The History of the Teutons

The Predecessors of the Later Germanic Tribes in Medieval Europe

And the Out-Migration of These Germans to America

By Jack Nieporte

Based Upon the Historical Work of Sister Carolyn Worman Sur, School Sister of Notre Dame

Published by Worman-Sur, Inc. 1989

and, The Great Hunger in Ireland of 1845-1849 by Cecil Woodham-Smith, published 1962

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I have been an active student of Germanic history and culture for many years. I have been most intrigued with our heritage that immigrated from there and landed in Cincinnati, where I too was born and raised for my first fifteen years. I purchased another book regarding the Barbarian Tribes of Germanic times back in 1993 or so, which generally explained this history, but admittedly, I was really still quite confused afterward. I was seeking to better understand my family's Germanic roots. I have been told occasionally that we come from good 'German Stock.' And so, this book of hers really caught my attention and I bought it fortunately on EBay!

I now better understand these roots after completing the reading of that book. I dare not plagiarize this work; hence, the purpose of this narrative of the history of the Germans back in history. I will begin with some foundational commentary on Sister Worman-Sur's explanation of such. This will be a fairly long read but the factual information conveyed places us in a solid time and space where the Nieporte's have long since lived and spread out from apparently. You will read below also of the German Triangle of the West: Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee. I have tried to highlight in yellow some of the more pronounced points of interest in her work. There are many more that I could have highlighted.

Unfortunately for our Canton, Ohio branch of the family, this work does not contain anything about it as far as I can tell. But I now believe that the actual entrance into this country by way of one or more Atlantic seaport cities, places this entrance point squarely in Cincinnati for their permanent settlement location. I am aware however, that the Joseph Nieporte family immigrated directly to Canton, so there must be more to this story than what I will share below. I hope in due time to discover how these two groups of Nieporte surname branches of the family split off from one and other.

She begins, " This history is being written to invite all persons of German Catholic Ancestory to reflect upon their past." Parenthetically, I am a direct descendent of German Catholic's that emigrated from Buhren, or one of the nearby villages in and around that geographical area, Germany to the new western outpost of the then called Northwest Purchase. And then on into the fledgling village of the then called Symmes Purchase, that now contains the city of modern day Cincinnati, Ohio. She continues, "The immediacy of the Sesquicentennial Celebration in the summer of 1989 in a small township settled by German Catholics, namely Teutopolis, Illinois, City of the Teutons, explains the rationale for a specific focus and specific footnotes..." She was raised and lived much of her life in Indiana and Illinois and felt so inclined to write this brief documentary on this obscure, but for me important,  topic.

I now continue to quote her as she moves into her 'brief History of German's Origin Chapter 1' of the above cited work. "The name 'German' cannot be limited to political boundaries or to those who speak German. The French have argued in the past that the real Germany was only the Rhineland and Southern Germany, which were the areas that inherited the Latin Civilization." "Prussia was Slavic in origin. I Zurich, Bern, or Basel where the mother tongue was German, the native Swiss would have been insulted if classified as German. In literature, writers from Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and other parts of the eastern France all belonged to 'German' literature. Thus, the confusion as to who was German or who was Dutch was well-founded."

"This confusion was not unique to Europe. For example, the 'Pennsylvania Dutch' language, as spoken in the Amish country around Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was actually the German language, while the Dutch in Holland spoke 'Dutch', which is quite different from the German language. Due to the strong nationalism of the Bavarians, they refused to call themselves anything buy Bavarian.

"Yankee Americans of the nineteenth century broadly categorized all German immigrants as 'Dutchmen'...most of them had never set foot in Holland nor were they Dutch...the reason being that the German refers to himself [or herself] as deutsche... and to his or her country as Deutschland. The German word deutsche, in Old High German distisk, from Theoda, dated from the year 700 AD when the Old High German word tiutsch meant simply 'people' or 'folk'. The word deutsche began to evolve in the eighth  and ninth centuries. It first occurred in its Latinized form 'theodiscus' in documents from this period. At this time it seemed to imply the meaning of 'neighbor' or 'brother'."

"The Teutonic Tribe: Pytheas of Massilia, (circa. 300 BC) was the first historian to mention the early Germanic peoples of historic times. He traveled from the coast of southern France (Marseilles) to Britain and the coast of the North Sea. Julius Caesar (100-44) knew the Germanic lands and tribes from personal experience and contact, for Latin Rome had trading posts on and beyond the Rhine. In the second century Roman historian, Cornelius Tacitus ( 54-120 AD) coined the name for this land Germanicus, Germania, and gave the first clear information about Germany. Germanicus, Germania, was the surname (on account of victories in Germany) of Augustus' son-in-law Tiberius Drasus. [Cassell's New Latin Dictionary: Latin-English, (1959), s.v. 'Germani'."; as quoted in this work we are quoting from.

"Teuton, the name of an ancient Germanic tribe, first appeared on the fringes of history more than a millennium before Germany was an organized state. History recorded the Teutons in the days of Rome's glory as a tribe of warriors and as allies or friends of the Cimbri tribe. In 120 BC the Cimbri and their allies the Teutons, migrated southwest where they were defeated by the Roman general Marius (156-86 BC). Turning west, in 113 BC the Cimbri defeated a Roman army near today's Klagenfurt, (Austria) and then passed along the northern Alpine foothills into Gaul, (now France). However, with their allies, the Teutonic, the Cimbri were finally defeated near present day Toulouse, France ' Before the Christian Era' (BCE). After this major battle, wars and boundary changes were constant in the early centuries in Germany. Gradually, there evolved three major groups of peoples: a) the northern Germans or Goths from the southern part of Scandinavia (Scandia), Jutland (Cimbric Chersonese); and the adjacent islands; b) the eastern Germans (Victula) and the Oder (Visogoths, Ostrogoths, Bergundians, and Vandals); c) the western Germans from the area between the Elbe, (Albis) the North Sea (Mare Germanicum), the Rhine River (Rhenus River), and the Main Rivers. The country called Sueves rested below the Suecivum (later Baltic Seal)."

Here is a map that is contained in the book. Continuing, "The Disappearance of the Teutons; at the beginning of the fourth century AD migrations, wars, and new alliances caused a number of smaller German tribes to join the larger national confederations. By the sixth-century only the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons tribes remained. The conquest of Gaul by the Frankish tribes marked a milestone of German history. Other German tribes were absorbed by numerical and cultural superiority of native Romans. In this absorption the barbarians adopted the habits and attitudes of the higher civilization and the higher civilization received, in turn, the regenerative energy of the young vitality of the German tribes."

"After a series of migrations the Cimbri tribe and their allies, the Teutons, settled around the Elbe River. The Elbe runs east of Hanover, Germany, and is accessible from Oldenburg, Germany by means of the North Sea. The tribes continued to be two of the most threatening to the Roman Empire." Here she continues on with further migration patterns which left traces that historians know about from certain records left behind and which she quotes and footnotes nicely. So, continuing on with her, " the Teutons were destroyed and disappeared from historical records around the seventh century. The last century of their existence was interwoven with religious history."

At this point in her story and historical account, she moves gradually but briefly in the era of the Mohammad religious peoples and the wars and disputes that they had with each other during the seventh and eighth centuries. If it were not for winning one key battle the Germanic tribes might have not only ceased to exist along with the Teutonic ones but cease altogether. The entire region and the larger scope of all of Europe might have been Islamic. She continues, "To counteract the evangelical tactics of the East, the Roman Catholic Pontiff encouraged St. Boniface, 'Apostle of Germany', to enter the scene of German Catholic history. The fate of the world was about to be decided by the Franco-Teutonic people and the Arabs. One author that she quotes says this: 'Islam was face-to-face with the last bulwark of Christianity..." I thought that this was an interesting fact.

Continuing on, "Boniface, in his effort to save Christianity, had used as his emblems, among others, the axe, the book, and the sword. One of his important writings was entitled, 'Conversion of the Teutonic Races.' Boniface was martyred in 755 AD and won the title of the Patron Saint of Germany." Gradually... "the Teutonic-Franco forces stabilized, and the area where they settled was eventually called the Teutonic Forest. Warring ceased for a period and without battlefront to unite the Teutonic peoples, the Teutons lost their identity as a tribe and took on the identity as a people below the Baltic Sea. These Cimbri and Teutonic-Franco people, were the ancestors of the Germans who later lived in the northern kingdoms of Hanover and Oldenburg, Germany and who eventually came to the Midwest in America."

"After the extinction of the Cimbri and Teutonic as distinct tribes, in the year 9 AD, there was an important retaliation to the Roman army. There was a war and in fact many it appears from her writing, but the important battle of Teutoburg Forest marked a turning point in the history of the Roman Empire as well as the history of Germany. With the aid of negotiation and some degree of deception, several Germanic tribes obtained the liberation of the greater part of Germany from Roman domination. In the next generation, Augustus' grandson, Germanicus, attempted but failed to regain the supremacy of the Romans. Had the Roman Varus won the Teutonic Forest Battle in 114 AD, Germany between the Rhine and the Elbe may have been romanized; Latin and eventually Italian or French would have become the dominant language."

"One significant person for the Germans was Charlemagne. Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor in approximately 800 A D by Pope Leo III. In the eighth-century, Pepin the Short was the sole ruler of the Franks. He was succeeded by his two sons Carloman and Charles Martel. At the death of Carloman in 771, Charles began a series of battles and military actions between 771 and 800 that earned him the title, "the Great". The Saxons, Lombards, Slavs, Bavarians, along with Moslems, all fell to his sword. A pattern of forced conversions was established, and diocese were set up immediately after conquest."

At the time of these conquests, the German Empire was not yet clearly defined. However, the crowning of Charlemagne by the Pope would significantly change German history. One interpretation of the crowing is that the Pope intended to show that he 'could delegate imperial authority in the West.' However, this event heightened church-state tensions in the West. With this decision, 'Did the emperor confer power on the Pope?' or, did the Pope confer power on the emperor?' In taking this active role in history did the Pope permit the 'deputy [to become] the master?' History still debates this question."

"A wide expanse of land and the diversities of many peoples had been held together by the strength and personal magnetism of Charlemagne or 'Charles the Great.' After his death in 813, his sole heir, Louis, was no match for his father. Nor were his sons, Louis the German, Charles the Bald, and Lothair capable of the deeds of their grandfather. Three years after the death of Louis the empire was divided at the Treaty of Verdun (843), and each son received a portion. The east went to his son Louis the German; the west to Charles the Bald; and the central area from the coast of Frisia to southern Italy was to be ruled by Lothair. This division is part of the formative history of France and Germany." And she goes on about other treaties and boundary changes but those are not important to our story here.

"The first German Reich is generally dated from 911 after the Carolingian dynasty died out. In the absence of feudal government, local lords assumed responsibility for ruling and defense. With the fall of the empire of Charles the Great, feudal chaos returned. The Franconian duke, Conrad I was elected the first German king. Germany continued to control Rome because German cardinals were prompted by the emperor in electing the next Pope. The threads between church and State were thus interwoven and would remain to the present." She adds this footnote: "Evidence of a close church-date relationship in Germany is the large number of church-related civil holidays, and the 3% tax allotment that pays the Priests salaries, and those of the ministers, and religious in Germany. Churches and schools owned by religious are considerably wealthier in Germany than in the United States, due to this state-supported income. Germany became the center of the Protestant-Catholic conflict even within Luther's lifetime. The aftermath of the Reformation quickly spread, first in Europe and then to America."

It is apparent from my reading of this booklet that she believes that "...the Reformation went far beyond the religious realm. The entire social structure of the world but particularly in Germany began to change. In 1522-1523 the Reich knights rose up and in 1525 the Peasant's Revolt broke out, the first significant revolutionary movement in German history to strive for both political and social change. Both uprisings were bloodily quelled. By 1529 five young Lutheran princes of Germany had accepted Luther's viewpoints. They asked King Frederick to allow their estates to practice the new religion. King Frederick wanted equal rights for Catholics. They rejected his compromise and, 'Their statement of protestation has become historic since it gave the name Protestant to the whole opposition movement to the Catholic Church." Squabbles between the Princes and the fortunes of war caused that the Protestant Princes were given the right to dictate their subject's religion by the 1555 Diet of Augsburg. This accorded the Protestants equal rights with the Catholics. With that, the religious division of Germany was established, and Roman Catholics began to look elsewhere to live if they were in Protestant territory."

"Approximately half a century after the Peace of Augsburg The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) brought the Catholic Hapsburgs of Bohemia into conflict with the German Protestants princes. This 'war which wore each side out and they couldn't continue' shrank Germany from 18 million to 4 million people. Peace had been won but at a very high price. Catholics in an area under a Protestant duke were forbidden to practice their religion, as were Protestants under a Catholic duke. Moving to another kingdom did not insure freedom of religion, as the faith of the family in power or boundaries of the ruler was subject to change. Moving to America would circumvent the dilemma."

"The French Revolution and the following suppression of religious orders in Europe were also motivations for exploring mission territory in America. The School Sisters of Notre Dame, originally a French order as the title would indicate, were among those suppressed in France. They were re-founded in Germany and made their way to America and eventually to Teutopolis around the middle of the nineteenth-century."

"In addition to war and the suppression of religious freedom, the printing press was also a factor in closing the gap between the Old World and the New. More books were written about America than any other country. A series of successive crop failures in Germany in the early part of the next century, during the winters of 1816-1817, gave rise to a desire for economic emancipation. A large peasant exodus occurred in the famine of 1817. Some Germans arrived at the coast of Europe, only to find they could not pay the transatlantic passage. They had to beg their way back to their country. Unscrupulous immigration agents absconded with the money of others."

I might add here that in yet another account that I have personally read, that deals not with Germany but with Ireland where both the Bradfords on my maternal line and some of the DuBois', came from or lived there. The stories of these countless crop-failures are heart rending. They lived in crates in ditches, had no clothes but those that they had on and their children were hungry all of the time. The Land Barons from England caused great economic and cultural havoc on this large population of peoples living outside of the British borders, but still controlled by the British Parliament and the merchants who were very powerful, combined caused horrorific sufferings of these peasant peoples in Ireland and their surrounds. The book of which I speak is, "The Great Hunger Ireland 1845-1849, by Cecil Woodham-Smith and published by Hamish Hamilton, London in 1962.

I will now depart for a moment and quote from this work as it sheds complimentary light upon what this lady in her work is explaining to us. I quote from page 20, " There never was, said the Duke of Wellington, a native of county Meath, a country in which poverty existed to the extent it exists in Ireland. Housing conditions were wretched beyond words. The census of 1841 graded houses in Ireland into four classes: the fourth and lowest class consisted of windowless mud cabins of a single room,....nearly half of the families of the rural population reposted the Census Commissioners, ... are living in the lowest state. In parts of the west of Ireland more than three-fifths of the houses were one-roomed, windowless mud cabins and west of a land drawn from Londonderry to Cork the proportion was two-fifths. Furniture was a luxury; the inhabitants of Tullanhobagle, County Donegal, numbering about 9,000, had in 1837 only 10 beds, 93 chairs and 243 stools between them. Pigs slept with their owners, manure heaps choked doors, sometimes even stood inside; the evicted and unemployed put roofs over ditches, burrowed into banks, existed in bog holes."

"All this wretchedness and misery could, almost without exception, be traced to a single source--the system under which land had come to be occupied and owned in Ireland, a system produced by centuries of successive conquests, rebellions, confiscations and punitative legislation...the successive owners of the soil of Ireland regarded it merely as a source from which to extract as much money as possible, and since a hostile, backward country is neither safe nor an agreeable place in which to live, from the first conquests the absentee landlord [British] was common in Ireland. The absentee evil was a 'a very great one' as early as 1377. Rents were spent in England or on the Continent; in 1842 it was estimated that £6,000,000 of rents were being remitted out of Ireland, and Kohl, the German traveler, commented on the mansions of absentee landlords, standing 'stately, silent, empty.' The whole of this structure, the minute subdivisions, the closely packed population existing at the lowest level, the high rents, the frantic competition for land, had been produced by the potato. The conditions of life in Ireland and the existence of the Irish people depended on the potato entirely and exclusively. The potato, provided it did not fail, enabled great quantities of food to be produced at a trifling cost from a small plot of ground. Sub-division could never have taken place without the potato: an acre and a half would provide a family of five or six with food for 12 months, while to grow the equivalent grain required an acreage 4-6 times as large and some knowledge of tillage as well. Only a spade was needed for the primitive method of potato culture usually practiced in Ireland...the potato was, moreover, the most universally useful of foods...Yet it was the most dangerous of crops. It did not keep, nor could it be stored from one season to another. Thus every year the nearly 2.5 million laborers who had no regular employment more or less starved in the summer, when the potatoes were finished and the new ones had not come in. It was for this reason that June, July, and August were called the 'meal months.'. More serious still, if the potato did fail, neither meal nor anything else could replace it. 'What hope is there for a nation that lives on potatoes!' an English official wrote.

I share this aspect regarding the Irish to support that which is happening all over the Continent during these very hard years of continual occurrences of crop failures, bad weather for farming, and the meager economic conditions of the country as a whole, not to mention the individual family literally starving, living in squalor, and the people having no hope for anything better to look forward to; add to that the oppression of the overloards from Britain who were so unsympathetic and controlling and power crazed, that their impact alone would have been almost intolerable for me; oh, how depressing that state of affairs must have been for those people--our ancestors to have to deal with all of their lives! It is unimaginable and unconsciencenable to think of those depraved conditions, while the whole of England fared much better overall, and especially the absentee landlords who were in essence stealing the life-blood out of an already poor country and people. It is told in this work, that the absentee landowner hired a local 'agent' to handle his affairs for him. This agent was paid on a quasi-commission basis and so he would profit personally; the more money he could extract from the peasants, the better. The sad state of affairs when the principal of capitalism works to the detriment of those who are engaged in it, and on the receiving end.

"The Devon Commission reported in 1845 on the eve of the famine, giving warning in grave terms of the dangerous state of Ireland. The report was dismissed on the grounds that it did not 'contain anything of striking novelty' and 'there was nothing in it that everyone did not know already, and a timid bill based on its recommendations giving Irish tenants a right to compensation for improvements in certain restricted circumstances was denounced as a 'violation of the rights of the property' and withdrawn. The Devon Commission moreover, was only one of many. In the 45-years since the Union no fewer than 114 Commissions and 61 Special Committees were instructed to report on the state of Ireland, and without exception their findings prophesiesed disaster; Ireland was on the verge of starvation, her population rapidly increasing, three-quarters of her laborers unemployed, housing conditions appalling and the standard of living unbelievably low [Marquess Clanricarde, H of L, June 24, 1845, Hansard, Vol. 81, page 1135; Earl of Wicklow, Ibid, page 1120; Marquess of Londonderry, Ibid, page 1118]" [ The Great Hunger, Ibid, previous citation at the beginning of this series of quotations from this book, page 36-37]

"The British Government's mind was made up. The property of Ireland must support the poverty of Ireland." [i.e., Britain would not commit under any circumstances to send monetary aid to the province in their Realm called Ireland. This is insane in my opinion. How could they do this to those peoples? 114 Commissions and 61 Special Committees and they all say that the country is on the verge of starvation and collapse, and they won't even help; that is something that The Lord will sort out in the next life I guess].

"Meanwhile, in 1844, a report was received that in North America a disease, hitherto unknown, had attacked the potato crop. This added to all of the above-Wow! How did they survive this? "Twenty-four failures of the potato crop were listed by the Census of Ireland Commissioners of 1851. In 1728 there had been 'such a scarcity that on the 26th of February there was a great rising of the populace of Cork'; in 1739 the crop was 'entirely destroyed'; in 1740 'entire failure' was reported; in 1770 the crop largely failed owing to curl; 1800 brought another 'general failure'; in 1807 half of the crop was lost through frost. In 1821-1822 the potato failed completely in Munster and Connaught; distress, 'horrible beyond description', was reported in and near Skibbereen, and subscriptions were raised for relief, £115,000 in London and £18,000 in Dublin. 1830-1831 were years of failure in Mayo, Donegal, and Galway; in 1832, 1833, 1834 and 1836 a large number of districts suffered serious loss from dry rot and the curl; in 1835 the potato failed in Ulster, and 1836 and 1837 brought 'extensive' failures throughout Ireland."

"In 1839 failure was again universal throughout Ireland, from Bantry Bay to Lough Swilly; famine conditions followed, Government relief works were started and a Treasury grant made. In 1841 the potato crop failed in many districts, and in 1844 the early crop was widely lost."

"Thus, the unreliability of the potato was an accepted fact in Ireland, ranking with the vagaries of the weather, and in 1845 the possibility of yet another failure caused no particular alarm...However, on July 23rd of that year the Freeman's Journal reported that the 'poor mans' property, the potato crop, was never before so large and the same time abundant.' There was every sign of a year of plenty; the first disquieting news came from an unexpected quarter. At the beginning of August, Sir Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister, received a letter from the Isle of Wight, as famous for its market gardens as anywhere in the South of England, reporting that disease had appeared in the potato crop there. Though the ignorance of the news was not realized, this was the first recorded evidence that the 'blight' which had recently ravaged the potato crop in North America had crossed the Atlantic.

The British Government was anxious not only for Ireland but for England. During the previous 50-years potatoes had assumed a dangerous importance in the diet of the English laboring classes. Hard times, the blockade during the Napoleonic wars, the unemployment and wage-cutting, which followed the declaration of peace after Waterloo, had been gradually forcing the English laborer to eat potatoes in place of bread, and on September 30, 1845, The Times [newspaper in London] reported that in England the two main meals of a working man's day now consisted of potatoes. Indeed, but for the intervention of the 'blight' it is almost certain that the English laborer, however unwillingly, would have been driven to greater and greater dependence on the potato, and in due course suffered the insecurity a potato diet brings."

"Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, circulated a letter of inquiry about the crop, and on August 11 Mr. Parker, a large grower and salesman, reported severe blight in Kent. The previous Tuesday he had driven round Sandwich, Ask and Wingham, to find the whole crop, early and late, including potatoes in the cottage gardens, 'entirely destroyed.' On Thursday, at Maidstone and Gravesen, he found 'fearful destruction'; that evening he had found blight just appearing at East and West Ham, and the next day he had seen it at Leytonstone. It was understood, he added, that the situation was the same in Holland and France. A failure in England would be serious enough, but for Ireland it would be disaster, and Ireland loomed in every mind, wretched, rebellious and utterly dependent on the potato. Yet another paper the Gardner's Chronicle reported a dramatic announcement. 'We stop the press with very great regret to announce that the potato to announce that the potato Murrain has unequivocally declared itself in Ireland. The corps about Dublin are suddenly perishing...where will Ireland be in the event of a universal failure?' On October 13th it was time for the potatoes to be taken out of the ground. As soon as digging began disastrous reports poured in... and so on."

Now lastly, as I will depart from this account after this to resume reporting on the previous books details as we were all reading above, we have the added entanglement of the Corn Laws. These laws enacted previously were repealed and it was a serious misfortune for Ireland. Short of civil war, no issue in English history has provoked such passion as Corn Law repeal. It was reported 'that the repeal of this law caused, if one can even imagine this, the famine in Ireland to be eclipsed' and to put into the background!

It is very hard for me to adequately comprehend the circumstances and severity of the calamities that occurred in the mid-19th century. One can easily see why the tremendous out-migration of the peoples of western Europe occurred. And significant to us of the Nieporte line, our direct ancestors were indeed these very people that I have been sharing with you the reader. I had leaned many years ago that 'a potato famine' occurred in Ireland in the mid-19th century giving cause to people to pack of their meager things and book passage somehow on a ship that would be leaving for America, and all of the prospects that it held for our ancestors. But after reading these to accounts shared within this document, it gives much greater cause to immigrate to America. The state of Europe was a terrible disaster which no one person could fix. They were indeed stuck. I am sure that our ancestors prayed fervently for relief. What a great test of their faith. It appeared God had forsaken them and their lands.

I will now turn back to our story from above. "Catholic German immigrants were concerned in great part not only with their material well-being in the new world, but primarily with their spiritual life. This may be deduced from the fact that among their first interests was the erection of a church and a school. America had been the 'Great Frontier of Western Christendom' since Spain supported the expedition of Columbus in 1492. Consequently, the ancestors of the first European Americans did not come from Germany. Rather, they came from Spain, some as early as the 15th and 16th centuries. They settled along the Southwest coast of North America. The 17th century brought English speaking people, mainly Protestants, to the east coast. The 18th and 19th centuries brought the Germans to the east, who settled mainly in Pennsylvania. A few came through New Orleans, but this was the exception. Gradually, they spread into what is now called the Midwest along the rivers...Some sought religious freedom; some sought land ownership denied them by the feudal system of Europe; a good number looked for adventure."

        "Back in Europe along the Rhine the spirit of America was abroad: 'Nach Amerika' became every man's dream. To have one's own fields, one's own home; to live in untrammeled freedom--it was a thought large and daring...So they came on: sometimes fathers alone to prepare a home in the wilderness; sometimes whole families, newly weds--all bent on carving out for themselves the little place of their dreams. Craftsman came: carpenters, masons, wagonmakers, shoemakers, weavers, locksmiths, men and women whose goal was not adventure but a home. Buoyed up by hopes of the future they held the dangerous, tedious, expensive crossing of small account.

        Down the 'Beautiful Ohio' on raft or steamboat they floated, their voices blending in their tender folksongs. To them it was the Rhine all over again. Cincinnati became a mustering point for the backs of Germans working westward. There old neighbors, relatives, and friends met and planned and fitted out for pioneer life. Many, however, stayed on in Cincinnati, where craftsman were the need of the hour; others worked a few years to gather enough money for land and then headed for the backwoods." [Robert Wilken, O.F.M., A historical Sketch of the Holy Family Church and Parish, Oldenburg, Indiana, pages 14-15]

"More realistic accounts would verify that the trip was not always so romantic. There were many hardships in the early boat trips. There were robberies, ship wrecks, and the usual irritation when a group of people were in a confined space for a long period of time. Ship crews from the lower class often boarded drunk, not knowing if they would return alive. Steam engines occasionally blew up...They were in a foreign land trying to understand a foreign language. Some, particularly those seeking religious freedom instead of material wealth, had left much behind."

"But a good majority of those who came had much to gain. The political situation in Germany during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in many people unable to find work to feed their families. The German peasants, not intimidated by rivers or mountains, comfortable with being landlocked as they were in Europe, found the inland of Ohio and Illinois rich in farmland they were unable to own since feudal times. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had set up a three-stage procedure under which five states were to be created in the land north of the Ohio River. One year later a group landed in Ohio."

        "On a cold December day in 1788, a group of about twenty-five men carefully steered their small boats toward the river bank. They dodged large chunks of ice floating in the cold Ohio River...They reached the shore and unloaded their boats. In front of them was nothing but trees and hill. There were no houses, stores, or streets, other in their imagination. Together they would begin to build a new village. The spot where the men landed lay across from the Licking River. They named the settlement Losantiville--'town opposite the mouth of the Licking River'. The name would be later changed to Cincinnati."

Parenthetically, the city was named later as Cincinnati after the formidable Roman General Cincinnatius, who according to another book I am reading on the early settlement of this early city, when called upon to defend the Roman borders in his time, dropped his farm work and left his family and conquered the invading barbarian forces from the north, and honored his country and his Caesar by doing so. He was looked up to as a hero and outstanding commanding General. It is said that afterwards, he left the army and went back to his farm and family not seeking any honors unto himself that the empire wanted to bestow upon him for his leadership and courage during a time of great military need, but instead went back quietly to what he loved: farming. Their was later a formal society that had this man as its focus: The Society of Cincinnati. This was begun by many old friends of the American Revolutionary War who had been generals and other high ranking military heroes but needed some way to stay in contact with each other. So, a few of them got together and formed this society. Later, and over the next centuries, it gained much prominence and prestige in the east. Its numbers swelled. During this time, the new village of the Symmes Purchase, needed a name for their town. They chose to use the popular and influential name of Cincinnati, and thus it has ever been since then.

"Until 1825 there was no direct connection by water from the east coast. Thus, until 1825 the Great Lakes possessed no commercial link with the eastern United States. American farm families came from Ohio to Illinois through Kentucky over the land. A small number of Germans came from the south through New Orleans, and from that city traveled by boat to Cincinnati or St. Louis and over the land to Teutopolis. In 1825 the first mule-drawn barges moved through the new Erie Canal into New York State, thus opening an all-water route between New York City and the New England States, and the Midwest prairies. In 1829, work on the Cumberland Road commenced and was completed in the winter of 1830-1831."

"The village of Teutopolis was founded by Catholic families whose roots can be traced to the same territory where the Teutons fought with the Cimbri in 113 BC. Hundreds of years later, after the feudal system had organized the society of Teutons, folklore reported that the Grand-Duke of Oldenburg would make his way to America and choose Cincinnati, Ohio, as a stopping place because its terrain reminded him of the beautiful Rhineland Valley in Germany."

"By juxtapositioning centennial sketches of several areas where Teutonic Germans settled, a better insight into the community, church, and personal family history of the early settlers has been gained, as well as insight into family roots. The first mention of Teutopolis, Illinois, as a city is found in the history of Oldenburg, Indiana. It is quite possible that many people of Teutopolis are not aware of their connections to Oldenburg, Indiana and Cincinnati, Ohio...There were many factors that explain why the people of the early German settlements in Illinois had little contact with their cousins once they parted from Cincinnati. The transportation and communication difficulties of the day were one factor, the time and energy that settlers needed to survive left little time for studying history. Few were willing to read by candlelight and fireplace as did President Lincoln who traveled these parries close to this period of history...When a few Germans left Cincinnati in 1835 to join them in Oldenburg, there were perhaps a half dozen families altogether in Oldenburg...many Germans came from the kingdoms of Oldenburg and Hanover to Cincinnati, and settled there temporarily until they could raise funds to travel West."

"One of the traits of the German people both in Europe and later in America has been a kind of provincialism. Whether this was viewed as a desirable or an undesirable characteristic is not clear. This work proposes two theories for the cause or root of their provincialism. One of these is geographical; the other was the bondedness necessary in a context of persecution. The people from the Old County were accustomed to being closed in upon themselves. The very geography of Europe suggested that the Germans be self-sufficient and provincial. In tribal times they were separated from each other by mountains and rivers and developed customs. In feudal times they were intentionally kept divided into smaller areas to keep one lord from gaining more power than the emperor. Thus, from generation to generation the characteristics of each locale have grown stronger, and loyalty to the community has taken on "patriotic' proportions. A German is above all is proud to be Münchener, Frankfurter, or Schwarzwǻlder. To be a German is fine, too: but it is secondary."

"Germans who left Cincinnati for Teutopolis were not interested in the folks they left behind, any more than they had been interested in their neighbors over the mountains or across the rivers in the Old Country. At the time of Tacitus, and early historian, Germany consisted of impenetrable forests and impassable swamps. In one of his accounts he asked, 'who would ever think of leaving Asia, Africa, or Italy and migrate to Germany?...It is a wild country under an inclement sky, hard to cultivate, a gloomy sight for anyone who does not call it his home.' Yet this undesirable geography of Germany very likely contributed to the ruggedness, the provincialism, and the independence of the Germany people. Unlike its neighbors in later Spain, France, and Italy, Germany was not surrounded by large bodies of water and mountains served as protection from aggressive enemies who wanted to gain territory...The Germans, with the exception of the Northern tribes by the Baltic and North Seas, were landlocked. Where there were no natural boundaries, Germans tended to erect them. During the time that Roman and German cultures mixed, there were notable differences in their villages."

        'The Roman village had a planned regularity of design, while the typical Germanic village consisted of irregularly scattered houses, fenced off from each other and from the outside world, and a wicker fence surrounding the whole group of houses. Caves were dug in the ground outside the house and covered with leaves and dung. They served as storerooms, as a protection against severe climate or in case of danger.'

"German Catholics of the nineteenth century brought to America, 'loyalty to their religion, masterly organizational techniques, and a strong community pattern of worship, culture, and social action. They settled in three major cities known as the 'German Triangle of the West', in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. From their first days, they insisted on separate treatment. 'Whenever one or two German families settled...this congregation then had to be presided over by a German Priest even if there be one-hundred or more Irish families in the same place.' Germans wanted to be recognized as a minority group and to sustain the language, the religion, and the customs of the Vaterland. They demanded the right to speak their own language, publish their own newspapers, maintain national churches, and have a proportional representation in the hierarchy."

        'The Germans demanded absolutely that the parish priest and the school should be German. To keep peace with the Germans, injustice is often done to the other nationalities. In such circumstances the Irish usually submit, while the French generally cease going to church...At worst, the German Catholics came out of a tradition where Church stood for power and influence, and a guarantee of the world's goods. At best, their demands were insurance that their faith would be maintained.'

"Once in Cincinnati, the Roman Catholic Germans settled in a section they called, 'Over-the-Rhine,' appropriately named since they had traveled further west than the significant western landmark of Germany, namely the Rhine River, to arrive in America. They established their own church, Holy Trinity, in 1834, on Fifth Street between Smith and Park. The Germans published their own newspaper The Volksfreund (Friend of the Folks) from the corner of Vine and Center Streets. From the diary of Charles Wills, 1849-1850, another indication of German provincialism is given.

        'The population of Cincinnati must be considerably over 100,000 and a nice mixture of foreigners make up the number. The Germans take the lead in quantity and may be recognized anywhere by the cut of their clothes and their beauty. The further end of Western Row is the abode of many thousands of them. There the melodious language may be heard incessantly. They are undoubtedly a hard working and hard living lot...They have a market...exclusively supplied and supported by its own people.'

"Thus, in Cincinnati the Germans associated exclusively with their own. The Germans from the Old Country brought over their famous Gymnastic Team, known as the German Turnverein. The historical society of Cincinnati displayed photographs of their formations and impressive feats. The Germans of Cincinnati were easily identifiable and clearly kept to themselves., two characteristics that would be carried to Teutopolis.

The second explanation for the provincialism of German immigrants was rooted in their experience of persecution. It was difficult to say which experience was chronologically first. Did one smaller group close in upon itself because it was persecuted, or was the group persecuted because it had closed in upon itself and was resented by the larger society?"

"The first Christian Church in Cincinnati was St. John's Protestant Church, established twenty years before the Catholic Church in 1814, on the corner of Elm and Twelfth Streets, at the disadvantage of having arrived in Cincinnati after the Protestants would feel the brunt of Protestant condescension and discrimination as well as the fierceness of nativist campaigns...Roman Catholics would experience such contentions expansion of their church that 'Americanism' as an enthusiastic Catholic movement applauding democracy...would finally engage the most serious attention of European Catholics and the Pope himself." In this the Catholics were severely persecuted for many decades.

"The provincialism or 'sticking together' among Germans has endured to the present day [1989]." This fairly large extraction and quotation of the aforementioned book The Teutonic Germans from which all of the above has been quoted, continues on into the several German customs, holidays and the like, but I will end here, for now. I trust that the reader can see the unique nature of the Teutonic Germans that came to America early on and settled in Cincinnati and the German Triangle of the West.

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