This paper was based on my doctoral research on emigration from Hessen-Darmstadt to Wisconsin. It was inspired by a socio-historical approach, which was first articulated in 60 by Frank Thistlethwaite. He criticized historians for confining themselves to the European or American side of the story, and encouraged them to examine the "process of migration as a complete sequence of experiences". 1 He challenged American researchers to make the "salt water curtain inhibiting American understanding of European origins" 2 more transparent, and admonished Europeans to examine settlement patterns of immigrants and their adaptation to a new environment, known as acculturation. This results in a new perspective "from neither the continent of origin nor from the principal country of reception". 3 According to Robert Ostergren, this approach allowed researchers "to view the migrant experience from within rather than without" 4 and to overcome the traditional view of emigration and immigration as two different phenomena. A good number of such studies on Scandinavians in the Midwest have been conducted since the late 60s, 5 but Walter D. Kamphoefner's seminal book, Westfalians in Missouri, has remained one of the few treatments on German immigrants. 6 One of the major obstacles to that kind of project is to locate a group from a small area in Germany which settled in a limited area in the United States. I was fortunate to locate about 2,000 people from the small southwest German province of Rheinhessen who formed group settlements in several counties in eastern Wisconsin in the mid-1800s. My research included a number of German and American sources, such as emigration records, German and American land records, the 1850 and 1860 United States Census manuscripts, church and civil records, immigrant letters, and newspapers. This paper is only a brief overview of some of the aspects of this research. 7

In 1817 Johannes Neeb, mayor of Nieder-Saulheim near Mainz, encountered a long trek of emigrant families passing through his village. This scene moved him so much that in the following night he dreamt that he was relocated to an unknown land. Neeb wandered around and finally came to a signpost with names of places he knew well: Mannheim, Oppenheim, Mainz, Darmstadt, and Alzey. Neeb was flabbergasted. There were no hills with vineyards in the area, the landscape was not dotted with small villages, and there was no sight of the majestic Rhine River, just wide tracts of uncultivated land. Soon afterwards he met a man who introduced himself as the Justice of the Peace of Oppenheim on the Ohio River. In fluent German he told Neeb that many immigrants from Rheinhessen had settled in the area and that they were living happily. The stranger invited Neeb to stay, and Neeb, fond of the idea, wanted to shake hands with him. However, he hit the bedpost and woke up.

Neeb's story, which was published in 1821 under the title Neu-Deutschland in Amerika, had a basis in fact. 8 Since the late 1600s, people from his area in the northern part of the old Palatinate, later known as Rheinhessen, had emigrated to Eastern Europe and North America. Neeb possibly knew that there was a place called Oppenheim in the United States. It was not on the Ohio River, however, but in the Mohawk Valley in New York State and had been settled by Palatines 100 years earlier. Neeb's dream also makes clear that people in Rheinhessen knew that there were settlements overseas where people from their immediate area clustered and which were a magnet for later emigrants. At the time of Neeb's death, in 1843, many villagers from his hometown were on their way to the Great Lakes area of the United States, where they settled in a sparsely populated wilderness called Wisconsin.

First, I will briefly introduce you to the Rheinhessen homeland of many Hessian immigrants, and discuss the socio-economic situation there in the first half of the nineteenth century. Then I will explain why Wisconsin was so popular among emigrants from the eastern part of the province, and how this chain migration started. Afterwards I will outline the distribution of Hessian immigrants in the various parts of Wisconsin in general and focus on areas where they clustered: the Darmstädter Settlements in southern Washington County and northern Sheboygan County, and the City of Milwaukee. In order to analyze the acculturation process of these immigrants in the the century, I will discuss: relationships to Anglo-Americans from the east coast who referred to themselves as Yankees, marriage patterns, agriculture, beer and wine businesses, religion, and attitudes towards the Civil War.

Nieder-Saulheim was part of Rheinhessen, the smallest of the three provinces of the Grandduchy of Hessen-Darmstadt. Situated on the left side of the Rhine, Rheinhessen was under French rule between 1797 and 1814 and was ceded to Hessen-Darmstadt in 1816. 9 With a mere 531 square miles, its territory embraced less than half the size of Dane County, Wisconsin. Most of its soil was fertile and the mild climate allowed the production of grain and wine. With a population of 213,000 in 1840 it had about 400 residents per square mile which at that time made it one of the most densely populated areas of Germany. As in most parts of Central Europe, population growth had been immense within the previous 25 years. The number of Rheinhessians had increased by one-quarter, which posed severe problems to an agrarian area where it was common practice among peasants to divide up their land in equal shares among their heirs (Realteilung). Emigration was regarded by many middle class families as the only remedy against impoverishment, especially after a series of crop failures in the 1840s. In 1847, the Kölner Zeitung reported that among the numerous families who were leaving Rheinhessen, "there was not even one, which could be considered ,poor'." 10 According to the article, most of them were worth between 4,000 and 5,000 Gulden ($1,600-2,000). A farmer, who had auctioned his estate for 12,000 Gulden ($4,800) explained his decision to emigrate with the following words: "You can call me a wealthy man, but I have nine children. After my death, each of them would not even inherit 1,500 Gulden ($600), and they would belong to the paupers in this country and could not aspire to earn as much as to live without sorrow. I therefore prefer to go to North America now with the funds I have at my disposition, buy a large homestead for my family at a nominal price and thus lay the foundation for a worry free future for my descendants." To this category also belonged Jakob Best, a farmer and vinegar-maker from Mettenheim. The father of the founder of the Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Best sold his real estate for 8,000 Gulden ($3,200) before he went to America. 11

In the mid 1800s, Wisconsin and other parts of the U.S. were the major, but not the only destination of emigrants from Rheinhessen. For some time Brazil was popular among the poor classes because provinces or plantation owners who tried to stimulate immigration often paid the - otherwise unaffordable - overseas passage.

Not only people from Nieder-Saulheim were caught by Wisconsin Fever between the early 1840s and the Civil War. Nearly 2,000 people from Kreis Oppenheim (consisting of 130 square miles less than four townships in Wisconsin) also chose this part of the United States as their new home. In other parts of Rheinhessen as well as in most areas of the three Hessian States (Hessen-Darmstadt, Hessen-Kassel, and the tiny state of Hessen-Homburg), people preferred other regions of North America and were not much attracted to Wisconsin - today the sister state of the modern German federal state (Bundesland) Hessen. The figures of the 1860 Census clearly illustrate this. There were 123,879 German-born residents in Wisconsin, but only five percent of them (6,313) were classified as Hessians. 12 Hessians, however, constituted at least 7 ½ percent of all Germans in the U.S. in that year. They were particularly strong in the states on the Northern Atlantic seaboard and the lower Midwest.

Why, of all places, was Wisconsin so popular among people from the Oppenheim area? The answer is quite simple: there was a chain migration process taking place which was typical for many migrations to the Midwest and other parts of the United States. Instrumental in stimulating emigration from Rheinhessen to Wisconsin was Franz Neukirch (1796 Mainz 1865 Milwaukee), who was an educated man. 13 The Neukirch family had lived for many years in Guntersblum near Oppenheim. Franz was a forester in a subordinated position and was in constant quarrels with his superior, who tried to get rid of him. In 1839, he charged Neukirch with having forged documents. Neukirch declared he was innocent and was supported by influential people who knew him. Nonetheless, charges were filed against him, and since things did not look good for him, Neukirch decided to escape to America. Immediately after his arrival in New York, he went on to Milwaukee and purchased 80 acres of government land south of the city in the Town of Franklin. Neukirch's wife and children joined him one year later. Despite his hard work, he found enough time to write letters home to his wife, relatives, and friends, in which he praised the advantages of life in the forests. 14 The soil on his farm was fertile, he wrote, and the climate healthy. Game, fish, and a wide array of berries and fruits offered enough food for the newcomer. It was very easy to raise pigs and cows, because they did not have to be fed but found their food in the forests. Neukirch was very fond of the close contacts he had with his German and Anglo-American neighbors. Schools and churches were built everywhere, as well as streets and canals. In spite of low wheat prices, prospects for agriculture looked very good to Neukirch, and he resumed: "Under these circumstances every poor daylaborer, who is not needed in Germany, should come here, where most Germans have earned enough money to buy their land after a short period as laborers and thus have reached an independent and safe existence." 15

Neukirch's wife made certain that her husband's letters from Wisconsin were circulated in Rheinhessen. Since Franz still had a good reputation, the mayor and others of Guntersblum supported her in her efforts. When she and her children joined him one year later in 1840, five more families from Guntersblum were also preparing to go to Wisconsin.

As the first Rheinhessian in the Milwaukee area, Neukirch's advice was sought by many of the immigrants who came in the following year. Johann Schätzel, who arrived late in 1840, was disappointed that all the land in Neukirch's vicinity had been sold. 16 In the land office in Milwaukee he met Valentin Pfeil, another Rheinhessian from Gensingen, who told him that government land was still available north of Milwaukee in the townships of Mequon and Germantown and that he and people from the Bavarian Palatinate just south of Rheinhessen had settled there. Schätzel and the other four Guntersblum families took his advice and purchased land there. In the long run, Neukirch was not happy with his life as a "Latin Farmer". In 1844 he moved to Milwaukee and took over the brewery of his son-in-law Johann Jakob Meier. His advice was still in high demand among recent arrivals and one year later the Wiskonsin-Banner praised Neukirch as a worthy pioneer of the territory. He had not published books on Wisconsin, as others had done, but his efforts to attract people to settle in Wisconsin were, the paper wrote, no less successful. Neukirch was credited with having "incited with his truthful letters to Rheinhessen an almost irresistible Wanderlust there [...] Thousands of Rheinhessians are living here, and we have not been aware of even a single case, where one of them regretted his decision to come to Wisconsin." 17

By that time, Rheinhessians and other Hessen-Darmstädters probably numbered less than a thousand people in Wisconsin, but Neukirch had good reason to be proud of his role as Hessian 'colonizer'. His brewery flourished and he soon became a wealthy and respected citizen of Milwaukee. As vice president of the German Democratic Association of Milwaukee, Neukirch was a protagonist of the political interests of the German element in the city. He continued to promote immigration to Wisconsin, especially from Hessen-Darmstadt. As correspondent of the Darmstadt-based, nationally circulated newspaper, Der Deutsche Auswanderer (published between 1847 and 1850), his letters and accounts reached a wide audience. According to an estimate of the mayor of Darmstadt, about 2,000 Germans came to Wisconsin upon his advice.

Neukirch was undisputedly the catalyst for emigration from Rheinhessen to Wisconsin, however, he was not the only one to stimulate it. In the years 1842 and 1843, for example,the exodus from the village of Selzen and its vicinity to Washington County was to a large extent due to Philipp Laubenheimer, one of the earliest pioneers of the Town of Richfield and owner of a tavern and sawmill there. 18

A survey of the 1860 census manuscripts reveals that Hessen-Darmstädters were scattered in many different counties, especially between Milwaukee, Lake Winnebago and Manitowoc, until the outbreak of the Civil War (see Table 1). 19There were two major rural Darmstädter Settlements in eastern Wisconsin, one in southern Washington County and a smaller one in northwestern Sheboygan County.

In 1860, 1,256 Hessen-Darmstädters lived in Washington County (northwest of Milwaukee). They were the second largest group of Germans after the Prussians. Two-thirds of the Hessians, mostly from Rheinhessen, clustered in the townships of Germantown, Richfield, Polk, and Jackson. Most of the immigrants in the Darmstädter Settlement came between 1842 and 1848, and when the sale of government land came to an end, the flow of immigrants rapidly diminished. During the late 1840s, new arrivals went 40 miles north to the wilderness of the Town of Rhine in Sheboygan County (the Elkhart Lake area) where they were joined by families who had previously settled in Germantown. In the 1850s, Rhine became the magnet for immigration from Rheinhessen, and developed into the most solidly Hessian township in Wisconsin. In 1860, Hessen-Darmstädters and their children constituted three-quarters of the Germans in Rhine and half of its total population. This was unusual in Sheboygan County where only one out of five Germans came from southern Germany.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, immigration to Wisconsin from Hessen-Darmstadt quickly diminished and, as in the rest of Wisconsin, never reached great levels again, as the figures of later censuses reveal. Until 1870 the number of Hessian-born slightly rose to 6,661, but then dropped to 4,082 in 1880. 20 These figures must be treated with caution, however, because of irregularities in the keeping of the census, and also because many people from Hessen-Kassel were probably classified as Prussians after the annexation of their state by Prussia in 1866.

Ethnic Germans were by far the dominant group in Washington County and the northern half of Sheboygan County; their number even grew after the settlement period. 21 The Darmstädter Settlement in Washington County was surrounded by colonies of Pomeranians and Rhenish Prussians from the Hunsrück and the Cologne area. In Washington County German-born and their children constituted 58 percent of the population in 1850, and 68 percent in 1860. 22 The Sheboygan County settlement in the Town of Rhine was next to group settlements of people from Thuringia, Saxony, Schleswig, and the tiny dukedom of Lippe-Detmold. As a consequence, the other groups played a numerically marginal role. While the presence of the Irish, who clustered in the Town of Erin, continued to be felt, the percentage of Anglo-Americans in the county dwindled from 17 to 10 percent between 1850 and 1860. The number of Americans of German descent even rose to 80 percent by the turn of the century. 23

Yankees were the earliest settlers in the Darmstädter Settlements and their language and culture were different from the Germans. They were mostly wealthier than the immigrants during the settlement period, and like elsewhere, both groups held quite a few stereotypes about each other. During the settlement process, many Rheinhessians were dependent on assistance from Yankee neighbors. Johann Schätzel in Germantown had a cordial relationship with his neighbor from Pennsylvania who, together with other Anglo-Americans, had helped him raise his log cabin in 1840. He wrote home to Germany that his daughter wanted to marry a Yankee, and that he approved of it because they were also Christians and moreover, natives of the land. 24 Schätzel seemed to have been rather an exception to the rule. As more Germans poured into the area, the interaction of the first days decreased. Schätzel's younger brother Valentin, who followed only one year later, painted a scathing picture of the Anglo-Americans he knew. He wrote to his father: "I have to let you know that an American doesn't have any religion like a European. He knows no other holiday than the Fourth of July [...] Each of his words is accompanied by curses and swears. If they can cheat a German out of his money, they do so with joy, at least they cheat him wherever and however they can [...]." 25 When reading German and English newspapers and letters, one gets the impression that Germans and Yankees were living in two different worlds. In 1843, E. R. Woodworth, who lived just a few miles away from Schätzel, wrote a long letter to his relatives in Massachusetts. He only dedicated one phrase to his German neighbors: "Ther [sic] is a great many German Dutch come to this Teritory [sic] they Seem friendly but not much for Society". 26 Considerable tensions between the German majority and the Yankee minority, some due to political issues, seem to have arisen in Washington County during the mid-1850s. They culminated in an 1855 lynching case, where a mob of Germans killed George DeBar, a New-York-born farmhand who had murdered one of their compatriots. 27

It is unknown if Johann Schätzel's daughter married the Yankee to whom she was engaged in 1840. She certainly would have been the talk of the area for a long time because pioneers were more likely to be killed by falling trees than to marry an ethnic outsider. There were enough Germans around from which to pick a partner. The 1860 census manuscripts for nine selected counties in Eastern Wisconsin revealed 1,196 married couples with at least one partner born in the Hessian states, and where it could be assumed that the marriage took place in the United States. 28 In ninety-four out of one hundred cases, both partners came from German-speaking areas. Only a total of 21 were married to French (most of them probably German-speaking Alsatians), 19 to New Yorkers, 9 to Pennsylvanians, and 6 to Englishmen. It is striking that only one Hessian was married to a member of Wisconsin's second largest group of immigrants, the Irish: he was a cigarmaker in Milwaukee.

Especially in the Darmstädter Settlements there was a strong tendency to enter matrimonial bonds with partners from the same home area. Three out of four Hessian-born residents in the Town of Rhine, who married in the U.S. before 1860, had Hessian husbands or wives. A few males even traveled back to Rheinhessen, married there, and returned with their brides. 29 Ten years later, after the end of the settlement period, the situation was different. Marriages with people from other parts of Germany had become more common, and the proportion of purely Hessian couples declined to one third of all cases.

The vast majority of immigrants pursued farming even if they had been artisans in Germany. There were a lot of differences between farming in Rheinhessen and Wisconsin. 30 The most striking was the size of the farm. Many of the settlers emigrated from the village of Selzen where the average size of a farm in 1817 was 3.5 hectares, a little less than nine acres. 31 In 1860, every farmer in Washington County from Hessen-Darmstadt owned 70 acres, 41 of which were improved; this represented almost eight times as much land (see Table 3). In addition there were almost no forests in Rheinhessen and fire and building wood had to be imported from other areas and was very expensive. Rheinhessian immigrants marveled at the prospects offered by the forests on their Wisconsin farms.

The Germans of Washington County generally enjoyed a good reputation for diversified farming. In 1853, the State Agricultural Society praised them noting that although they did not cultivate as much land as Anglo-Americans, they prepared it more thoroughly and, therefore, had higher production rates. 32 This was confirmed by John Gregory, land agent in Milwaukee, who wrote in a handbook for Irish immigrants in 1853: "I have seen the truth of this proved in many parts of this State, but in no place so fully as in the outskirts of Milwaukee, where an industrious and skillful German makes more of an acre than a country farmer does of five." 33 Far from being filiopietistic, I have to say: if this was true, there couldn't have been better immigrants than Rheinhessians. Land in their home region was sparse and intensively cultivated for grain production, the main products being wheat, rye, barley, and oats. In many villages, especially on the Rhine, most families also owned small vineyards. Cattle and other animals were kept mostly for domestic purposes. Especially in the first years after their arrival in Washington County, Rheinhessians, like other Germans, adopted only as many American farming methods as necessary. During the self-sufficiency period they attempted to continue to farm the 'German way' as much as possible. The manuscripts of the agricultural census reveal that for many years there were considerable differences in production between Germans and Anglo-Americans.The censuses also indicate that Yankees pursued diversified farming from the beginning, as opposed to their compatriots in the prairie counties. I will only mention two differences. Wheat was, of course, king among all ethnic groups. In old Washington County in 1849, 93 bushels per farm were produced by Yankees, who were traditional wheat farmers, and 72 by Germans (see Table 2). Rye, a much less important cash crop, was still a favorite of Germans who produced an average of 42 bushels ten times as much as Yankees and Irishmen. This was due to the fact that rye traditionally was used in Germany to bake bread, and the immigrants wished to carry on this tradition. Germans in 1849 also produced twice as much barley as Anglo-Americans. The amount of eight bushels per farm was still small and would expand within the next decades as the demand of the breweries grew. Indian corn and maple sugar were products Germans did not know from home, but they started producing them immediately after their arrival, although on a much smaller scale than the Yankees.

Ten years later, in southern Washington County, there were still considerable differences between Germans and Yankees, but they were gradually leveling especially among the earliest immigrant farmers (see Table 3). The production figures of Hessen-Darmstädters, some of whom had farmed in the area for almost two decades, show that the adaptation of their farming techniques was farther along than that of all German immigrants. Rheinhessians still produced almost as much rye and barley as their compatriots, but they now put more emphasis on the production of wheat: with an average of 128 bushels it was just in between the figures of all Germans (101 bushels) and the Yankees (155 bushels).

Grain farming continued to be the principal occupation of the farmers in Washington and Sheboygan Counties for two decades after 1860, but there were changes on the way. As the importance of Wisconsin wheat dwindled on the national and international markets, dairy farming became more prominent, first among Anglo-Americans and soon by other groups. 34 By 1885 the acreage of food crops and market cereals in Washington County were about equal. 35

The 1860 census reveals that not much cheese and butter were produced in the Darmstädter Settlements. However, Rheinhessians there were more acculturated and willing to learn the art of cheese making from their Yankee neighbors than the rest of the Germans. Both produced 18 pounds of cheese per year which was twice the German average. The number of cows increased steadily; cheese making had become an important source of income for many farmers. In the Town of Rhine, the Hessian stronghold of Sheboygan County, dairy farming was introduced later but much more intensively. The first cheese factory in Rhine was started in 1872 by Helwig Feldmann who was born near the city of Darmstadt. 36 Hiram Conover from Sheboygan Falls had taught the manufacturing process to Feldmann's son, and Helwig's wife even traveled to New York State for a few weeks to perfect her skills. In 1885, the production of the township alone was almost as high as that of Washington County. 37

Farmers were busy people and did not have much time for relaxation. Churches were the major centers of religious and social life; - there were only a few secular Vereine in the Darmstädter Settlements until the end of the nineteenth century. Most Rheinhessians were members of the Evangelical church, which in Rheinhessen was founded in 1822 when Reformed and Lutherans merged. They mostly founded United Protestant congregations (Vereinigte Evangelische Kirchengemeinden) in Wisconsin. The earliest of them was St. John's Evangelical Church in Germantown, founded in 1843. In Germantown as in many other places, each sizable German group had its own congregation. Christ Church in Germantown was known as the "Hunsrücker Kirche," and in the vicinity of Town Rhine people spoke of the "Darmstädter Kirche," "Lipper Kirche" or "Schwarzwälder Kirche" when they referred to St. Peter, Immanuel, or St. John, respectively. 38

Some Rheinhessians embraced denominations that were unknown in Germany. This was in part due to the fact that Lutheran or Reformed ministers were scarce in Washington County until the 1860s. Another factor was that German-speaking itinerant preachers of other groups were quite active; in Richfield their work among Rheinhessian families was quite successful. By the early 1860s, three congregations were founded in the Darmstädter section of Richfield: the united Lutheran-Reformed church, the Evangelical Association (a Pennsylvania-German offspring of Methodism), and the First Presbyterian Church of Richfield. The First Presbyterian Church was founded in 1861 by a Presbyterian minister who had served the united congregation for several years and convinced several of its members of the advantages of Presbyterianism. 39

Other Rheinhessians brought a philosophical heritage that was not approved of by most Americans. Since the mid 1700s, and especially since the time of the French Revolution, many people in Germany had outspoken liberal religious views. They questioned traditional Christian doctrines, and founded the so-called Deutschkatholische Kirche (German-Catholic Church) in 1844. 40 Rheinhessen was a major center of German-Catholic activities, and congregations were soon found both in cities and in the countryside. They increasingly became the forum for people who espoused more political freedom and, therefore, were closely observed by the government and suppressed after the Revolution of 1848 had failed. Some German-Catholic preachers emigrated to Wisconsin. Among them were Eduard Schröter, who had officiated for the congregation in Worms, and Heinrich Loose, his colleague from Neustadt an der Haardt in the Palatinate. 41 Both were well known in Rheinhessen because they held public addresses in many locations. Schröter became preacher of the Freie Gemeinde in Milwaukee and was quite active in founding freethinker congregations in Wisconsin. He also visited the Darmstädter Settlements, and his views found much support among many settlers, to whom he was no stranger. 42 By the end of 1852, 30 congregations had been organized in Wisconsin. Among them were the Freimännerverein von Germantown, the Freie Gemeinde der Towns Polk und Richfield, and the Freie Gemeinde von Town Rhine. 43 Most of these congregations, however, were short-lived and ceased to exist by the mid 1850s because of organizational problems and lack of support by members. 44 However, many settlers in the Darmstädter Settlements did not join any churches after the decline of the Freie Gemeinden, and some of them even opposed the foundation of churches. A pastor, who arrived in the Town of Rhine in 1859, was greeted by a local with the words: "We don't need any Pfaffen (priests), we are in a free country." 45

As in the rest of rural Wisconsin, life in the Darmstädter Settlements was unspectacular. In 1881, an observer wrote about the Town of Polk: "The changes for the past thirty years have been uneventful and mark only the improvement and advancement which have come to the honest and thrifty people who have subdued the forest and made it the happy abode of peace and plenty." 46 There was one event in those thirty years, however, which influenced the lives of many people; it was the Civil War.

Many German immigrants were not fond of sending their sons to war. After all, many young men had left their country to avoid military service. In addition, most Germans in Wisconsin sympathized with the Democratic Party, and considered the war 'Lincoln's War'. 47 In Washington County, the townships contributed a lot of money for the support of the northern troops, but the number of volunteers among German immigrants remained quite low until the end of the war. 48 Riots even occurred when pressure was exerted upon immigrants by draft commissioners. 49 In Sheboygan County, things were somewhat different. The Germans there, influenced by leaders such as the advocate Konrad Krez from the Palatinate, were generally not as opposed to the war as their southern neighbors. 50 Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, German papers carried appeals to volunteer with the argument that Germans, as adopted citizens, should show at least as much patriotism as the Anglo-Americans in the county. 51 And especially to stir-up the Rheinhessians, the Sheboygan National Demokrat published a version of Yankee Doodle in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, which was similar to the vernacular spoken in southern Hessen-Darmstadt. 52

The war had pushed acculturation a step forward. Immigrants who served served in the war were more aware than ever before that they now were part of a nation which was worth fighting for. In 1868, the residents of the Town of Rhine were praised highly when they erected a war monument. A local newspaper wrote: "The town of Rhine has taken the lead in this county, in commemorating in marble [...] the patriotism and bravery of the soldiers of that town who gave up their lives in the service of their adopted country during the late war of the Rebellion". 53 War monuments at that time were still uncommon in rural areas of the United States and Germany, as a rule, but they could frequently be found in Rheinhessen. In the 1840s, a number of memorials were inaugurated there to commemorate the soldiers who had fought under Napoleon, who was still held in high esteem by many veterans. 54 So the early erection of the war monument with the names of German and Anglo-American casualties was not only a patriotic gesture, but also the continuation of a Rheinhessian tradition.

Many immigrants spent some time in Milwaukee before they purchased farmland; others, especially craftsmen, decided to stay in the city. In 1860, one out of five Hessians in Wisconsin lived in Milwaukee. 55 They came from different areas, but the proportion of Rheinhessians was quite great. Many of them were in close contact with relatives and friends in the Darmstädter Settlements. A young man named Philipp Walldorf became aware of this soon after his arrival in the city in 1856. Reports that he enjoyed the nightlife of Milwaukee a little bit too much soon reached his cousin fifty miles north in Town Rhine. His inappropriate behavior was immediately reported to his parents in Germany who, in turn, wrote him an admonishing letter. 56

The social network of Rheinhessians in Milwaukee also had its good sides. Many immigrants found work at businesses owned by people from their home districts. This is especially true for the pioneer brewing industry in which Rheinhessians played a crucial role. Most of the early German breweries in the city were run, at least for a time, by brewers from towns within a 20-mile radius in southern Hessen-Darmstadt. In 1844 Philipp Best from Mettenheim founded a brewery on PrairievilleRoad which, under his son-in-law Frederick Pabst, became the Pabst Brewery, one of the nation's giants in the business. 57 In 1869 Best took over the South Side Brewery, which for twenty-five years had been operated by Franz Neukirch and his son-in-law C. T. Melms. In 1850 his brother Charles Best opened the Plank Road Brewery which was sold after three years to Fred Miller, an immigrant from Württemberg - for whom America's second largest brewery is named. 58 Another early brewer was Johann Braun from Partenheim. He was business partner of Neukirch until 1846, when he founded the City Brewery. 59 Five years later, at age 29, Braun was killed in a traffic accident and his widow married his former employe Valentin Blatz from Bavaria, who united Braun's brewery with his own new business. 60 Another success story in the Milwaukee brewing business also began with a young widow. After brewer August Krug died in 1858, his widow married Joseph Schlitz, his clerk who had come from Mainz three years before. 61 When the man whose "beer made Milwaukee famous" 62 died in a ship accident on the Atlantic in 1875 he was one of the city's richest men, his company manufactured almost 70,000 barrels a year. 63 Two more prominent Milwaukee brewers from Rheinhessen in the second half of the nineteenth century were Jakob Obermann, a shoemaker from Selzen, and Adam Gettelman, who was born in Germantown of parents from Nieder-Weinheim. 64

Why did people from a wine growing area play such a crucial role in the beer brewing business, not only in Milwaukee but also in other cities? 65 Perhaps the answer is some immigrants from southern Hessen-Darmstadt, such as Joseph Schlitz, had been trained as coopers and were familiar with both the production of wine and beer. It is also interesting to note that Rheinhessians were among the wine dealers of Milwaukee. John P. Kissinger from Selzen, and Adam Orth from Eich started their businesses in the mid-1850s and frequently traveled to Europe and imported large quantities of wines, especially from the vineyards of their homeland. 66 Orth, an important client of winegrowers in his native area, imported 104,000 gallons of wine from Hessen-Darmstadt between 1857 and 1867. 67

As I have demonstrated, Rheinhessian immigrants to Wisconsin were transplanted but not uprooted. In a sense, mayor Neeb's dream came true. Many aspects of the lives of the Rheinhessians would have been very familiar to him, while others would have been unrecognizable. Rheinhessians gradually adapted to their new country, but at the same time tried to keep as much of their traditional way of living as possible. Most adaptations were out of necessity, as was seen in the switch from wine production to beer production. In agriculture they enlarged their wheat production, but still maintained enough rye production to eat their traditional foods. The antagonism between mainstream Protestantism and German-Catholicism in Rheinhessen became more apparent in the free intellectual climate of Wisconsin. Eduard Schroeter once commented that -at least for a time - his humanist ministry on the banks of Lake Michigan was as successful as during his time in Worms on the Rhine. 68

In an area dominated by the German element, the last cultural element to be lost was their mother tongue. German remained the everyday language of many families in the Darmstädter Settlements of Washington and Sheboygan Counties until the second half of the twentieth century. 69 The language was taught by parents and Sunday school teachers, but hardly in public schools. In the settlements studied, the language handed down was the ancestral dialect which was often far from standard German. Roland Schomberg had two problems when he started to teach first graders in a public school in the Town of Rhine area in the early 30s. 70 First of all, none of the children had sufficient knowledge of English, the teaching language. Schomburg had to teach them the basics of English in German. When doing so he encountered the second obstacle. The children understood his high German, but they replied in Hessian dialect, which he who grew up speaking Plattdeutsch just a few miles further east - hardly understood. And if mayor Neeb met some of the elders today he could still speak to them in Rheinhessian, just as I do today.

Table 1: Hessians in selected Wisconsin counties 1860
county Hessian- born percentage of Hessians in Wisconsin (N= 6,313)
Milwaukee 1,369 21.7
Washington 1,256 .9
Sheboygan 950 15.1
Ozaukee 374 5.9
Waukesha 303 4.8
Manitowoc 251 4.0
Dodge 9 3.2
Fond du Lac 182 2.9
Buffalo 49 0.8
Brown 30 0.5
Calumet 21 0.3
Trempealeau 9 0.1
Shawano 3 0.05
Total 4,996 79.25
Source: Author's evaluation of 1860 U.S. census manuscripts (people claiming birth in Hessen-Darmstadt, Hessen-Kassel, and Hessen-Homburg).

Table 2: Agriculture in Washington County, Wisconsin 1849/50
Average production per farm (including the townships of later Ozaukee County)
all groups Germans Yankees Irish British Scandinavians Canadians French
Number of farms 1,635 916 265 352 48 16 14 12
Total acreage 93.6 85.9 103.5 98.4 92.5 83.5 121.5 315.4
Improved land (acres) 26.2 25.7 28.1 25.6 29.5 17.1 32.9 33.7
Value of farm ($) 815.6 732.8 1,121.3 747.2 1,025.0 587.5 1,4.1 945.8
Value of implements ($) 50.5 56.4 55.4 32.3 56.5 23.6 37.8 64.2
Horses 0.3 0.1 0.4 0.09 0.2 0 0.9 0.08
Cows 2.1 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.8 1.6 2.3 2.5
Oxen 2.1 2.0 1.7 1.7 1.7 1.6 2.1 2.8
Other cattle 1.9 1.7 1.8 2.0 2.4 1.1 2.5 2.2
Sheep 0.7 0.7 0.9 0.2 1.1 0.6 0 0.4
Hogs 6.3 6.2 5.2 6.1 6.2 3.5 3.9 7.6
Value of animals ($) 1.9 116.5 124.9 102.1 120.4 81.1 135.8 161.0
Value of slaughtered animals ($) 18.5 17.4 25.4 14.4 22.3 14.6 21.2 52.6
Wheat (bush.) 78.0 72.4 92.6 78.2 79.3 42.3 91.6 209.8
Rye (bush.) 25.9 42.1 4.1 5.0 3.4 10.2 8.2 10.4
Barley (bush.) 6.1 7.4 4.0 3.3 7.4 2.5 1.4 36.2
Indian corn (bush.) 212 18.0 41.8 12.2 33.0 7.5 23.6 42.5
Oats (bush.) 62.4 63.5 62.3 59.6 63.9 26.9 59.5 106.7
Buckwheat (bush.) 2.3 2.4 4.2 0.9 2.3 0 0 4.2
Wool (pounds) 1.0 1.4 1.0 0.2 0.6 0 0 0.8
Peas and beans (bush.) 0.5 0.8 0.4 0.09 0.04 0 0.4 0
Potatoes (pounds) 75.5 77.1 75.3 71.8 74.6 68.8 44.1 102.8
Butter (pounds) 105.4 98.3 140.5 95.1 125.0 109.1 107.1 80.0
Cheese (pounds) 0.2 0 1.1 0 0 0 0 0
Hay (tons) 2.0 1.5 3.1 2.1 3.0 0.8 7.7 3.6
Maple sugar (pounds) 65.5 38.4 181.1 30.9 120.7 57.5 0.0 240.0
Source: Author's evaluation of the Agricultural Schedules of the 1850 Washington County Census.


Table 3: Agriculture of various ethnic groups in the Darmstädter Settlement of Washington County, Wisconsin 1859/60
Average production per farm
Hessen- Darmstadt. All Germans Anglo-Americans Irish All groups
Number of farms 212 922 40 115 1,135
Total acreage 70.1 69.6 97.6 101.2 75.9
Improved land (acres) 40.9 37.8 52.5 48.7 40.3
Value of farm ($) 1,510 1,365 2,046 1,518 1,446
Value of implements ($) 70 63 86 57 64
Horses 1.1 1.1 1.6 1.3 1.4
Cows 2.8 2.7 2.6 2.5 2.7
Oxen 1.5 1.5 1.2 1.4 1.1
Other cattle 2.3 2.6 2.1 2.8 2.6
Sheep 2.2 2.4 6.6 5.6 3.0
Hogs 5.0 4.8 4.3 5.0 4.8
Value of animals ($) 186 163 238 9 173
Value of slaughtered animals ($) 36.2 32.1 49.0 35.2 33.9
Wheat (bush.) 128 101 155 136 109
Rye (bush.) 58 61 5 21 53
Barley (bush.) 33 32 13 3 28
Indian corn (bush.) 146 116 120 168 122
Oats (bush.) 28 20 48 30 23
Buckwheat (bush.) 0.03 0.1 0.6 0.3 0.3
Wool (pounds) 5.7 6.1 25.9 25.2 9.3
Peas and beans (bush.) 2.0 4.5 1.5 0.4 3.8
Potatoes (pounds) 52.1 46.7 39.0 60.9 48.2
Value of Fruits ($) 2.6 1.7 4.8 0.6 2.0
Wine (gallons) 0 0.003 0 0 0.003
Butter (pounds) 159.9 144.4 180.2 142.7 146.3
Cheese (pounds) 17.8 9.7 17.5 0 9.4
Hay (tons) 4.5 4.1 6.5 4.4 4.3
Hops (pounds) 0.03 1.8 0 0 1.5
Maple sugar (pounds) 9.4 9.3 53.5 22.2 15.0
Honey (pounds) 1.4 1.3 0.8 0 2.8
Source: Author's evaluation of the Agricultural Schedules of the 1860 Washington County Census (Towns of Germantown, Jackson, Polk, and Richfield).

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Joseph Salmons for the kind invitation to participate in the Max Kade Institute's "Defining Tensions" Conference. I am also indebted to Fran Loeb Luebke for her great support.

1) Frank Thistlethwaite, 'Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries', Comité International des Sciences Historiques, XIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, Stockholm, 21-28 Août 60, Rapports: V: Histoire Contemporaine (Göteborg/Stockholm/Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 60), 34.
2) Thistlethwaite, Migration from Europe Overseas, 32.
3) Thistlethwaite, Migration from Europe Overseas, 34.
4) Robert Ostergren, A Community Transplanted: The Trans-Atlantic Experience of a Swedish Immigrant Settlement in the Upper Middle West, 1835-15 (Madison: Wisconsin UP, 88), xiii.
5) One excellent case study on Scandinavian immigrants is Jon Gjerde, From Peasants to Farmers: The Migration from Balestrand, Norway, to the Upper Middle West (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 85).
6) Walter D. Kamphoefner, The Westfalians: From Germany to Missouri (Princeton: Princeton UP, 87). A German version was published some years earlier: Westfalen in der Neuen Welt. Eine Sozialgeschichte der Auswanderung im . Jahrhundert (Münster: F. Coppenrath, 82) (Beiträge zur Volkskultur in Nordwestdeutschland, 26).
7) See my dissertation: Helmut Schmahl, Verpflanzt, aber nicht entwurzelt: Die Auswanderung aus Hessen-Darmstadt (Provinz Rheinhessen) nach Wisconsin im . Jahrhundert, (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000) (Mainzer Studien zur Neueren Geschichte, 1). An English translation is in progress with the kind assistance of Joseph Salmons, Fran Loeb Luebke, and others. For more information see my homepage: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~hschmahl .
8) See Johannes Neeb, Vermischte Schriften, Vol. 3 (Frankfurt: Hermannsche Buchhandlung, 1821, Reprint: Brussels: Impression Anastaltique Culture et Civilisation, 81), 102-111.
9) For a concise treatment of the historical and socio-economic background of Rheinhessen and other parts of the Rhineland in the early 19th century, see Jonathan Sperber, Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848-1849 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 91), 13-52.
10) Quoted from the periodical Der Deutsche Auswanderer, 8/1847, col. 128. The article was also printed in other German and German-American papers, such as the Allgemeine Auswanderungszeitung, 23 Feb 1847, col. 159, and the Wiskonsin-Banner, 1 May 1847.
11) See the records of notary public Georg Jakob Saurmann from Bechtheim (Landesarchiv Speyer K 1 Nr. 3386).
12) Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864), liii.
13) See Helmut Schmahl, Verpflanzt, aber nicht entwurzelt, 123-129 for a detailed list of sources on Franz Neukirch.
14) Neukirch's letters were printed in Der Deutsche Auswanderer, 2/1847 [no date given], cols. 20-22; 3/1847, cols. 37-40; 27 May 1848, cols. 349-352; 3 June 1848, cols. 362-363; and Wilhelm Hense-Jensen, Wisconsin's Deutsch-Amerikaner bis zum Schluß des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Vol. 1 (Milwaukee: Deutsche Gesellschaft, 00), 289-302.
15) See his letter, Milwaukee, 1 Dec 1839, quoted in Hense-Jensen, Wisconsin's Deutsch-Amerikaner, Vol. 1, 295.
16) Letter of Johann Schätzel, Milwaukee Dec 1840, quoted in Der Deutsche Auswanderer, 35/1847, col. 558.
17) Wiskonsin-Banner, 12 July 1845.
18) Laubenheimer was born in Dexheim in 1803. See his biographical sketch in History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties (Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1881), 463, 733.
19) See Helmut Schmahl, Verpflanzt, aber nicht entwurzelt, Chapter 6 (151-202) for details.
20) See Francis E. Walker, A Compendium of the Ninth Census [1870] (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1872), 394-395; Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census [1880] (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883), 492-493.
21) The following observations are based, if not stated otherwise, on the author's computerized database of the population schedules of the 1850 and 1860 United States censuses for Washington and Sheboygan counties.
22) Washington County in 1850 had 11,0 inhabitants (excluding later Ozaukee County), by 1860 the number rose to 23,622. Author's evaluation of census manuscripts.
23) See Carl Quickert, Washington County, Wisconsin: Past and Present, Vol. 1 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 12), 129.
24) Letter of Johann Schätzel, Milwaukee Dec 1840, quoted in Der Deutsche Auswanderer, 36/1847, col. 574.
25) Letter of Valentin Schätzel, Milwaukee, 22 Aug 1841, quoted in Der Deutsche Auswanderer, 35/1847, col. 557.
26) State Historical Society of Wisconsin, File 1843 June 8: E. R. Woodworth letter.
27) See Richard N. Current, The History of Wisconsin, Vol. 2: The Civil War Era, 1848-1873 (Madison: SHSW, 76), 2-4; Joseph Schafer, 'The Yankee and Teuton in Wisconsin', Wisconsin Magazine of History 7 (23/24), 164-168.
28) The 1860 Census did not list the relationship of people living in one household. However, a plausible reconstruction of family structures was possible in most cases. It was assumed that a marriage took place in the U.S. if the oldest child living in the household was native-born. Also, couples less than 51 years old with no children listed were included in my survey. Kamphoefner, Westfalians in Missouri, 112 used a similar classification.
29) Anton Diefenthäler, who emigrated to Germantown in 1848, returned to his home village Spiesheim in 1851 and brought his bride to America. See Portrait and Biographical Record of Sheboygan County (Chicago: Excelsior Publishing Co., 1894), 531; Ira A. Glazier / P. William Filby (eds.), Germans To America: Lists of Passengers arriving at U.S. Ports, 1850-1855, Vol. 2 (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 88), 449.
30) There is no recent scholarly study on the history of agriculture in Rheinhessen. A good introduction on farming in the area in the first half of the th century is contained in Wilhelm Heße, Rheinhessen in seiner Entwickelung von 1798 bis Ende 1834. Ein statistisch staatswirtschaftlicher Versuch (Mainz: Florian Kupferberg, 1835).
31) Landesarchiv Speyer U 184 Nr. 13: Generalmusterliste (census) Selzen 1817.
32) Allgemeine Auswanderungs-Zeitung, 27 Aug 1853.
33) John Gregory, Industrial Resources of Wisconsin (Chicago: Langdon and Rounds, 1853), 62-63. John W. Hunt came to a similar conclusion in his Wisconsin Gazetteer, published in Madison in the same year, (223).
34) See Joseph Schafer, A History of Agriculture in Wisconsin (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 22), 97-164; E. E. Lampard, The Rise of the Dairy Industry in Wisconsin: A Study in Agricultural Change, 1820-20 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 63), 47-89.
35) See Report on the Productions of Agriculture, as Returned at the Tenth Census [1880] (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883), 211, 324; Tabular Statements of the Census Enumeration [1885], and the Agricultural, Mineral and Manufacturing Interests of the State of Wisconsin [...] (Madison: Democrat Printing Co., 1886), 574-576.
36) See Edwin L. Fisher, The Cheese Factories of Sheboygan County, (Sheboygan: Sheboygan County Historical Society, ca. 92), 9, 25.
37) Rhine produced 437,564 pounds of cheese, Washington County 457,682. See Tabular Statements of the Census Enumeration 1885, 532, 573.
38) Communication of Fred Horneck, Elkhart Lake, WI to the author, September 96.
39) See Barbara A. Nelson / Margaret S. Holzbog, Richfield Remembers the Past (Richfield, WI: Richfield History Committee: 96), 72-73, 75, 77-78.
40) On the history of the movement in South West Germany see Peter Bahn, Deutschkatholiken und Freireligiöse. Geschichte und Kultur einer religiös-weltanschaulichen Dissidentengruppe, dargestellt am Beispiel der Pfalz (Mainz: Gesellschaft für Volkskunde in Rheinland-Pfalz, 91) (Studien zur Volkskultur in Rheinland-Pfalz, 10).
41) On Schröter see J. J. Schlicher, 'Eduard Schroeter the Humanist', WMH 28 (44/45), 169-183, 307-324; on Loose see Peter Bahn, Deutschkatholiken und Freireligiöse, 331-332.
42) See his autobiographical essay 'Zehn Jahre in Amerika dem freien Menschen- und Gemeindethum das Wort geredet und doch nicht verzweifelt', Blätter für freies religiöses Leben 7 (1862/63), 91.
43) See Wiskonsin-Banner, 5 Oct 1853.
44) See Blätter für freies religiöses Leben 1 (1856/57), 80.
45) See Louis von Ragué, Lebensbilder aus der Innern Mission! Pastor Louis von Ragué. Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben und Wirken (Hoyleton: Evangelische Waisenheimat, 12), 24.
46) History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties, 425.
47) See Frank L. Klement, Wisconsin in the Civil War: The Home Front and the Battle Front, 1861-1865 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 97), 26-31.
48) See History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties, 363-368.
49) See Lawrence H. Larsen, 'Draft Riot in Wisconsin, 1862', Civil War History 7 (61), 421-427.
50) On Konrad Krez see Wolfgang Diehl, Konrad Krez Freiheitskämpfer und Dichter in Deutschland und Amerika (Landau: Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, 88); Portrait and Biographical Record of Sheboygan County, 212-215.
51) See, for example, Sheboygan National Demokrat, 1 May 1861.
52) The version of the Yankee Doodle in the Sheboygan National Demokrat of 7 Sep 1861 reads as follows: "Yänky-Dudel: Der Däd und ich, mir wor'n im Camp,/ Mitsammt 'm Cäpten Gudwin,/ Un do hen mer die Buwe g'sehn,/ So dick wie hästi Pudding./ Un do wor Capten Waschington,/ Uuf'm schöne Gaul, gar rausend / Der hot den Leut die Orders gewe - / Es waren viele Tausend./ Chor: Yänky Dudel halt's nau uff,/ Yänky Dudel Dändy,/ Meind die Musik un den Step,/ Un faß' die Mäd recht händy /[...] Un Unkel Säm, der war aach do / mit Zwiwel un mit Kuche,/ Un hot se verschwapt vor Zuckersach -/ Des hot er hehm g'numme./ S'wor so en Fun, ich kann's net all / Verzähle, was ich g'sehn;/ Ich had mei Hut gezoge nu / Bin hehm zu meiner Mämme [...]"
53) Evergreen City Times, 20 June 1868, quoted in Eleanor Kuhn, The Town Rhine Monument to Civil War Dead (s.l.: Sheboygan County Landmarks, 76), 6.
54) See Wolfgang Bickel, Rheinhessen. Zeugnisse seiner Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg, 94), 86.
55) 1,369 Hessian-born are listed on the census manuscripts. Their number may have been considerably higher because the census taker of the 5 th and 8 th wards disregarded the instructions to record the names of German states where immigrants were born.
56) See Philipp Walldorf's comments in a letter to his parents in Dolgesheim, dated Milwaukee, 11 May 1858. In possession of Frau Irma Walldorf/Uelversheim.
57) On Philipp Best and his family see Thomas C. Cochran, The Pabst Brewing Company: The Model of an American Business (New York: New York University Press, 48), 3-69.
58) See Jerold W. Apps, Breweries of Wisconsin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 92), 113-121.
59) See Frank A. Flower, History of Milwaukee (Chicago: Western Historical Society, 1881), 1457-1458; Apps, Breweries of Wisconsin, 99.
60) Milwaukee Sentinel, 29 Mar 1851; Flower, History of Milwaukee, 1462.
61) See Howard Louis Conard, History of Milwaukee from Its First Settlement to the Year 1895, Vol. 2 (Chicago: American Biographical Publishing Co., [1895] ), 328.
62) For many years after Schlitz' death, this was the slogan of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company. See Apps, Breweries of Wisconsin, 102.
63) See Flower, History of Milwaukee, 1463; The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Wisconsin Volume (Chicago, Cincinnati, and New York: American Biographical Publishing Company, 1877), 382.
64) On Obermann see The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men, 6-7. In recent years, a history of the Gettelman brewing business was published: Nancy Moore Gettelman, A History of the A. Gettelman Brewing Company (Milwaukee: Procrustes Press, 95).
65) The founders of Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis were also from that part of the Rhineland. See Rudolf Cronau, Drei Jahrhunderte deutschen Lebens in Amerika (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 09), 393.
66) See Conard, History of Milwaukee, Vol. 2, 368-370.
67) Staatsarchiv Darmstadt G 1 Nr. 110/4: "Decennial Report of Importations from Hessen-Darmstadt Uebergeben von Hrn. Weinhändler Adam Orth gebürtig aus Eich Kr. Worms", enclosure of a report by Ludwig von Baumbach, Consul of Hessen-Darmstadt in Milwaukee, 3 Feb 1868.
68) See Blätter für freies religiöses Leben 7 (1862/63), 109-110.
69) Steven Geiger from the University of Wisconsin in Madison is currently working on a dissertation on German dialects spoken in Sheboygan County.
70) Communicated to the author by Roland Schomberg in September 96. See also his autobiography, ... And That's The Way It Was! (Sheboygan: Sheboygan County Historical Society, 86), 23-28.