The Emergence of Little Rock’s Community of German Speakers

In the decades before the Civil War, the few ethnic German immigrants who chose to live in Little Rock were unable to form social relationships like those they had enjoyed in their home countries.[1] The immigrants who spoke little or no English were isolated from the activities of native-born city residents and, because of their small numbers, they did not have – with minor exceptions – their own German-language clubs, associations, churches, or other groups, nor did they have their own spaces and events where they casually interacted with each other.[2] As a result, until they mastered English and adapted to the culture that surrounded them, these “small souls” had social lives that took place largely within families or a circle of German-speaking neighbors and friends.[3]

This situation changed during the 1860s after the Civil War triggered population movements that increased the city’s population from 3,727 at the start of the decade to 12,380 at its end.[4]  Among the newcomers were ethnic German immigrants whose numbers grew from 175 in 1860 to 494 in 1870.[5] By 1867, the count of ethnic Germans living in Little Rock was large enough for them to set up their own secular and religious organizations.[6]

The drive to establish German-language clubs and associations in Little Rock came in large part from immigrants who had settled there after the Union army occupied the city in September 1863. Most of these newcomers had moved to the city from other states, mainly in the East and Midwest, to which they had originally emigrated.[7] They quickly outnumbered the ethnic Germans who had lived in Little Rock at the start of the war.  By 1870, they comprised 138 of the 180 ethnic German families living in the city (about 77 percent) and 163 of the 173 single ethnic German residents (94 percent).[8]

Gun Store of A.E. Linzel

On average, the newcomers were younger than the immigrants who had resided in Little Rock before 1860, and they had different life experiences and expectations for their futures. One expectation, stoked by living in larger U.S. cities with active ethnic German enclaves, was that they would have social lives beyond the boundaries of the English-speaking society, enjoying familiar activities such as singing, shooting, dancing, and drinking ­with their fellow German speakers. Toward that end, many of the newcomers led an effort to replicate the social life in clubs and associations (the Vereinswesen) that was pervasive in the German states from which most had emigrated.[9] 

The city’s first German-language association, created in late 1866 or early 1867, was the Men’s Choir (Männerchor), a singing group long popular in the German Confederation.[10] A few months later, ethnic Germans opened a Turnverein, followed during the next few years by marksmen clubs and the German-language lodges of two secret societies, the United Ancient Order of Druids and the Independent Order of Red Men.[11] Numerous additional secular German-language clubs and associations would spring up in the years that followed.[12]

While a few old-timers joined the newcomers in establishing secular clubs and associations for German speakers, others led an initiative to enable Lutherans, who comprised a majority of the city’s ethnic German population, to have their own Church.  Several prominent German-speaking immigrants, most of them long-time residents, met in the home of Charles and Fredericka Reichardt Miller in Fall 1868 to plan the new church. On December 15, 1868, this group with a few additions adopted a constitution creating the German Evangelical Lutheran Church.[13] The new congregation quickly constructed a church building, dedicated in March 1870, and then erected a building for its German-language school.[14]  After an immigration surge beginning in the late 1870s that swelled the number of German speaking Catholics in Little Rock, local church leaders built St. Edward Catholic Church, dedicated in 1885, to host German-language services and a German-language school.[15]

Among the German speakers in Little Rock were Jews, whose numbers surged in the aftermath of the Civil War. Unlike observant Lutherans and Catholics, Jews were not expected to avoid secret societies or the Turnverein, and many – both old timers and recent arrivals – were active in them even as they helped assemble the B’nai Israel congregation (chartered in 1867) and build a synagogue (opened in 1872). Soon after the congregation formed, several Jewish merchants started the Concordia Association (1868) to hold social and cultural events, and they founded a local chapter of the International Order of B’nai B’rith (1871), a secret society.[16] Although these organizations were not exclusively for German speakers, more than ninety percent of the early members of the synagogue and the Jewish clubs were ethnic Germans.[17]

These Jewish groups in which German was commonly spoken joined Little Rock’s new German-language secular and Christian religion-based organizations as the core of the active community of German speakers that emerged in the late 1860s. Other elements of the community included a German language newspaper providing community members with relevant news and the different spaces and events where German speakers regularly came together.[18]

Among the spaces where German speakers often encountered each other were the city’s many ethnic German-owned businesses, including a disproportional share of Little Rock’s grocery stores, dry goods stores, and liquor stores.[19] Other important spaces for them were the City Garden, Papa Geyer’s Beer Garden, and Jacobi’s Grove, where German speakers socialized while enjoying family outings, and saloons owned by ethnic Germans where hard drinkers shared shots. German speakers also assembled at beer gardens, the Concordia Hall, and, after 1884, the Turner Hall for their own dances, dinners, and balls, and they attended concerts, plays, and lectures at the latter two venues.[20] Also, a few of them staged, and many took part in, an annual Maifest celebration and an annual masquerade ball, both of which ethnic Germans held in Little Rock well into the twentieth century.  

Little Rock Turnverein, 1892

The elements of the community that brought German speakers together helped overcome deep divisions within the German speaking population caused by differences in country of origin (see footnote 1), religion, wealth, social status, education, political views, and other characteristics.[21]  In spite of the many differences, Little Rock’s German speakers were able to create their own “Little Germany,” in which ethnic Germans, regardless of their English proficiency, could live comfortable lives among people who shared their language and values. In their ethnic enclave, they were no longer “small souls,” but a group that enjoyed their own culture and customs, promoted their own values, and, when needed, protected their own interests.

 ENDNOTES

1. “Ethnic German immigrants” were first-generation German-speakers who had similar cultural characteristics and values whether born in one of the states of the German Confederation (before 1871), Germany (after 1870), Austria, Switzerland, or German communities within Denmark (Schleswig-Holstein), France (Alsace), Poland (Galicia), or elsewhere. When asked their “country of birth” as part of the 1870 U.S. Census, the 589 ethnic Germans living in Pulaski County named, among others, Prussia (227 persons), Baden (76), Bavaria (42), Saxony (33), Hanover (31), Württemberg (31), Austria (25), Switzerland (22), Bohemia (15), Poland (13) and Hesse (11).

2. The exceptions included the Little Rock City Garden, also later known as the Dutch Garden, opened by ethnic German immigrant Alexander George and his brothers in 1840 where guests could sit outside and enjoy various drinks, including beer brewed by the George brothers. Also, German speakers could attend German-language religious services conducted by Reverend William H. C. Yeager in the 1840s at the Christ Church (Episcopal). In addition, an ethnic German “Singer Bund,” formed at least briefly in the late 1850s. See “Little Rock City Garden,” Weekly Ark. Gazette, Apr. 23, 1840, p. 3; “Brewery,” Weekly Ark. Gazette, Feb. 3, 1841, p. 2; and “Ball at James’ Hall,” Ark. True Democrat, Feb. 2, 1861, p. 3.  Also see Michael Dougan, Arkansas Odyssey, Rose Publishing Co, 1994, p. 137.

A few ethnic Germans who spoke good English and became successful businessmen joined the city’s leading citizens as members of English language secret societies. For example, William George, Francis Ditter, Henry Fisher, and Charles Krebs were pre-Civil War members of the United Ancient Order of Druids. "Tribute of Respect," Ark. True Democrat, Aug. 18, 1858, p 4.  

3. According to an editorial in the Anzeiger des Westens, a newspaper published in St. Louis, "small souls” was what Americans called Germans who lived as isolated individuals rather than as part of an organized group. “Anzeiger des Westens, 22 October 1857, Germans and the Crisis,” in Steven Rowan (editor and translator), Germans for a Free Missouri: Translations from the St. Louis Radical Press, 1857-1862. Univ. of Missouri Press, 1983, p. 57.

4. During the Civil war, insecurity caused by guerilla operations in rural areas forced many farmers and their families to move to Little Rock. Also, freed slaves moved to the city in large numbers. After the war, the city’s economic prospects attracted new residents from other states, including former Union soldiers who had been stationed in Little Rock.

5.  Using 1860 and 1870 U.S. Census data, I counted the number of ethnic Germans living in Little Rock in each of those years. For counts of the German-born population of Pulaski County from 1860 to 1890, see Shirley Schuette, Strangers to the Land: The German Presence in Nineteenth-Century Arkansas, Master’s Thesis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2005, p. 35 and Johnathan Wolfe, “Background on German Immigration,” Ark. Historical Quarterly, 25(4), Winter 1966, p. 377.

6. Historian Carl Wittke observed, “Wherever Germans settled in sufficient numbers to support group activities, they introduced the social patterns of the fatherland, for like all immigrant groups, they did not shed lightly the customs of the Old World.” Carl Wittke, Refugees of Revolution, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952, p. 280.

7. Using the household data in the 1870 U.S. Census, I identified each ethnic German family living in Little Rock that included a son or daughter who had been born in another state. I assumed that the birthplace of the oldest child was the family’s previous state of residence. My count of the previous states of residence was as follows: Tennessee 13, New York 13, Missouri, 11, Ohio 10, Illinois 4, Pennsylvania 3, Indiana 3, California 2, Louisiana 2, Alabama 1, Kentucky 1, and North Carolina 1. Only one ethnic German family with children had moved to Little Rock from a German state in the 1860s. Comparable data on previous states of residence are not available for ethnic German families without children or for single individuals who settled in Little Rock during the 1860s.

8.  My analysis of 1860 and 1870 U.S. census data for Little Rock showed that forty-two (nearly two-thirds) of the sixty-five ethnic German families living in Little Rock in 1860 were still there in 1870.

9. According to Annette R. Hofmann, “In the German states, the Vereins movement began at the close of the 18^th century and developed during the first decades of the 19^th Century into a mass movement that permeated all strata of the population.” Annette R. Hofmann, The American Turner Movement: A History from its Beginning to 2000. Max Kade German American Center, Indiana University and Purdue University, 2010, p. 47. Wittke (1952, p, 280) noted that “in urban centers [of the United States], large and small, Germans nurtured social organizations of many kinds to perpetuate the life they had known at home.” The noun word “Verein” has multiple translations depending on the context of its use. It can refer to, among other things, a social club, association, society, or organization. I translate, as others have, Turnverein as the “Turner Society.”

10. The existence of the Männerchor was mentioned in local newspapers when it sponsored the city’s first German Maifest celebration. See “May Festival,” Ark. Gazette, May 19, 1867, p. 3 and “Festival,” Ark. Gazette, June 12, 1867, p 3. In the latter article, the author wrote, “The Maennerchor is an association of our German citizens, banded together for social purposes; and periodically they observe the customs of the fatherland, suggestive to the aged of the happy hours long since gone, and affording innocent amusement to their descendants.”

11. Untitled Item, Ark. Gazette, Dec. 16, 1868, p. 3; “Attention Sharpshooters,” Ark. Gazette, Dec. 12, 1872, p. 4; and “Our Schuetzen Gilde – 1875,” Ark. Democrat, Oct. 25, 1878, p. 4. Grove No. 5 of the United Ancient Order of Druids (UOAD) was founded on April 12, 1870. Although many of its members were ethnic Germans, German may not have been its main language. Aurora Grove No. 6 of the UOAD, formed in 1871 or 1872, was populated exclusively by German-speaking members. The Arkansas Stamm No. 162 of the Independent Order of Redmen first convened on October 15, 1871. A second lodge, Hermann Stamm No. 163, opened on Feb. 6, 1872. See the Little Rock, Arkansas, 1872 City Directory, p.18 (accessed on Ancestry.com). Also, “U.O.A.D.,” Ark. Gazette, Apr. 12, 1870, p. 4. 

12. Among other German-language groups formed in the 1870s were the Germania Lodge of the Knights of Honor, another secret society, and the Casino Club, a group that sponsored frequent social events for its mostly Lutheran membership. “City and General Items” (Casino Club), Ark. Gazette, Nov. 22, 1876, p. 4 and “City and General Items” (Knights of Honor), Ark. Gazette, Feb. 24, 1878, p. 4.

13. Del Schmand, Heritage of the First Lutheran Church. Horton Brothers Printing Co., 1988, pp. 9-11 and Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Central Arkansas, 1889, p. 411 (accessed on Google Books). Schmand, citing Church records, listed 22 “charter members” of the Lutheran Church. Of those, 14 were living in Pulaski County – most in Little Rock -- before 1860 and another was living in Benton. Seven lived outside the state in 1860. 

14. “A Model Church,” Ark. Gazette, Apr. 7, 1888, p. 5; “German Lutherans,” Ark. Gazette, Sept. 9. 1888, p. 3; “Corner-Stone is to be Laid Today,” Ark. Gazette, July 7, 1907, p. 11; “New Lutheran School,” Ark. Gazette, Sept. 15, 1907, p. 4; and “Lutheran Church is 55 Years Old,” Ark. Gazette, Dec. 15, 1923, p. 17.

15. “St. Edward Catholic Church,” Encyclopedia of Arkansas, accessed at https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/st-edward-catholic-church-13511/

16. The history of Jews in Little Rock and the rest of Arkansas is covered comprehensively in Carolyn G. LeMaster, A Corner of the Tapestry, University of Arkansas Press, 1994. Also see, “I.O.B.B.,” Ark. Gazette, May 30, 1871, p. 4; “The New Synagogue,” Ark. Gazette, Sept. 28, 1872, p. 4; and the listing of “benevolent and secret societies” in the 1872 Little Rock City Directory.  Although the Concordia Association board and its members were Jewish, the Concordia Hall was a popular venue for events sponsored not only by the Association but also by diverse non-Jewish organizations.

17. According to LeMaster (1994, p. 22), over ninety-nine percent of the Jews who settled in Arkansas before and during the 1850s were from German states.

18. A weekly German-language newspaper was published in Little Rock starting on June 1, 1866, with an unknown final date; from Oct. 1869 to January 1871; and from Oct. 1874 to March 1876, with a suspension from January to March 1875. The first two newspapers were named the Arkansas Staats Zeitung and the third was the Arkansas Freie Presse. In October 1877, another version of the Arkansas Staats Zeitung began publication. It continued until 1917. An additional weekly German-language paper, the Arkansas Echo, began publication in 1891 and continued until 1932. See "The Press Gang," Ark. Gazette, June 10, 1876, p. 2 and Kathleen Condray, Das Arkansas Echo. The University of Arkansas Press, 2020.

19. The 1872-1873 Little Rock City Directory listed businesses by category with their owners’ names. Using that information and the 1870 census, I identified businesses owned or co-owned by ethnic Germans. The count showed that 16 of 25 “Dry Goods – Retail” businesses were owned or co-owned by ethnic Germans, as were 15 of 30 “Grocers-Retail” businesses, 5 of 15 “Liquors;” and 8 of 22 “Saloons.” See “Little Rock Business Directory, 1872–1873,” Pulaski County Historical Review, 9(1), December 1961, pp. 57-67. In 1870, ethnic Germans made up about four percent of the total population of Little Rock and in 1880 the percentage peaked at about six percent.

20. Each of the German-language secret society lodges had its own meeting room. Also, of course, the German Evangelical Lutheran church had its own meeting space for the activities of its members as did St. Edward Catholic Church after it was constructed in 1885.

21. Because of their differences, ethnic Germans often disagreed with and sometimes disliked each other. Nevertheless, in the decade or so following the Civil War, increasing numbers of Little Rock’s ethnic Germans came to view themselves as “Germans” who shared a common heritage. Eleanor Turk observed, “The process of trans-Atlantic migration … changed Prussians, Hessians, Bavarians, and Palatines from Central Europeans into “Germans” as well as “Americans.” Eleanor L. Turk, "Germans in Kansas," Kansas History, 28, Spring 2005, p. 48.

 

HENRY JACOBI’S BRAVE DEED: Helping Seven Escaped Slaves as the Confederacy Ended in Little Rock

Confederate patriots living in Little Rock were alarmed when the Union Army shattered the Confederate forces that attacked Helena on July 4, 1863 and a few weeks later began moving west.[1]  As the Federals slowly advanced toward Arkansas’ capital, some of the city’s wealthier families began leaving, many taking their slaves to safe havens further south.  

Ann McHenry Reider

Among those who wanted to protect their slaves from Yankee freedom was the widow Ann McHenry Reider. She had inherited eleven of them from her husband when he died on June 11, 1861. Jacob Reider had been among the earliest German-speaking immigrants to settle in Arkansas. Emigrating from Zürich, Switzerland, Jacob arrived in the Arkansas Territory in about 1821 – the year of his arrival is not certain – and in 1826 was living in Batesville.[2]   He moved to Little Rock on May 18, 1828.[3] 

Reider opened a mercantile business to sell groceries, dry goods, shoes, liquor, and whatever else consumers might want.[4]  Beginning in 1830, he conducted his business at a one-story building on the corner of Main and Market Streets, where he also lived. He prospered, and in the late 1830s, bought his first slaves. The 1840 census showed that he owned six slaves; by 1850 he possessed sixteen and in 1860 he had twelve. In 1860 census Reider was the richest German-speaking immigrant living in Little Rock. The self-assessed value of his real and personal property was over $1.2 million in current dollars.[5] An “unlettered man” not active in local civil affairs, he was a devoted Catholic. In 1830, he attended the first Catholic mass conducted in Little Rock.[6]  

Jacob and Ann McHenry had married on April 30, 1833. Born in Tennessee in 1805, she came with her parents to Arkansas in 1818 “in a canvas covered wagon.” After the marriage, the couple built Little Rock’s first two-story building, a house near the corner of 2^nd and Louisiana Streets.[7] The widow and her slaves were still living there in 1863. 

Advertisement for the Return of Charlotte

Among Mrs. Reider’s inherited slaves was “Charlotte,” who had run away from the Reiders twenty years earlier. To get her back, Jacob offered a reward of up to $100 for her return. In a  Weekly Arkansas Gazette advertisement, he described her as “a mulatto girl,” who was “about 17 years old, 5 feet 6 inches high, rather slender and genteel in her appearance, color tolerably light for a mulatto, smiling countenance, has a down look when spoken to and a habit of rolling her eyes when retiring, and is very active in walking.”[8] The ad was discontinued after two weeks, indicating that likely Charlotte was captured quickly.  In 1863, she was in her late 30s and was the mother of two children, also owned by Mrs. Reider. Aside from the brief time spent on the lam, Charlotte had lived her whole life “within one mile of Little Rock.”[9]  

One day in the middle of August, as General Sterling Price was strengthening Little Rock’s fortifications in preparation for a Union Army attack, Charlotte bumped into Henry Jacobi, a 50-year-old German immigrant who had moved to Little Rock in about 1848.[10]  A couple of years later, he had opened a book bindery. In the decade that followed, he had expanded his Markham Street store to sell books and other assorted goods.[11] Charlotte was thoroughly acquainted with Jacobi because, she later explained, “As my mistresses house in town was near his store, I often ran in there [Jacobi’s store] to buy little things before the war and got to know him well.”[12] 

Jacobi was an educated man interested in public affairs. A U.S. citizen since 1844, he was active in the “Sag Nicht” movement that in the middle 1850s sought to counteract the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic Know Nothing party.[13]  Jacobi may have been Jewish, but likely was not.[14] In 1845, while living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he had married Sarah Ann Jewel (1826 – 1904), who was not Jewish. After moving to Arkansas, he was not active in Little Rock’s nascent Jewish community in the 1850s or the B’nai B’rith congregation that officially formed after the Civil War. None of his children were raised in the Jewish faith. Perhaps a freethinker, he apparently did not attend any church in Little Rock. 

Portrait of Henry Jacobi

Although Jacobi worked hard to build his business from its modest beginning, he had mixed success and sometimes struggled to support his growing family – during the 1850s, he and his wife added five children to their household, including a set of twin girls.[15]  When he made extra profits from his business, he invested in real estate, buying large tracts of undeveloped land near the city. At the end of the 1850s, he encountered severe financial difficulties and ended up deeply in debt.[16] To help financially, his wife opened a shop in 1859 next to his bookstore that first sold “hoop shirts” and, later, shoes.[17]  

Jacobi closed his store just as the Civil War was arriving. With a partner, he opened a beer garden and grocery store in May 1861 on about twelve acres of unincorporated fenced land he owned by the western edge of the city. He lived in a house on this land, which sat a few blocks south of the state penitentiary (now site of the state capitol) at a location that was 10^th and High Streets before High Street was destroyed by Interstate 630.  Jacobi initially called his establishment “Jacobi’s Garden,” but it became known as “Jacobi’s Grove.”[18] 

During the Civil War, Jacobi was quietly pro-Union, like many ethnic German immigrants living in Pulaski County.  He said little publicly about his views but confided in a few close friends and some of the slaves he knew.  For example, Shederick Parrish, who was in bondage until the Union Army occupied Little Rock, testified before the U.S. Southern Claims Commission in 1874 that Jacobi “always talked in favor of the Federal government and said the Yankees would lick the rebels at last. He would read the papers to colored men and tell us how things were going on.”[19]  Another former slave, Asa Richmond, who served on the Little Rock city council from 1869 to 1872, told the commission, “I have often spoken to him about the war, but he would not have much to say about it, for it was dangerous for a white man like him who was suspicioned and threatened to talk to a negro – he told me he was a union man. I know he dared not to do anything to show he was a loyal man….” A third former slave, Sol Winfrey, testified, “I believe from what I know of old man Jacobi that he is a union man and that he had to keep what he did a secret or he would have been taken out and hung.” 

At the chance encounter of Charlotte and Henry Jacobi in August 1863, the German immigrant warned her, as she later related in her own words, that Mrs. Reider “was getting wagons and fixin to send us to Texas” the next day. Jacobi suggested, she said, that “I had better run off if I could, that the Federals would be in town soon….” Jacobi offered to help her.[20]   

Knowing that if she were taken to Texas, she would be beyond the reach of the Union army and the freedom it would bring to slaves in Little Rock, Charlotte ran away that night from Mrs. Reider. She was joined in her escape by six other slaves, including her two children, two other females, and two other children. The seven escapees hid in wooded land lying near the borders of Jacobi’s Grove. She later recalled, “[F]or three weeks we laid out in the woods, night and day, wet and dry, and along in the evening every day, Mr. Jacobi sent out a little girl to us with a bucket full of victuals. She would go up the hill like she was going for water and slip round to us in the bushes.” 

By helping the escaped slaves, Jacobi put himself and his family in danger. If his actions had been discovered, he would have been arrested, or more likely would have been beaten or worse, and his property destroyed. According to Charlotte, Jacobi “was suspicioned of having us there for one night some rebel soldiers came out to his house. I was only 200 yards in the timber and saw it all as it was bright moon light, the men were on horses and surrounded the house, some them went in and made the old man get up, then they looked through the stable and everywhere – and when they could not find us they got mad and went down in the cellar and brought up all the barrels of wine and liquor, and after they drank all they wanted  – they throwed the rest out.” 

One night two weeks after that incident, Charlotte was at Jacobi’s house when a “Federal spy” arrived. He told her that the Union Army “would open the ball(?) at Bayou Meto next morning,” and advised her “not to stay in the woods because the rebels would catch us if we were there as they would scatter them all over.” Immediately, the seven escaped slaves moved to conceal themselves “under the colored Methodist Church.” Charlotte described what came next: “Sure enough next morning the cannons begun to fire, and about 10 o’clock the rebels began to leave there and kept it up till three, and about four o’clock I heard the clank of the cavalry sabers, and looked out and seen the men with blue coats, and I knew it must be the yankees.” 

After the union army arrived on September 10th, Mr. Jacobi boarded Charlotte and her six companions for two weeks at his house as they began their lives as free people. They had avoided being taken to Texas, where most of the slaves were not freed until many weeks after the war ended in April 1865. 

After her emancipation, Charlotte took Edwards as her family name or married a man whose last name was Edwards. Little is known about her life after she was freed.[21] Her voice speaks through time only in her testimony before the Southern Claims Commission, where she told the story of her escape. She likely lived in Little Rock for the rest of her life (she was still living there in 1874 when she gave her testimony). Although it is not certain, she may be buried in Little Rock’s Fraternal Cemetery where more than 2,000 African Americans have graves.[22]  Among them are at least fourteen with the last name of Edwards who were buried before 1915. Their burials were recorded in the cemetery record book, but their graves are not marked, either because they have no tombstones or, if they do, any writing on them is illegible. One person listed in the cemetery record book is Lotte Edwards, who was buried on June 29, 1909.[23] Perhaps she was the Charlotte who escaped from Mrs. Reider. If so, she lived the last half of her life as a free woman, reaching her eighties before her death. 

Reider Burial Grounds

Unlike the post-war life of her former slave, that of Ann McHenry Reider is easy to trace. She resumed her life in Little Rock after the war with some of her wealth remaining.[24]  She continued to live at 2^nd and Louisiana Streets in her house that was “all enclosed with green shutters” and had “an old-fashioned garden in which flowers bloomed in profusion” until April 1887 when she moved to a large home at 1406 Lincoln Street, which is now Cantrell Road.[25] She occupied the house, later known as the “Packet House,” with the families of her daughters Cassie (1839-1931) and Amanda (1845-1920) who were married, respectively, to brothers Robert C. Newton (1840-1887) and Thomas W. Newton (1843-1908).[26] Mrs. Reider overcame the trauma of losing her slaves to live a long life, dying in 1897 at the age of 93. According to one obituary, she was at the time of her death “the oldest resident of Little Rock.”[27] 

Like her husband, Mrs. Reider was a devout Catholic, and both are buried at Little Rock’s Cavalry Cemetery. Their burial places are in a family plot marked by a marble monument more than a dozen feet tall that features the sculpture of a near life-size woman whose arm is draped over a cross. The sculpture stands on a massive base with Jacob Rider’s name and birth/death dates prominently inscribed in the front. 

Jacobi stayed in Pulaski County for the rest of his life, sometimes living in the city but mostly residing on a farm about eight miles from Little Rock. After the war, he did not return to his bookbinding business but continued operating Jacobi’s Grove until about 1871.[28] In addition to the hospitality business, Jacobi found government work. When the Union Army occupied Pulaski County, he signed on with its Provost General Office as a detective and a “secret service” member. For a few months after the end of the war, Jacobi served as the city’s appointed police chief. In 1866, he was elected the city’s constable and collector.[29] 

In 1868, Jacobi was elected county coroner at the same election at which voters approved a new state constitution. He was re-elected to that office in 1870 as part of the brindletail ticket.[30] Two years later, he ran for circuit and criminal court clerk, an elective county government office, but lost.[31]  After Reconstruction ended, he was defeated in his 1874 campaign to be elected a Justice of the Peace (JP) from Big Rock Township. However, he was appointed to fill a vacant JP seat a couple of months later on Dec. 31th.[32]  During most of the decade that followed, he was known as ‘Squire Jacobi, and he presided over a JP court, later called a magistrate court, where people accused of breaking county laws were tried. He resigned from the court in December 1883.[33] 

The paltry salaries of his elected positions and the meager profits he earned from his beer garden and farm provided too little income to pay off his pre-war debts. In 1872, the Pulaski County Chancery Court forced him to settle the $7,000 debt owed to creditors in New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati by selling large amounts of land he had bought in the 1850s, including 320 acres located fifteen miles from Little Rock, 120 acres nine miles from the city, and three city blocks.[34]   

In the early 1870s, Jacobi filed a claim with the U.S. Southern Claims Commission for compensation for property (mainly lumber and animals) taken from him by the Union army soon after it occupied Little Rock. (It was as part of the investigation of this claim that Charlotte Edwards was called as a witness in 1874.) His initial claim was rejected, but when he refiled it in 1876 with letters from Gen. Frederick Steele, who led the successful Union army attack on Little Rock, and Sen. Clayton Powell, it was approved. He was awarded $821.50 of the $3,582 he requested. The commission had no doubts about Jacobi’s loyalty but questioned the value of the property taken from him.  

Jacobi Tombstone

‘Squire Jacobi, a respected citizen, died on January 23, 1887, a couple of weeks before his 74^th birthday. His wife, Sarah Ann, lived for 78 years, passing away on December 31, 1904 (the year on her tombstone is wrong). They share a marble headstone at Little Rock’s Mt. Holly cemetery.[35] Jacobi was remembered in his obituary as “charitable, kind, and affectionate to everybody….a true and warm friend always ready to help and assist.”  Those characteristics, along with compassion, were evident in his good deed nearly twenty-five years earlier when – at some risk to himself and his family – he assisted Charlotte Edwards and six other slaves to gain freedom that would have been delayed at least twenty months without his help.   

Footnotes 

1.  Mark K. Christ. 2010. Civil War Arkansas 1863. University of Oklahoma Press. See chapter 4 “The Battle of Helena” and Chapter 5 “The Campaign to Capture Little Rock.” 

2. Reider’s obituary stated that he came to Arkansas “about 40 years ago.” “Obituary.” 1861. Little Rock True Democrat, Aug. 1, p. 2.  His presence in Batesville is mentioned in “Early Times in Arkansas by N.” 1858. Weekly Ark. Gazette, Jan 9, p. 2. 

Reider’s year of birth is uncertain. The date on his tombstone is 1776, which would have made him 85 years old when he died in 1861. His obituary stated he was 85.  However, in the 1860 census, his age is given as 76.  In the 1850 census, his age was listed as 53, and the 1840 census indicates that his age was between 40 and 49.  According to the 1850 census, he and his wife had a three-year-old child, which means that if he were 85 years old in 1861, he would have been 71 when the child was born. 

3. The exact day he arrived is mentioned by Fay Hempstead (p. 773) in Pictorial History of Arkansas from Earliest Times to the Year 1890, published in 1890.  Accessed via Google Books. 

4. His first advertisement in the Arkansas Gazette, which at that time was published at Arkansas Post, appeared on May 21, 1828.  Because of the time needed to set up a store, Hempstead's arrival date (footnote 3) was likely not accurate. “New Goods.” (Adv). Ark. Gazette, May 21, 1828, p. 4.  

5.  According to the 1860 census, Reider owned real property worth $25,000 and personal property valued at $15,000. In 2020 dollars, the amount was about $758,000 (real property) and $455,000 (personal property).  I used the inflation calculator at http://www.in2013dollars.com/  to determine the present values in 2020. The site estimates that a $1 in 1860 had the purchasing power of $30.31 in 2020. 

6. “St. Andrews Cathedral, Little Rock.” 1924. The Guardian (Official Organ of the Diocese of Little Rock), December 20, p. 8.  Accessed at http://arc.stparchive.com/Archive/ARC/ARC12201924p08.php

In his obituary, Reider was described as follows: “An unlettered man, he was endowed by nature with remarkable mind and memory, and sound judgment.” “Obituary.” 1861. Little Rock True Democrat, Aug. 1, p. 2.  

7. “Glimpses of Yesterday.” 1934. Ark. Gazette, Mar. 11, p. 30. 

8. “$100 Reward” (adv). 1841. Weekly Ark. Gazette, Nov. 10, p. 3. 

9. This quote and all others attributed to her are from testimony given in 1874 to the U.S. Southern Claims Commission related to claim 21,507, filed by Henry Jacobi. Jacobi’s complete file with all related testimony can be found at Fold3.com in the database “Southern Claims Commission, Approved Claims, 1871-1880.” 

10. Jacobi testified to the U.S. Southern Claims Commission that he came to Little Rock in 1848, but his arrival may have been in 1849 or 1850. The first advertisements for his bookbinding business showed up in the Arkansas Gazette in 1851. 

Jacobi was born on February 10, 1813, in Trarbach, now known as Trauben-Trarbach, a small town on the middle section of the Moselle River, famous for its winemaking. The city was in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz when he was born, but in 1816 the area was annexed by Prussia. According to Jacobi’s obituary, his family was “highly reputable,” and his father was an officer in the Prussian army. He was educated by a wealthy grandmother, and before emigrating, he traveled extensively as a wine salesman for a vineyard owned by a family member. He emigrated “before 1837” and settled in Pennsylvania, where he learned the bookbinding trade. He applied for citizenship in 1842 and received it in 1844. That year, he married Sarah Ann Jewell (Dec. 14, 1926 – Dec. 31, 1904), a native Philadelphian. See “The Late Henry Jacobi.” 1887. Ark. Gazette, July 5, p. 5 and “Died.” 1887. Ark Gazette, June 24, p. 1. 

Jacobi and his wife had seven children, one of whom died in childhood. They were Rachael (1846 – 1905), Henry Jr. (1848 – 1851), Susannah (1850 – 1873), Clara (1852 – 1828), Lillie (1854 – 1920), Rosa (1854 – 1937), and Albert Cohen (1857 – 1919). Rachael and Henry Jr. were born in Pennsylvania, the others in Little Rock. 

Catherine Jewell (1837 – 1901), the younger sister of Sarah Ann Jewell, moved to Little Rock from Cincinnati with her husband George Baehr in the latter part of 1860 or early 1861. Baehr, born in Bavaria, was, like Jacobi, a bookbinder. He volunteered for the Capital Guards, a Little Rock militia, incorporated into the Confederate Army as Co. A, Arkansas Sixth Regiment. Baehr was killed in action on June 27, 1864, at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia. According to testimony heard by the U.S. Southern Claims Commission, Catherine Jewell lived in a small house on land next to Jacobi’s Grove during the Civil War.  Calvin L. Collier. 1961. First In – Last Out: The Capitol Guards, Arkansas Brigade in the Civil War. Pioneer Press (Little Rock), p. 115. 

11. His first advertisement was published on October 14, 1851.  “Book Binding.” 1851. Ark. Banner, Oct. 14, p. 3.  The same ad was published on Oct. 17 in the Weekly Ark. Gazette.  Jacobi regularly advertised in the years that followed.  His typical advertisement was as follows:

“The undersigned would inform the public of Arkansas that his Book-Bindery is in full operation, and that he is prepared to bind new books or to rebind old books at Cincinnati prices. As he purchased his stock of materials for cash in New York and executes the work himself, in person, there are no extra charges for profits at his Bindery. Persons in the city or in any part of the state who may have the kindness to give him their patronage may rely on their work being done on unusually reasonable terms and with neatness and dispatch.”  

On Dec. 5, 1957, he started publishing a new, longer advertisement that repeatedly ran in the Arkansas Gazette.  See “Henry Jacobi. Bookseller, Book Binder, Stationer, and Blank Book Manufacturer.” Weekly Ark. Gazette, Dec. 5, p. 3.    

The ad included this note:  “N.B. As I am a practical mechanic, much experienced, and long established in my business; doing most of my work with my own hands and when assistants are necessarily employed, giving it my immediate personal supervision, I am enabled to not only guarantee its fidelity, but to sell it at mechanic’s prices, without extra profits. And essentially as I do business on the cheap system (both buying and selling) I am further enabled as I have done from the beginning, unchanged even by late flush times, to supply my customers with every article in my line, in good faith at the lowest prices, at which it is practicable to live, carry on business, and to remain solvent in this community.”    

12. Testimony to the U.S. Southern Claims Commission. Claim 21,507 filed by Henry Jacobi, “Southern Claims Commission, Approved Claims, 1871-1880,” a database accessed at Fold3.com. 

13. “The Great Sag Nicht Rally in Saline.” 1855. Weekly Ark. Gazette, Nov. 2, p. 3. 

14.  Carolyn Gray LeMaster claims in her book that Jacobi was Jewish but offers no evidence to support that conclusion. She may have mixed him up with Hirsh Jacobi (1840 – 1897), who settled in Little Rock after the war and was active in the local synagogue. Hirsh’s wife, Amalia Kahn Jacobi (1834 - 1926), opened a Millinery and Dry Goods Shop on Main Street in 1871 and advertised herself as “Mrs. H. Jacobi --  Millinery and Fancy Goods” until she went bankrupt in 1876. See, for example, “Mrs. H. Jacobi – Millinery and Fancy Goods (adv).” 1874. Ark. Gazette, p. 4 and “Bankrupt Sale.” 1876. Ark. Gazette, Aug. 19, p. 4.  Henry Jacobi and Hirsch Jacobi were not related. 

15. LaMaster reviewed Jacobi’s credit reports compiled by R.G. Dun & Co. during the 1850s. (These reports are housed in Harvard University’s Baker Library.) The reports document that he was “quite poor with modest trade” when he started his store, but gradually increased his stock and business. LaMaster, 1994, p. 14. 

16. Some evidence suggests that part of Jacobi’s financial problems resulted from unpaid or under-paid binding work he did for the state Printing Office in 1858, 1859, and 1860. Before the Civil War and for several years after its end, he tried to get the Arkansas General Assembly to pay him more for the work he had done. See, for example, “Legislative Proceedings.” 1860. Weekly Ark. Gazette, Nov. 17, p. 2 and “House of Representatives.” 1860. Weekly Ark. Gazette, Dec. 22, p. 2. (The State Senate passed a relief bill for Jacobi, but the House of Representatives narrowly rejected it.) Also see, “General Assembly of Arkansas. “1868. Ark. Gazette, Dec. 15, p. 2. 

17. “Hoop Shirks” (adv). 1859. Weekly Ark. Gazette, Oct. 1, p. 3 and “Ladies’ Shoes at Mrs. Jacobi’s” (adv) 1860. Weekly Ark. Gazette, January 28, p. 3. 

18. “Jacobi’s Garden.” 1861. Weekly Ark. Gazette, July 6, p. 3. The advertisement stated:  “The undersigned at his place near the western boundary of the city of Little Rock, has opened a garden, and is prepared to furnish refreshments to such as favor him with the patronage. The place is quiet and retired, and kept in the most orderly manner. Ice cream, light wines, and other refreshments on hand, and served to persons singly or in parties. He solicits a share of public patronage. Henry Jacobi.  

19. The testimony of Shederick Parrish and the others that follow are in Claim 21,507 filed by Henry Jacobi, “Southern Claims Commission, Approved Claims, 1871-1880,” a database accessed at Fold3.com. 

20. Jacobi gave similar advice to Nelson Douglas, the slave of a Confederate Army officer. According to Brooks, a few days before the occupation, “[Jacobi] told me to remain in Little Rock and not to go south with Col. Brooks and the Confederate Army.” Brooks took the advice. On the day that the Union Army arrived, Brooks went to work for Jacobi, living at his place until June 1865. Testimony of Nelson Douglas in Claim 21,507 filed by Henry Jacobi, “Southern Claims Commission, Approved Claims, 1871-1880,” database accessed at Fold3.com. 

21. Nothing was found about her in searches of Ancestry.com, familysearch.org, newspapers.com, newspaperarchives.com, and geneologybank.com. 

22. See http://www.arkansaspreservation.com/National-Register-Listings/PDF/PU5892.nr.pdf  

23. “Oakland and Fraternal Historic Cemetery Records,” accessed on familysearch.org.  

24. According to the 1870 census, the self-assessed value of her real estate was $10,000, about $198,500 in 2020 purchasing power. The estimate of 2020 purchasing power was calculated at the following website: https://www.in2013dollars.com/ 

25. See “Glimpses of Yesterday.” 1934. Ark. Gazette, Mar. 11, p. 30 and Renton Tunnah. 1929. “City Wore a Different Aspect During the Reconstruction Days.” 1929. Ark. Gazette, March 31, p. 12. For more on the Packet House, see http://www.arkansaspreservation.com/National-Register-Listings/PDF/PU3243.nr.pdf.  

26. Robert C. Newton commanded Baxter’s military forces in the 1874 Brook-Baxter War. 

27. Mrs. Reider’s tombstone has the date of her death as November 16, 1898. However, her obituaries are dated 1897: “Mrs. Anna Reider’s Death.” 1897. Ark. Gazette, Nov. 16, p. 5 and “The Oldest Resident of Little Rock.” 1897. Forrest City Times, Nov. 19, p. 6. (The likely date of her death was Nov. 14, 1897;  the Arkansas Gazette obituary published on Tuesday, Nov. 16, stated that her death was on the preceding Sunday.) 

28. Jacobi’s Grove hosted many events, including the city’s first Maifest, held by ethnic Germans in 1867. Also, it was a popular venue for events held by the city’s former slaves. Jacobi sold this property in the early 1870s, but the name and venue remained in use into the 1880s. See “May Festival.” 1867. Ark. Gazette, May 19, p. 3 and “The Fourth of July.” 1868, Weekly Ark. Gazette, Jul 7, p. 2. 

29. “Post of Little Rock.” 1865. Ark. Gazette, May 11, p. 4; “Item.” 1865. Weekly Arkansas Gazette, Oct 7, p. 2; and “City Chamber, Little Rock.” 1867. Ark. Gazette, March 21, 1867, p. 3. 

30. “Election Results.” 1868. Morning Republican, March 4, p. 2 and “Result of the State Election.” 1870. Ark. Gazette, Nov. 15, p. 4. 

31. “For Circuit and Criminal Court Clerk and Recorder” (adv). 1872. Ark. Gazette, Sept 13, p. 4. 

32. “The Election: The Returns as Far as Received–Pulaski County Redeemed.”1874. Ark. Gazette, Oct 15, p. 4 and “Little Rock Locals.” 1874. Ark. Gazette, Dec 31, p 4. 

33. “Resigned.” 1883. Ark. Democrat, Dec. 12, p. 1. 

34.  Jacobi mentioned the forced sale of his land in his 1874 testimony before the U.S. Southern Claims Commission. Claim 21,507 filed by Henry Jacobi, “Southern Claims Commission, Approved Claims, 1871-1880,” database accessed at Fold3.com. 

35. “The Late Henry Jacobi.” 1887. Ark. Gazette, July 5, p. 5 and “Mrs. S. A. Jacobi Dead.” 1905. Ark. Gazette, Jan. 1, p. 7.

 

Little Rock's Families from Asch: Their Emigration and First Years in Pulaski County

This paper, with some additional appendices, can be read and downloaded from this link
https://www.dropbox.com/s/75nygwbjfs2hw3u/familiesfromAsch.pdf?dl=0 

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The following is part one of the story of several families who emigrated from Asch, a small city and district in Austria’s Bohemian region, to Pulaski County before the Civil War. The emigration started when two single men from Asch fled Austria after the failure of the 1848 revolution. These two men – John Adam Reichardt and John Christopher Geyer -- were the first members of their families to make their homes in Pulaski County. Others followed. In all, three Geyer families, one large Reichardt family, and one Penzel family, plus Wolfgang Wunderlich, a single man from Asch, settled in Pulaski County from 1850 to 1854. In all, by 1857, at least 28 emigrants from Asch had moved to Pulaski County (although two had moved away by that time). This group contributed to a sizeable increase in the number of Germanic emigrants in the county that, according to the 1850 census, numbered only about 136 men, women, and children.

The emigrants from Asch spent the years before the Civil War adjusting to their new home. Some were farmers living in rural Pulaski County and others found jobs in Little Rock. Wherever they were living, they got caught up in the War and the families, like the rest of the nation, had divided loyalties: a few Asch emigrants or their spouses served in the Union Army; more of them were in the Confederate Army. Of all the Asch emigrants, Charles Penzel, a private in the Southern army, was most affected by the war: he was twice wounded, once severely, and he spent the last year of the war as a prisoner.

 

Postcard showing Geyer Cafe in Asch

Part one of the story of the families from Asch ends as the Civil War was coming to a close. The violent and tumultuous times must have been discouraging for them. However, their fortunes were about to change. As will be discussed in part two of this story, when the war ended, the families from Asch prospered, mainly as merchants, and they, along with their spouses, their children, and their children’s spouses, became the core of the city’s small, but influential, protestant – mainly Lutheran -- German immigrant community that for three decades had an outsized impact on Little Rock’s economic development, social life, and local government.

Arrival of the Families from Asch

From 1848 to 1857, at least 28 emigrants moved about 5,000 miles from their homes in or near the Bohemian city of Asch to Pulaski County.1  Twenty-seven of them were members of five families and one was a single person who married into one of the families a few years after arriving in Little Rock. The families were:

The Johann Martin and Eva Katharine [Kuenzel] Reichardt family. Johann Martin (1800 – 1884) and Eva Katharine (1800 – 1858) emigrated to Arkansas along with four sons and three daughters.2  John Adam Reichardt (1825 – 1884), the oldest son, was the first to arrive in Little Rock, fleeing arrest for participating in the failed 1848 Austrian revolution.3  He arrived in Arkansas in late 1848 or early 1849. His brother Christopher (1823 – 1881) soon followed him, traveling with Anna Catherine Penzel, who was, or was soon to be, his wife. They reached New Orleans aboard the Columbus on October 31^, 1850, then continued their trip to Arkansas.4  Another brother, George (1832-1910), crossed the ocean from Bremen to New Orleans on the Columbia, a ship that arrived on May 19, 1852. Two years later, in 1854, Johann Martin and Eva Katharine journeyed to the state with three daughters, Adelina Margaret (1834 – 1909), Louise (1837 – 1910) and Fredericka (1842 – 1911), and a young son, Edward (1844 – 1883). They departed Bremen on August 18, 1854 and arrived in New Orleans on October 23rd aboard the Johannes, then headed by boat to Little Rock.5  In Asch, Johann Martin had owned a wool textile mill that he sold before leaving.6

The Johann Michael and Sophie Marie [Ludwig] Geyer family. Johann Michael (1790 – 1856) and Sophie Marie (1791 – 1873) and three of their children emigrated to Pulaski County. Their oldest son, John Christopher Geyer (1819 – 1878), was the first of the family to arrive. Like John Adam Reichardt, he left Asch after the collapse in Austria of the 1848 revolution during which he had “led a company of revolutionists.” After a short stay in Philadelphia, he traveled in 1849 to central Arkansas, where he lived briefly in Pulaski County before he bought land along the Arkansas River in Conway County, a few miles southeast of Lewisburg.7  Johann Michael and Sophie Marie followed their son to central Arkansas in 1852, departing from Bremen on the Rebecca, arriving in New Orleans on October 26, then continuing to Little Rock. With them came their son John Erhardt (1832 – 1919), and daughter Sophia (1836 – 1916). The family traveled in relative luxury, occupying a cabin on the ship’s deck.8  Johann Michael had worked as a butcher in Asch.

The Johann Michael (Papa) and Anna Margaretha Geyer family. Also aboard the Rebecca in October 1852 was the Johann Michael (1811 – 1892) and Anna Margaretha (1810 – 1876) family. However, this Geyer family had a less comfortable trip across the Atlantic, traveling in steerage. In addition to the parents, other family members aboard the ship were their son John Christian (1845 – 1930) and four daughters, Anna Margartha (1841 – 1870), Ernestine (1838 – 1934), Alvina (1847 – 1927), and Emilie (1850 – 1926). Johann Michael had been a farmer in Asch. In his later years, this Johann Michael became widely known in Little Rock as “Papa Geyer,” the owner of a popular beer garden near the Arsenal, and I will refer to him by that name to differentiate him from the older Johann Michael Geyer.

Although the two Johann Michael Geyer families were certainly kin to each other, evidence supports the conclusion that the older Johann Michael was not the father of the younger Johann Michael. For one thing, the younger Johann Michael was born in 1811, but the older Johann Michael did not marry until 1818. Also, none of the obituaries of the members of either family suggested a close kinship between the two families. Likely, the older Johann Michael was the uncle of the younger one or the two men were cousins.

Isaac Geyer and his son George. Isaac (1814 - 1887) and George (1836 - 1880) traveled together from Asch to the United States in 1853. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean, departing from Bremen, on the Heinrich von Gagern, a ship that landed in New Orleans on October 12^th.9  The two men were likely related by kinship to the two other Geyer families that settled in Pulaski County, but the nature of the kinship is unclear. Both men were farmers.

The Johann Christof and Maria Elizabeth Penzel family.  Johann Christof (1800 – 1857) and Maria Elizabeth (1803 – 1865) were the parents of Anna Catherina Penzel (1825 – 1870) and Charles Ferdinand Penzel (1840 – 1906). According to a family history published in the Pulaski County Historical Review, Johann C. and Maria E. crossed the Atlantic in 1848 with their newly married daughter and son-in-law Christopher Reichardt.10  However, this story is contradicted by ship records showing that Christopher and Anna Catherina took the Columbia to New Orleans in 1850 and that her parents were not passengers on the ship. In fact, the year Johann Christof and Maria E. emigrated to Arkansas is a mystery: I have found no record of their trip to the United States. The main evidence of their presence in the Pulaski County in the 1850s is the tombstone of Johann C. showing he died there on July 17, 1857. That year, their teenage son Charles Ferdinand (1840 – 1906) emigrated to the United States. His Wanderbuch (an official record of his work places in Bohemia) shows that he did not leave Asch before the end of March 1857, and it is not known if he made it to Pulaski County before his father died.11  Although the occupation of Johann Christof before he came to the United States is not known, it is known that Penzel families were “minor nobility” in the Asch area.12

The single person who emigrated from Asch during this time was Wolfgang Wunderlich (1834 – 1901), who was unmarried when he traveled to the United States in 1852. His trip from Bremen to New Orleans was taken with George Reichardt on the Columbia, arriving on May 19th. In 1857, he would later marry Louisa Reichardt, George’s sister.

In addition to the members of the families from Asch who arrived in Central Arkansas before the Civil War, at least two other emigrants from Asch settled in Pulaski County after the War.13  One was Christopher C. Geyer (1847-1900), a young farmer who arrived in 1866 and settled on land near Isaac Geyer in southern Pulaski County. The other was Adam C. Penzel (1859-1932), a butcher, who emigrated alone to Little Rock in 1879.14  Both of these Asch emigrants spent the rest of their lives in Pulaski county. Their relation to the families already in the County is not clear from the available evidence.15

Although the only documented relationships among the members of the families from Asch were the marriage of Christopher Reichardt and Ann Katherina Penzel followed by the marriage of Louise Reichardt and Wolfgang Wunderlich, other kinship relations – close and distance – undoubtedly existed. They were inevitable: the Geyer, Penzel, Kuenzel, Ludwig, and Wunderlich families had deep roots in the Asch area, and intermarriages between families with those surnames had taken place for more than a century.16  Whatever their kinships, the families certainly knew each other before they came to the United States, and their emigration to the Pulaski County suggests they had either agreed to emigrate to the same area or were mutually influenced to settle near each other.  If nothing else, they probably found comfort in having people they knew living near them as that adapted to their new situation.

 

Photo of John Christoper Geyer

Likely, the decisions of John A. Reichardt and John C. Geyer to settle in central Arkansas influenced others from Asch to do the same. But an unanswered question is why the two men chose to emigrate to such an out-of-the-way place. Of the 2,000 to 10,000 48ers who fled Germany and Austria in the wake of the collapsed revolutions, most emigrated to cities such as St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee where large numbers of German-speaking immigrants already lived.17  In contrast, when Reichardt and Geyer arrived in Pulaski County, only about 559 of Arkansas’ 162,797 free residents (.034%) and about 136 of Pulaski County’s 4,538 free residents (3.0%; the county had another 1,119 enslaved residents) had been born in a German, Austrian, or Swiss “state.”18  These two Asch refugees were – the best I can tell – the only 48ers who settled in Arkansas, and they were among only a few who ended up in Deep South states.19

Whatever reason they had for emigrating to a place with so few German-speaking residents, once in central Arkansas, Reichardt and Geyer probably wrote letters home that encouraged their families to emigrate there. Perhaps more such letters were sent by Christopher Reichardt and Anna Katherina Penzel Reichardt after this married couple settled in the county.

The arrival of the families from Asch in Pulaski County increased the number of German-speaking immigrants in the county by nearly twenty percent, and the new arrivals were important additions to the community not only because they were educated and had some wealth, but also because the family members included eight young unmarried females and eight bachelors. Such unmarried women were welcome in a place that had a sizable number of single men in its small German/Austrian-born population.20  Also the unmarried men from Asch, once they established themselves, were attractive to the daughters in families that had emigrated earlier to the area. 

First Years in Pulaski County

The 1850s were a time for the new emigrants from Asch to adapt to their new country. The first arrivals, John C. Geyer and John A. Reichardt, remained in Pulaski County for only a short time. As mentioned, Geyer bought a long stretch of riverfront land in Conway County and started farming there. After a few years in the county, Reichardt married Anna Margareta Spindler and moved with her to Boonville, Missouri.

Christopher and Anna Katherina Reichardt took up farming on land near Granite Mountain Springs, a few miles due south of Little Rock. They eventually settled on a farm near the Primrose Cemetery, living close to several other German-speaking immigrants.21  When Christopher’s parents, Johann Martin and Eva Katherine Reichardt, arrived in 1854, they bought a farm near their son and daughter-in-law, and lived there with their three daughters and son. In 1856, Christopher claimed a 43-acre homestead in the Primrose area, then he added acreage to it in 1859 (44.0 acres) and 1861 (38.2 acres) by purchasing land cheaply from the federal government.22 When Eva Katherine -- Christopher’s mother and Johann Martin’s wife – passed away on July 26, 1858, she was buried in the Primrose cemetery near her home.    

Although the exact year of their arrival in Pulaski County is not known, Johann Christof and Marie Elizabeth Penzel made a home sometime in the 1850s in the Primrose area near their daughter Anna Christina Penzel Reichardt.23  Upon John Christof’s death in 1857, he was buried at the Primrose cemetery and Marie Elizabeth, the 1860 census showed, moved in with her daughter’s family.

Isaac and George Geyer also settled on farms near Granite Mountain, but not by the Primrose cemetery. Their farms were within a couple of miles of the Christopher and John M. Reichardt farms and were in the same township (Union Township).

Papa Geyer and his family did not locate in the Primrose community or in Union Township. Instead, he acquired a farm in Big Rock Township, a few miles north of Granite Mountain and further to the west of the city. He and his family lived there until the start of the Civil War.

Johann Michael and Maria Sophie Geyer, after reaching Pulaski County in 1852, made their home in Little Rock where their son John Erhardt and daughter Sophia had settled. Johann Michael was the first of the Asch immigrants to pass away, dying on November 20, 1856, and was buried in Little Rock’s Mt. Holly cemetery. After he died, his wife Maria Sophie moved in with the family of her daughter Sophia, who had married Joseph C. Schader in 1853.

Four of the young men who emigrated from Asch made their homes in Little Rock. John E. Geyer – the son of a butcher – quickly found employment as a butcher, working for Louis (Loui) George’s butcher shop. After a few years there, he acquired George’s butcher shop in a partnership with his brother-in-law Joseph C. Schader. Later, near the end of the decade, John E. opened a tannery.24

George Reichardt, who had been a classmate of John E. Geyer back in Asch, also lived in Little Rock when he was not driving cattle from Texas to sell in California. Later In his life, he told stories of how he had made a big profit with his first cattle drive when beef was scarce in California, but had lost money on his last drive because by that time the state had plenty of local beef.25  When not driving cattle, he worked as a merchant in Little Rock and lived in a boarding house there.

Wolfgang Wunderlich, who had learned carpentry in Asch before emigrating in 1852, worked as a cabinet maker after settling in Little Rock. In 1856, he joined the U.S. Army for a five-year enlistment, serving as a carriage maker at the Little Rock Arsenal.26

Charles Penzel, after arriving in Little Rock in the middle of 1857, found a job as a carpenter, working for Henry Fisher (Fischer), a German immigrant who had for many years owned a saloon in the city and was at the time a successful “master carpenter.” The 1860 census showed Penzel living with Henry and Catherine Fisher and their eight children whose ages ranged from 2 to 20 years. (Catherine was a sister of Loui George.)

As the 1850s progressed, several of the unmarried Asch emigrants found husbands and wives. The first to marry was Sophia Geyer who, as mentioned earlier, wedded Joseph C. Schader in 1853. Born in 1830, He came in 1840 with his parents to Little Rock from Hesse-Darmstadt. The 1850 census showed him living with Loui George and his family. He also worked for George’s butcher shop. He moved in the early 1850s to Napoleon, Arkansas for a brief time, where he opened a business. Shortly after returning to Little Rock, he married Sophia and in 1854, as mentioned above, bought Loui George’s butcher business in a partnership with John E. Geyer, Sophia’s brother.27

In 1856, Isaac Geyer married Kisirah Nail, who had been born in Alabama. They lived on Geyer’s farm in Union Township.

In 1857, six members of the families from Asch got married. They included George Geyer, who married Kasey (family name unknown) and John Christopher Geyer, who, living on his farm in Conway County, married Nancy Adeline (family name unknown). Both Kasey and Nancy Adeline had been born in the United States. Both families continued to live on their farms.

The other marriages in 1857 were:

March 30:  John Erhardt Geyer married Helene Marie Eliza Struve, born in 1835, who had emigrated in about 1847 from Hanover with an older sister, Amelia (1829 – 1858), and an older brother, August (1831 – 1876). They had settled in Little Rock where her brother had become a merchant.  

              

April 16: Ernestine Geyer married Ferdinand Baer, a German emigrant who was a carpenter and undertaker.  Baer, born in 1825, had emigrated from Baden-Wuerttemberg to the United States in 1854 and settled in Little Rock that year, starting his own business.28

June 30: Adelina Reichardt married Frederick Kramer, an emigrant from Halle or its vicinity in Prussia’s Saxony. Born in 1829, he came to the United States in 1848 and on July 27, 1857 completed a five-year enlistment in the U.S Army during which he had been stationed in Indian Territory (Oklahama). Three months after the marriage, he rejoined the U.S. Army to be a carriage maker at the Arsenal.29

October 24. Louisa Reichardt married Wolfgang Wunderlich, one of the emigrants from Asch. A carpenter, he had joined the U.S. Army on May 31, 1856 and was stationed at the Little Rock Arsenal as a carriage maker with army’s ordinance division.30

The last marriage before the Civil War was on April 16, 1860. Anna Margaretha Geyer, Ernestine’s sister, married Francis J. Ditter, a man more than twice her age. She was his second wife. His first wife had been Amelia Struve, who had died in 1858. Amelia was the sister of Eliza Struve, who had married John E. Geyer in 1857. Ditter was born in Baden in 1817 and had emigrated to the United States in the 1840s.  He had joined the U.S. Army on May 18, 1846 and was sent to the Little Rock, classified as a carriage maker. He had married Amelia on February 22, 1849. When he completed his five-year enlistment on May 15, 1851, he and his family remained in Little Rock to open a business that made and sold carriages, coffins, and other such goods, plus provided undertaking services.31

As 1860 -- the last full year before the start of the Civil War -- ended, the families from Asch had made progress in adapting to their new home. They had bought farms or found jobs. started families and businesses and established themselves as solid citizens. Likely they missed some aspects of their lives in Asch: Pulaski County had no Lutheran Church for them to attend and lacked the social clubs and organizations that had been available in their previous home. Also some of them who lived on farms were isolated from the larger population because they did not speak English.32  Nevertheless, the Asch immigrants had planted promising roots in their new homeland, and those who had married had added at least fifteen babies to the community of Asch emigrants.

The Civil War Arrives

When the Civil War arrived in 1861, the families from Asch were not united in their loyalties. Two of the immigrants joined Union forces and three of them, plus the husbands of two women from Asch, volunteered – at least briefly -- for the Confederate Army, even though no members of any of the Asch families, nor of the new families created by marriage, owned slaves. Most Asch emigrants managed to avoid serving in either army.

The most pro-Union family from Asch was the Reichardt family. The oldest son, John Adam, volunteered for the Union army, and despite being in his late 30s when the war started, served as a commissary sergeant for the 29^th Missouri Volunteer Infantry.33  Also, Wolfgang Wunderlich, the husband of Louisa, served in the Union Army. He rejoined the army following the completion of five years at the Little Rock Arsenal and spent the war years outside of Arkansas serving in the ordinance department of the Union Regular Army.34  

 

Newspaper Photograph of George Reichardt

Other Reichardt family men did not serve in either army. Christopher had a large family to support and would have been an old recruit. Edward was only sixteen when the war started and was able to avoid the army in the years that followed. George was a prime age to be a soldier when the war started, but his whereabouts during the war is not mentioned in his obituaries or other stories about him.  I have found no records showing that he served in either army. Perhaps he was in California during the war years.35

Kramer, the husband of Adelina, had joined Little Rock’s militia, the Capitol Guards in 1860 after he left the U.S. Army to start a grocery store. When the war started In 1861, he resigned from the Guards just before the unit was incorporated into the Confederate Army as Company A of the Sixth Arkansas Infantry Regiment.36  However, in an advertisement published in the Arkansas Gazette in May, 1861, after the war had started, he and his business partner, Ferdinand Sarasin, announced they would be selling all of their goods so they could close their grocery store and join the Southern army.37  Although Kramer never became a rebel soldier, he professed support for the Southern cause. 

Papa Geyer’s family had little involvement in the Civil War. His son, John Christian, born in 1845, was too young for military service when the war started, and stayed out of service as he grew older. The spouse of his daughter Ernestine, Francis Ditter, the former U.S. Army soldier, was over 40 years old when the war started and did not join an army. His other son-in-law, Ferdinand Baer, was 34 years old when the war started.  Like Kramer and Sarasin, he had been in the Capitol Guards, but had left it before it became part of the Confederate Army. Nevertheless, he served briefly in the Confederate Army:  The main evidence of his service is a claim submitted by Anna Margareta, his widow, in 1928 for a confederate army pension. Also, documents show “F. Baer” and “Ferdinand Joseph Baer” was a soldier in Company A of the 13^th Infantry Regiment of the Arkansas Militia, but list no dates of service.38  Baer’s obituary did not mention any service in the Civil War.

Some members of the other Geyer families supported the confederacy. John Erhardt Geyer, the son of the deceased Johann M. Geyer, along with his brother-in-law Joseph Schader, the husband of Sophia Geyer, served, briefly, in the Confederate Army. John E. joined Company A of the 6^th Arkansas Infantry, the former Capitol Guards, but after serving a month was, according to his obituary, “on request of his officers, detailed to take charge of his own tanyard in Little Rock, and he helped to supply the Confederate army with leather materials, of which it was greatly in need….” Geyer operated his tannery until September 1863 when Federal troops entered the city. They arrested him and, according to his obituary, he was a war prisoner for a short time.39  (John Erhardt’s older brother, Christopher, was 38 years old when the war started and did not join either army.)

Joseph Schader, John E.’s brother in law and former business partner, perhaps participated in the war on the Southern side. Although his name cannot be found on a comprehensive list of soldiers in the Civil War, his obituary stated that he was “in confederate service…being connected with hospital service.”40  

In the third Geyer family, Isaac – in his 50’s – was too old for military service, but George volunteered in February 1862 for Woodruff’s Battery in the Arkansas Artillery, then served as a private in Marshall’s Battery (also known as the Pulaski Battery) of the Arkansas Light Artillery. His length of service is not given in the military records I located.41

Of all the emigrants from Asch, Charles Penzel experienced the war most intensely. Although he had arrived in the United States only a few years before the war started, he volunteered for service in September 1862, fought in several battles, was twice wounded, and was held as a prisoner of war for more than a year. His service was described in his obituary:

[Mr. Penzel] entered the ranks of the Confederacy as a private in Company A, of the Sixth Arkansas [Infantry]….During the war Mr. Penzel was in the thick of the fighting, was wounded at Shiloh, severely wounded at Chickamauga, and there captured. He was taken to Chattanooga where he remained for five months, after which he was taken to Rock Island, Ill., where he was held a prisoner of war until the close of hostilities.42

Among his wrenching experiences during the war, he lost his friend Henry Fisher Jr., son of Henry and Catherine Fisher, with whom Charles had lodged before the start of the war.43  Both he and Henry, plus Henry’s younger brother (Charley) were in the same company, the former Capitol Guard.  The anguish caused by Henry’s death was apparent in a draft letter dated January 10, 1863 from Wartrace, Tennessee, that he penciled in his Wanderbuch. He wrote:

It is with sorrow this time to write the sad news about the death of Henry who fell on the 31^st day of December in the battle of Murfreesboro. He fell in the first charge as I have heard for I was not in the battle myself. I am detailed to serve since the middle of November in the commissary department. It was on the second when I heard of him but was not permitted to go to the battlefield to take care of his body. I anscious [sic] waited to see Charley [another son of Henry Sr.] who was engaged in the hospital but on the third we received orders to leave Murfreesboro….I only felt my heart filled with sorrow mourning the loss of a friend who fell for his country not even able to do anything for him.44   

Nine months after the Battle of Murfreesboro, Penzel suffered a traumatic wound at Chickamauga, on September 20, 1863, that “came near ending his existence.” As described in his obituary, “He was struck in the mouth with a large ball, which passed through his head, coming out at the base of the skull.”45   According to the story told by his great grandson, the poet Charles Penzel Wright, Jr., the bullet entered his mouth as he yelled “charge.”46  The wounded Penzel was captured and stayed in captivity until the end of the war. Soon after he arrived back in Little Rock, he signed, on June 24, 1865, a loyalty oath.47  He was ready to move on in his life.

 

Newspaper photograph of Charles Penzel accompanying 1909 Obituary

As the Civil War was ending, it would have been reasonable for the families from Asch to have second thoughts about their decisions to leave their homes in Asch to settle in the new world. The war had brought them hardships and divisions. It had placed their family members in opposing armies. It had disrupted their hopes for better lives for themselves and their children. Fortunately for them, although they did not know it at the time, their luck had already begun to change.

As Little Rock prospered in the years following the war, the families from Asch would find great success as merchants in the city. The first and biggest step toward future accomplishments was the opening of a grocery store on Little Rock’s Main Street in November 1863, a couple of months after the city had been occupied by Federal troops. The store’s name was the Kramer & Miller Family Grocery Store and Bakery, and it would enrich several of the Asch families and prepare others to open their own successful stores. From this foundation, the Asch families would become leaders of the protestant German community in Little Rock and would make important contributions to the economic, religious, and social life of the city in the decades following the Civil War.

Footnotes

1. In the 1850s, Asch was a city and district on the western edge of Bohemia, a region in the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Then, as now, the city was located near the north end of a narrow peninsula – a finger-shaped protuberance – that extends into Germany. To its north, west, and east, the city was and is located just a few miles from German borders.

In a census conducted in 1858, the population of the city of Asch was 7,420. The larger district of Asch that included the city and surrounding area, had a population of 23,589 (source:  http://www.asch-boehmen.de/d/index.php?seite=1_1 ). Most of the city and district residents spoke German and had German ancestry. A 1921 census found that ninety-nine percent of Asch’s population was considered to be “German” (Statistický lexikon obcí v Čechách (Statistical handbook of the municipalities in Bohemia), part of the Statistický lexikon obcí v Republice Československé (Statistical handbook of the municipalities in the Czechoslovak Republic), 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Prague, 1924). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C5%A1  .

After World War I, Asch became part of Czechoslovakia. The spelling of the city name was de-Germanized, changed to “Aš.” In the 1930s after Hitler seized power, German nationalists wanted “Sudetenland” -- areas in Czechoslovakia, like Aš, in which most residents were ethnic Germans – to be brought into Germany, and in 1938  Germany’s Nazi regime forcibly annexed Sudetenland into the Third Reich. After the end of World War II, the new government in Czechoslovakia forced almost all ethnic Germans living in the Sudetenland to leave the country. The population of Aš.changed from 22,930 in 1930 to 11, 378 in 1947. The city’s population in 2016 was 13,227.

2. These emigrants from Asch had, mainly, traditional German names with German spelling. After they came to the United States, most altered their names to conform with English usage. For example, Johann became John, Christof became Christopher, and Edvard became Edward. 

With few exceptions, I use the Americanized names of the emigrants. Among the exceptions are the first names of the parents of the families who came to the United States with their children. Thus, I refer to Johann Martin Reichardt and Johann Michael Geyer, but substitute John for Johann when referring to their various sons. 

The spelling of some names change from source to source. The main problem is the interchanging of “a” and “e.” For example, the name of one Reichardt daughter is sometimes spelled “Adaline” and sometime “Adelina.”  Similar differences in spelling can be found with the names of Margaretha, Catherina (Katherina), and Sophia, with “a’s” and “e’s” changing. In other places, the “K” is changed to “C” (e.g., Carl instead of Karl) and “pf” changed to “f” (Christoph to Christof).

3.  John Adam Reichardt’s role in the 1848 uprising was not mentioned in a biographical sketch on the Reichardt family written by Fay Hempstead in his Historical Review of Arkansas (vol. 3, pp. 1534-1535), nor was it mentioned in his obituary. It was noted decades later in a 1929 newspaper article about the celebration of Carl Schurz Day. This article asserted, fancifully, that John A. Reichardt had fled to the United States with Carl Schurz, one of the leaders of the 1848 revolution who later was a Union Army general and then had a distinguished career in public service in the United States. According to the article:

In 1848, Carl Schurz took an active part in the revolution in Germany…. With him in the revolutionary movement was John Adam Reichardt who later came to this country with Schurz. Mr. Reichardt came to what is now the city of Little Rock, while Schurz went to Wisconsin, and later made his home in Watertown, Wisc.

Schurz, fleeing arrest following the collapse of the 1848-49 uprising, first went to Paris and then to London before emigrating to the U.S. in August 1852. John Adam had already been in Arkansas for a couple of years by the time Schurz arrived in Wisconsin. “Carl Schurz Day to be Observed.” Arkansas Gazette, March 3, 1929, p. 45.

Fay Hempstead. 1911. Historical Review of Arkansas: Its Commerce, Industry and Modern Affairs, Volume 3. Lewis Publishing co. pp 1534-1535.  https://books.google.com/books/about/Historical_Review_of_Arkansas.html?id=hD9EAQAAMAAJ

4. The couple married soon before or soon after the two arrived in Arkansas. On the ship’s registry, she is listed as “Catherine Penzel” with the name “Christopf Reichardt” following hers, suggesting they were not married at the time.  New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006. (See Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1820-1902; Series: M259; Roll #32)

5. All the information on the ship journeys of the Asch families from Bremen to New Orleans was found through searches of the following Ancestry.com data base: New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006.

Also see, Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild: Ship Johannes

https://www.immigrantships.net/v16/1800v16/johannes18541023.html

6.  According to a newspaper article published in 1939, Johann M. Reichardt had owned a “woolen mill” in Asch, a textile manufacturing center. The article says he sold the mill “in order that he might come of the United States.” See Lucy Marion Reaves. “Glimpse of Yesterday.” Arkansas Gazette, December 10, 1939, p. 23.

On the passenger list of the Johannes, his occupation was listed as “Oeconom,” which probably means economist.

7. John Christopher Geyer “commanded a military organization in the [1848] revolution and was compelled to flee to the US,” according to Fay Hempstead. 1911. Historical Review of Arkansas, vol. 2. Lewis Publishing co. p. 753.  (Available at  https://books.google.com/books?id=Sz9EAQAAMAAJ )  His role in the 1848 revolution (“he led a company of revolutionists”) was mentioned in the obituary of his younger brother, John E. Geyer. See “Pioneer Merchant of the City Succumbs.” Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 29, 1919, p. 2.

The 1860 census showed Geyer living in Welborn Township in Conway County; in 1870 his home was in nearby Howard Township. In 1875, he was appointed postmaster of Plummers Station, a stage coach and train stop in Howard Township. In 1880, Plummer Station was incorporated as Plumerville.

8.  Ancestry.com. New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006.  (See Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1820-1902; Series: M259; Roll #36)

9.  The exact relationship of these two men is not documented. Their ages and the fact they traveled together suggest they were father and son. See Ancestry.com. New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006.  (See Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1820-1902; Series: M259; Roll 38)

10. See Mrs. Arthur R. Connerly. 1964. “The Christopher Reichardt Family.” Pulaski County Historical Review, 12, pp. 51-53.  According to this article by a descendent of the Christopher Reichardt Family, “The first of the Reichardt family to come to America was Christopher. He lived with his parents and brothers and sisters in a small town called Asch, in Bohemia, Germany, and was in love with Miss Anna Penzel of the same town.”

The article then tells the story of how Christopher made it to the United States:  “… [the] Penzels were coming to American by sailship, of course, and Christopher wanted to come along. He begged and pleaded with Father Penzel, but Mr. Penzel didn’t think it was wise for a young couple, unmarried, to be so long on the ocean together. Finally Father Penzel said, ‘Well if you young people want to marry before we go, Chistropher may come along.’ So, at 4:00 o’clock in the morning, just before the ship sailed, Christopher and Anna were married. And they came to American in 1848.”

In considering the accuracy of this story, note that Asch was in Austria, not Germany; John A. Reichardt was likely the first in his family to travel to the United States, arriving in 1848 or 1849; and ship records show that Anna Catherine and Christopher sailed to the United States in 1850 and the father and mother of Catherine Penzel were not listed as passengers on the ship (see footnote 4). 

11. Penzel’s Wanderbuch shows, with a dated entry, that he was in Asch in March, 1857. His father, Johann Christof Penzel, died in Little Rock on July 17, 1857. (The Wanderbuch is an item in the Penzel family collection, BC.MSS.11.01, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Arkansas Studies Institute.)

12. Charles Penzel Wright, Jr., the great-grandson of Charles F. Penzel, referred to his great grandfather as “minor nobility” in an interview published in The Paris Review in 1989. Wright achieved renown as a poet, serving as U.S. poet laureate in 2014-2015 and winning the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1998.  See J.D. McClatchy (interviewer). “Charles Wright. 1989. The Art of Poetry No. 41.” The Paris Review, issue 113, Winter.  (accessed on-line). 

13.  More emigrants from Asch made the journey to Little Rock, but my research has not discovered their fates. Six such emigrants were on the Columbia with George Reichardt and Wolfgang Wunderlich in 1852. They were Johann Precht, age 20, a weaver from Asch, and Adam and Margaretha Heilman, both age 40, who were traveling with two small children from Rossbach (now Hranice), a small city a few miles north of Asch. On the ship’s list of passengers, Precht and the Heilmans specified Little Rock as their travel destination. Other travelers from Asch heading to Little Rock were Christine Jäger, age 28, who traveled with the Johann M. and Sophia Geyer family on their 1852 transatlantic trip. Also on board the ship was John Wolfbrell, age 20, from Asch. In the ship’s records, he listed Arkansas as his destination. On the 1854 ocean journey of the Reichardt family, Maria Pfeiffer, age 20, from Asch, was listed as traveling with them to Arkansas.

14. Adam Penzel departed on March 19, 1879 from Hamburg traveling to New York on the Silesia. See Ancestry.com. New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006. 

15. Adam Penzel apparently was not closely related to Charles Penzel, whose obituary in 1906 did not mention Adam, who was by that time a successful and well-known Little Rock butcher, as a relative. Also, Adam was not a pall bearer at Charles Penzel’s funeral. Adam Penzel did name his first son “Charles.” See “Last Rites for Charles Penzel.” Arkansas Democrat, February 20, 1906, p. 8.

16. Several connections by marriage among the Geyer, Wunderlich, Kuenzel, and Penzel families can be found when exploring genealogy websites. However, Reichardt was an uncommon last name in Asch, suggesting that Johann Martin was born elsewhere and had moved to Asch from Germany.

17. Estimates of the number of 48ers who emigrated to the United States range from 2,000 to 10,000. Either of those numbers is small compared to the estimated 200,000 Germans who emigrated contemporaneously to the United States from 1848 to 1850. Despite the relatively small number of 48ers who came to the U.S., they had a tremendous impact on the nation as politicians, writers, newspaper editors, and opinion leaders, and through their participation in the Union Army during the Civil War.  See the following books: Carl Wittke. 1952. Refugees of Revolution: The German Forty-Eighters in America. University of Pennsylvania Press and Don Heinrich Tolzmann. 1998. The German-American Forty-Eighters, 1848-1998. Indiana German Heritage Society.

To sample present day assessments of 48ers, see the following:  Kent Logson. From Rebels to Democrats – A New Assessment of an Old Relationship. German-American Relations from 1848 to Today. Gustav-Stresemann-Institute e.V Bonn Symposium, Berlin, March 19, 2018, accessed at https://de.usembassy.gov/rebels-democrats/

18. Jonathan J. Wolfe. 1973. “The Peopling of Pulaski: Pulaski County Population Sources and Composition 1830-60.” Pulaski County Historical Review, 21, pp. 51-52.

Shirley Sticht Schuette. 2005. Strangers to the Land: The German Presence in Nineteenth Century Arkansas, A Thesis submitted to the Graduate School University of Arkansas at Little Rock in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Public History, pp. 35-38.

19. Several other emigrates (e.g., Frederick Kramer) came to United States in 1848 and 1849, but they were not refugees fleeing Europe in the aftermath of the Revolution. Of course the political and economic conditions that led to the 1848 Revolution were also factors that led to increasing emigration from German and Austrian states.

20. The 1860 census showed that 63 single men born in Germany or Austria were living in Pulaski County.

21. All of their nearby neighbors were from Germany or Austria. Among them were the families of George Blank and Daniel Rauch, who, according to the 1860 census, were from Austria, and the George Peil family from “Germany.”


The Primrose cemetery was established in 1843 on land donated by George Peil after he buried a son there. In 1867, the Primrose Baptist Church was built on land next to the cemetery. See Jefferson I. Dorough. 1983. “George Daniel Peil and Early German Immigrants in Pulaski County.” Pulaski County Historical Review, Fall, pp. 55-57. Also see, https://www.primroseumc.org/our-heritage 

22. Information on the land granted and sold to Christopher Reichardt is found in a search of this Ancestry.com data base: United States, Bureau of Land Management. Arkansas, Homestead and Cash Entry Patents, Pre-1908 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com, 1997.

23. Fay Hempstead. 1911. Historical Review of Arkansas: Its Commerce, Industry and Modern Affairs, vol. 3. Lewis Publishing co. p. 1534. (Available at https://archive.org/stream/historicalreview03hemp/historicalreview03hemp_djvu.txt 


24. Fay Hempstead. 1911. Historical Review of Arkansas: Its Commerce, Industry and Modern Affairs, vol. 2 Lewis Publishing co. pp. 753-754. (Available at https://books.google.com/books?id=Sz9EAQAAMAAJ )
For more on Louis George and his family, who had come to Little Rock in 1833 as part of the Mainzer Emigration Society, see Dan Durning. 1975. “Those Enterprising Georges: Early German Settlers in Little Rock.” Pulaski County Historical Review, 32(2), June, pp. 21-37. 

25. “Geo. Reichardt, Old Citizen, Dead.” Arkansas Gazette, June 15, 1910, p. 7; “George Reichardt was one of the leading business men of Little Rock.” Arkansas Gazette, Nov. 7, 1931, p. 56; and “George Reichardt (obituary).” Arkansas Staatszeitung, June 17, 1910.

26. Wunderlich enlisted on May 21, 1856. Ancestry.com. U.S. Army, Register of Enlistments, 1798-1914 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. 

27. See “Married.” Weekly Arkansas Gazette, Nov 11, 1853, p. 3 and “Jos. C Schader. Pioneer Resident Passed Away Yesterday.” Arkansas Democrat, Nov. 14, 1902 p. 2. Also see “Mrs. Sophia Schader (obituary).” Arkansas Democrat, January 3, 1916, p.6. 



28. Ferdinand Baer Sr. (obit). Arkansas Democrat, February 15, 1912, p. 10.

29. For more on Kramer, see http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=12300 

30. The last three of these four 1857 weddings were conducted by Washington L. Lewis, a Pulaski County Justice of the Peace.

After their marriages, Louisa and her sister Adelina lived with their husbands in the Little Rock Arsenal barracks until October 1859 when Kramer was allowed to leave the army before the expiration of his five-year term. The Wunderlich family stayed in the barracks until his release from service, effective February 1, 1861, just a week before the commander of the Little Rock Arsenal surrendered it to avoid an attack by an enraged mob.  See David Sesser. 2013. The Little Rock Arsenal Crisis, The History Press. 

When Kramer left the army, he and Adelina moved to a living space above the grocery store he had opened on Main Street in November 1859 with his friend Ferdinand Sarasin, a German immigrant.

31. Note that Kramer had taken the same duties as a carriage maker at the Arsenal that Ditter had had previously. In early 1857, when Kramer had moved to Little Rock as his first term as a soldier was ending, he had applied for U.S. citizenship. Ditter was one of men who signed his application, attesting to Kramer’s good character.

Four of the men who married women from Asch had in common their work as carriage makers and carpenters. Ditter, Kramer, and Wunderlich served as carriage makers at the arsenal, and Ditter, Baer, and Wunderlich made and sold carriages, coffins, and other wooden products.

32. When the 1860 census was taken, the report noted that the members of the Christopher and Johann Martin Reichardt households could not read or write English. However, the lack of English skills was not a big problem for them. Most of their nearby neighbors had also immigrated from Germany or Austria, so it was possible to socialize with them in German. Also, when they needed supplies or other goods, they could get them at Little Rock stores that were owned and operated by German immigrants.

33. Information on John Adam Reichardt’s service was mentioned in testimony he gave on behalf of Issac Bott, a German immigrant living in Little Rock, who had filed a claim in hopes of getting paid for a load of sugar that Federal troops had taken from him in September 1863.  See Ancestry.com. U.S. Southern Claims Commission, Disallowed and Barred Claims, 1871-1880 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007.

34. National Park Service. U.S. Civil War Soldiers, 1861-1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2007.

35. One of Christopher and Johann Martin’s neighbors, George Blank, listed in the 1860 census as being from Austria, lost one of his sons, George, who was killed while serving in the Union Army in 1865. He is buried in the Little Rock National Cemetery.

36. See Calvin L. Collier. 1961. First In – Last Out: The Capital Guards. Pioneer Press (Little Rock).

37. The advertisement, dated May 31, 1861, was headlined, “War! War! War!” and declared in the first sentence, “Both of us are anxious to join the army and hereby announce to be public that we offer our entire stock of Groceries and Provision at moderate cost.”  The ad, published in the Weekly Arkansas Gazette, was signed, “Sarasin & Kramer.”

38. “F. Baer” appears in a search of records in National Park Service. U.S. Civil War Soldiers, 1861-1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2007. According to a history of the Capitol Guard, “F. Bear” was a member of the Guard who left just before it was incorporated into the Confederate Army. Another soldier, this one named George Baer, was in Company A of the Arkansas Sixth Regiment (the former Capitol Guard). He was killed in action on June 27, 1864 at the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia. His relation to Ferdinand Baer, if any, is not known. Collier, First In – Last Out, p. 115.

39. See “Pioneer Merchant of the City Succumbs.” Arkansas Gazette, December 29, 1919, p. 2 and

“Funeral of Pioneer Business Man Tuesday.” Arkansas Democrat, December. 29, 1919, p.1. Also see Fay Hempstead. 1911. Historical Review of Arkansas, vol. 2. Lewis Publishing co. p. 753-754 (Available at  https://books.google.com/books?id=Sz9EAQAAMAAJ ). 

Kramer was, at least briefly, a partner in this tannery, as shown in an advertisement published in the Arkansas Gazette on March 8, 1862.  It stated:  Wanted: A good tanner and currier, to whom the best wages will be given. Enquire at the Tan Yard of Geyer & Kramer.”

40. “Jos. C Schader. Pioneer Resident Passed Away Yesterday.” Arkansas Democrat, Nov. 14, 1902 p. 2.

41. See http://www.chrisanddavid.com/wilsonscreek/roles/SOLDIERSWOODRUFF.html 

42. “Chas. F Penzel Passed Away This Morning.” Arkansas Democrat, Feb. 17, 1906, p. 1 and “Charles F. Penzel Died Suddenly.” Arkansas Gazette, Feb. 17, 1906, p. 1. 

43. Henry Fisher (Fischer) was born in 1818 in Altenburg, Saxony. He emigrated to Arkansas in 1837 and married Anna Catherina George on Feb. 14, 1839. She was a member of the George family (Loui George's sister) that had emigrated to Little Rock in 1833. Henry and Catherina named their first son, born in 1840, Henry. 

Henry Fisher Sr. died on June 13, 1868 leaving a large family behind. “Died.” Daily Arkansas Gazette, June 16, 1868, p. 3.

44. This draft letter was written in Penzel’s own hand in his Wanderbuch, which he must have carried with him when he was a soldier. Remarkably it was written in English even though German was the native language of both him and Henry Sr.  According to a history of the Capitol Guards, Henry Miller was “killed on his feet” in fierce fighting early on December 31, 1862 during the battle of Murfreesboro (also known as the Battle of Stones River).  During the same day of fighting, Peter Hotze, another German immigrant from Little Rock, was wounded when he was “blown off his feet” by an artillery shell and Capt. John Fletcher, who was commanding Company A, was shot in both legs. Calvin L. Collier. 1961. First In – Last Out: The Capital Guards, Pioneer Press (Little Rock), pp. 60 – 65. 

45. Chas. F Penzel Passed Away This Morning. Arkansas Democrat, Feb. 17, 1906, p. 1.

46. See J.D. McClatchy (interviewer). “Charles Wright. 1989. The Art of Poetry No. 41.” The Paris Review, issue 113, Winter.  (accessed on-line).

47. The naturalization papers are in the following collection:  Penzel, Charles F. papers, Arkansas State Archives, Little Rock, Arkansas.