A new study study of German immigrants to Wisconsin in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and their children, found that many continued to use German as their primary language. It also found that in areas with large concentrations of Germans, many English speakers picked up German.
What's odd is that this is treated as news. Anyone who knows anything about immigration to the United States knows that in ethnic enclaves foreign languages tended to persist and be predominant for many years.
In Texas, some communities founded by German immigrants continued to have heavy concentrations of people speaking primarily German into the 20th century. There's this myth that somehow today's immigrants are different, but the pattern seems much the same. The first generation often learns little English, especially if they come here as adults. The second generation is bilingual and may or may not be more comfortable in English, and the third generation and after tends to speak less and less of their grandparents' language.
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It would be a mistake to compare small immigrant communities (they were small population) in remote (truly remote, back then) areas of Wisconsin or Texas to the immigrant hordes of cities like New York or Chicago.
In Lawrence Welkburg you might have been exposed only to German. In Yorkville (Manhattan), English would intrude, like it or not.
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