Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 35

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 1074

USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 35

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live happier, and especially more carefree in view of the future lot of his numerous pos- terity, than he could in Germany with six times that amount."

Whatever may have been the merit of Duden's letters from the standpoint of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they were of tre- mendous influence directly and indirectly on the history of The Center State.

The Latin Settlement in Shiloh Valley.

Missouri did not get all of the high class German immigration which Du- den's letters prompted to leave the fatherland. Gustavus Koerner, and a party of friends, including two of the Engelmanns, Henry Abend and others, came over about 1833 expecting to make their homes in Missouri. They arrived in St. Louis. Koerner and Theodore Engelmann were sent into the interior of the state to look at the country and to report on a location. They came back and made such an unfavorable report on slavery in Missouri that the party de- cided in favor of Illinois and located in and around Belleville. Later much German immigration was diverted to St. Clair county on the Illinois side by the feeling against slavery.

The idea of a German state was not original with Duden. Preceding the coming of this investigator, many articles had appeared in the newspapers of Germany discussing the practicability of the creation of a German state in the United States. The plan advocated by those who favored it was to obtain possession of a large tract of land and parcel it out in lots of fifty acres to the colonists. "Latiniers," some of these colonists called themselves. The German papers noted the movement as "the Latin emigration." Those who joined Gustavus Koerner in choosing Shiloh valley, near Belleville, in preference to Missouri, because of slavery, formed what for many years was known as the "Latin Settlement." Koerner was the schoolmaster of the community.

The Founding of Hermann.

In 1837 a town was established in Missouri along the line of Duden's sug- gestion of "the center of culture for the Germans in America." . A large body of land on the south bank of the Missouri, about thirty miles west of Duden's farm, was bought. The purchase was made by the "German Settlement So- ciety of Philadelphia." A colony of Germans was established on the land and the name of Hermann was chosen for the community.

Dr. William G. Bek told the story of Hermann. In 1836, the German Set- tlement Society of Philadelphia was organized, having for its declared purpose the establishment of a colony in the West, this colony to be German in pop- ulation and in customs. It was to develop culture as understood by Germans. In 1837 the society sent out a commission to visit Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan. These delegates were to locate a place near a nav- igable river with a considerable body of land and with natural inducements. for various industries. They found what they were seeking on the south side of the Missouri near the mouth of the Gasconade. The society bought 11,300 acres for $15,612. So prompt was action of the society that the first settlers reached the location in the late fall or early winter of 1837. But, through ill-

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ness, the general manager failed to get there to apportion the land and the pioneers of the colony had a hard winter. These first comers were Conrad Baer, George Conrad Riefenstahl, wife and five children, John George Prager, wife and two children, Gottlieb Heinrich Gentner and wife, Daniel Oelschlager, wife and one child,-seventeen in all.

The Diary of Herman Steines.

A distinctive and valuable. contribution to Missouri history has been made by Professor William G. Bek in his translations from letters and diaries of the German immigrants who came to the state, following the letters of Duden. A series of these translations has been published in the Missouri Historical Re- view. In one instalment, printed in 1920, was given portions of the diary of Herman Steines who came over with other members of the Solingen Emigration Society :

January 25, 1837-Today I went to the horse mill at the Harris place and ground two bushels of wheat. Every man who came had to use his own horses to run the mill.

February 8 Early this morning I left for St. Louis. On account of the morass, which was supposed to be a road, I could not get farther than Harrison's, thirteen miles on this side of St. Louis.

February 9-I arrived in St. Louis at noon. At the city market I sold my produce, namely, ten pounds of fresh butter at 311/2 cents a pound; twelve pounds of old butter at 25 cents a pound and four dozen of eggs at 25 cents a dozen.

March 4-This evening I got my buckskin breeches from Mr. Farmer.

March 6-I rode to St. Louis today, carrying twenty-two dozens of eggs and eleven pounds of butter on my horse.

March 22-Ordered a new wagon from the wainwright near the jail. It will cost me $150.

May 5-The assessor of St. Louis, Mr. Patterson, was here today. Assessed me as follows : Two horses, $50; six head of cattle, $72; one watch, $5. Total state taxes are 521/2 cents, of which 371/2 cents are for poll tax.

May 20-Went to the log rolling at Mr. Halbach's.

May 29-Squirrels are destroying the corn crop. Birds and raccoons are also very destructive to the fields.

July II-Mr. Farmer cradled my wheat today, and mother and I bound it.

July 14-Mother and I cut our rye with a scythe.

July 28-With my two horses I helped Gross and Paffrath trample out their wheat. August 10-Mr. Bornefeld made me a lot of cigars from homegrown tobacco.

August 20-Mother and I filled the mattresses with fresh straw.

August 31-The mail carrier failed to come on the last two mail days. Harrison, who had contracted to carry the mail from St. Louis to Jefferson City for $500 a year, has become bankrupt. They say we shall not get any papers and letters till a new contract is made for carrying the mail.

September 5-I chinked and daubed with mud the cracks in the walls of my house.

October 21-Jacob Ridenhour was here and he agreed to split one thousand fence rails for me at five bits a hundred. He will take his pay in wool at 371/2 cents a pound.

November 3-Judge Evans of St. Francois County was three and. one-half days late for session of the court.

December 1-Went to a meeting at Brawly's house, where Mr. Rennick preached on "The Salvation of. the Repentant Sinner and the Damnation of the Wicked."

The Coming of Engelmann.

With some of his countrymen, Duden's letters seemed too highly colored. There were intellectual Germans to whom Missouri appealed as a future home

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if it was as represented by Duden. These "akademikers" selected George.Engel- mann as one whom they could trust to check up Duden's statements. Thereby St. Louis and Missouri gained a citizen whose explorations and investigations were for more than half a century respected among men of science far and wide. Engelmann came to Missouri in 1834. That was five years after Duden left. He was twenty-three years old. He had studied at Heidelberg with Agassiz. When he graduated in medicine he wrote a paper on plant mon- strosities which showed such comprehensive knowledge of botany as to attract widespread attention.

Accompanied by a hunter who acted as guide and helper, Dr. Engelmann was engaged most of the time for several years in the scientific study of the region around St. Louis, carrying his investigations to Southern Illinois, to Southern Missouri and into Arkansas. Besides reporting in a practical way on the country, he made scientific reports on the botany and on the minerals. One of his explorations was a tour into Arkansas, looking for a silver mine which a St. Louis company thought must be somewhere in the Ozarks.

The reports which Dr. Engelmann made upon the resources of the Mis- sissippi Valley in the vicinity of St. Louis were considered so important that they were made the principal features of a periodical called Westland, several numbers of which were published at Heidelberg, leading to the migration of many educated Germans. Settling in St. Louis after his earlier explorations, Dr. Engelmann practiced medicine, aided in the publication of the first Ger- man newspaper, the Anzeiger, and joined in the establishment of a German high school. That was several years before the first public school was opened in St. Louis. And with all of these engagements Dr. Engelmann carried on his scientific labors from time to time, leaving home on journeys of exploration.

He became famous on both sides of the ocean as the great American au- thority on the cactus, the United States Government publishing his report on the subject. By reason of the exhaustive and critical character of his study, his publications were accepted as the authorities in many lines of investigation.

The Foremost Scientist of that Period.

In a long series of meteorological records, which he kept with infinite care, Dr. Engelmann rendered not only Missouri but the whole Mississippi Val- ley a signal service. The late Dr. Enno Sander, who came to Missouri in the fifties and was an intimate friend of Engelmann and associated with him in scientific research, said to the writer:

"Engelmann inaugurated as early as 1835 at St. Louis, with good and reliable instru- ments, a series of meteorological observations which he continued scrupulously three times a day during nearly fifty years. Such was his zeal that a short time before his death, Dr. Engelmann, himself, swept the snow from the walk leading to his instruments, and even during his last days refused assistance in making his observations. His journal was kept so thoroughly and faithfully that it has become the only reliable source of information on the. climatology of the Mississippi Valley for that period. Engelmann's tables prepared from these observations are now authentic records. The officers of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington early recognized the greatness of Engelmann as a scientist and the officers and scientists of government exploring expeditions, fitting out at St. Louis, came to him for advice and aid. Engelmann's instruments, always carefully and fault-

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lessly kept, gave the government scientists the opportunity to compare and regulate their own. To Engelmann these scientists looked for counsel as to collection and preservation of specimens. They came to him to help them determine and classify when they encoun- tered doubt. There are very few of those government exploring reports in which the parts relating to botanical observations and the descriptions of plants were not written by Dr. Engelmann."

Dr. Engelmann was versed in all of the natural sciences, but his favorite study was botany. The work that he began and pursued in and about St. Louis for many years was developed under the encouragement given by Henry Shaw in his magnificent bequests, until today the St. Louis School of Botany, under Director George T. Moore, is recognized in Europe as well as in the United States as one of the great institutions in that branch of study and re- search.

In 1843 George Engelmann, William Greenleaf Eliot, Adolph Wislizenus and a few others met in the law office of Marie P. Leduc to form the Western Academy of Science. These young men bought a piece of ground of several acres near Eighth street and Chouteau avenue, started a botanical garden and experimented in forestry. The organization was a pioneer in the scientific field of the Mississippi Valley; it disbanded after a few years, but the members of it went on individually with their scientific work. In 1856 the present Academy of Science was organized, and Dr. Engelmann, one of the leading spirits in the movement, became the president, holding the office fifteen years.

Adventures of Dr. Wislizenus.

Associated with Dr. Engelmann in the earlier years of his career in St. Louis was Adolph Wislizenus, who came from Germany about 1840, leaving behind him the record of having been one of the students who seized Frankfort when it was the capital of the German empire in 1833. Wislizenus was the son of a clergyman. He escaped after the failure of the students' uprising, completed his medical studies in Switzerland and France and arrived in St. Louis in 1839. Scientific exploration lured him from practice and Dr. Wislizenus went out from St. Louis with one of the fur trading expeditions, reaching Oregon. ~ The report of his observations brought him recognition among scientific men through- out the country. Coming back to St. Louis, Dr. Wislizenus settled down to practice with Dr. Engelmann, but after five years he was off again on scientific exploration, this time to the southwest, and into Northern Mexico. The war clouds were darkening. The St. Louis scientist was taken prisoner at Chi- huahua and conveyed to a remote place in the mountains. There he remained until Doniphan and his adventurous Missourians came marching down as if there was no such thing as an enemy's country, when he was released. Wis- lizenus returned to St. Louis with the "conquistadores," as the conquering heroes of that day were called. His scientific report upon Northern Mexico be- came authority and has so remained until the present day.

Enno Sander and Franz Sigel Revolutionists.

Enno Sander, of a good family, a graduate of the University of Berlin, was one of the German "Liberals" who assembled at Baden and declared them-

Dr. George Hillgaertner

Henry Boernstein

Carl Daenzer

Emil Preetorius

UPBUILDERS OF THE GERMAN PRESS OF MISSOURI

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selves. Under the provisional government that was established Dr. Sander be- came assistant minister of war. When the revolution failed and the leaders were being condemned to death or to imprisonment, he made his way to Switzer- land, and later, in 1852, he reached St. Louis. The Missouri law creating a state board of pharmacy where every druggist must show his ability to practice, was of Dr. Sander's authorship. The St. Louis School of Pharmacy owed much to his inspiration. Franz Sigel, who became a major-general, and whose equestrian statue is in Forest Park, was one of this St. Louis colony of Ger- man revolutionary leaders. Sigel was a graduate of the military school at Carlsruhe. When the revolution started in Baden, in 1848, he raised a corps of 4,000 volunteers and fought two battles with the royal troops. He was defeated and escaped to Switzerland. The next year he went back to Baden. After commanding the Army of the Neckar, he was made minister of war of the pro- visional government and succeeded to the chief command of the revolutionary forces. After several battles he was again compelled to retreat, and took refuge in Switzerland. In 1856 he came to St. Louis and became a teacher of math- ematics in the German Institute. That was his vocation until the Committee of Public Safety organized the Union Guards in the winter of 1861 when he was made colonel of one of the five regiments first organized.

Missouri, Land of Religious Freedom.

Religious as well as political freedom was an inducement to early German immigration. In one of his letters Duden had much to say about the tolerance that prevails without being "the progenitor of indifference." The steamboats Rienzi, Clyde, Knickerbocker and Selma on their first trips up from New Or- leans in the spring of 1839 brought 700 Lutherans. The head of the party was Martin Stephan who had been a preacher at Dresden. On the journey these Lutherans, who held tenaciously to the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, named Stephan as their bishop. They had, under his leadership, gone back to Luther- anism as Martin Luther taught it. These people brought with them personal effects and $120,000. They intended to buy land and to found colonies of their own. Part of them went on to Perry county, purchased nearly 5,000 acres and established settlements. The others, who remained in St. Louis, continued to worship for three years in Christ church, the vestrymen of which extended the privilege.

Realization that they had found in Missouri a land of religious freedom had come to these Lutherans quickly. On the Sunday morning after their ar- rival, good Bishop Kemper read to his congregation in Christ church, then on Fifth and Chestnut streets this notice :

"A body of Lutherans, having been persecuted by the Saxon government because they believed it their duty to adhere to the doctrines inculcated by their great leader and con- tained in the Augsburg Confession of Faith, have arrived here with the intention of settling in this or one of the neighboring states, and having been deprived of the privilege of public worship for three months, they have earnestly and most respectfully requested the use of our church that they may again unite in all of the ordinances of our holy religion. I have, therefore, with the entire approbation of the vestry, granted the use of our church for this day from 2 p. m. until sunset to a denomination whose early members

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were highly esteemed by the English Reformers, and with whom our glorious martyrs Cranmer, Ridley and others had much early intercourse."

This kindly, Christian reception had its part in saving the Lutheran colony from going to pieces spiritually a few weeks later when their bishop, Martin Stephan, fell into evil ways. Talented and magnetic, he had not the self con- trol to withstand temptation. He was tried and expelled from the church.

The Walthers.

Among those who had come out with the colony were two young preachers, Otto Hermann Walther and Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther. They were sons of a Lutheran pastor in Saxony, highly educated. They had studied and prayed their way to what they believed to be sound Lutheranism. Otto Her- mann. Walther was the pastor of the Lutherans who remained in St. Louis and worshipped in Christ church, later forming what became Trinity, the first Ger- man Lutheran church in St. Louis.

In their distress and demoralization following the downfall of Bishop Stephan, the Lutherans turned to the Walthers. Hermann Walther did not live long. Ferdinand Walther was less than thirty years of age when he ac- cepted the leadership. He restored material order, but, more than that, he led the sorely tried colonists back to their spiritual ideals. He succeeded Hermann as pastor of Trinity. St. Louis became the center of Lutheran- teaching and Lutheran influence. The act of church hospitality on the part of Christ church was fraught with great consequences, material as well as spiritual, to St. Louis. It added to and helped to assimilate one of the most desirable elements of the population. It helped to make the city not, only nationally but internationally the capital of a powerful religious organization. A college, a theological. sem- inary, a publishing house, a hospital were established.

A National Movement.

For forty-eight years Ferdinand Walther was the dominant figure with the Lutherans. He had been ordained only the year before he joined the colony and left Saxony. When the end of his work came, in 1887, he was seventy- six years old. Church after church was organized in Missouri until they num- bered in St. Louis alone nearly a score. Concordia college grew from its humble beginning in 1850 into one of the great educational institutions of the state. As early as 1844 the Missouri Lutherans supported Walther in making their movement more than local. Die Lutheraner was published semi-monthly in St. Louis. It called on Lutherans everywhere in the United States to come back to the old faith. Lutherans were numerous in New York and Pennsyl- vania and North Carolina. They had spread into Ohio and Tennessee, into Indiana and Illinois. But they had adopted much doctrine which, in the opinion of Walther and the Missouri Lutherans, was not sound. Die Lutheraner's ap- peals aroused great interest east of the Mississippi. Much correspondence fol- lowed. There were meetings and conferences. At Chicago, in 1874, was or- ganized a Lutheran synod, with a constitution drafted by Walther and with the . St. Louis theologian as president. It embraced many of the eastern Lutherans.

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Walther came back to Missouri and entered upon his enlarged career as a teach- er of pure Lutheran theology. He prepared hundreds of young pastors for Lutheran churches. His theology went direct to the Bible for substantiation. The Missouri leader of orthodox Lutheranism had many controversies with other Lutherans. He courted these discussions. Upon his suggestion, the Lutheran bodies of the United States held free conferences to discuss their doctrinal differences. And after each of these conferences, Lutherans found themselves nearer together, with Ferdinand Walther more of a leader of Luth- eran thought than before. He went to Europe to present his views. He edited Lutheran periodicals which had wide circulation. The Lutheran publishing house in St. Louis became a far-famed institution. Ferdinand Walther was an ardent lover of music all of his life. He was a man of humor which he masked with a serious face. He wrote his sermons and committed them to memory so that he spoke without manuscript before him. He was an orator of international fame among Lutherans. Most of the Lutheran churches of St. Louis estab- lished parochial schools in which the children of Lutheran parents were educated. Square miles of North St. Louis and South St. Louis were built up by the Lutherans. As a class these people were home owners and well to do people. They clung to their religion brought with them from Germany but they mani- fested little interest in the political ideal of a German state in Missouri.

Pioneer German Journalism.

In 1835 a German newspaper, the Anzeiger des Westens was started in St. Louis. The publisher and editor was H. C. Bimbage. Later William Weber, one of the "akademikers," joined Bimbage in the conduct of the Anzeiger. Around their newspaper the educated Germans rallied and fought the Native American party which was becoming strong in St. Louis. "Know Nothingism" found stimulus in the fact that in three months of one year in the late forties there had landed at the St. Louis levee 529 steamboats bringing 30,000 immigrants to settle west of the Mississippi. Dr. Hugo Maximilian von Starkloff, writing in 1913, the German centennial year, said that this early German immigration to Missouri included "men of prominence in the professions, as well as good business men, physicians, lawyers, engineers, architects, also literary men, musicians, and artists of various kinds." Of the men who rallied around the Anzeiger in those pioneer years he said, "their efforts were directed with par- ticular force against the so-called 'Know Nothing' element which was unusually strong in the city at the time. And they carried on a determined fight for the public welfare, for the rights of the citizens of their adopted city and the pres- ervation of personal liberty, not allowing themselves to be influenced by attacks and villification from various sources to leave their chosen path."

The Know Nothing Trouble.

When the Know Nothing sentiment culminated in violence the Anzeiger was the first object of attack by the Native Americans. At the city election of 1853 it was charged that the Germans had taken control of the First ward polls at Soulard market and were preventing the Whigs from voting At that time the Germans were classed as Benton Democrats. The report was brought up

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town that Dr. Mitchell had been mobbed and that Mayor Kennett, candidate for re-election, had been hissed. Bob O'Blennis, the gambler, and Ned Buntline, the story writer, assembled 5,000 men and marched down to Soulard market. Pistol shots were fired. Stones were thrown. The crowd from up-town fired into the market house. A shot from Neumeyer's tavern, on Seventh street and Park avenue, killed Joseph Stevens of the St. Louis Fire company. The Americans charged the tavern, gutted it and burned it. They got two six- pounders and located them on a Park avenue corner to rake the streets to the south but did not fire. One party of fifteen hundred started for the office of the Anzeiger to clean it out but met the militia and turned back. This trouble wore itself out in a day. It was the curtain raiser for the election tragedy of August, 1854. Antagonism toward foreigners had become intense. Foreign born citizens offering to vote were challenged and called on to show their papers and then declared to be disqualified.

German Loyalty.

The idea of a German state in Missouri faded. In place of it developed in- creasing activity and influence in the public affairs of Missouri as an American state in the Union. Dr. Starkloff says that of the first 10,000 enlisted in St. Louis to support the Union 8,000 were Germans. It was that enrollment of 10,000 that defeated the secession of Missouri. Gould's statistical work pub- lished by the Western Sanitary commission gave the number of Missouri Ger- mans enlisting in the Union army as 30,899. Missourians born in this country who enlisted in the Union army, by the same authority, were 46,676. The pro- portion to population was overwhelmingly in favor of the Germans.

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Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 35

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939 Publication date: 1921 Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company Number of Pages: 1074

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 1074