the Germans who came directly from abroad, preferred to hear preaching in German. In Ohio, so Bishop Asbury writes in his journal, "Brother Böhm has the largest body of hearers, because he preaches in German." In 1808 began the missionary travels of Böhm, in company with Bishop Asbury. They visited the states of Ohio, then only just beginning to be settled, Kentucky, Tennessee, the two Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and Canada. It is noteworthy that wherever they went they met Germans, and Brother Böhm had to preach in all places in the German language. It seems that he was selected to accompany Bishop Asbury for that very reason. Whenever their journey took them to pioneer settlements, they found Germans. Böhm preached in the German language at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; at Wheeling, West Virginia; in the state of Ohio at Zanesville, Lancaster, Chillicothe, Circleville; in Kentucky at Louisville, Lexington, and Frankfort; in several places in Tennessee' and North Carolina, and at Charleston, South Carolina. This will give some notion of the more populous German areas. In Cincinnati, Böhm preached the first German sermon that had been heard there. It was September 4, 1808. "The village," he writes in his journal, "promises to grow very were born. The young Heinrich received a good education from Rosmann, a Hessian soldier who had been captured with Rall's regiment at Trenton. To him Heinrich owed his good German. Böhm's father belonged to the United Brethren, becoming a bishop of the sect, but Heinrich received his inspiration at the Methodist conferences of Baltimore and Philadelphia.

1 In East Tennessee he remained for some time on Pigeon River to preach to the Germans there. This was in the neighborhood of Sevierville. The German preacher Hemminger had already preached in German there (1808), which is a clear indication of a large and early German settlement in this region. Cf. Der deutsche Pionier, vol. viii, pp 25-35. It is interesting that Böhm found Germans even in New England. In Boston he stayed at the house of the Reverend Bernhard Othemann.

rapidly. It has almost 2000 inhabitants." After the general conference of 1812, Böhm discontinued his missionary travels, settling down to work among the Germans in Pennsylvania. Subsequently he was assigned to New Jersey, locating in Jersey City. In 1859, though over eighty years of age, he made another tour of the West, this time crossing the mountains by rail. On June 8, 1875, he reached his centenary, and a great celebration was held in his honor in Trinity Church, Jersey City. His fivescore years did not prevent Böhm from preaching a sermon on this occasion. He died, January 15, 1876, in his one hundred and first year. During his tours he had traveled over one hundred thousand miles on foot and on horseback, and had seen prosperous cities rise spontaneously on what had once been prairie and forest. He had shared in all the joys and sorrows of the land, had seen all the presidents of the United States from Washington to Grant, and had voted in all the presidential elections from 1796 to 1872.

Historical records, as well as the accounts of travelers and preachers, prove that in the first decades of the nineteenth century the German element was very largely represented in the Ohio Valley by permanent settlements. The great immigrations from Germany into the Middle West were destined soon to follow.

1 He apologizes later in his autobiography for calling the "Queen City of the West" a village.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WINNING OF THE WEST

III. (A) THE ADVANCE OF THE FRONTIER LINE TO THE

MISSISSIPPI AND MISSOURI RIVERS

(A) Westward progress of the frontier line, shown by the census mapsDescendants of Germans and foreign-born Germans as frontiersmen Two centres of distribution on the Mississippi, (1) New Orleans, (2) St. Louis Early Germans in Louisiana and Alabama (Mobile) — German settlements along the Missouri River Duden's farm and description of Missouri - The "Giessener Gesellschaft," Follen and Münch-German towns and counties in Missouri.

(B) Beginning of the advance of the frontier line toward the Northwest; the Illinois territory opened by George Rogers Clark-Sketch of his expedition and of the work of his German lieutenants, Bowman and Helm

Settlement at Vevay, Indiana - The Harmony Society (Rappists) on the Wabash in 1815 - St. Clair County, Illinois; Belleville, Highland, Madison County - Chicago - German settlements in Iowa: Dubuque, Davenport, Des Moines, etc.- Germans in Michigan; the missionary Baraga; settlers in Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Westphalia (Ionia County). THE two foregoing chapters described the first two stages in the winning of the West with reference to the part taken by the Germans and their descendants. The Virginia and Carolina Germans were found stationed on the advance line and among the reserves that opened Kentucky and Tennessee for settlement. Coming from Kentucky on the south and from Pennsylvania on the east, they pushed forward for the conquest of the Valley of the Ohio. The pioneers of German blood arrived as early as any, and were surpassed by none in securing a permanent foothold in the newly settled areas.

One of the most glorious chapters in American history has been outlined in the report of the Eleventh Census of

the United States in the volume on population.' It is the history of a century of conquest, 1790–1890, a conquest of the vast territory lying between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The chapter is sketched by the aid of maps illustrating the density of the population of the United States at each successive census period. The frontier line in 1790 ran parallel to the Appalachian Mountain Range, crossing the latter only in a few places,—the Mohawk Valley, the Pittsburg district, the Holston and Kentucky lines of settlement. Slowly the frontier advanced to the westward, scarcely reaching the Mississippi by 1820, showing that a desperate struggle was going on between the white settlers on the one hand and the aboriginal inhabitants, aided by wild nature's barriers, on the other. Sometimes the line is involved and complex, but decade upon decade it steadily moves on, beyond the Mississippi, onward to about the ninety-fifth meridian in 1850, reaching the one hundredth (the beginning of the arid region) in 1880, with scattered settlements meanwhile leaping beyond, making a new frontier on the Pacific coast and in the Rocky Mountains. The next census report in 1890 announced the momentous fact that the frontier line had disappeared from the map of the United States."

1 Report on Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census, 1890, part 1, pp. xviii to xxix.

2 "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken by isolated bodies of settlers that there hardly can be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it cannot, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." Bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890. F. J. Turner, in his essay, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (p. 9), adds the following comment : "This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historical movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession,

For the historian of the German element in the United States no more gratifying field of labor will be found than the location of German settlements in the Western areas. He will find the German element on the frontier line at every stage of its progress westward, securing and defending it, or pushing it onward as did the Palatines before the Revolutionary War. Just as in the eighteenth, so in the nineteenth century, two classes of the German element must be reckoned with, those who through one or more generations were native Americans, and secondly, those who were born in Germany. The latter either came to better their condition, or they were refugees, oftener political than religious in the nineteenth century.

The native German element, except where it had dwelt in a distinctly German environment, showed complete assimilation and was undistinguishable from the native stock. Nevertheless the fact of its existence should not be overlooked. It had the advantage of position, also of familiarity with the modes of pioneer life, when compared with the European representatives of the same stock. This native element was abundant in every one of the three great currents of westward movement: (1) That along the Mohawk River through central New York to Lake Erie and northern Ohio. This was the road for the New Englanders to the Western Reserve district, but it was also the road west for the German element in the Mohawk Valley or on the Hudson, or even in New Jersey. (2) That proceeding through central Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, or the lower road following the southeastern border of the Pennsylvania mountains into Maryland, then westward on the North Branch of the Potomac River, thence to

and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development."