Wilhelm Wagner (1803-1877), son of Peter Wagner, was born in Dürkheim, Germany. He married Friedericke Odenwald (1812-1893). They had nine children. They emigrated and settled in Illinois. His brother, Julius Wagner (1816-1903) married Emilie M. Schneider (1820-1896). They had seven children. They emigrated and settled in Texas.
Who owns the West? -- Buffalo Bill and Karl May : the origins of German Western fandom -- A wall runs through it : western fans in the two Germanies -- Little houses on the prairie -- "And then the American Indians came over" : fan responses to indigenous resurgence and political change -- Indians into Confederates : historical fiction fans, reenactors, and living history.
"The German Pioneers: A Tale of the Mohawk" by Friedrich Spielhagen and translated by Levi Sternberg is a German novel that was almost lost to time. What was, initially, a more contemporary book is now an interesting historical fiction story that explores German pioneers, a tale that was so rarely explored.
Transcriptions with historical and biographical context of letters sent to Ohio resident and German immigrant Jonathan C. Rauch during the 1850s and 1860s by various friends and cousins who were pioneer settlers along and west of the Mississippi in Illinois, Missouri and Iowa. The letters depict everyday life of mid-19th century German and German-American settlers to the Midwest. Letters were written by Samuel, Margaret and John Boatman, Martin McCready, S.J. Brown, G.W. Rauch, H. Myers, M. Palmer, J.E. Rowe, Peter and Eva Faulk and Wm J. Georg. The thesis also includes a section devoted to German-American frontier travel literature.
This book covers the early German-American experience for those who emigrated, including settlement patterns and the diffusion of German culture into American society. The author culminates this cultural exchange with the German importance in the formation of the American Republic, and as a critical part of national memory.
America has been and still is a land of immigrants, a melting pot of many races and creeds. From 1832 until 1847, people poured into Texas from the American backwoods and from Europe. They sought the same things: land and a new life in a democratic society. As part of that wave, German immigrants came between 1845 and 1847. They came legally and helped establish what would become major cities in Central Texas. This story is about one immigrant and his family who left Germany expecting to rise from subsistence farming to commercial farming in the New World, only to be thrust into the role of pioneering farmer by an inept emigration company, the Adelsverein. Of course, legal emigration was more difficult in 1846 than it is today. The statement, they came over on the boat, belies the fact that voyages across the ocean were long, tedious, and dangerous. Wagon trains from the coast into the interior of the state were no easier. Hostile Indians, intent on keeping their cultures intact, occupied the land they settled. Creating a farm out of raw wilderness was not for the weak of heart or weak of limb. It took work, more difficult and more dangerous than most of us in the 21st century can imagine. See what it was like to emigrate during the nineteenth century through the story of Christoph Feuge and his large family from Heiningen (Germany) as they travel to Karlshafen (Texas) and on to the colony of Fredericksburg (Texas). Through luck, bold action, and sheer determination, he manages to survive hurricanes, disease, and years of absolute destitution to establish his dream in America. To round out his story of emigration, anecdotes and accounts from other emigrant diaries are added into his story. Thus, the story remakes Christoph Feuge into a Everyman German Immigrant, one who experiences all of what those early German Pioneers went through to put down roots in Texas. Robert Lamar Feuge was born and raised in Fredericksburg, Texas. He is the great, great grandson of the title character of this book. From his earliest days, he has been interested in the history of Fredericksburg and the German settlers who lived it. What was it like to emigrate from Germany to Texas in 1846? A graduate of Fredericksburg High School and Howard Payne College, Robert received his PhD from the University of New Mexico in 1969 and spent much of his adult life in San Diego. He has been an avid beach volleyball player, hiker, and collector of southwestern Indian art. Today, he lives in retirement with his wife, Margaret, and two miniature Dachshunds in Sedona, Arizona.
2014 Reprint of 1894 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. The "Frontier Thesis" or "Turner Thesis," is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1894 that American democracy was formed by the American Frontier. He stressed the process-the moving frontier line-and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed consequences of a ostensibly limitless frontier and that American democracy and egalitarianism were the principle results. In Turner's thesis the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won very wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.
