Emigration Learning Resource 2: Activities

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Key Question: What did America offer people wanting to emigrate from West Sussex in the early 19^th century?

Read these 3 sources carefully. Use a dictionary to check the meaning of any words you are not sure about E.g., hewers, prairie, sawyer, (the word ‘sawver’ is a misprint)
What kind of documents are they?
What was their purpose?
Which of the three sources do you think does the best job of persuading people to emigrate to the USA? Explain why.

Locate Liverpool, Manchester, New York, Ithaca, Owego, Kansas, Topeka (Kansas), Mercere, Wyoming, West Virginia, Tazewell on maps of the UK, USA and world.
Compile a list of reasons with information from these sources about why you think workers in the 1830s might want to emigrate to the USA.
Research the development of railroads OR farming in the USA in the early 19^th century and investigate how much they relied on emigrant workers
Investigate USA currency in the early 19^th century. If the UK’s currency was pounds, shillings and pence what did the USA use? Can you explain how many cents there were in a dollar, what a dime was, any paper money…?

Design a poster, using a similar style to the sources, encouraging people to emigrate to the USA in the early 19^th century. Include as many reasons as you can. Think carefully about:
- layout
- wording
- use of illustrations
- useful facts
The Kansas poster is actually part of a folded leaflet. Look carefully at the Kansas leaflet Now create the pamphlet to be sent out by the new English colony in Source B to anyone interested in finding out more. Remember to include:
- Description of the new colony
- Climate
- Quality of the soil
- Other products
- Other information Eg housing, wage rates…