Q: Was there a Federally funded program, government agency, or religious interest groups in New York (or elsewhere) during the 1800’s that encouraged, promised, or offered non-English speaking emigrants—(land and) a English education (in Chicago for seven years ?) if they studied and became ministers and then perhaps settled in the Midwest somewhere. It sounds kinda like a plausible gimmick by New Yorkers to reduce the crowding in “The Big Apple”. It also sounds like a plausible method for developing or struggling churches in the mid-west to attract emigrants into the priesthood or ministry. I’m trying to figure out how my great grandfather, Fred H. Hans arrived in New York from Hanover, Germany in abt 1840 and then somehow managed to get to Chicago where he apparently attended school for seven years (while also studying ministry ?). After completing the school in Chicago, he evidently returned to New York where he married Louisa Lintlaw and had two children before moving to Bremer County, Iowa where he farmed and ministered (Evangelical Methodist or ME). It doesn’t make too much sense to me, that Fred would travel all the way from Chicago (after completing school), back to New York, get married, have two children, then travel all the way back to Iowa to preach and farm. It almost sounds like he begrudgedly had to complete a contract, otherwise how would he have been able to acquire the farm property in Iowa to start with.
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