The Dissertation Committee for Judith L - The University of Texas at ...

Chapter One
The Setting
Introduction to the Study
Geographers and historians have written much about the impact of European
immigrant groups in the United States and the regions where they settled. As Europeans
moved to the United States some settled in rural areas while others quickly established
towns. Whether in rural or urban settings immigrant groups created communities that
reflected the culture they brought with them, but through the process of simplification
these communities were not exact replicas of the ones left behind. These people also felt
pressures to acculturate and assimilate within the more dominant U. S. Anglo culture.
These pressures displayed itself within the towns they established. Likewise, as towns
naturally modified to reflect changes occurring across the United States, immigrant towns
did the same.
The Germans who migrated to Texas in the nineteenth century have been the
focus for many in their scholarly works. 1 They were the largest European group to come
to Texas in the nineteenth century. Most of the migrating group came under the
1
Walter Struve, Germans & Texans: Commerce, Migration and Culture in the Days of the Lone Star
Republic (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996); Lauren Kattner, “Growing Up and Town
Development: Social and Cultural Adaptation in a German-American Town,” MA Thesis, University of
Texas at Dallas, December 1987; Glen E. Lich, The German Texans (San Antonio: University of Texas
Institute of Cultures, 1981); Jean T. Hannaford, “The Cultural Impact of European Settlement in Central
Texas in the Nineteenth Century,” MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1970; D. W. Meinig,
Imperial Texas: An Interpretive Essay in Cultural Geography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969);
Hubert G. H. Wilhelm, “Organized German Settlement and Its Effects on the Frontier of South-Central
Texas,” (PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois, August 1968); Terry G. Jordan, German Seed in Texas
Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth-Century Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966); Rudolph
L. Biesele, The History of German Settlements in Texas 1831-1861 (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1930).
This is only a partial list. For a more complete listing of other titles and a wide variety of articles written
about the Germans in Texas see the Bibliography.
1