In 1910, there were around 65,000 Romanian-born in the US, with just over half in New York City. This number was up almost 5-fold over 1900. There were 20 times as many Italian-born.
But in Minneapolis, the Romanian-born outnumbered the Italian-born by more than 2 to 1.
In effect, this was similar to the Hmong and Somali populations of a century later: small national population, but with a noticeable concentration in the Twin Cities.
I tried to determine what had happened to this population, and it appeared to have disappeared. The Orthodox churches in Minneapolis are in the northeast, and the Heritage Organization of Romanian Americans - Minnesota is in Vadnais Heights, and St.Paul and South St.Paul are considered to be the historical center of the Romanian community.
It turns out that the Romanian community in Minneapolis was primarily Jewish, while the Romanian population in St.Paul had been born in Hungary. The 1910 census reported country of birth based on the international boundaries, so that most persons from Eastern Europe were from Germany, Russia, Austria, or Hungary, with only a small number from the southeast - Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Greece.
Europe in 1910 - Click for mapNationwide, 63% of Roumanian-born persons used Yiddish, 33% used Roumanian, and 3% used German. Among those gaining entry during the preceding decade, 90% used Yiddish. It is likely that most were bilingual, using Yiddish within the Jewish community, and Roumanian with the larger community. There was also likely different questioning between immigration authorities, and census officials. It is more likely that there were Yiddish speakers working for immigration than for the census, and they may have been more interested in determining ethnicity, whether Polish, Volga German, or Jew, rather than place of birth. In previous censuses, Polish-born persons were identified based on their language, even though Poland did not exist as a state at that time. The 1900 Census even divided "Polish-born" among those born in the Austrian, German, and Russian portions (Minneapolis had a fairly even split, which was not typical for other locales).
In 1910. Polish with 49K speakers was 4th among foreign languages spoken in Minnesota, behind the Big 3 of German 408K, Swedish 282K, and Norwegian 281K; but ahead of Finnish 44K, French 44K, Danish 42K and Czech (Bohemian and Moravian) 33K.
19% of Swedish speakers lived in Minneapolis, 12% of Norwegians, and 8% of Germans. 46% of Yiddish speakers lived in Minneapolis, and 17% of Polish speakers.
The census shows the characterization of Minneapolis as a Swedish city and St.Paul as German was a matter of degree. Minneapolis has 54K Swedish speakers, but St. Paul had 26K; and St.Paul had 50K German speakers, but Minneapolis had 32K.
Differences were often much larger for other languages. St.Paul had twice as many Italian speakers (3253 vs 1646), and 2.5 times as many Magyar speakers (1032 vs 404), while Minneapolis had 16 times as many Slovak speakers (1444 vs. 88), 8 times as many Russian speakers (872 vs. 128), 12 times as many Slovenian speakers (747 vs 60), and 15 times as many Finnish speakers (1361 vs 89).
Numbers were not dissimilar, particularly when the difference in size of the two cities is taken into account, for Danish, French, Polish, Czech, and Yiddish speakers.
The Minneapolis Romanian shul was in Elliot Park. It existed until 1958 when it merged with another synagogue and moved to St. Louis Park. In 2011, that synagogue merged with another and moved to Minnetonka. So it appears that the Romanian identity was gradually lost and subsumed within a Jewish identity.
