Georgian Adventurers

Late 19th Century — 1921

Among the first Georgians to the United States were a group of 15 horse riders invited to join Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Congress of Rough Riders of the World. Georgians escaping conscription during WW1, revolutionaries fleeing Tsarist prisons, or adventurers seeking jobs on the Californian railways trickled into the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Deténte and Its Impact

1970s — mid-1980s

In the 1970s, during Détente and the Helsinki Agreements (1975), Georgian Jews found their way to the United States, with the first 10 families arriving in 1973-74. Two larger waves of Georgian Jews followed in 1978-80 and in the mid-1980s. Most of the 5-6,000 Georgian Jews who arrived in the United States settled in the Queen’s district of New York City.

Georgian horse riders in front of the Ulysses S. Grant Statue. New York, 1908. Image from Irakli Makharadze, ქართველები ამერიკაში [Georgians in the USA] (Tbilisi: Bakur Sulakauri Publishing, 2011), p 28.

 

Exodus after 1921

1920s — 1930s

After the establishment of the Georgian Democratic Republic in May 1918, trade and consular links facilitated a growing Georgian presence in the United States. More Georgians were pushed out by the Red Army invasion of Georgia in February 1921, fleeing to Poland, France, Germany, Turkey, and the US.  In the 1920s, a few hundred Georgian exiles from Europe, among them former Georgian officers, government officials and aristocrats, fled to the United States. 

Prince Georges Matchabelli (1885-1935), a Georgian aristocrat and a diplomat of the Georgian Democratic Republic who emigrated to the US after February 1921.

Post-War Displacement

1945 — 1950s

After World War II, a new wave of Georgians arrived, many of them former POWS or exiles covered by the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953.

 

After Independence......

1991 — Today

Since Georgian independence in 1991, the Georgian community has expanded enormously with  a new infusion of students, scholars, restauranters, artists and entrepreneurs. Georgian diplomats and their families are present in both Washington D.C. and New York City. There are also many undocumented Georgians in US cities. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Do We Want to Achieve?

We have a patchwork knowledge of the Georgian Diaspora in the USA, which has been part of the US community for over a century. Most public information focuses on individual Georgians, but we have no systematic research on the Diaspora’s history, size, location, or composition. The goal of this project is to collect data, both quantitative and qualitative, on the history and composition of the Georgian émigré community in the USA.  Our sources come from government departments, archives and libraries, personal papers, photograph albums, cultural organizations, and newspapers. The information we collect will be archived and made accessible to scholars and to members of the US Georgian community on our interactive website.

Our focus is on the following features of the Diaspora:

• Demographic and socio-economic characteristics
• Historical patterns of migration
• Size and geographic distribution
• Organizations (societies, communities, the church)
• Histories (families and oral histories)
• Archives (journals, newspapers, radio, photographs, documents)