The Arkansas River Valley Takes Pride in Its German-Swiss Heritage

Friendly people who take pride in the beauty of their mountain surroundings as well as their German and Swiss heritage roll out a warm welcome to the Arkansas River Valley, where thousands of their ancestors relocated in response to recruiting efforts in the late 1800s.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Altus, located on the Ozark Plateau in Franklin County, was home to one of the largest international settlements in the state, attracting people from Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Yugoslavia and Ireland. Situated in the Boston Mountains at the highest point on the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railway, the town was attractive to immigrants because its soil and climate were ideal for establishing a viticultural region and for its strong resemblance to their mother countries. Although many who settled in Altus worked on the railroad, in the nearby coal mines or utilized their skills as craftsmen to make their living, most were farmers, with grapes for winemaking and table consumption as the predominate crop.

As Arkansas historian Dr. Jonathan Wolfe notes in his study of the German and Swiss migration to Arkansas, the state was ill-equipped financially to carry out a large-scale plan to attract German-speaking immigrants. So the job fell to “religion and railroads” to carry out the plan.

Bishop Edward Fitzgerald of the Diocese of Little Rock was eager to add to the state’s Catholic population. The Little Rock and Fort Smith Company sought to sell more than 4 million acres of government-granted land for $2 to $6 an acre in hopes of recouping some of the cost of bringing its railroad (completed in 1876) to the primitive Valley, which stretched some 165 miles from Little Rock in the center of the state to the Northwest outpost of Fort Smith.

During the 1870-90 period, Arkansas’ German-speaking population grew from 1,708 to 7,018, largely because of this partnership. Although many other Southern states had larger German populations, among those states only Texas added more German-speaking immigrants in those 20 years.

Two German religious orders that were greatly affected by Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf – the Benedictines and the Holy Ghost Fathers – were significant influences in helping the Bishop and the railroad company realize their objectives.

Benedictine monks who fled Germany to the relative safety of the monastery in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, were transplanted to America to found St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana. In exchange for railroad land, their Abbott agreed to establish a mission center and a convent for Benedictine nuns in the Arkansas River Valley. This agreement led to the founding of St. Benedict’s Priory in 1878 near Paris, AR. Renamed New Subiaco Abbey in 1891, it provided priests for churches at such places as New Dixie, Hartman, Scranton, Altus, Paris and Morrison’s Bluff.

The Holy Ghost fathers were expelled from Germany, with several priests making their way to Ohio and Pennsylvania. Learning that Father Joseph Strub of the Order was intent on establishing a colony in the west, Bishop Fitzgerald persuaded him to investigate available land in Arkansas. Father Strub then secured 200,000 acres of railroad land extending from Little Rock to near present-day Russellville for the founding of St. Joseph Colony. Priests who came to the territory eventually colonized churches in Conway, Morrilton, Dardanelle, Atkins, Coal Hill and Clarksville.

Reports on the availability of cheap land and its resemblance to Germany and Switzerland in this valley drew immediate response from German-speaking residents of the Midwest, the Northeast and from Western Europe. Father Strub helped spread the word with publication of Leitstern, a tract that served as an immigrant’s guide to reaching the promised land. It presented many favorable comparisons of Arkansas to Germany and Switzerland, depicting life for immigrants far more rosy than real life proved to be.

The Little Rock and Fort Smith Railway offered free tickets for explorers of the new land and one-price tickets from Europe to Arkansas for immigrants. The period between 1878 and 1883 brought the greatest number of Germans and Swiss to Arkansas, and the majority of immigrants had settled by 1885.

At one time there were 42 wineries in Altus. Now there are five, three of them dating from those first German and Swiss settlers. Jacob Post moved to Altus in 1879 and planted the first commercial vineyards in Altus in 1880. Johann Andreas Wiederkehr, a native of Switzerland, founded Wiederkehr Wine Cellars in 1880, carving out of a hillside a wine cellar that is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and houses the excellent Weinkeller Restaurant. Jacob Post founded the Post Familie Vineyards and Winery in the same year, and his legacy is in the sixth generation of family management at that winery and at St. John’s (Est. 2005) and Mount Bethel Winery (Est. 1956). The fifth winery is Chateau aux Arc (the original spelling of “Ozark”) Vineyards and Winery, established in 1998.

“Jacob Post came to America in 1872 to escape religious persecution and to pursue economic opportunities that were not available to him in Germany,” says Joseph Post, great-great grandson who, with 7 of 11 siblings, manages the family’s winery.

“He came by boat to Ellis Island, then to New Delphi, IN. He was a German-trained horticulturalist/winemaker and started growing grapes in New Delphi without much success. He came to Arkansas after his priest told him about a group of German-Swiss Benedictine monks that had just formed a new abbey in Arkansas.”

Jacob Post purchased 80 acres of land from the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railway, providing a water and fuel station for the trains. “The passengers became the first customers of Post Familie Vineyards and Winery,” according to Joseph.

Descendants continue to incorporate into their lives the pioneer spirit of those first immigrants. “We are still self-sufficient in many ways,” says Joseph. “Most of our food is from the family farm – vegetables, fruits, nuts, beef and venison as well as our wines are harvested and enjoyed in due season.

“Our family in and around Altus still shares the sausage press used by our great-great grandfather. We still build our own buildings and work on all of our own equipment, even building our own parts when necessary.”

Spry and energetic Cyrilla Sax Raible, 94, has lived all her life in Altus and has ties to both the Wiederkehr and Post families. Her father was a first cousin to the Wiederkehrs, and her sister, who lived to 104, married a Post. Winemaking also was in her family, and she remembers packing grapes for shipment during Prohibition when winemaking was illegal except for the production of altar wines.

“Times were hard – and sad, with the loss of a lot of children,” Mrs. Raible says of the days of her ancestors, with malaria, cholera and even starvation plaguing many of those who came to the Arkansas frontier. She recounts that many families were not well accepted in the town because of their Catholic faith and their German and Swiss ancestry.

Mrs. Raible remembers a day when she was about 6 and other children threw rocks at her when she went into town to mail a letter. “Many years later, however, I was visited by a man who had left Altus but was back on a visit. He apologized to me and others for the treatment Germans and Swiss received as students.”

“Life was tough; coal mining was one of the very few cash paying jobs available,” says Joseph Post. “They were discriminated against, but they had tremendous faith. I know from stories told by my great aunts and uncles that German Catholics were thought very poorly of by the townsfolk of Altus in the early 1900s. The protestant kids would . . . chase the Catholic kids back up the mountain. Often they would set fire to the Catholics’ fields on the hill. Wet burlap sacks were always kept on hand to fight the fires.”

Post served on the Coal Miners Memorial Committee with a small cross-section of his community. His role was to take everyone’s ideas into consideration and design an appropriate monument that stands on the Altus town square in honor of the mostly Slavs and Irish who worked the mines in nearby communities.

Most of the German-speaking population settled on Pond Mountain, now more commonly known as St. Mary’s Mountain, where St. Mary’s Catholic Church (officially, Our Lady of Perpetual Help) was established by the Benedictines in 1879. Sandstone for the present church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1901, was quarried by hand from the mountain. Also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the church, which underwent a $500,000 restoration at the time of its 120^th anniversary observance in 1999, is in the Roman Basilica style and is known for paintings by German artist Fridolin Fuchs, who enlisted many immigrants as models for his depiction of the Passion of Christ; its beautiful J.G. Pfeffer organ, built in 1897 and restored in 1986; and 29 stained glass windows.

“The paintings, stained glass and simple architecture of St. Mary’s do wonders for my spirit of faith and community,” explains Joseph. “I’m proud that several of my relatives were used as models in the paintings. There are a number of parishioners who have ancestors in the paintings. I think it wonderful and becoming a little unique in our highly mobile society to see multiple generations of the same family worshipping at the same location. It’s like a living faith.”

Most of the paintings were done between 1915 and 1917. Pope Benedict the 15^th is pictured as well as the Bishop of Little Rock, the Abbot of Subiaco, and the then-priest of St. Mary’s.

“The artist did a self-portrait in the painting of Christ driving the merchants out of the temple,” Joseph explains. “I think this is proof that he had a good sense of humor, because he was probably hitting up the priest for money to go home to Germany.”

Altus celebrates its heritage annually with a Grape Festival over the last weekend of July and the Wine Fest/Harvest Celebration over the last weekend of September. Tours and wine tastings are available year round, and St. Mary’s Church is open to visitors. Father Hillary Filiatreau is a fount of history on both the church and New Subiaco Abbey. The Heritage House Museum tells the story of Altus’ past with its numerous exhibits and artifacts.

Altus and other towns throughout the Arkansas River Valley are easily accessible from Interstate 40, which parallels the Arkansas River from Little Rock to Fort Smith.

Published by German Life Magazine, Summer 2006

An Intriguing Story of Settlement

My interest in researching the German-Swiss Catholic families that settled throughout the Arkansas River Valley in the 1800s stems from the search for my own Arkansas family’s roots, which are in that area of Conway County that became part of Faulkner County when it was formed in 1873. In searching the 1880 census for links to ancestors, I was intrigued by page after page of enumerated families that gave Germany and Switzerland as their places of birth.

After searching hundreds of census forms from the 1840s forward that included families from no more exotic locales than the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana and occasionally more distant places, it was, to say the least, out of the ordinary to encounter real emigrants to Arkansas – people who obviously uprooted their complete lives to start new ones thousands of miles from their birthplaces and farther than that in terms of miles of the heart and mind.

The obvious question for me was, “Why?” Even though there had been a large German population in the United States from the 1600s, with a growing influx of German immigrants beginning with the 1830s, no period equals that of the 1880s, when one and a half million Germans migrated to America. Over a quarter of a million came in 1882 alone. Only the Irish were relocating in greater numbers.

It’s one thing to ascribe movement of families from within a young United States to the new territories with the promise of vast acreage for the staking, the spirit of adventure, the lure of economic prosperity. After all, it was only a few hundred miles to the frontier, and it wasn’t that long ago that where they lived WAS the frontier.

In many ways, the German migration was similarly motivated. There was no united Germany before 1871. Germany was comprised of dozens of small "state kingdoms" and principalities scattered across north central Europe. Religious persecution in the 18th centruy was followed by political oppression in the 19th century. But above all else, Germans came for the economic opportuniies.

They joined emigrants to Arkansas from Italy, Bohemia, Poland, Russia and Ireland, among other nations, in the search for a better life.

This blog is about tracking descendants of the families who made this trek, whether straight from Germany or other countries or from other states in the U.S. Finding people who have a story to tell about their descendants and relating them is one of the goals of this site. Although we may know how and why this immigration developed, it would be educational and entertaining to learn from journals, letters, anecdotes and other sources the how and the why.

Were the expectations of both the recruiters and the recruited met? Some of the arrivals were disenchanted pretty quickly and many of them relocated after a short time; other families remained, some of them now in their 6th generation.

How did they make a living? What were the significant contributions they made – churches, schools, establishment of the wine industry.

Some communities – Morrison’s Bluff comes to mind – thrived but have all but disappeared from the Arkansas landscape; an old cemetery still exists at Morrison’s Bluff and the church that was established there is still in existence.

What other nationalities came to the region – Bohemians in Dardanelle, Italians in Tontitown, Poles at Marche, etc.?