Deutschheim (Deutsch = German, Heim = home)
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| Deutschheim (Deutsch = German, Heim = home), the name chosen for the site, was a term used by early German writers to describe 1820s-1850s Missouri. The region extending from St. Louis west to Boonville on the Missouri River, plus areas along the Mississippi, especially around Perry and Ste. Genevieve Counties, became the new homeland of thousands of German immigrants in the 19th Century. Pockets of settlement occurred south and west of Sedalia, around Concordia, and in the southwest corner of Missouri. St. Louis and Kansas City experienced major German settlement. By 1860 over half of Missouri's foreign-born residents were German. Today at least 50% of Missourians claim at least one grandparent of German ancestry. Germans from all walks of life left their homeland to come to the United States, to Missouri's great benefit. Some were highly educated professionals and university graduates at a time when very few people achieved that distinction anywhere: professors, physicians, scientists, lawyers, merchants, ministers, musicians, and artists. Most who came were not of the middle classes, and opted to leave their homeland because of collapsing rural economies in which jobs were destroyed and countless farm laborers and artisans were thrown out of work. Nearly every one of them tried to reestablish in the new land that which had been most valued in the old. It was a risky and brave jump into the unknown, especially in the early period (1830-1850) when Missouri was still primarily a frontier with vast tracts of heavily forested and unpopulated land. Missouri owes an enormous debt to her thousands of German immigrants. Middle class Germans established schools, libraries, institutions of higher learning, newspapers, a wide variety of cultural opportunities, and a variety of successful businesses and industrial concerns. German peasants opened up the land and created prosperous farms and villages where wilderness had existed, on land that many Anglo Americans had avoided because it was regarded as substandard. The advanced farming techniques of rural Germans proved them wrong. Many peasants wrote home about their good fortune and were joined in Missouri by friends and relatives. Whenever possible the newcomers settled close together with others from their old country neighborhoods, making enclaves of the Old World in the New where German regional customs and variants of language were preserved for generations. Deutschheim State Historic Site was created in 1979 to preserve, protect, and share Missouri's German and German American culture, heritage, crafts, folkways, foodways, life styles, and traditions with visitors. Deutschheim opened to the public in 1984 and has been undergoing continual growth and development ever since. Time Travel: The Pommer-Gentner House & the Strehly House and Winery Begun within a couple of years of each other, the two houses represent different building traditions. Caroline Pommer's 1840 house is an example of high-style German Klassizismus (Neoclassicism); it differs from the more familiar and widespread Greek Revival in its restraint and austerity of design. Many early middle-class German settlers chose Klassizismus for their houses. On the other hand, Carl Procopius Strehly's house, built in stages from 1842 to 1869, has a fne traditional German vernacular front and is representatuve of later 19th c. German brick buildings constructed throughout the Midwest. The Strehly complex was the site of a renowned German language newspaper, written by University of Leipzig graduate Eduard Muehl, which vehemently opposed slavery years before this became a popular cause in the 1850s. The Hermann City Council began to actively encourage wine production in the 1840s. Muehl and Strehly began to plant wine grapes, and Strehly built his winery in the 1850s. Wine became the basis of a large 19th Century industry which has been successfully revived in recent years. The Pommer-Gentner House is furnished for the 1830s-1840s with imported porcelains, Biedermeier furniture, and original artwork; the Strehly House for the comfortable 1860s-1880s. The Winery and the Print Shop hold folk arts, crafts, and traditions displays. The gardens contain rare heritage plants, some of which are occasionally offered for sale. Contact the office for information on available plants and seeds. Hermann: A German-built Village In the 1830s when several immigrant groups selected Missouri as their choice of a new home, one association bought land in Gasconade County. The resulting Hermann Colony was the most systematic and best organized of Missouri's seven German settlement societies. Founded by the Deutsche Ansiedlungs-Gesellschaft zu Philadelphia (German Settlement Society of Philadelphia), it was the only one organized in this country, the only one set up as a joint-stock company, and was widely advertised on both sides of the Atlantic. It drew colonists from throughout the eastern United States, Canada, and Central Europe. The Society planned to be culturally integrated and self supporting, almost like a little country, with town lots and forty acre farms redeemable for shares of stock. Construction began in 1838 and the founders expected that a new Germany in the New World would quickly arise. While the New Germany was never achieved in Hermann or any other part of the U.S., the German language has been the first one spoked by many Missourians right up into the 1950s. Before farming became industrialized, travelers always knew when they had come to a German American district by the barns and the distinctive haystacks. Workers in some indiustries and in dairies and gardens wore wooden shoes as recently as the 1960s. Once even windmills could be found in some places, and half-timbered buildings are still common. Other traditions have lasted: foods like home-made wurst (sausages) and the making of sauerkraut, wine, beer, and Christmas cookies like Lebkuchen and Springerle are still part of the lives of many German Americans. HIGHLIGHTS: • The Pommer-Gentner House, built in 1840, is an example of a high-style German Kllassizismus (neoclassical) style, now rare in the Midwest. • The Pommer-Gentner House is furnished with Chinese and German porcelains, German silver from 1810-1845 and Missouri-German and imported furniture. The house also has a gallery for traveling exhibits. • The Strehly House has a more traditional German vernacular front and is representative of later 19th century German brick buildings constructed throughout the Midwest. • The Strehly House, with authentic German interior colors throughout, has an extensive collection of 1850s- 1890s furnishings, personal possessions and decorations. • Behind the Strehly House is a German kitchen garden with a collection of more than 30 varieties of vegetables, most of which are no longer available commercially. • Exhibits on gardening and other tools and 19th century country ways are featured in the barn. • The Strehly winery, built in 1857, has the only remaining carved wine cask in the Midwest. The building also features one of the few remaining stepped facades in the Midwest. • The Strehly's re-created flower garden still has bearing grape vines originally planted in the 1850s. • In the winery's ground-floor Print Shop are displays on wedding customs, pottery, kitchen items, tools and other items representing German American life. |
| In 1799 Daniel Boone moved to Missouri and in 1814 Congress granted him 850 acres in the area. Boone was forced to sell the land in order to pay his considerable debts incurred while he was in Kentucky. Boone continued to hunt and trap animals until his early eighties. Daniel Boone died in St. Charles County, Missouri, on 26th September, 1820. He dies at the Boone home near Defiance. |
Boonville Mural
Washington, Missouri
| Daniel Boone Born in Bucks County, Pa. February 11, 1735 Died in St. Charles County, MO. Sept. 26, 1820 |
| Historic Bethel German Colony, Bethel, Missouri -- just 45 miles west of Hannibal, Missouri. Bethel was the most successful communal colony in the State of Missouri, founded by Dr. Wilhelm Keil in 1844. Today, this tiny community of 117 residents strives to preserve its rich heritage. The Colony offers the public an opportunity to step back into a time when colonists lived by the golden rule and shared their crops, clothing, crafts and even their earnings. During the late 18th and early 19th century, many communal colonies were established in the United States. Examples of these are the Amana colonies in Iowa, Zoar in Ohio and New Harmony in Indiana. Bethel German Colony, similar to those colonies, was founded in 1844 by Dr. Wilhelm Keil, a charismatic religious leader who sought to create a harmonious, nurturing community for its citizens. Keil was born in Prussia on March 6, 1812. During his lifetime, he shifted occupations many times. In Darmstadt, he was a milliner, in New York, a tailor, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a druggist and doctor. After being converted to German Methodism by Dr. William Nast, he became a preacher. Soon he separated from the Methodist Church and became an independent preacher. When Keil began preaching in Pittsburgh, he found a nucleus for a Christian communal society within a group of people who had split from the Harmonist Society. These were joined by other converts to Keil’s doctrine of Christian communal life. Promised nothing but bread, water and hard work by Keil, his followers sold their property in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states and undertook the arduous journey to the Far West to establish their colony on the sparsely settled prairies of north Missouri. In the autumn of 1844, Keil and his family, with a few others, arrived to spend a winter of considerable hardship on property on the North River. The following spring other colonists began arriving, among them many skilled craftsmen who erected dwellings, community buildings and other necessary structures. All buildings were large and sturdy, most of them made of brick manufactured in the Colony. All activities of the Bethel German Colony were under the nominal direction of Keil, who seems not only to have exerted an extraordinary power over his followers but to have inspired an extraordinary devotion among them. His word was final in all legal, as well as religious and social matters. By 1850 the Colony had 476 members. Each family was given a house and each person worked as he was able. No records or accounts were kept of work done or supplies provided within the community. Food was distributed from the Colony stores each Saturday and clothing was provided in the spring and fall. While agriculture was the primary occupation, the Bethel colonists supported such thriving industries as a tannery, blacksmith shop, saw mill, grist mill, a tailor shop, a distillery, and a few textile looms. By 1855 the Bethel Colony had a population of 650 and its property included almost 4,000 acres in Shelby County as well as over 700 acres in Adair County. Yet Wilhelm Keil grew increasingly restless through the 1850s. In 1855, a group of about 75 Bethel colonists led a procession of 25 wagons for a 2,000 mile overland trip to the Oregon Territory. At the head of the procession was a wagon carrying a hand-hewn hackberry, lead lined coffin of Dr. Keil’s eldest son, Willie, who had been promised he could ride in the lead wagon westward across the plains. Willie died shortly before the trip; his coffin was filled with Colony made Golden Rule whiskey to preserve the body. Willie was buried near what is now Raymond, Washington. Keil settled his followers in the Willamette Valley of the Oregon Territory. He named the new colony Aurora, after his daughter. For the next twenty years Bethel in Missouri and Aurora in Oregon were held together by Keil’s magnetic personality as well as the colonists’ loyalty and devotion to him and his teachings. The Bethel German Colony prospered for 35 years, disbanding in 1879 after Keil’s death. Today over 30 original Colony buildings survive in Bethel, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. |
| Once Again Available! Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America and a Stay of Several Years Along the Missouri (During the Years 1824, '25, '26, 1827) James W. Goodrich, General Editor George H. Kellner, Elsa Nagel, Adolf E. Schroeder, and W. M. Senner, Editors and Translators The mass migrations to the United States from Europe that began in the 1830s were strongly influenced by what is known today as emigration literature--travelers' writings about their experiences in the New World. Such accounts were particularly popular with German readers; over 150 examples of the genre were published in Germany between 1827 and 1856. Gottfried Duden's Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America, published in 1829, was one of the most influential of these books. The timing, format, coverage, and literary qualities of the Report, and its idyllic descriptions of pioneer farming in Missouri, combined to make it an instant success. It attracted thousands of Germans to the Midwest, and particularly to Missouri, the focus of Duden's account. This edited and annotated translation is the first complete version to be published in English. It provides for the general public and the professional historian a significant contribution to U.S. immigration history and a unique and delightful fragment of Missouri's rich German heritage. Duden presented his account in the form of personal letters, a style that helped make the book believable. The Mississippi- Missouri valley reminded him of his native Rhineland where the rivers facilitated trade and transportation, and fertile river bottomland offers the perfect environment for agriculture. Duden farmed the land he bought during his sojourn in Missouri, and his book includes meticulous descriptions of clearing, fencing, and harvesting. His pro-emigration bias, colored by the fact that he himself had been able to hire help on his Missouri farm, made his view of the farmer's life, it turned out, more idyllic than practical. Many would-be gentlemen farmers, inspired by his book to come to Missouri, found pioneer farming more strenuous than they had expected. About the Author Born in 1785 in the town of Remscheid, Duchy of Berg, Germany, Gottfried Duden first traveled to America in 1824. While serving as a justice of the peace and a jurist in the Prussian civil service, he had become convinced that the problems of the German people stemmed from over population. It was his belief that emigration was a viable solution to the problem of overpopulation that prompted him to travel to Missouri and attempt to convince his countrymen to follow him there. A Joint Publication with the State Historical Society of Missouri |
| Hermann, the county seat of Gasconade County, Missouri, was incorporated in 1845. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 2,674. The city was founded by the Deutsche Ansiedlungs-Gesellschaft zu Pennsylvania (German Settlement Society of Philadelphia) in the 1830s, partly influenced by Gottfried Duden, who wrote about the area in his Bericht über eine Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nord Amerikas (Report of a Journey to the Western States of Northern America). The party of settlers was led by George Bayer, who bought the land and is considered by many to be the founder of the town. The town was platted after the society sold shares in the 11,300 acres (45.73 km²) of Gasconade River valley land it had purchased. The society had almost utopian goals of a "heart of German-America" wherein it could perpetuate traditional German culture and establish a self-supporting colony built around farming, commerce, and industry. The town is named after Hermann der Cherusker, a German leader who defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in the year 9. The town is most famously known for its wineries. Hermann is home to Stone Hill Winery, (the largest winemaking business in the state) and Hermannhof Winery. Two miles south of town just off of Missouri Highway 100 West is Adam Puchta Winery, and Bias Winery is less than eight miles east of town on Missouri Highway 100 East. The town also hosts a Maifest during the third weekend in May and an Oktoberfest the first four weekends in October. In addition to wine, Hermann is the sausage-making capital of Missouri. The Katy Trail, a 225 mile long bike path, passes through McKittrick, which is just across the Missouri River. |
| HISTORY OF HERMANN Hermann was founded in 1836 by the German Settlement Society of Philadelphia. Concerned because of the English influence on their children and the loss of their German traditions and customs, the society had a grand vision of founding a city where German culture could flourish in the New World. In early spring of 1837, the settlement society sent a scouting committee to visit locations in the Midwest for their new city, which was the first planned community west of the Mississippi River. They deputized George Bayer, a teacher, to lay claim to the land that is now Hermann because the geography reminded them of the Rhineland in Germany. Bayer purchased over 11,300 acres at a cost of about $15,600. The town was bordered by hills on three sides and the Missouri River to the north. Bayer was later appointed as General Agent for the new city at a salary of $600 per year. The first group of settlers, nine adults and eight children, arrived in Hermann in December of 1837 on the last steamboat of the season from St. Charles, Missouri. Bayer started with the 17 settlers, but he became ill and was delayed many weeks in Pittsburgh. His delay in arriving caused problems because he was the only person with the authority to lay out and assign lots to people. Another group of colony members planned better. Instead of showing up in the wilderness in the middle of winter, they came as far as St. Louis, looked for temporary work, and waited for Bayer. They moved to Hermann in the spring of 1838, along with Bayer. Developing their town was more difficult than the organizers had expected, in part because they asked too much from Bayer. He was to survey all the land, assign property to the colonists, furnish food for all the settlers, arrange for sawmills and gristmills to be built, and deal with complaints. And the settlers had many complaints. In fact, they complained so much that the Society lost confidence in Bayer and released him from his duties. His health had suffered under the demands placed on him, and Bayer died (some say of a broken heart) in March 1839 at the age of 39. He was buried in the remotest part of the Hermann Cemetery on East Hill, and it was declared that no one could be buried within 75 feet of his grave. During Hermann's sesquicentennial celebration in 1986, a court of inquiry was formed to hear Bayer's case. It was determined that all the tasks that were assigned to him were impossible to carry out, and, therefore, he was exonerated. Today, Hermann is a thriving community, although the Germans had hoped to build a city that could rival Philadelphia. We do have one claim to fame, however, and that is that our Market Street is 10 feet wider than Market Street in Philadelphia. Hermann has two official historic districts, the area surrounding Stone Hill Winery and the part of town near the Missouri River. We have more than 100 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Hermann's population is approximately 2,750. Its main industries are tourism and agriculture. |
| In 1799, Boone moved out of the United States to Missouri, which was then part of Spanish Louisiana. The Spanish, eager to promote settlement in the sparsely populated region, did not enforce the legal requirement that all immigrants had to be Catholics. Boone, looking to make a fresh start, emigrated with much of his extended family to what is now St. Charles County. The Spanish governor appointed Boone "syndic" (judge and jury) and commandant (military leader) of the Femme Osage district. The many anecdotes of Boone's tenure as syndic suggest that he sought to render fair judgments rather than to strictly observe the letter of the law. Boone served as syndic and commandant until 1804, when Missouri became part of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase. Because Boone's land grants from the Spanish government had been largely based on verbal agreements, he once again lost his land claims. In 1809, he petitioned Congress to restore his Spanish land claims, which was finally done in 1814. Boone sold most of this land to repay old Kentucky debts. When the War of 1812 came to Missouri, Boone's sons Daniel Morgan Boone and Nathan Boone took part, but by that time Boone was too old for militia duty. Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren. He hunted and trapped as often as his failing health allowed. According to one story, in 1810 or later Boone went with a group on a long hunt as far west as the Yellowstone River, a remarkable journey at his age, if true. Other stories of Boone around this time have him making one last visit to Kentucky in order to pay off his creditors, although some or all of these tales may be folklore. American painter John James Audubon claimed to have gone hunting with Boone in the woods of Kentucky around 1810. Years later, Audubon painted a portrait of Boone, supposedly from memory, although skeptics have noted the similarity of this painting to the well-known portraits by Chester Harding. Boone's family insisted that Boone never returned to Kentucky after 1799, although some historians believe that Boone visited his brother Squire near Kentucky in 1810 and have therefore reported Audubon's story as factual. Boone died on September 26, 1820, at Nathan Boone's home on Femme Osage Creek. He was buried next to Rebecca, who had died on March 18, 1813. The graves, which were unmarked until the mid-1830s, were near Jemima (Boone) Callaway's home on Tuque Creek, about two miles (3 km) from present day Marthasville, Missouri. In 1845, the Boones' remains were disinterred and reburied in a new cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Resentment in Missouri about the disinterment grew over the years, and a legend arose that Boone's remains never left Missouri. According to this story, Boone's tombstone in Missouri had been inadvertently placed over the wrong grave, but no one had corrected the error. Boone's Missouri relatives, displeased with the Kentuckians who came to exhume Boone, kept quiet about the mistake and allowed the Kentuckians to dig up the wrong remains. There is no contemporary evidence that this actually happened, but in 1983, a forensic anthropologist examined a crude plaster cast of Boone's skull made before the Kentucky reburial and announced that it might be the skull of an African American. Black slaves were also buried at Tuque Creek, so it is possible that the wrong remains were mistakenly removed from the crowded graveyard. Both the Frankfort Cemetery in Kentucky and the Old Bryan Farm graveyard in Missouri claim to have Boone's remains. |
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