Inded the Saxons gave to England much of the language we speak today. That is why Low German(Plattdeutsch), which the German-Saxons speak, sounds so much like English, which the Anglo-Saxons speak. In about 540 A.D., The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Germany and Denmark invaded Briton England shortly after the Romans had pulled out. The Saxons settled in the provinces now known as Essex, Sussex, and Wessex(East, South, and West Saxony). Thus, many of the English immigrants to Ripley County probably have common ancestry with German immigrants going back to the Saxons.
These English Saxons were Christianized beginning with the mission of St. Augustine in 597 and St. Birinius of Gaul, and their conversion was completed by time of the Council of Whitby in 664. Anglo-Saxon missionaries, including St. Boniface in 716 were sent back to Germany to try to convert the German Saxons to Christianity, but these efforts were largely unsuccessful until the rule of Charlemagne.
The Saxon rulers of Wessex eventually became the first true Kings of England beginning with Alfred the Great, the son of King Egbert of Wessex. Alfred seized London in 885 and his discendants ruled until the Norman invasion from France in 1066.
Back in Germany, early churches were built in the newly Chrisianized Saxon territories. One of the very first was St. Alexander's Church at Wildeshausen, it was built by Duke Wigbert of Engem. He was a son of the Saxon hero Widukind and was buried in the church while it was still under construction in about 816. The Church became Protestant after the Reformation, and this area was later incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. The Gunter and Timmerman families of Batesville came from Wildeshausen and the Plump family from nearby Goldensadt.
St. Michael's Church at Heiligenfelde was built in 1230 on the site of a stone church builr a century or two earlier. The name Heilgenfelde means "sacred fields". It is likely that a hermit monk had a shelter at or near this site from the 800s. It may have even been a pre-Christian place of worship. Heiligenfelde was the mother churdh of many of the immigrants to the Sunman vicinity, Spades and Adams Church.
The town of Venne was first recorded in history in the year 1087. It is this date which will be celebrated this year in Venne on August 20-23. The Church at nearby Engter was built in 1229. This was a period of great religious enterprise. Great Gothic cathedrals were being constructed. The 5th Crusade to wrest the Holy Land from the Moslems was underway at this time. The towns of Venne and Engter were the homes of many of the immigrants who settled Hunersville, as well as of the Dreyer and Niermann families of Sunman-Penntown.