How Representative are Emigrant Letters? An Exploration of the German Case

6 Music and affective signalling in an immigrant letter from 1844

“…In the Steel letters -some of which appear to have been brought together when Lilly and James eventually came to settle in Wisconsin and joined their saved letters to the letters that Thomas had saved -for at least a brief period many of these significant gaps in the conversation are explicitly filled in by the subsequent letters by both parties. 6 This is certainly not to say that the work of interpretation is easily resolved in Thomas Steel's letters. Even with the more articulate immigrant letter writers, there remains a vast, indeterminate territory of interpretive confusion and guesswork resulting from combinations of poor, vague or hurried writing, conflicted and semi-conscious purposes and emotions, and barely articulated suggestions, half-truths and untruths of the sort that occasionally enter into correspondence.…”

Love in the Time of Migration

“…Letter-writing was particularly useful to working-class families during the mass movements of people from continental Europe, the United Kingdom and Asia to the Americas (Baily and Ramella 1988;Blegen 1955;Cancian 2010;De Haan 1998;Erickson 1972;Fitzpatrick 1994;Gerber 2006;Helbich and Kamphoefner 2006;Kamphoefner, Helbich and Sommer 1991;Liu 2006;Miller 1985;Miller, Schrier, Boling et al 2003). For literate and less skilled writers, separation in migration provided an opportunity to stay in touch via pen and paper.…”

Reconsidering the migrant letter: from the experience of migrants to the language of migrants

“…The number of letters available for research and the overall number of letters that were written and those that were not exchanged between individuals and families have perplexed researchers (erickson, 1972;Fitzpatrick, 1994;Helbich & Kamphoefner, 2006;Richards, 2006). These questions have compelled historians Helbich and Kamphoefner (2006) to ask 'how similar or different the socioeconomic and demographic profile of these individuals was, compared to those who did write … what sort of letters survived and surfaced, what may distinguish them from those that did not, and which part of the chain composed by writer, recipient, preservers, and finally donor may have been most essential' (p. 30). In other words, how representative were the conclusions culled from the available letters if researchers did not have access to all the letters composed, delivered, and preserved over time?…”