The lure of more decent employment conditions and the hope of a brighter future for their children. A wave of immigrants from the north of England (and Sweden) came to my area to work as craftsmen and silversmiths. Instead of working in Yorkshire's steam-powered mills where child labor was exploited more than it had ever been before the industrial revolution, their kids, when settled here, were enrolled in school.
My reference and point of wider interest was not to the post-colonial and independent USA of the early 19th century which was an emigration to a new identity entirely. My interest was in the wider migration within the still expanding British empire of that century and the many reasons that drove that migration. Nothing to do with well enough known but separate American immigration.
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