A history of the family of German immigrants who came to Frederick County, Maryland and the house they built named from the city from which they came: Schifferstadt. The book details the life and times of the original family who built the home in the mid-1700s and details what remains of the stone house, the oldest residential building in Frederick, Maryland.
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.
This is a definitive account of the land and the people of Old Monocacy in early Frederick County, Maryland. The outgrowth of a project begun by Grace L. Tracey and completed by John P. Dern, it presents a detailed account of landholdings in that part of western Maryland that eventually became Frederick County. At the same time it provides a history of the inhabitants of the area, from the early traders and explorers to the farsighted investors and speculators, from the original Quaker settlers to the Germans of central Frederick County. In essence, the book has a dual focus. First it attempts to locate and describe the land of the early settlers. This is done by means of a superb series of plat maps, drawn to scale from original surveys and based both on certificates of survey and patents. These show, in precise configurations, the exact locations of the various grants and lots, the names of owners and occupiers, the dates of surveys and patents, and the names of contiguous land owners. Second, it identifies the early settlers and inhabitants of the area, carefully following them through deeds, wills, and inventories, judgment records, and rent rolls. Finally, in meticulously compiled appendices it provides a chronological list of surveys between 1721 and 1743; an alphabetical list of surveys, giving dates, page reference--text and maps--and patent references; a list of taxables for 1733-34; and a list of the early German settlers of Frederick County, showing their religion, their location, dates of arrival, and their earliest records in the county. Winner of the 1988 Donald Lines Jacobus Award
In Citizens in a Strange Land, Hermann Wellenreuther examines the broadsides—printed single sheets—produced by the Pennsylvania German community. These broadsides covered topics ranging from local controversies and politics to devotional poems and hymns. Each one is a product of and reaction to a particular historical setting. To understand them fully, Wellenreuther systematically reconstructs Pennsylvania’s print culture, the material conditions of life, the problems German settlers faced, the demands their communities made on the individual settlers, the complications to be overcome, and the needs to be satisfied. He shows how these broadsides provided advice, projections, and comment on phases of life from cradle to grave.
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.
The lists making up this remarkable work try to identify German emigrants in their homeland and in Pennsylvania. Thus they are cited with reference to manumission records, parish registers, passports, and other papers of German and Swiss provenance, and noted again, where possible, with reference to an equivalent range of Pennsylvania source materials, notably church records, wills, and tax lists. The materials antedating immigration often indicate causes, dates of emigration, the emigrant's occupation, his dates of birth and marriage, place of birth and residence, and names of family members, sometimes with lines of descent for several generations.
Between 1838 and the early 1890s, German peasant farmers from the Kingdom of Hanover made their way to Lafayette County, Missouri, to form a new community centered on the town of Concordia. Their story has much to tell us about the American immigrant experience--and about how newcomers were caught up in the violence that swept through their adoptive home. Robert Frizzell grew up near Concordia, and in this first book-length history of the German settlement, he chronicles its life and times during those formative years. Founded by Hanoverian Friedrich Dierking--known as "Dierking the Comforter" for the aid he gave his countrymen--the Concordia settlement blossomed from 72 households in 1850 to 375 over the course of twenty years. Frizzell traces that growth as he examines the success of early agricultural efforts, but he also tells how the community strayed from the cultural path set by its freethinker founder to become a center of religious conservatism. Drawing on archival material from both sides of the Atlantic, Frizzell offers a compelling account for scholars and general readers alike, showing how Concordia differed from other German immigrant communities in America. He also explores the conditions in Hanover--particularly the village of Esperke, from which many of the settlers hailed--that caused people to leave, shedding new light on theological, political, and economic circumstances in both the Old World and the New. When the Civil War came, the antislavery Hanoverians found themselves in the Missouri county with the greatest number of slaves, and the Germans supported the Union while most of their neighbors sympathized with Confederate guerrillas. Frizzell tells how the notorious "Bloody Bill" Anderson attacked the community three times, committing atrocities as gruesome as any recorded in the state--then how the community flourished after the war and even bought out the farmsteads of former slaveholders. Frizzell's account challenges many historians' assumptions about German motives for immigration and includes portraits of families and individuals that show the high price in toil and blood required to meet the challenges of making a home in a new land. Independent Immigrants reveals the untold story of these newcomers as it reveals a little-known aspect of the Civil War in Missouri.
A concise history of Germans in Minnesota including immigration patterns, the Catholic and Lutheran churches, cultural organizations, businesses, and politics, especially in the World War I years.
