Maryland's earliest white settlers were English; many of them farmed lands on the Eastern Shore. As tobacco crops wore out the soil, these early immigrants moved on to the fertile Western Shore and piedmont. During the 19th century, Baltimore ranked 2nd only to New York as a port of entry for European immigrants. First to come were the Germans, followed by the Irish, Poles, East European Jews, and Italians; a significant number of Czechs settled in Cecil County during the 1860s. After the Civil War, many blacks migrated to Baltimore, both from rural Maryland and from southern states.
Since World War II, intrastate migration has followed the familiar urban/suburban pattern: both the Baltimore metropolitan area and the Maryland part of the metropolitan Washington, DC, area have experienced rapid growth while the inner cities have lost population. Overall, Maryland experienced a net loss from migration of about 36,000 between 1970 and 1980, much of it to Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida; the outmigration stopped during the 1980s, however, with a net gain of over 200,000 from 1980 to 1990. Between 1990 and 1998, Maryland had a net loss of 49,000 in domestic migration and a net gain of 118,000 in international migration. Maryland's foreign-born population totaled 412,000, or 8% of the total population, in 1996. In 1998, 15,561 foreign immigrants arrived in the state—the 10th-highest total of any state for that year. Between 1990 and 1998, the state's overall population increased 7.4%. In the period 1995–2000, 495,152 people moved into the state and 514,875 moved out, for a net loss of 19,723, many of whom moved to Virginia.