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In
November of each year, American children learn much about the Plymouth
Pilgrims of Massachusetts, who fled to New England in 1620 to escape
religious persecution, and a year later, they celebrated the first
American Thanksgiving. While they indeed had much to be thankful for,
42 people of the original 99 Pilgrims, who had landed at Plymouth
Rock, had already died during that first year of extreme cold, disease,
and malnutrition. Hence, although the word 'pilgrim' means 'wanderer,'
it also comes down to us as one who has suffered. Today, not even
our own Texans of German descent realize that the first German Pilgrims
to the Lone Star State in 1845 suffered an even worse fate.
Between the Napoleonic Wars and 1840, and long before the unification
of Germany in 1871, the lot of the German industrial worker and peasant
alike had fallen about as low as it could get - to a level approaching
antebellum slavery. The courts of the German princes, too, suffered
badly under Napoleon, and in order to reestablish their elegance and
extravagance, the rulers levied what was perhaps the heaviest taxation
ever known. Between 1815 and 1848, Prince Metternich of Vienna ruled
Austria and the German Confederation of 40 independent countries,
principalities, margraviates, and free cities with a reactionary iron
fist. By the time of the liberal Revolts of 1848, many of the German
elite classes - bankers, professors, and noblemen - ended up on the
wrong side of the political fences, and among the German "Forty-Niners"
who scurried off to Texas in 1849 were enough "grafs" (counts), princes,
and barons to stock Buckingham Palace.
On one occasion, the German poet, Heinrich Heine, asked an emigrant
boarding ship: "Why are you leaving Germany?" The response to Heine
was: "I swear...if France had suffered just one-tenth of what these
people in Germany have suffered, it would have caused 36 revolutions
in France, and 36 kings would have lost their heads to the guillotine!"
About
1842, twenty-one of the German princes recognized the need to reduce
the overpopulation of "the Germanies," and to that end, they organized
the "Mainzer Adelsverein," later known in Texas
as the "Society For The Protection of German Immigrants In Texas,"
or simply as German-Texas Immigration Company. The princes, led by
Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and Duke Adolf of Nassau, concluded
the emigration agreement at Bieberich-am-Rhein in April, 1842, and
Prince Braunfels immediately left for Texas,
where he purchased the 4,000 square mile Miller-Fisher land grant
(between San
Angelo and San
Saba). He also purchased a coastal site, where he founded Carlshafen,
later Indianola,
for the "Adelsverein's" seaport, and he founded New
Braunfels as the midway rest site between the sea coast and the
land grant. |
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Mural
depicting Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and German immigrants
TE photo |
| Prince Braunfels
then returned to Germany to solicit colonists, and he left as commissioner-general
of the "Adelsverein" in Texas, his friend,
Baron Ottfried von Meusebach (later John Meusebach), who founded Fredericksburg
and Castell,
and signed a friendship treaty with Santa Anna, the war chief of the
Comanche Indian -tribe. Later, Von Meusebach returned to the coast
to receive the first contingent of immigrants. As a result, he learned
that Prince Braunfels and the other noblemen's preparations were for
ships and shipboard supplies only, and the first immigrants of February,
1845, found that Indianola
was only an open and undeveloped marshland, no buildings, no tents,
no food or supplies—period. A survivor of the succeeding 'death
march' wrote the account, published in Galveston Weekly News of November
12, 1877, a part of which follows: |
"....When Baron
von Meusebach returned to the coast, he found that ships carrying
6,000 immigrants had unloaded at Indianola,
for whose reception and transportation not the slightest preparation
had been made. With no other shelter, these unfortunate victims lived
in holes they had dug in the ground, without roofs and drinking water,
except that which fell from heaven. Meusebach had contracted with
teamsters to take the immigrants inland to New
Braunfels. Instead, the teamsters ran away to earn more money
working for the U. S. Army (this was during the beginning of the Mexican
War). Their principal food was fish and wild ducks, because none of
them brought guns capable of killing larger game. For weeks, the rains
came, and for miles around, the marsh prairies were covered with knee-deep
water. Immigrants suffered first from malarial fever, and later, from
a flux or dysentery, which resembled cholera and began thinning their
ranks. Hundreds of corpses were buried (in shallow graves), only to
be dug up by the wolves, and their bones were left dotting the prairie..."
"Finally, the trails became passable, and those who were able to started
for New
Braunfels on foot, leaving behind them not only their weather-beaten
household goods, but also their sick relatives. The route from Indianola
to New
Braunfels was strewn with the bones of those immigrants. The writer
recalls coming upon a large, loaded wagon, stuck in the mud. The bones
of the oxen were still there, under the (ox) yoke, as were those of
the driver and his family, scattered about on all sides of the wagon.
Of the 6,000 immigrants who reached Indianola
in 1845, no more than 1,500 ever reached New
Braunfels, and more than 50% had died miserable deaths from starvation
and disease. Upon reaching New
Braunfels, the writer wrote back to Prussia, suggesting that the
proud German eagle be removed from the "Adelsverein's" coat of arms,
and be replaced with a Texas buzzard...." |
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By
any reckoning, more than half of the Plymouth Pilgrims survived
the first year in New England. Of the first German Pilgrims to Texas
in 1845, however, only one in four survived the walk from Indianola
to New
Braunfels, and the reader can still find on microfilm the original
account from which this story is based, taken from the memoirs of
one of the German Pilgrims, who made that march. The toll of lives
on succeeding German immigrant ships also ran high. Of 588 people
of Pastor Johan Kilian's Wendish colony that left Prussian Lusatia
in September, 1854, aboard the Ben Nevis, seventy-six of them died
aboard ship of cholera and were buried at sea. The remaining 512
persons remained in quarantine for three weeks, and then they walked
from Galveston
to Serbin,
near Giddings, in the
worst of winter weather. Many survived the dreadful immigrant voyages,
only to die ashore in the perennial yellow fever plagues that scourged
Galveston
and Indianola
almost every fall. It was said too that the only thing that stunk
worse than a German immigrant ship in Galveston
harbor was an African slave ship. But in spite of disease and death,
the German immigrants kept on coming - even if hundreds died - and
in the 1900 Texas census, 157,000 Texans were enumerated who had
been born in Germany. Today, there are 53,000,000 Americans of German
descent.
So remember, friend - the next time you enjoy some German sauer
kraut and beer at the Brenham
"Maifest," or savor the taste of good German sausage at the New
Braunfels "Wurstfest," don't forget that the cost of our Texas
Germanic heritage came truly high in the lives of our ancestors
- those who died at sea of dysentery, cholera or yellow fever; those
who starved, or those who died on that first "death march" to Comal
County.
© W.
T. Block, Jr.
"Cannonball's
Tales"
June 26, 2006 column
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