Many of the families of northern Ripley and southwesternFranklin counties came from northern Germany, roughly along a line betweenBremen and Osnabrueck in what was once the old Kingdom of Hannover andthe Grand Duchy of Oldenburg.

The religious and cultural history of the people of northernGermany has much to do with the religious affiliation and values of thepeople of the Batesville area.  The north German Saxons were Christianized1200 years ago.  They speak a dialect of German, somewhat akin toEnglish, called Plattdeutsch or "Low German" from the lowlands of "LowerSaxony".

These north German people were the descendants of theSaxon tribesmen who were Christianized in Germany in 785 by Charlemagneafter many years of warfare between the Saxons and the Franks.  Theirculture was not the commonly portrayed, light-hearted Bavarian "gemuetlichkeit",but the more frugal and austere culture of northern Germany with its Gothicarchitecture, Biedermeier furniture, and diet which relied heavily on potatoes,cabbage, and pork-based dishes like "knipp" (similar to goetta).

These north German families had a common heritage, a similarhistory, and a culture which goes back to the Middle Ages.  To understandwhy they left, and what they brought to Indiana as their cultural and religiousheritage, we need to find out more about the history of the area wherethese German immigrants originated.
 
 

The year 1985 marked the 1200th anniversary of the Christianizationof the Saxon tribesmen who populated northwestern Germany.  Priorto the year 785 A.D. the Saxons were a people who worshipped the old Germanicgods such as Odin (Wotan), Donar (Thor), and Freyja-for whom our Wednesday,Thursday and Friday are named.

The Saxons were constantly at war with the ChristianizedFranks.  In the year 785, Karl the Great (Charlemagne), the Christianleader of the Franks, and Widukind, the heathen leader of the Saxons, finallymade peace.  Widukind was baptized, and the Saxon people were convertedto Christianity.

Upon conversion, the Saxons were required to take thefollowing oath: "I renounce the devil and all the devil's ilk and all thedevil's works and words.  And I renounce .... Donar and Odin and Saxnotand all the demons who are their companions.  I believe in God, theAlmighty Father.  I believe in Christ, the Son of God.  I believein the Holy Spirit."

Until then, the Saxons, like many of the German tribes,had remained outside the Christian Church and outside the Roman Empire,even in the heydays of the Ceasars.  The Roman legions had been badlybeaten in the year 9 A.D. in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest close topresent day Osnabrueck.  As a result, Roman influence did not extendmuch beyond the Danube or the Rhine Rivers, and northwestern Germany retainedits ancient religion and political independence until the days of Charlemagne,and its Germanic language and culture until the present day.
 

Indeed the Saxons gave to England much of the languagewe speak today.  That is why Low German (Plattdeutsch), which theGerman-Saxons speak, sounds so much like English, which the Anglo-Saxonsspeak.  In about 540 A.D., the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from northernGermany and Denmark invaded Briton England shortly after the Romans hadpulled out.  The Saxons settled in the provinces now known as Essex,Sussex, and Wessex (East, South, and West Saxony).  Thus, many ofthe English immigrants to Ripley County probably have common ancestry withGerman immigrants going back to the Saxons.

These English Saxons were Christianized beginning withthe mission of St. Augustine in 597 and St. Birinus of Gaul, and theirconversion was completed by time of the Council of Whitby in 664. Anglo-Saxon missionaries, including St. Boniface in 716, were sent backto Germany to try to convert the German Saxons to Christianity, but theseefforts were largely unsuccessful until the rule of Charlemagne.

The Saxon rulers of Wessex eventually became the firsttrue Kings of England beginning with Alfred the Great, the son of KingEgbert of Wessex.  Alfred seized London in 885 and his descendantsruled until the Norman invasion from France in 1066.
 

Back in Germany, early churches were built in the newlyChristianized Saxon territories: One of the very first was St. Alexander'sChurch at Wildeshausen. it was built by Duke Wigbert of Engern.  Hewas a son of the Saxon hero Widukind and was buried in the church whileit was still under construction in about 816.  The Church became Protestantafter the Reformation, and this area was later incorporated into the GrandDuchy of Oldenburg.  The Gunter and Timmerman families of Batesvillecame from Wildeshausen and the Plump family from nearby Goldenstedt.

St. Michael's Church at Heiligenfelde was built in 1230on the site of a stone church built a century or two earlier.  Thename Heiligenfelde means "sacred fields".  It is likely that a hermitmonk had a shelter at or near this site from the 800s.  It may haveeven been a pre-Christian place of worship.  Heiligenfelde was themother church of many of the immigrants to the Sunman vicinity, Spades,and Adams Church.

The town of Venne was first recorded in history in theyear 1087.  It is this date which will be celebrated this year inVenne on August 20-23.  The Church at nearby Engter was built in 1229. This was a period of great religious enterprise.  Great Gothic cathedralswere being constructed.  The 5th Crusade to wrest the Holy Land fromthe Moslems was underway at this time.  The towns of Venne and Engterwere the homes of many of the immigrants who settled Huntersville, as wellas of the Dreyer and Niemann families of Sunman-Penntown.
 

In the 1500s, the Protestant Reformation began. Luther tacked his 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenburg, Germany,in 1517.  In 1521 he was ordered before Emporer Charles V at the Dietof Worms to explain his teachings and ordered to recant them.  Hedid not, and his stand marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformationfollowed by the religious wars of Europe.

Beginning with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 the religionof an area - Catholic or Lutheran - was determined by the ruler of theprovince or kingdom where one lived.  However, the wars over religiondid not end until the Peace of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty YearsWar in 1648.  Most of Germany had been left devastated.

Many families left their homes to settle in other partsof Germany and elsewhere in order to escape religious persecution. Some of the early German immigration to this country was by dissentingsects and nonconformists.  However, the majority of the immigrantswere Lutheran.  The first group of German settlers arrived in Pennsylvaniain 1683, and that immigration continued until the Napoleonic wars.

Most of northern Germany became Protestant after the Reformation. Once again most of the Saxon people were separated from the Catholic Churchin Rome, as they had been before Charlemagne, but this time within theframework of Christian beliefs.  However, those parts of northernGermany which were then under control of the Bishop of Muenster remainedCatholic.

The reason the Bishopric of Muenster remained Catholicgoes back to 1534-35.  Religious extremists gained control of thecity at that time.  In the words of the historian S. Baring-Gould,"Muenster became the theatre of those wild orgies which ever attend mysticismunrestrained, when spiritual exaltation winds up with horrible licentiousnessand abominable cruelties.  "

On Midsummer Eve, 452 years ago, the city was finallyattacked and liberated.  According to Baring-Gould, "Catholicism wasre-established without a dissentient voice within the city." "The inhabitantswho survived the catastrophe, even those who had once been zealous partisansof the Reformation, became staunch in their adherence to the ancient Church,and nothing afterwards could induce them to lend an ear to Protestantismof any sort."
 

Thus, although Wildeshausen, Heiligenfelde, Engter andVenne were Protestant, many communities only a few miles away in the Dammevicinity, which became part of the lands under the Bishop of Muenster,remained Catholic.  Many of the German Catholic immigrants to theBatesville-Oldenburg area came from the Damme vicinity.  Their Catholicheritage can be traced back to those events in the Reformation.  Almostall other German Catholics in this area such as those around St. Nicholasand New Alsace trace their history back to Baden, Alsace, and Bavaria insouthern Germany.
 

It is also interesting to note that while the parishionersat Oldenburg, Indiana, were primarily north Germans, some of their religiousteachers-the priests and nuns-came from southern Germany and Austria. Mother Theresa Hackelmeier came from Vienna, Austria, to establish theConvent at Oldenburg in 1851, and the Franciscan Fathers at the OldenburgFriary came from their Province in Cincinnati originally established byfriars from the Austrian Tyrol.  The governments of Austria and Bavariaspent several million dollars in missions to the American Germans.

German Protestants did not find as much missionary zealby the Protestant states back in Germany.  There was also an insistenceamong some German Protestants that services be conducted only in German. Such clauses were frequent in their Church constitutions.  St. Paul'sLutheran Church at Crossroads was established in 1851 by Pastor Frankefrom the Church at Spades.  Many families at Crossroads were relatedto those at Huntersville.  Prior to 1920, all sermons at St. Paul'swere given in German.  English did not become the predominant languageuntil 1927.

As a result of such provisions, missionary efforts ofother denominations, such as the Baptists and Methodists, made considerableheadway not only among English settlers, but also among German Protestantswho wanted to adopt the language and culture of their new homeland.

However, early Methodist Churches also used German. The Laughery Methodist Mission was established in 1845.  Its earlyrecords, written in German, show immigrants from the same villages in theOsnabrueck vicinity from which the Huntersville families also came. Those records are now in the DePauw University archives.

There were two major German Protestant denominations inthe Batesville vicinity: the Lutherans and the Evangelical Protestants.

The Evangelical Protestant Churches trace their originto the State Church of Prussia which was organized in the early 19th centuryat the behest of Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia to unite Lutheranand Calvinist (Reformed) churches.  Other German states followed suit. Today almost all of the Protestant Churches in Germany are known as "EvangelicalLutheran" as a result of this merger.

Six ministers in the United States from the new statechurches in Germany organized the German Evangelical Synod of North Americain 1840.  However, Lutheran churches in America were not forced tomerge with Calvinist churches.  Consequently, most of them maintainedtheir earlier identity and organized their own synods.

German congregations on the frontier needed ministers. The association of a congregation with either a Lutheran synod or the EvangelicalProtestant synod was sometimes determined by the particular pastor thecongregation had chosen.

Thus, both Lutheran and Evangelical Protestant churchesin the Batesville vicinity trace their history back to what are today calledEvangelical Lutheran Churches in Germany.  The mother church of AdamsLutheran Church is the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Heiligenfelde, Germany,and the mother churches of Huntersville Evangelical Protestant (U.C.C.)Church are the Evangelical Lutheran Churches at Engter and Venne.

The Evangelical Protestant Churches later merged withother Reformed (Calvinist) churches to become known as Evangelical &Reformed.  In recent years, they have further combined with the Congregationaland Christian churches (which had previously merged) to form the UnitedChurch of Christ.  These U.C.C. churches include Huntersville, Penntown,St. Jacob's at Blue Creek, Fink's Church, and St. Peter's at Klemme's Corner.

Lutheran churches in this area, such as Crossroads andAdams Church, eventually became associated with the United Lutheran Churchin America, while Hubbles associated with the American Lutheran Church. These two denominations are in the process of combining with a third denomination,the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches to form the new EvangelicalLutheran Church in America.

The next chapter will deal with the political and economicbackground of northern Germany and how it affected immigration to thisarea of Indiana.