View of Davenport, Iowa
The following paragraphs are from Chapter XXIX, History of Davenport and Scott County, Iowa, by Harry E. Downer. 2 vols. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1910.
THE GERMAN IMPRESS.
The earliest German immigration came to Scott county almost at the beginning of her history. From historic sources of unquestioned verity the population of Davenport in 1836 was about 100, consequently the history of the village cannot be said to have begun before that date. On may 15, 1836 the first German family came to this vicinity. It was the family of Carl Jacob Freitag (Friday) who with his wife and his three sons, Johann, Jacob and Gottlieb, had emigrated from Wurttemberg, pressed forward across the broad, western prairies, for the most part using a yoke of oxen for transportation, until he settled as a farmer in what is now Rockingham township, a few miles down the Mississippi river. Here in the new home three days later, a daughter, Caroline, was born to the German pioneer couple. In the year 1836 there also landed in America the Bomberg family which included Friedrich Ernst Bomberg, his wife and seven children......
Early in the year 1848 Davenport received an additional company of German immigrants numbering about 250, most of these coming from Schleswig-Holstein, where political conditions were intolerable. This stream of immigration continued, as those who had reached this land induced their friends and relatives to come. When finally the struggle of Schleswig-Holstein against Danish despotism had reached an unfortunate conclusion a larger immigration began in the years from 1851 to 1853. The German immigration was swelled by those coming from other German provinces, due to the reaction following the times of revolution in the fatherland. Until the beginning of the '1880s, a large stream of German immigration poured into this vicinity, which gradually became weaker, and although today comparatively few in the old fatherland think of emigrating it has never entirely ceased.
The Iowa census of 1890 gave Scott county a population of 43,164, of which 10,130, or very nearly one-fourth, were natives of Germany. If to this large number be added the German immigration of the twenty years following 1890 and the direct descendants of all those coming from Germany a strong showing is made for the strength of German-Americanism in this county. That not all descendants of Germans retain their German spirit is unfortunately true, yet on the other hand, it is pleasant to be able to state that in a large number of the sons and daughters of the immigrants of the '40s till '60s, the inherited spirit of the fatherland still is manifest and the love of the German language and the good old German customs has not died out. There has been no lack of continued commercial success for such true German-Americans. It is only necessary to mention here the descendants of several old forty-eighters and others more recent: Louis Hanssen's Sons, Christ Mueller's Sons, Ferdinand Roddewig's Sons, H. & H. Rohlfs, Wahle brothers, Peter Feddersen, Oswald, Walter and Herman Schmidt, Charles Naeckel's Sons, T. Richter's Sons, the sons of Henry Lischer, Alfred and Henry True, Henry and William Wiese, Ad. Eckermann, and others.
Reference
1. History of Davenport and Scott County, Iowa, by Harry E. Downer. 2 vols. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1910.
Viewed at the following website: http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/1910TC.html
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