Die Luxemburgers in der neuen Velt

(The Luxemburger in the New World)
Our family is pretty typical of the immigrants who came to America to change things--not the least of which was finding a larger selection of people to marry.  Just my own great-greats represent German, Austrian, Luxemburger and Polish people.  Once here, their kids got busy and rearranged the gene pool.
Obviously, this post has to do with the Luxemburg contingent.


 We've mentioned "Die Luxemburgers in der neuen Velt" before.  It was written by Nicholas Gonner and published in German in 1889, in Dubuque, Iowa.  It was part guidebook, part documentation, and a good part bragging.  The idea was that a new immigrant could come here, book in hand, and find people he knew, and land available, in this vast country. 
"To us our countrymen but to make it even to other, more practical way useful, we added the counsels for emigrants. We limited ourselves not on our personal experiences, but drew from the best sources", (apologies for the machine translation). The book is online HERE, open to "our" pages.


BTW, our Luxemburgers were Peter and Angelica SAND, who begat Michael SAND, who married Louisa RAUSCH...whose daughter Elizabeth SAND married Anton HESCH, my lucky grandparents.  You can find Peter's appearance in the book HERE...(as well as Mr Majerus from a couple posts ago).


Anyway, the machine translation service seems to be a bit better lately, and we wanted you to see the translated description of Stearns County:
"Almost in the center of the densely populated portion of the state lies the large Stearns County. It has 1350 engl. Square miles with a population of about 30,000 souls, including 6000 German, of which 215 families are Luxembourgers. The county is heavily forested, especially the northeastern half, fairly flat, well watered, has many beautiful lakes and good farmland. It is really a county that fits the Luxembourgers. The capital city of St. Cloud, Stearns Co. is on the Mississippi, almost entirely German, and it is the seat of the new bishopric of northern Minnesota. The Catholic population of the county, especially German, is very numerous. Have contributed much to the Benedictine Fathers, on the west 12 miles on a lake in the middle of the forest, the output docked sixties an abbey, with an educational institution for the middle class boys is connected. She now leads the title of St. John's, formerly St. Louis, on the lake.
 Jn Stearns Co. are 14 parishes - without the cathedral church - all but two, one Polish and one English, German, and also includes 11 missions, also almost exclusively German. With few exceptions the entire Benedictine provided pastoral care and is responsible for the spiritual and religious needs, therefore, well taken care of. 

It would take too long, we wanted to respond specifically to the various communities. Jn and around St. Cloud 16 families and 18 families live very mixed Luxembourg. The parish of St. Wendel, Luxembourg post office, in the same township, including 21 full and 12 mixed families, and the large parish of Cold Spring has 14 full and 14 mixed families Luxembourg. They can have 63, more than all other communities in Luxembourg Family St. Nicholas is. The remaining families Luxembourg are among the various other parishes of the county. The value of land in the county is different, at St. Nicholas HL5 to H20, H20 and H7 in Avon, Cold Spring at Lake Henry H10 to b15; in Luxembourg H20 to H25, H18 and H25 in St. Cloud, etc. The first Luxembourg were found in St. Cloud and elsewhere in the county. in 1856, stronger in 1857 and 1858. They came from Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and partly even from Europe. She did not hesitate long before they went on building churches' s, since 1871 the county had already 12 German municipalities".
Pretty cool, huh?  Oh, and Larry found a Luxemburg immigrant listing online: 
Luxembourg/American Families.org (yup, set to SAND, but you can play with it) ☺