I am a day late with this story, but I could not ignore it. It’s a bicentennial birthday story. Rev. Martin Stephan is rather famous (and infamous) for leading the German Lutheran immigration to America in 1839 known as the Gesellschaft. When Rev. Stephan came to this country, he left most of his family in … More The Junior Martin Stephan’s 200th
I looked it up just to make sure. Today’s birthday girl is classified as my great grandaunt. Another way to put it is that this woman was my Grandma Mueller’s, Aunt Anna. I found several places that said the term “Great” should not be used when referring to siblings of your grandparents, but if you … More Great Grandaunt Anna Celebrates 175th Birthday
May 30th and May 31st are infamous days in the history of the German immigration to Perry County which took place in 1838-1839. These are the days when the leader of the Gesellschaft, Rev. Martin Stephan, was found guilty of several charges and then sent into exile in Illinois. It is a story that is … More Exiled to the Devil’s Bake Oven
During the fall of 1839, not long after the original group of immigrants first arrived in Perry County, another group of German Lutherans were boarding a ship in Germany to join them. In fact, this new group was boarding one of the same ships that had brought a load of passengers to America in late … More Gruber Group Getaway
Every day that I write one of these blog posts, I learn something new. It is one of the really enjoyable things about doing this. After writing over 500 of these articles, I also can now make some generalizations about what I have discovered. Today’s story is an illustration of a story that has a … More Finding a Job and a Wife in the Big City
Today’s title is a mouthful in the German language. Auswanderungs-Gesellschaft is a German term that gets translated as “emigration society” in English. I have often used the scaled-down version of this term, Gesellschaft, in several posts when describing the basic group that consisted of the immigrants, their leadership, and the way they were governed and … More Auswanderungs-Gesellschaft
Today’s article is the result of starting out looking for information on one story and ending up telling a different story. It all started with the birthday of Friedrich Ferdinand Grosse on May 27, 1811. Ferdinand was one of the original immigrants whose family decided to stay in St. Louis and not move to Perry … More A Census Hall of Fame
If you are a member of a church like the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod that uses a traditional church year, then you probably know that today was Transfiguration Sunday. The story for the day was the one where Jesus, along with Peter, James, and John, went to the top of a mountain where Moses and Elijah … More Stephan’s Hill
An interesting event took place on Sunday, August 25th in 1839. Five people were confirmed on that day at the camp church which at that time was located in the area of Perry County known as Dresden. Two of the five were also baptized. All five of these people had come to Perry County as … More Camp Church Confirmations
August 11th in 1839 became a very significant day in the lives of the new immigrants in East Perry County. On that day, Johann Georg Gube died. That fact may not seem important, but because of the circumstances, it was. Johann Georg Gube is described as being a rather wealthy farmer in Germany. He was … More A Consequential Death
