This is an place holder with html for Google spidering. Turn on javascript to get access to the pdf.

code

.... this page has full text in html for Google spidering - the html will be removed when the site d=goes live.

WARTBURG: DREAM AND REALITY OF THE NEW GERMANY IN TENNESSEE By KLAUS G. WUST In any history of the German element of the United States, Tennessee will occupy only a minor place. Although Germans and German Swiss have been present in that state throughout its existence, their numerical strength has never been large enough to have made itself felt. Their contributions to the various trades, professions and industries were in most cases commen- surate with their numbers. Only as farmers may they have given more than their share toward the development of sound farming practices and toward a much needed diversification of agriculture. East Tennessee was the end of the road for the onwardpushing Penn- sylvania German in the decades after the Revolutionary War. What had still been a forceful wave of migration in Western Maryland and in the Great Valley of Virginia, became a mere trickle beyond the New River. By 1790, the first permanent settlements of Germans from Pennsylvania and from the Shenandoah Valley were established in Green, Washington and Sullivan counties, soon to be followed by the infiltration of the Clinch and Holston river valley by German farm families. The fertile mountain valleys of East Tennessee offered the type of land suitable for the small farms the Germans were looking for. Whenever a new settlement reached sufficient numbers, a church congregation was founded. Most of the early German congregations in the area were of the Lutheran faith. In April, 1812, the Lutheran Synod of North Carolina admitted nine congregations in Tennessee (Sullivan, Washington, Green, Knox and Blount counties) into its ranks. In succeeding years, petitions for German-speaking preachers came from Sevier, Franklin, Lincoln and Bedford counties where a number of German settlers from North Carolina had established themselves about 1800.¹ Most of these German congregations were quite small and they had difficulties in finding pastors willing to serve them in the backwoods. In July, 1820, representatives from a dozen Lutheran churches in East Ten- nessee met in the small hamlet of Cove Creek in Green county and founded there the Evangelical Lutheran Tennessee Synod.² They were joined by a number of congregations in Virginia. German was proclaimed the official language of the Tennessee Synod, and, although bilingualism crept very soon into this organization, the language transition was delayed consider- ably by the efforts of the clergy. Dunker and United Brethren groups from Virginia also located in East Tennessee during the following years. By 1820, scattered German settlements reached a line which may be roughly defined by the course of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers from the Virginia border to Bradley county. A detailed study of this early phase of German 1 C. W. Cassell, History of the Lutheran Church in Virginia and East Tennessee (Strasburg, Va., 1930). 2 Kurze Nachricht von den Verrichtungen der ersten Conferenz gehalten in dem Staat Tennessee (New Market, Va., 1821); Socrates Henkel, History of the Evangelical Lutheran Tenneseee Synod (New Market, Va., 1890). [21] settlement has never been made. It would represent an important contribu- tion to the pioneer history of the state.³ In the year 1828, a German traveler, Traugott Bromme, passed through several parts of Tennessee. 4 His account paints a very favorable picture of the area presently covered by Roane, Anderson, Morgan and Cumberland counties. He mentions the many German farmers whom he had encountered along the Holston river. Bromine's glowing reports about the fertility of the soil and the low prices for land were circulated widely among German Americans in the North. Several German businessmen began to look into investment opportunities in East Tennessee. When in 1839, five years after the first publication of Bromme's book, large tracts of land in the Cumber- land plateau region were offered for sale in New York City, Georg F. Gerding was among the first buyers. The use he subsequently made of this land and his project of a "New Germany" in Tennessee will be told in the chapters of this article. Gerding's Wartburg project, however, was to remain the only German colonization venture in the state prior to the Civil War. German immi- grants in search of farm land turned toward the Midwest. Certainly, the larger cities and towns of Tennessee received modest numbers of German tradesmen and shopkeepers during the fifth and sixth decades of the eighteenth century, but the large waves of immigrants arriving in New York, Baltimore or New Orleans headed elsewhere. Memphis and Nash- ville were the only Tennessee cities with German colonies large enough to support the usual clubs and German-language newspapers. 5 By 1854, a lively German weekly, Stimme des Volkes, appeared in Memphis. Its editor, August Kattmann, was a Forty-Eighter who was the leader of the Germans in Memphis until his death in 1860. Evidently, there was room for a second German weekly because Der Anzeiger des Südens commenced publication in 1858. Nashville also had a German newspaper as early as 1857. 6 German residents of the Tennessee capital in 1850 had founded the German Relief Society "for the protection of immigrants from fraud and other misfortunes" patterned after the venerable German Societies of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Charleston, South Carolina. 7 After the outbreak of the Civil War, many Germans left the state and went North. Among those who stayed on, owners of considerable property or substantial business enterprises formed the majority. A small number of Germans from Tennessee fought in the Confederate armies. After the war some of the refugees returned to their former homes but Tennessee was also haunted by a goodly assortment of Germans who arrived within the ranks of the carpetbaggers. During the immediate post-war period, a group of politically active German businessmen in Nashville, reinforced by speculators from the North, tried to promote German immigration to Tennessee. In the spring of 1866, they put up funds to establish the daily Tennessee Staatszeitung under the 3 Some research into the early German settlements was done in 1939/40 by R. S. Collins at Maryville College and John G. Prank at Vanderbilt University but the results of these studies were never pub- lished. A number of old Pennsylvania-German farm families were evacuated during World War II when Oak Ridge was built by the Federal Government. Cf. George O. Robinson, The Oak Ridge Story (Kingsport, Tenn., 1950), 32-83. 4 Traugott Bromme, Reisen durch die Vereinigten Staaten und Ober-Canada (Baltimore, 1834), 2 vols. (Reference to East Tennessee in Vol. II, 125 ff.) In 1828 Bromme visited parts of Tennessee. He noted the presence of numerous German settlers along the Holston River near Knoxville. 5 Alexander J. Schem (ed.), Deutsch-amerikanisches Conversations-Lexikon (New York, 1869-1874), 11 vols. "Tennessee," X, 650; "Nashville," VII, 691-2; "Memphis," VII, 193-4. 6 Karl J. Arndt and May E. Olson, German-American Newspapers and Periodicals 1732-1955 (Heidelberg, 1961). "Tennessee," 611-614. Olson lists a total of 26 wholly German or German-English publications in Tennessee. 7 The First German Relief Society were Gerald Seiferle, John Buddeke, Francis Klotz, H. B. Waldmann and Anthony Leonhard. Cf. Acts of Tennessee, 1850, 392. [22] editorship of J. Ruhm who was to provide a special, weekly edition devoted to the promotion of immigration. In August 1867, the various German societies of Nashville called a meeting at Turner Hall "to take into con- sideration the best measures for promoting German immigration to this state." Simultaneous meetings of Germans were held in Chattanooga, Knox- ville and Memphis. The organizers were hopeful that "branch societies of an association would be formed thoughout the state to assist immigrants to find suitable locations, and help to get them established." At least in Nashville the organizers had success. "The German Association of the City of Nashville" was founded and received at once a charter from the legislature according to which it was "authorized to procure laborers from parties applying to them, to act as agents for land owners desirous of selling their property, and for parties wishing to buy land in the State of Tennessee." This association held regular meetings for a time. At its first official meeting it suggested that the state government establish a "Bureau of Immigration." 8 The State evidently carried out this suggestion at once because a "State Board of Immigration" was appointed in December 1867. This Board selected German-born Hermann Bokum as Commissioner of Immigration. Bokum, one time professor of German literature in Philadelphia and Boston, had been a clergyman in East Tennessee before the war and had fled to the North where he earned a living as a lecturer, author and translator of classical German literature, came back to Tennessee at war's end as an agent of the Freedman's Bureau. 9 After his appointment as Immigration Com- missioner he tackled his new task by putting his abilities as a writer to work. He compiled a comprehensive handbook on Tennessee intended as a guide for prospective immigrants. Both an English and a German edition of this compendium appeared. In another move, Bokum saw to it that Ruhm's Staatszeitung received a handsome subsidy for distributing copies of this German newspaper free of charge to newly arrived immigrants in American ports. Otherwise little activity was deployed by either the Board or its appointed Commissioner and impatient friends at the state house soon called the whole venture off. 10 The public tended to lump immigrants together with carpetbaggers and emancipated Negro slaves as byproducts of the Reconstruction. When a German settlement near Columbia failed miserably in 1868, the local press declared that "the Germans were no better than Negroes, who, at least, were able to speak English." 11 Despite the failure of official encouragement to immigrants, several private schemes were tried to divert a part of the constant stream of immi- grants from the Midwest and direct it toward Tennessee. In 1869, John Hitz, the Swiss Consul General in Washington, and Peter Straub, Swiss Consular Agent in Knoxville, 12 jointly sponsored a Swiss-German Colony in Grundy County which resulted in the founding of the village of Gruetly near Altamont. 13 Three German Emigation Societies settled some Germans 8 Nashville Daily Press and Times, August 14 and 21, 1867. 9 Hermann Bokum, Zeugnis eines Flüchtlings von Ost-Tennessee (Philadelphia, 1863). The two editions of his handbook were published under the following titles: The Tennessee Handbook and Immi- grant's Guide and Das Tennessee Handbuch: Eine Beschreibung des Staates Tennessee (both Philadelphia, 1868). 10 C. G. Belissary, "Tennessee and Immigration, 1865-1880," Tennessee Historical Quarterly VII (1948), 229-248. " Nashville Daily Press and Times, April 1, 1868. 12 Peter Straub (1828-1904) was a native of Bilton, Canton of Glarus, Switzerland. He settled in Knoxville just before the Civil War and rose to local prominence as a manufacturer. In 1875, 1876 and 1881 he was elected mayor of Knoxville. Later he served as U. S. Consul at St. Gallen. Cf. Albert Bartholdi, Prominent Americans of Swiss Origin (New York, 1982), 177-78. 13 Adelrich Steinach, Geschichte und Leben der Schweizer Kolonien in den Vereinigten Staaten (New York, 1889), 162-167. In 1933 a M. A. Thesis entitled "The German-Swiss Settlement at Gruetli Tenness