Becoming American at the beginning of the nineteenth century meant great increases in immigration and commerce for Louisiana. While always present to an extent, German immigration to the state boomed in the 1840s. By 1870, twenty percent of Louisiana’s population was German-speaking (Merrill, The Germans of Louisiana, from the introduction by Don Heinrich Tolzman). While most of the estimated 750,000 Germans who used New Orleans as a port of entry to the United States in the nineteenth century continued up the Mississippi to the Mid-West, or took the Red River to Texas, many did stay in the city and its surrounding areas.