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German Special Interest Group

G-SIG Logo The German Special Interest Group (G-SIG) is a volunteer organization in partnership with the St. Louis Genealogical Society and the German American Heritage Society. Its mission is to enable its members to explore varied interests in their German ancestry and the development of German-American culture in the greater St. Louis metropolitan area in a variety of contexts. It is intended to foster education about our rich German heritage.

Meetings


Meetings are held at the St. Louis County Library Headquarters.

The meetings on 21 May 2008 and 26 October 2008 will be held at the Lutheran Hour Ministries, 660 Mason Ridge Center Drive, St. Louis, MO 63141. Mason Ridge Center Drive is just east of the Auto Club of Missouri headquarters on North Outer Forty Drive. Access to North Outer Forty Drive is from Mason Road at the Mason/US 40 interchange or from Conway Road just west of the 270 overpass (turn left).
 
Date: Sunday, 26 October 2008
Meeting Time: 1:30 p.m.
Presentation: 1:30 p.m.
Topic: Cluster Fair -660 Mason Ridge Center Dr.
Speaker:


For additional information on the G-SIG, please contact the Society office at 314-647-8547, or by e-mail to

For additional information on the German-American Heritage Society of St. Louis, please contact Hermann Eisele at 314-588-9500 or by e-mail to  


G-SIG Forum


The G-SIG publishes a periodic flyer which provides a forum for educational, historical and genealogical information with fresh insights and ideas to help your research or enjoyment of German traditions and ancestry.
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The Germans in St. Louis


The first wave of Germans came in the mid-1830s. Only eighteen German families lived in St. Louis in 1833, but some 6,000 German souls lived here four years later. Most came looking for land to escape crowding, lured to Missouri by romanticized descriptions of the state through the Giessen Emigration Society which described it as the American Rhineland. Within two years, Saxony Germans started stepping off riverboats too. These Saxons brought with them their conservative brand of Lutheranism. Within ten years they established Trinity Lutheran Church and the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church. The denomination moved Concordia Seminary here in 1849, making it the first college in Missouri to accept both men and women.

Germans established their own neighborhoods and towns as well. Between the river and Broadway from Buchanan to Salisbury on the near north side, German immigrant Emil Mallincrodt established the town of Bremen in 1844. The promise of a friendly environment where German was spoken attracted many new and recent arrivals. Omnibus connections between St. Louis and the ferry landing at Bissell’s Point started in 1845, linking the hamlet to St. Louis. It became part of the incorporated city ten years later. Now the Hyde Park neighborhood, it retained its German character well into the twentieth century.

Germans arriving after 1850 were usually ardent abolitionists and nationalists. Their political activism made them instrumental in keeping Missouri in the Union during the Civil War.

Germans were a cohesive group into the twentieth century. By 1880 some 46 percent of public school children were German and, a year later, 20,000 of the young scholars in St. Louis still received their lessons in German every day.

[This information taken from]

http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/heritage/history/immigrant.htm

GAHS Logo  Click here to visit the GAHS Web site