The German Corner: #7

Cranberry Prairie

David A. Hoying

      Emigrants from northwest Germany, the Plattdüütsk or Low German emigrants from Oldenburg, Hannover, Westphalia (as it was a Prussian Province the emigrants are often listed as "Prussians"), and Tecklenburg for the most part embarked for America from the port of Bremen. Rotterdam was also a possible port. The immigration ships dropped anchor especially at Baltimore, along with New Orleans and New York. The port of Baltimore was particularly important for the shippers of Bremen because of the tobacco trade they were party to. The merchants of Bremen were responsible for the importing of about 3/4 of the tobacco into Germany. Not wanting to send an empty ship back to Baltimore, they fitted their ships out, usually quite badly, for emigrants. The trip across the "Great Herring Pond", as some of the Germans dubbed the Atlantic ocean, usually endured for two months. Once in Baltimore, the emigrants could expect to be in west-central Ohio within an another month. From Baltimore the trip could be made by rail and coach or by wagon either to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or to Wheeling, West Virginia, (then Virginia). Steamboats on the Ohio River were taken to Cincinnati, then the great center for the Low German and other German immigrants. On to west-central Ohio, the Miami & Erie Canal would be taken as far as Dayton and then to Piqua when it was opened up, and the rest of the way finally by wagon. Minster, founded in 1832, is the first of the Plattdüütsk settlements to be founded out of Cincinnati. There followed from there in Ohio, New Bremen in 1833, Glandorf in 1834, and Saint Henry and Fort Jennings in 1835. Making a trek westward, there was Oldenburg, Indiana, in 1837; Teutopolis, Illinois, in 1839; and New Vienna, Iowa, in 1843 (the latter being founded by settlers from Minster). Prominent amongst the latter settlements, as well as Minster, Saint Henry, and Fort Jennings, were emigrants from Oldenburg. These settlements were primarily Catholic. In Ohio, New Bremen was founded by Evangelicals and New Knoxville by Reformists. There were also several Evangelical settlements in Indiana including White Creek. Presumably there were other Evangelical settlements that followed a westward pattern out of Cincinnati.