- ’0 yuoo-rrfO'J-‘V g “"4 ‘fl} ¢'0'-ivo-aa-o o " -"' o 0- at... . 3." IT. boron -¢. .. ' '0...- oII on a. ' . - 0 .Ov.‘. . g, '1' I O O O'C-n- 1' o. ' O'Oilwloo ., '- 0' ‘ " 5’ lot-u '. . I' . n .90..‘- v 0' 0 ' " ' I‘“~o- -I no ‘ "I00‘o~cli. n o A ..r c— 00000 ... no . 00b .~d I~"“ o. I (.0p4. .r..-.f‘. a .‘ -1..'-—.o~n. Q...’0 I , . 0o 0" i...".o| a I OOOOOO &0'0|-0|. o'- . o- . uo-h-Go-wfiow- OI. ‘0 0 vamtmu o- I 0 . ’. .‘IId'o.~'I 0".- Q.. 'Oidlow 'a .- ....... 7‘ 00.”.Iog‘yu .~.. ~... " '0' |. .' . . ' 40" Q .0 , ..“\u . ‘1' . 0" can loo u. ‘ v .v a I'D .0 «I. ll. Q I 'l ' u .a- 1' .- T i. o ' b 0‘ o ‘ 1 0- , .0 o. I w-—. . I ‘0..."' In‘Op-c-c a. I oo-o'oonu 'II no .7le I. Hal ..0 'l O 0 C o .. .u’o THE SPATIAL EVOLUTION¢0F THE GERMAN AMERICAN CULTURE RECION th CLINTON AND TDNTA COUNTIES MICHIGAN Thesis for [the Degree of M. A. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY PETER WALLACE DeFORTH 1970 Mg... _-m 1: \ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT LID-EAR}! Mag 3 c _ LL; “’“W 4,. wwwg aaaaaaaaa "NAG & 3|]st Q 300K ”BIND SERVO INT; ”mm” ................ ‘ PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DATE DUE I DATE DUE DATE DUE “JUNE 7 2014 “62/15 10/13 K.IProj/AocsrPres/CIRCIDateDueForms__2013.indd - pg 1 ABSTRACT THE SPATIAL EVOLUTION OF THE GERMAN-AMERICAN CULTURE REGION IN CLINTON AND IONIA COUNTIES, MICHIGAN By Peter Wallace DeForth The German-American culture region in Clinton and Ion- ia Counties has been a distinctive cultural island on the Michigan landscape for most of the last one hundred and thirty-four years. But in the last two decades the cultur- al identity of its inhabitants has been eroding rapidly, probably due to the modernizing influences of vastly in- creased mobility, technology, and communications. To the casual observer, there is little initial evidence of the cultural heritage of the area. Yet there is enough evi- dence to encourage the cultural geographer to ask whether a culture region does exist today in Westphalia. And if so, in what form does it exist, and what are the spatial manifestations of its presence? This thesis concentrates on establishing the exis- tence, identifying the form, and describing the spatial distributions associated with the German-American culture region that grew up around the Catholic German settlement at Westphalia and the Lutheran Germans that settled on its eastern fringes. In order to achieve this purpose, aspects of both the genetic and functional approaches in cultural geography are utilized to assess the culture, its history, and its manifestations on the cultural landscape, and to identify the cultural processes that have shaped its spa- tial evolution. The second purpose is to evaluate the usefulness of Meinig's gore, domain, and sphere concepts for analyzing and describing a relatively small culture region that is divided into sub-cultures by the religious differences of its inhabitants. Synthesis of the evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion that there has been and still is a rural Ger- man-American culture in Clinton and Ionia Counties. Mem- bers of both the Catholic and Lutheran German sub-cultures exhibit religious and social behavior patterns which reveal a regional sense of ethnic consciousness, even though the processes operating in the region have segmented the sub- cultures into a series of religious social systems that have displayed markedly different rates of acculturation. Spatially significant social systems appear to be a better tool for analyzing the Spatial evolution of small culture regions that contain sharply divided sub-cultures than do the more generic concepts of core, domain, and sphere, which appear to be better suited to analyzing and describ- ing relatively monolithic cultures. THE SPATIAL EVOLUTION OF THE GERMAN-AMERICAN CULTURE REGION IN CLINTON AND IONIA COUNTIES, MICHIGAN By Peter Wallace DeForth A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Geography 1970 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter I. II. III. INTRODUCTION, THEORY AND METHODOLOGY . . . Introduction Statement of Problem Theoretical Considerations Methodological Considerations HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN-AMERICAN CULTURE REGION . . . . . The Cultural Nucleus Growth of the Settlement Arrival of the Lutheran Germans Expansion of the German-American Culture Region The Historical Basis THE SEARCH FOR CULTURAL HOMOGENEITY: RESULTS OF FIELD RESEARCH . . . . . . . . The Need for Field Research The Social Bases Spatial Changes in Values Religious and Secular Organizations Cultural Ceremonies and Traditions The Use of the German Language Changes in the Spelling of Names Economic and Cultural Orientation Evidence on the Cultural Landscape Analysis of House Types Analysis of Barn Types Cemeteries ii iv 17 9b IV. THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF THE CULTURE REGION: PROCESSES, CURRENT SYNTHESIS, AND CONCLUSIONS 0 O O 0 O O O O O O O 0 O 0 0 197 Processes Shaping the Culture Region Current Synthesis and Conclusions APPENDIX I O O O O O O O O 0 O O O O O O O O O O O 21 7 LIST OF REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 iii Table l. 11. 12. 13. lb. LIST OF TABLES Page Newly Arrived German Immigrants Settling near the Site of Westphalia, Michigan (1836-1842) 0 o o o o o o o o a o o o o o o o 33 Baptisms in St. Mary's Parish, 1839-1862 . . . 38 German Farm Owners Who Have Migrated from the Culture Region to Adjacent Townships, 1967 o I o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 75 Migration of Selected Culture Region Families to Nearby Cities, as Reflected in Telephone Directories, 1969 . . . . . . . 76 German-American Culture Region and Vicinity Population Changes, 1910-1960 . . . . . . . . 85 Community Businesses and Services, 1969 . . . . 87 Agricultural Statistics, l9h5-l955 . . . . . . 88 German Language Proficiency in the Culture RegiOn, 1969 o o o o o o o e o o o o o o o o lLIrl Spelling Changes in German Family Names . . . . 148 1960 Land Use in Clinton County, Selected TownShips O O C C O C O O O O O O O O O O O O 165 House Types and Characteristics . . . . . . . . 172 Barn Types and Characteristics . . . . . . . . 187 Condition of Farmstead Buildings (Other than HouSeS) O O I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 190 Characteristics of the Survey . . . . . . . . . 220 iv Figure 1. 2. 10. 11. 12. 13. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Westphalia, Michigan and Vicinity . . . . . 1842: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, MiChigan O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O l86h: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, MiChj-gan O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 1875: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Mi Chigan O I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 1896: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1915: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1969: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . German Language Proficiency: Adults . . . German Language Proficiency: Retired Elders O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 German Language Proficiency: Minors . . . Primary Town Patronized for Church Services . Primary Town Patronized for Social Needs . Cemeteries Where Most Recent Ancestors he Buried O O O C O I I O O O O O O O O Page 32 45 53 57 66 7O 1&2 1&3 inn 152 153 154 14. 15. l6. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 2t». 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. Primary Town Patronized for Medical services 0 O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O 0 Primary Town Patronized for Banking Sewices 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 Primary Town Patronized for Groceries Purchases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Primary Town Patronized for Clothing PurChaseS o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 0 "Prairie Tee" house . . . . . . . . . . . . "I-Type“ house 0 o o o o o o o o o o o o 0 "Square, Two-story, Pyramidal-roof" house . "Cross-Type" house . . . . . . . . . . . . "Estate-Type" house . . . . . . . . . . . . Modern ranch-style home . . . . . . . . . . Double-crib log barn . . . . . . . . . . . Interior construction of the log barn . . . New England "English" barn . . . . . . . . New England barn modified to increase hay storage capacity by addition of a gambrel I‘OOf o I o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o High-gambrel-I‘OOf barn o o o o o o o o o o curved-I‘OOf barn o o o o o o o o o o o o o I vi 155 156 157 158 173 173 175 175 177 177 182 182 184 18A 186 186 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION, THEORY AND METHODOLOGY Introduction One of the most noticeably German place names in Michigan belongs to Westphalia, a small community located approximately seventeen miles northwest of Lansing. The name stands alone, like the Germans who first settled near the present site of that village. From the small group of five men who emigrated to this area from Westphalia Prov- ince, Germany in 1836, the concentration of German pioneers and their descendants has grown to the extent that German- Americans now own virtually all of the land adjacent to the nearby communities of Fowler and Pewamo as well (See Fig- ures l and 7). The first Germans to establish their homes in this vicinity were Catholics, but they were soon joined by a group of German Lutherans who were attracted to the ethnic island and purchased farms on its eastern fringes. To these people coming from abroad, religion was extremely import- ant: many of them had left Europe because of their relig- ious beliefs. From the church attendance in the area today, it is apparent that religion still enjoys a central position in the German-American communities. And the ethnic con- 1 LEGEND WWW" ___ NW A WESTPHALIA, MICHIGAN : stun: mmv ”.— mvmagusmms N AND VICINITY :mva. mo :1: mm) o r 2 3 4 5 SCALE N MILES Figure l 3 sciousness among the German—American people there appar- ently has been reinforced by their religion: while the Ger- man language is not heard in everyday community life, it is still spoken at informal gatherings after church services on Sundays in Westphalia. There is sufficient evidence to conclude that the community of Westphalia and the surrounding German-settled area were initially a "cultural island" surrounded by a sea of Yankee, English-speaking pioneers from New England. One hundred and thirty-four years have passed since the first German settlers arrived in the region, and immigration fig- ures reveal that most of the in-migration of Germans to this area ceased before the turn of the twentieth century. Con- sequently, many traces of the old German and pioneer ways of life have disappeared. Every one of the inhabitants of this area now considers English to be his primary language of communication, and perceives himself entirely as an American. German is very rarely spoken in public. The dress, the appearance, and the social, political and econom- ic attitudes of the German-Americans there are similar to the characteristics and attitudes of the populace in much of the rest of rural midwestern America. Yet after being questioned closely, many of the in- habitants admit that some of the most drastic changes in their life style have occurred in the past three decades. .All of this evidence poses intriguing questions to the cul- ‘tural geographer: Does a German-American culture region L, exist today at Westphalia? And if it does, in what form does it exist, and what are the specifically spatial man- ifestations of its presence? Statement of Problem The German settlement around Westphalia, Michigan offers the cultural geographer a unique example of the de- velopment of a German-American cultural island that, be- cause of religious differences, split into two distinct groups: the Catholic German-American sub-culture and the Lutheran German-American sub-culture.l Most of the genera- tion that associated strongly with the cultural heritage of the pioneer groups has, however, passed on, and those that presently survive will in all likelihood be gone within the 1The existence of an American "culture" at the time when the German settlers arrived is debatable. The German- American culture could, I suppose, be considered to be a sub-culture of a larger American "culture" that was homo- geneous in its democratic and pioneering traditions and in the fact that it served as a "melting pot" for a tremen- dously heterogeneous immigrant population. But the German- American culture had characteristics, as will be shown, that made it neither distinctly German nor distinctly Amer- ican: it may therefore be considered as a culture in its own right, at least in its early stages, and will be treat- ed as such in this thesis. The arrival of the German Luth- eran settlers split the German-American culture into two sub-cultures, since the Lutherans could not be accepted as full members in the German Catholic religious community. In order to facilitate brevity, the German-Americans that belong to the German-American culture group in Clinton and Ionia Counties, Michigan, shall hereafter be referred to simply as "Germans," and the Catholic and Lutheran Ger- man-Americans as Catholic and Lutheran Germans. But for the purpose of avoiding confusion in contrasting broad cultural groups, the terms "German-American culture" and 'GermanaAmerican culture region" shall be retained. 5 next decade. Almost all of the inhabitants of German des- cent perceive themselves as members in the American cultur- al group and believe that their behavior is typically Amer- ican. And much of the evidence of past cultural homogene- ity is rapidly being replaced by a different scale order of homogeneity in the face of the modernizing influences of vastly increased mobility, technology, and communications, all of which tend to level cultural differences. There are two purposes for conducting this research. The first is to establish the existence, identify the form, and describe the specifically spatial manifestations of the German-American culture region in Clinton and Ionia Coun- ties, Michigan. In order to achieve this purpose, aspects of both the genetic and functional approaches in cultural geography will be employed to assess the culture, its his- tory, its manifestations on the cultural landscape, and the processes that have shaped the spatial evolution of the culture region. The second purpose is to evaluate the usefulness of Meinig's generic core, domain and sphere concepts in describing a relatively small culture region, such as the one at Westphalia, Michigan, by using Spatially significant religious soEial systems as the basic unit of evaluation. Theoretical Considerations Cultural geographers, through application of the concept of culture, seek understanding of the spatial distribution and space relations of man and those fea- 6 tures on the earth's surface which have been produced or modified by human action. To this end they have focused their attention upon study of the differences from place to place in the ways of life of human com- munities and their creation of man-made or modified features. . . . They study the material and nonmaterial phenomena and processes relevant for an understanding of the spatial distribution of cultures.2 Wagner and Mikesell have identified five themes which are central to and have characterized the literature of cultural geography: culture, culture area, cultural land- scape, culture history, and cultural ecology. While each theme may be the focus of a particular research project, it is necessary to consider all of the others in relation to the theme under study in order to achieve a balanced ap- proach.3 And if, as is sometimes the case, the central theme is not well defined, the other themes may be studied in their interrelationships for indirect clues to the miss- ing evidence. In this manner the missing information could conceivably be replaced, or at least approximated, by other pertinent evidence, and the original intent of the study achieved. The emphasis of this study is on the culture area. The concentration of descendants of German settlers in the 2National Academy of Sciences -- National Research Council, The Science of Geography (Washington, D.C.: Re- port of the Ad Hoc Eommittee on Geography, National Acad- emy of Sciences -- National Research Council, 1965), p. 23. 3Philip L. Wagner and Marvin W. Mikesell, Readings in Cultural Geography(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962i, p. 23. 7 vicinity of Westphalia, Michigan, is an accepted fact. But so is their perception of themselves as Americans and not as Germans. The question which inevitably must be answered is whether or not a culture area, or region, still exists: and if it does, then in what form, and over what area? The culture region must be defined by cultural characteristics, or traits, which distinguish it from all of the surrounding cultures. If those traits do not exist in readily identi- fiable form today, or are not easily distinguished from the traits of the surrounding cultures, then it is necessary to go back in time and examine the culture history from the time when the identifying traits were the strongest. If, as is usually the case, historical records are inaccurate, then the cultural landscape may be examined for information to fill the gaps in those records. Finally, in examining the combined material so obtained, processes which have been operative in shaping and changing the culture region may be identified. From the overview gained in this manner, it should be possible to estimate with reasonable accuracy any Spatial variations in culture traits within the area, to discover whether or not it is sufficiently homogeneous and exclusive to be called a region, and to analyze variations in the form and extent of any region so found. Culture areas, or regions, can vary in size from an entire continent to the dwelling and hunting area of the last two remaining people of an island race that is dying. In using previous studies as a guide to research, it is 8 logical to assume great differences between macro-region studies and micro-region studies. The Westphalia German concentration approaches the micro-region end of the scale. But in view of the apparent focus of the German communities on the Catholic and Lutheran religions, perhaps the most suitable study available as a theoretical guide is D. W. Meinig's analysis of the Mormon culture region,’+ an area which covers much of Utah and portions of surrounding states. Meinig was searching for similar information: We need to know more precisely just where the Mormons are and just what is the context of their situation in each locality, which means knowing something about when, why, and how they got there and what is their relationship with reference to other local peoples. . . Not only must we know the patterns in greater detail, but we must know more about the processes that created them. If the culture area concept is to be used by geographers to provide new insights and interpreta- tions rather than merely new compartments for the as- semblage of commonplace data, such areas must be viewed not as sgatic uniform platforms but as dynamic areal growths. I Meinig discovered through his research that the traditional methods of delineating regional boundaries were essentially useless in describing and analyzing a culture region: he concluded that: The context of the Mormon Situation is sufficiently varied from place to place to make any single perimeter deceptive: whatever the criteria, the resultant areal Q LLD. W. Meinig, "The Mormon Culture Region: Strategies and Patterns in the Geography of the American West, 18U7- 1964," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Lv (June, 1965), pp. 191-220. 51bid., p. 195. 9 compartment cannot possibly reflect adequately those variations. This is, of course, commonly true of cul- tures: it is one of the most serious difficulties in mapping them, and has been one of the important gases for criticism of the whole culture area concept. He then proposed a new method of analysis based on the use of certain generic concepts: . . . which can express the areal dimensions of signif- icant gradations in the content and situation of the culture under study. In the following section the terms core, domain, and sphere will be defined and used for that purpose. Because cultures are areal growths such gradations are also likely to represent a sequen- tial spread from a locality of origin, or hearth. Thus these terms will be at least suggestive of patterns in both time and space. A core area . . . is taken to mean a centralized zone of concentration, displaying the greatest dens- ty of occupance, intensity of organization, strength, and homogeneity of the particular features . . . It qualifies by all the obvious measures of density, in- tensity, and nodality . . . The domain refers to those areas in which the par- ticular cuIture under study is dominant, but with mark- edly less intensity and complexity of development than in the core, where the bonds of connection are fewer and more tenuous, and where regional peculiarities are clearly evident . . . The Sphere of a culture region may be defined as the zone of outer influence and, often, peripheral ac- culturation, wherein that culture is represented only by certain of its elements or where its peoples reside as minorities among those of a different culture. Sphere boundaries are often less easy to define because there may be fine gradations of culture differences and the limits of influences may be rapidly changing.7 This hierarchy appeared to work quite well as a tool of regional analysis for analyzing the Mormon culture. But the Westphalia Germans are far less significant in terms of 61bid., p. 213. 71bid., pp. 213-216. 10 both numbers and the amount of land they occupy. It had to be assumed that if these concepts were applicable, they would apply only in a modified form. Meinig was able to generalize for large, dispersed groups of Mormons: at West- phalia, the settlement is relatively concentrated, and cen- ters on three small communities. In the German settlement area, it seemed that the rural sociologists' concept of a social sygtem,8 taken in its Spatial context, might prove a better tool for delineating regional cultural boundaries. Preliminary field investigation results pointed toward the existing religious social systems as the most homogeneous cultural groups in the area. In the German-American cul- ture region, the ethnic origin of its inhabitants was the principle feature that separated their culture from the surrounding cultures: but their culture was divided into sub-culturescnlthe basis of religious differences, and religious social systems,comprised of individual church parishes within each religious sub-culture, would be the lowest unit in the hierarchy. And in the rural country- side, these religious social systems would probably attach Spatial significance. Such units would then prove Valuable for evaluating Meinig's concepts in a small culture region like the German-American culture region that is the sub- ject of this study. 8Charles P- Loomis and J. Allan Beegle, Rural Sociol- ogy: The Strategy of Change (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1957T, pp. l-22. - ll Methodological Considerations In the past, cultural geographers in this country have used two different approaches in studying specific re- search problems: Carl 0. Sauer's "gepggic approach" and R. S. Platt's "functional approach." The genetic approach, also known as "historical geography," . . . rests largely upon direct field observations, combined with the use of historical data. By piecing together evidence from culture-trait and trait-complex distributions, linguistics, place names, [etc.,] . . . this developmental approach seeks to determine: (1) the origin in lace and time of specific cultural fea- tures . . . (2 the routes, times, and manner of their diffusion . . . (3) the distribution of former and present cultural areas . . . and (4) explanatory de- scriptions of the character of former and present cultural landscapes . . . The functional approach, on the other hand, directs atten- tion . . . to the works of man as functional problems in the local environment . . . or to data on human interaction in the endeavor to define regularities in spatial ar- rangement and flow phenomena . . . The functional ap- proach emphasizes the obsepzation of the present-day scene to determine how things are organized and oper- ated. The key word is 'process' . . .10 Both approaches were used in the search for cultural homogeneity in the area occupied by the descendants of the original German pioneers in the culture region. I first exhausted all of the historical sources that could be ob- . tained, including town, church and store records from the 9National Academy of Sciences -- National Research Council, The Science of Geography, pp. 26-27. ' 10 Ibid. 12 area: the results of that research appear in Chapter II. Subsequent field research was directed toward the detection of spatial variation in both the social and the economic behavior of the culture and toward finding and recording visible evidence on the cultural landscape. Then the as- sembled information was analyzed in order to determine the processes that had been operative in the region. Finally, the German settlement was examined in the light of all the gathered evidence to determine its current structure and to answer the question of whether or not it now may be called a culture region. Any study of spatial variations in the social behav- ior of a culture over time more often than not is weakened by the sparsity of recorded evidence relating to changes in social behavior, many of which have occurred subtly and very gradually. The researcher has no alternative but to attempt to identify distinctive behavioral characteristics in the culture as it exists today, and to work backword in time from that position. The information so obtained is consequently limited in time to the current life Span of the oldest living members within the culture and subject to all the fluctuations of their memories and personal prejudices. It is further subject to the interpretations of the researcher, who in many cases views the target cul- ture through eyes biased by his own culture's standards and behavior. The evidence in this category is, therefore, principally qualitative in nature, and must be interpreted 13 cautiously and in conjunction with datable facts in order to determine significant cultural changes through time and over Space. In the case of the German settlement at Westphalia, the author was extremely fortunate in that an earlier study had been conducted. A rural sociologist, Thomas L. Norris, lived among the Germans at Westphalia during the summer of 1950 and worked as a farmhand while gathering information 11 Norris concentrated his efforts on ana- for his thesis. lyzing the structure of the village of Westphalia--the so- cial system located at the site of the original settlement, and therefore most likely to be "traditional" in its reten- tion of ceremony, values, and other characteristics of the early German-American culture that settled there--and upon the process of acculturation within that community. His work proved exceptionally valuable in providing the basis for intelligent field questioning directed at establishing differences between that social system and the other social systems within the region, especially with respect to in- tra-regional contrasts in traditions, ceremonies, values, and rates of acculturation. The investigation of one particular culture trait was in this instance an obvious necessity: 11Thomas L. Norris, "Acculturation in a German Cath- olic Community," (East Lansing, Michigan: Unpublished Mas~ ter of Arts Thesis, Michigan State University, Department Of Sociology and Anthropology, 1950). 14 Language, as an essential medium of human commun- ication, is obviously a critical component of any cul- ture. The exact influence of language upon culture has been guessed at but never clearly established: in any case, language in its turn is strongly affected by other aspects of a culture. Whatever these inter— relationships may be, the speech of a community is one of its distinguishing traits.l Research on a related topic, changes in the spelling of the names of German settlers in response to pressures caused by life in America, also appeared to show promise of yielding information concerning relative rates of ac- culturation among the social systems and for the culture region as a whole. The economic nature of culture regions was recognized as long ago as 1931.13 Economic behavior in a culturally cohesive region could reasonably be expected to reflect that cohesion, and, conversely, if cultural considerations in such a region no longer are important relative to econom- ic behavior, then patterns of economic interaction should differ from those of social interaction. In order to find out what had occurred in the German settlement, I directed one section of my field work toward establishing mappable patterns of both economic and social behavior. The result- ing maps of interaction were also to be vital in analyzing the processes that had been operative within the region. 12Wagner and Mikesell, Readings in Cultural Geogra- phx. pp. 2-3. 13Carl 0. Sauer, "Cultural Geography," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, VI (1931), p.623. 15 The other major category upon which field research was to be focused was the cultural landscape. Evidence of cultural homogeneity was h0pefully to be found in the form of pioneer relics, patterns of land use, and settlement patterns and field patterns: The cultivated lands that appear so prominently in many landscapes testify not only to a radical change in plant cover but also to the presence of clearly artifi- cial elements: orchards, gardens, furrowed fields, walls and fences, paths and roads, granaries, stables, dwellings, and entire settlements, all in orderly ar- ray. In any cultural landscape, the arrangement, sty- le, and materials tend to reflect the presence of a distinctive way of life, or genre de vie, interacting with a given natural setting. Engineering works, arch- itecture, cultivated plants, domestic animals, imple- ments, vehicles, costumes and much else help to diag- nose particular cultures.14 ~ Previous studies by Kniffen pointed toward the use- fulness of research on house and barn types and suggested classification schemes to aid in such investigations: . . . housing even considered alone is a basic fact of human geography. It reflects cultural heritage, cur- rent fashion, functional needs, and the positive and negative aspects of noncultural environment. These relationships are more easily appreciated for a simp- ler era when plant and animal husbandry were dominant pursuits, but are no less true today. There is an element of urgency in dealing with folk housing, for it is largely unchronicled and its overwhelmingly wood composition makes it highly vulnerable to destructive forces, leaving behind little record of its character}:5 luWagner and Mikesell, Readings in Cultural Geogra- phy, p. 11. 15Fred Kniffen, "Folk Housing: Key to Diffusion," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, LV, No. 5 (December, 1965), pp. 549-550. See also Fred Kniffen, "Louisiana House Types," Annals of the Association of Amer- ican Geographers, XXVI (1936), pp. 179-193. 16 Still another source of information found on the cultural landscape was the rural cemetery, which is useful in providing information concerning the spread of the cul- ture region and the use of foreign languages by its inhab- itants. Kniffen has suggested other directions in cemetery research: Formal disposal of the deceased is a universal practice, and in common with other elements of the occupance pattern Should be an essential consider- ation in individual or comparative study. It reflects traditional values, religious tenets, legal regula- tions, economic and social status, and even natural environment. Evolution, invention, and diffusion are as nicely exemplified here as with any other cultural phenomenon. Since there is a special re- luctance to disturb graveyards, they often lie sur- rounded by bustling urban activities, preserved for study far longer than might normally be expected of an outmoded folkway. There can be few other sub- jects as untouched or as promésing as the geograph- ical study of burial places.l Tombstone markings are also helpful in providing informa- tion on spelling changes in names. 16Fred Kniffen, "Necrogeography in the United States;' Geographical Review, LVII, No. 3 (July, 1967), p. 427. CHAPTER II HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN-AMERICAN CULTURE REGION The Cultural Nucleus The establishment of the cultural nucleus of the Ger- man-American culture region on the site of what is present- ly the village of Westphalia, Michigan, represented the final step taken by its founders in their escape from the rural society of Germany, which, at that time, was charac- terized by military Oppressiveness, low wages, and relig- ious intolerance. The desire for political freedom and economic betterment, aggravated by religious harassment in a section of Germany in which there were equal numbers of boulProtestants and Catholics, prompted many of the inhab- itants of the Westphalian and Rheinland Provinces to invest their life savings in a one-way passage to a new life of pioneer farming in America.1 The first immigrants to settle in the vicinity of what is now the village of Westphalia, Michigan, were Ger- man Catholics. Rev. Anton Kopp, a Catholic priest, and a native of Rfithen, Westphalia, accompanied a group of lNorris, "Acculturation," p. 24. 17 18 families from the rural villages of Helden and Elspe, West- phalia, in their departure from Bremen for the New World on‘ August 26, 1836.2 The presence of the Catholic priest on this journey was in keeping with the missionary policies of the Catholic Church, which was attempting to simultaneously care for its present members and establish a firm influence in pioneer America.3 After landing in New York City on October 3 of the same year, the small group of immigrants journeyed westward on the Erie Canal and finally arrived in Detroit on October 25. Rev. Kapp, acting as a coordinator for the group, con- tacted the Catholic Bishop of Detroit, Father Friedrich Rese, to determine where the families might obtain land, as the Catholic Church in Detroit was acting as an orientation agency for Catholic immigrants. Bishop Rese advised Rev. Kapp to take his group to Ionia County to acquire home- steads, since the land to the east had already been sold to land speculators. This advice was reinforced by a Mr. Anton Cordes, who had worked with the surveyors in the areas in question: he befriended the immigrants and eventually set- tled with them. Rev. Kopp and Eberhard Platte journeyed along the Dexter Trail to Lyons, Michigan: after having 2St. Mary's Centennial: Westphalia, Michigap, 1836- 1236 (Westphalia, Michigan: 1936), pp. 46, 64. 3Norris, "Acculturation," p. 25, citing Jesse Barn- hard, American Community Behavior (New York: 1949), p. 248. l9 difficulties with the language barrier, they were finally able to obtain directions to the land office in Ionia. Rev. Kopp soon discovered that the better land in the area had already been purchased by speculators, and that the only land available at a price that the settlers could afford lay to the east in Township 6 North, Range 4 West. Representing the settlers, he purchased land there at about one dollar per acre. The speculators had considered the land in that township to be far too swampy and poorly drained to be of any value--a sign which presaged the hard- ships the German-Americans would face in settling their land. Rev. Kopp then returned to Detroit, where Bishop Rese appointed him a clergyman of the German Mission in that city on November 19, 1836.5 Soon thereafter, Joseph Platte, John Hanses, William Theilman, Anton Cordes, and John Salter, following direc- tions provided by Rev. Kopp, journeyed together on foot to their land. After traversing the area, they began to con- struct temporary log residences on the 560 acres of Section 5 which Rev. Kopp had purchased for them (and which includ- ed part of the site of the present village of Westphalia). Mr. Salter, however, soon became discouraged and returned to Detroit, where he eventually sold his share of the land. The men began clearing operations in late November, and by “Ibido, pp. 26-27. 5St. Mary's Centennial, p. 46: 20 February their families had joined them for the start of many rugged years of frontier farming life.6 In 1837 Rev. K0pp returned to the settlement area as its permanent minister: he temporarily resided in Lyons un- til the settlers completed building a two-room log church/- residence for his use in March of 1838. His arrival was extremely important for the community for a number of rea- sons. It established a firm link with the Catholic Church in Detroit, which continued to channel newly-arrived Ger- man immigrants into the area for several decades. One_pf the primary causes of emigration from Germany had been re- ligious harassment: the importance of the church, already highly intensified by years of conflict in Germany, was undoubtedly further enhanced in the minds of the settlers by the need for faith to sustain them in their rugged life in a strange, often hostile environment. In addition, the community social systems to which they had belonged in Ger- many had been successfully merged for centuries with the religious social system of the Catholic Church, and the absence of anyone to fill the status-role of priest signi- fied the virtual absence of the religious social system in itself. The return of Rev. KOpp again brought the combined social systems to a state of equilibrium: once more the set- tlers could participate in the ritual of weekly mass, which 6Ibid.. pp. 46-48. «o y N‘ .Hv\\.~.\n.. e 21 is so vitally important to believers in the Catholic faith. The status-role of priest was capably filled by Rev. Kopp. Most of the immigrants had been peasant farmers be- fore leaving Germany; a few were bricklayers or millers, but there were no educated men among them, with the sole exception of the priest.7 Rev. Kopp was not only the pri- mary source of moral and Spiritual comfort, but in the set- tlers' eyes he was the only man capable of leading the com- munity in its secular affairs: He was a man of splendid education, with much en- ergy and force of character . . . Certainly much credit is due to this remarkable man for the spirit of self- sacrifice he exhibited. He remained here in the wil- derness, living a life of hardship and poverty in or- der to be of service to his people and administer to their spiritual needs. Because of his superior educa- tion and leadership he was called upon to attend to their temporal and political affairs as well. The land on which the Catholic Germans were home- steading had not been previously settled, but other lands were being claimed and cleared on all sides of the town- ship. Most of the surrounding pioneers had previously lived in New England or the Middle Atlantic States, or had pushed westward from those states while following the edge of the frontier through settlements in Ohio and Indiana. Isolated pockets of Irish immigrants were moving on to land 7Joseph Scheben, Untersuchungen zur Methods und Tech- nik der deutschamerikanischen Wanderungsforschung an Hand eines Vergleichs der Volkszahlungslisten der Township West- phalia,Michigan, vom Jahre 1860. (Bonn, Germany: 1939), Tabelle II. 88t. Mary's Centennial, p. 55. 22 near the present site of Fowler and along Belleview Road in Ionia County, but they represented the only other non-Eng- lish-speaking element in the immediate surroundings. New German arrivals purchased and settled on land as close as possible to the church and the original settlers. Verylfgw non-Germanlfamiliesgmoved_into the areathat was being set- tled by the Catholic Germans. These early settlement trends allowed the German pioneers to attain self-suffic- iency with relatively little contact with their non-German neighbors. The German community was from the very begin- ning a cultural island, and in the face of that fact the Germans were able to perpetuate many of the customs from their way of life in Europe. I The language barrier also served to limit cross-cul- tural contact, and thereby inhibit acculturation. Of the initial settlers, only Father KOpp could speak even a lit- tle English. During the first few years of the settlement, there was relatively little need to learn the language, and for most of the pioneers there was probably little free time in which they could do so. The German settlers, however, were immediately con- fronted with a number of mandatory adjustments to the way of life in pioneer America: these adjustments established new cultural traditions and marked the beginnings of the slow process of acculturation. One of the earliest and most drastic changes encoun- tered was a shift from the nucleated-village patterns of 23 settlement that the emigrés had left behind in Germany to a dispersed, regular settlement pattern in Michigan. The emigrants from both the Westphalia and Rheinland Provinces had come from areas in which the centuries-old pattern of peasant farmers commuting from their irregular "heap vil- lages" to their often widely dispersed "strips" of farm- land was prevalent:9 The arable lands were divided into small, elongated strips, that were arranged in irregular furlongs, or Gewanne, each GeWann being cultivated according to a time-table and usage prescribed by the village commun- ity. This is the so-called Gewanndorf in which the village is named after the pattern of property distri- bution with which it is associated. The village itself consists of a cluster of farmsteads and other build- ings, in which the streets are irregular in width and direction, and the houses irregularly disposed with respect to the street frontage and to each other. For these seasons it is called, alternatively, the Haufen- dorf.l Dispersed habitats, or Einzelhof, are present in those ar- eas in small numbers, but it is safe to assume that the majority of the emigrants to Westphalia Township had been accustomed to life in the Gewanndorf or Haufendorf fash- ion. In Michigan, however, the wanship-and-Range system 9Villages positively identified as source villages in Germany from which the Catholic emigrants had departed were examined by the author as to their settlement patterns in Deutscher Generalatlas (Stuttgart, Germany: Mairsgeograph- iScher Verlag, 1967-1968): general field and village pat- tern classifications were obtained by comparing the village locations with information contained in Robert E. Dickin- son, "Rural Settlements in the German Lands," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XXXIX, No. 4 (Decem- ber, 1949), pp. 239-263. 10Dickinson, "Rural Settlements," pp. 242-243. 24 of land survey, the fact that most of the immigrants were so poor that they could only afford to buy one tract of land, and the necessity for each settler to live as close as possible to the land he was clearing were all factors which forced the individual farmer to live on his own land with his family. This situation resulted in a dispersed pattern of settlement, in which the farmstead was located on the farmer's land, as close to the outside of his sec- tion (and therefore, the road) as possible. This new settlement pattern was in distinct contrast to the Gewann- gppf pattern, where the farmers lived in the village and belonged to the tightly knit village social systems. A number of the new arrivals also faced changes in occupation. In addition to those who had been peasant farmers in Germany previously, by 1842 the immigrants from the Rheinland included a blacksmith, a master mason, a bricklayer, a juryman, an innkeeper, a miller, and a cab- inet-maker. Since there was essentially no immediate market for their services, these men were forced to find temporary labor in nearby towns or to become farmers in order to survive. Ip§the 1860 census, all of these men ex- cept one listgd their primary occupations as farmers: the early changes proved to be permanent.11 The German pioneers had to make numerous other adjust- 11 Scheben, Untersuchungen, Tabelle II. ‘ Tannin.” 25 ments, Initial farming efforts were devoted to "general farming" at subsistence levels. Poverty and the lack of tools and stores forced the pioneers to use frontier exped- iency in constructing their dwellings and clearing their lands: the first dwelling was inevitably a one-room log cabin, often without windows or closeable doors: and prim- itive agricultural instruments, such as wooden hoes, Spades, shovels and plows, and thorn-bush drags were com- monly used.12 Fire and disease took heavy physical tolls, particularly among the young. In spite of their relative isolation in the growing German settlement, the.pioneers knew that they would have to eventually learn the English language. They had eXper- ienced initial frustrations with the language barrier at immigration check-points, on their trips westward, and in the land office, where they were required to Sign legal documents they did not understand, but knew to be import- ant. ‘They had to learn some basic English in order to get their grain milled during the first years in nearby Yankee communities, and to conduct other minimal economic trans- actions. American schooling requirements, the census, and the requirements to keep business and local government records in English were soon to cause further frustration, and the Germans began slowly to learn the necessary words 12Norris, "Acculturation," p. 28. 26 and phrases. The Germans also had to adapt to the American polit- ical system by establishing a democratic form of local self-government. By 1839, the number of inhabitants had increased to such an extent that the settlers were able to request permission from the Watertown administrative area to separate from the area and form their own township government. The request was granted, and on April 29, 1839, the first township meeting was held. The necessary officers were elected to fill the administrative posts re- quired by the political system: Rev. Kopp was immediately chosen to fill the top post of Township Supervisor. This move in effect merged all three social systems-~political, religious, and community--into a single social system that was exclusively ethnic in nature and highly church-centered in orientation. At Rev. Kopp's suggestion, the township was named Westphalia, in honor of the point of origin of the initial group of pioneers.13 All of these factors combined led to important chang- es in both the attitudes of the settlers and the methods they used in earning their subsistence. The old feelings of dependence upon the tightly-knit social systems of the nucleated German village were replaced by a tradition of independence as each farmer became accustomed to the rela- tive isolation of his new homestead. Yet awareness of and 138t. Mary}s Centennial, p. 59. 27 identity with the German community increased, because the alternative of learning the new language and joining the other social systems was far more difficult in an environ- ment which provided more than enough difficulties for mere survival. Numerous major tasks were too time-consuming and difficult for any one family to accomplish alone in the harsh environment: the pioneers were forced to form new social organizations to overcome such problems. "Bees" soon became the principle means by which the entire commun- ity would combine its efforts in order to raise a building, clear land for new arrivals, and complete other major tasks: and these "bees" also served to cement community solidarity. In the face of all these changes, the pioneer fami- lies relied even more heavily on their pillar of strength, the Catholic Church, and upon its representatives, Rev. KOpp and his successors. Only the Church and its ritual remained unchanged, and its persisting tradition reminded the German-Americans of the homes and friends they had left behind. Their community social system centered increasing- 14 The situation in 1y on the church and its activities. pioneer Westphalia clearly illustrated Loomis and Beegle's contention that: Religion serves to establish and reaffirm group ends 1“The term Church (capitalized) refers to the Roman Catholic Church in its formal sense, while the term church refers to the community church organization. 28 and norms. It maintains group ends over private ends and provides mechanisms and motivation to encourage individuals to contribute to group behavior. It pre- vents disruption of social systems. A great deal of emphasis must be placed on the afore- mentioned events, for they set the standards which governed the later life of the community. Although new cultural traditions had been formed through new relationships within the community, the church and the language barrier together served to prevent general interaction with outsiders, in a form of social boundary maintenance designed to preserve the community in its modified form. The new community, even with its extreme orientation to the Catholic Church, was uniquely different than those communities that the im- migrants had left behind in Germany. The growth of the community was fed both by natural increase and further immigration. The settlers formed a cohesive group from the very beginning, and each new German arrival was rapidly as- similated into their social system. The new arrivals, who purchased land as close as possible to the original com- munity because the church was the focal point of its cul- ture and social systems, spread the traditions spatially outward. The German community which had emerged by the end of 1842 was without a doubt the culture hearth from which the German-American culture region evolved. 15Loomis and Beegle, Rural Sociology, p. 203. 29 Growth of the Settlement The first group of German settlers had purchased a total of 560 acres of land on Sections 4 and 5 of the township: their land had been selected partly on the basis of its proximity to sources of fresh water: natural Springs and a creek, which is known today as Kloeckner Creek. Subsequent growth centered on this area: Those people who wished to farm . . . always chose a piece of land contiguous to that already cleared for agricuéture, and, therefore, outward growth was uni- form.1 Both the original pioneer group and the men who fol- lowed them during the next few decades were virtually pen- niless upon their arrival on the homesteads they had pur- chased, and the environment was an inhOSpitable one: The settlers . . . were very poor. The plans for establishment of a community were not well worked out before leaving Germany, as was the case of the Franks in the Saginaw area. The location of remote Westphal- ia was not very favorable at that time. The many swamps of the township igded to the difficulty of up- building the community. Letters from the settlers to relatives and friends, however, were full of enthusiasm about their new homes and the freedom they were enjoying, and prompted many of those remaining behind to follow on a similar course of action. . 16William B. Kemp, "A Study of German Culture in Clinton County" (East Lansing, Michigan: Unpublished comprehensive field problem, De artment of Geography, Michigan State University, 1964 , p. 21. '17Warren W. Florer, Early Michigan Settlements: Washtenaw, Westphalia, Frankenmuth (Detroit, Michigan: Herold Printing Company, 1941), p. 29. 30 During the years 1838-1842, immigrants from the Westphal- ian Province arrived in increasing numbers. In 1841, the first group of immigrants from the Adenau District of the Rheinland Province in Germany arrived in Detroit: they also were Catholic Germans, and were directed to West- phalia Township, where they acquired farmland and settled near the original group of Westphalians. Adenau was during the next two decades to become the principle source region for emigration to the new settlement in Michigan. The causes underlying the emigration from that district were similar to those that had spurred the movement from Westphalia Province: The same general social conditions existed in the Adenau District as in Swabia. The essential differ- ence was that of the Confession of Faith. The story of 1830-1850 in the Rheinlands and in Southern Ger- many (Bavaria and Swabia) embraces the causes of the emigration to Michigan. Here in Westphalia, Mich- igan, as in other communities, they were united by faith.1 Initial growth of the settlement was relatively rapid, and the chief source of the early growth was in- migration. By the end of 1842, at least 70 German Catholic families with a total of 264 members had settled on and were in the process of clearing 2811 acres of land within the township (See Figure 2 and Table l).19 18Ibid. 19St. Mary's Centennial, pp. 64-66. 31 Figure 2: -- 1842: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan. The areas depicted in this map represent the land owned by German- American settlers in 1842. Information on which this map is based was extracted from deed descriptions in his- torical records. Sources: St. Mary's Centennial: Westphalia, Michi- gan, 1836-1936 (Westphalia, Michigan: 1936), pp. 64-66: and William B. Kemp, "A Study of German Culture in Clinton County" (East Lansing, Michigan: Unpublished comprehen- sive field problem, Department of Geography, Michigan State University, 1964), p. 21 (fold-out map). 32 . ' I I : NONTCALN COUNTY ' GRATIOT COUN l I : IONIA COUNTY CLINTON COUN : I ' I : I I l I | : t | . : I | I u ' I . : E a I . | ' I “-2911!!! I!» .......... IMMLTQL __________ 4599.1 ........... m T _-. : > I I l I ST. JOHNS ' PORT --- 290'”. 5'0 ____________ Plum -_..... I E ' I i : TV! I Waterlovm Tw IDOWIII T LEGEND 4 '842 - CATHOUC Gems —-- COUNTY mom EXTENT OF THE GERMAN GILTLRE REGION [:3 Lon-em cams ------ TOVINSNIP my N AROUND WESTPHALIA, mcmom - IOTO~PLATTEO LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA WTIES P'D E OTHER mus - LAKES ANO STREAMS Q 9 I 2 § SCALE IN MILES ‘I '2 Figure 2 33 TABLE 1 NEWLY ARRIVED GERMAN IMMIGRANTS SETTLING NEAR THE SITE OF WESTPHALIA, MICHIGAN (1836-1842) Year Families from Families from Total of Westphalia Rheinland Total Number Arrival Province Province Families Arriving 1836-7 4 o 4 15 1838 7 o 7 24 1839 ll 0 ll 39 1840 5 O 5 7 1841 13 10 23 108 1842 9 ll 20 71 Source: St. Mary's Centennial: Westphalia, Michigan, %I 621 6 (Westphalia, Michigan: 1936), pp. +- , The original settlement consisted of scattered dwell- ings, with each family living on its own land, and the small two-room log church, which was located about one- half mile west and north of the present center of the village. The church and most of the dwelling units were built on knolls becauSe the land in the area was extremely swampy and had not yet been drained.2O By July of 1842, the congregation had become so large that the parish decided to build still another church, and purchased ten acres of land along the southeast corner Of Section 5: this land is still occupied by the Catholic Church and its associated buildings. The growth Of the 201bid., p. 64. 34 village of Westphalia upon that corner near the church site was a direct reflection upon the importance that the church held for the community of settlers: it is also direct evidence on the cultural landscape of the church- centered culture which settled there. The early economy Of the community was based en- tirely on farming. Crops raised included oats, hay, wheat, and various vegetables.21 Where possible, the farming methods were those which had been used in Germany: When the early settlers were ready to harvest their wheat they cut it by hand with a sickle or scythe, or later with a cradle. It was also gathered up by hand and tied in bundles. Each farmer thrashed his own wheat with a hand flail. It was sometimes pounded out on ice, on barn floors or on any other hard sur- face. This method of flailing wheat was not new to the settlers for this custom also prevailed in Ger- many at that time.2 Wheat was the first "cash" crOp, and it had to be taken to the nearby Yankee settlements to be milled: the farmers brought back what they needed and sold the rest: Cattle were scarce then and the usual custom was to pack a two-bushel bag of wheat upon the back, carry’ it on foot through the woods to Lyons or Portland to be milled and bring back the flour in the same manner. John Hanses also recollected later, how he used to drag barrels Of flour from Portland on a hand sled, and halt every few minutes to lift the flour over fall- 21Although there is no substantial evidence to indi- cate that these immigrants were "potato Germans," some Of the Older residents believed that they had heard that the early settlers tried to plant potatoes, but that the soil was not well- adapted to potato growth, and the attempts failed. 22St: Mary's Centennial, pp. 50-51. 35 en trees which were in the way.23 There were very few livestock in the early years because they were SO expensive. Because of the lack Of draft animals,burning became the principle method of clearing land: The early settlers usually chopped down the trees in such a manner as to make them fall in a heap as much as possible. When burned up, this left quite a cleared Space. After they had made a clearing in this manner they tilled and cult%Xated it as well as possi- ble with the tools at hand. The pioneers needed money to be able to have some Of the necessities of life. They acquired funds by selling their small crOp surplusses when they could, by laboring in nearby communities, by manufacturing and selling char- coal tO nearby blacksmiths, and by selling ashes from their clearing Operations, black salts, raccoon furs, and deer- skins. They Often travelled as far as Jackson and Detroit to market the last five items, which, according to one account "probably brought in more ready cash in some years, than was realized from their crops."25 The settlers were able to contribute a small amount to the church for the sustenance Of the priest, and, even- tually, for the establishment of a church school. Rev. George Godez had succeeded Father Kopp in 1843, and in 231bid., p. 51. 2“:bid., p. 54. 251bid., p. 68. 36 1846 he was able to hire a Yankee resident of Westphalia Township, Moses Bartow, to teach the English language to the pioneer children. From the very start, the church was entirely responsible for conducting the school. Rev. Godez instructed the children in German and religious mat- ters in one half of the Old log church, which was used as a school until a better building could be erected, and Mr. Bartow used the other half.26 The importance attached to learning English is evidenced in the fact that English instruction pre-dated by at least four years the law re- quiring that all children receive at least three months schooling in English per year.27 Among the immigrants who arrived after 1842 were oc- casional tradesmen, a number of whom eventually ansWered the community's growing needs for essential services and began to establish small businesses at the section corner near the church. Anton Dunnebacke erected the first house on the village site in 1849 and opened a cobbler's shop in his residence.28 The Township Post Office located near the church corner in 1850. In 1852 Joseph Platte trans- ferred his general store to the village site near the church: 26Ibid., p. 66. 27Kemp, "A Study of German Culture," p. 10. 28Judge Sherman B. Daboll, Past and Present of Clin- ton County, Michigan (Chicago: A. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1891), p. 500. 37 Mr. Platte owned considerable land thereabout and his Object in removing his store was to found a vil- lage. His lead was followed by others and in due time the town took on shape and population.2 By the end of 1852 the settlement at the corners near the church included the shoemaker's shop, two taverns, the general store, a blacksmith shop, and a resident physi- cian's Office. The fipgtggawmill.NEBLStarted_in 1856, and the first gristmmilllwasypuilt in 1858.30 The small com- munity forming at the site of the village very soon became known locally as "the settlement," or "Dutch-town" (be- cause its inhabitants spoke Deutsch, the German language.31 The rapid growth of the German Culture Region in this time can best be seen in immigration figures and in the growth Of the church. At least 151 male immigrants had settled in the community by 1860.32 The first frame Catho- lic Church was erected on the church property in 1847: this church, known as St. Peter's Church,was reputed to have had a capacity Of 400 people. A third index Of the growth Of the region is the yearly number of baptisms in the Westphalia Church (See Table 2). By 1858 the rate Of natural increase was at its peak, and by 1860 the total 29St.Mary's Centennial, p. 80. 3°Ibid. 31F. S. Ceaser, "Forgotten Communities of Central Michigan" (Lansing, Michigan: Address to the Greater Lan- sing Historical Society, May, 1963), p. 15. 32St. Mary's Centennial, pp. 65-78. 38 TABLE 2 BAPTISMS IN ST. MARY'S PARISH, 1839-1862 Number Number Year Baptized Year Baptized 1839 5 1851 21 1840 6 1852 44 1841 13 1853 56 1842 21 1854 52 1843 24 1855 80 1844 26 1856 102 1845 35 1857 108 1846 36 1858 124 1847 24 1859 104 1848 31 1860 91 1849 29 1861 115 1850 48 1862 114 Source: St. Mar 's Centennial: West halia Michi an 1836 1936, (Westphalia, Michigan: 1936), pp. 110-111. 39 natural increase since 1839 surpassed the immigration totals to that date.33 It is not, therefore, at all surprising that the priest was soon more than busy in ministering to his par- ish and supervising school activities. Rev. Kopp served two non-consecutive terms as Township Supervisor: he was the first--and last--priest to serve in the political system. Thereafter church and state were kept separate, at least to outside appearances, although the priest's in- fluence in secular matters was no doubt exceptionally strong. Rev. Godez similarly served briefly as the first postmaster Of Westphalia, commencing in the year 1850:34 he was probably chosen because Of his constant contact with all the peOple in the parish. But he vacated the job as his parish responsibilities grew. Arrival Of the Lutheran Germans In the 1850's compulsory military prescription and economic oppression in the Mecklenburg Province in north- eastern Germany led people in widely scattered locations to depart the country for America. In the process Of striking out for the unknown, it was natural that some of the families should meet other Germans while in transit, and that they should form small groups based on common 33St. Mary's Centennial, pp. 68-69, 110-111. 3leid., p. 66. 40 ethnic, linguistic, and religious bonds. Since many of these immigrants usually had no specific destination in mind, they often stayed together as groups and settled in one area. There was seldom a minister accompanying such a group with the aim of maintaining an established social system. Such was the case with a small group of Lutheran Ger- mans who had left such widespread points as Schwerin, Pommern, M611n and Marxhagen: the Nuffer, Luecht, Rossow, Schultz and Hoerner families met somewhere along the jour- ney to Detroit at an undetermined time in the early 1850's. Some of the families found temporary work in Detroit, and others went to Ohio in search of a home.35 It was inevit- able that these immigrants should hear that a German set- tlement had been established in Westphalia Township: Learning of an established German community in West- phalia which was organized in 1836, because Of a com- mon language, the early immigrants came by stagecoach or on foot making their way through the wilderness to 'The Settlement.’ bringing with them only meager be- longings . . . The German immigrants established resi- dence in thg area about two and one-half miles south Of Dallas.3 Here they obtained day-work in the com- munity for the Westphalia pioneer farmers who had al- ready cleared some Of the land. They worked in exchange for food, other necessities, and a small amount of wages. These people immediately took up land in order 35Mrs. Clarence Light, Built on the Rock, 1869- 1969_ In Commemoration Of the 100th Anniversary of the Organiza- EIon O? St. PeterELutheran Congregation (Riley Township, Michigan: St. Peter Lutheran Church, 1969), pp. 4-5. 36The town of Dallas was located three-fourths of a mile east Of the present site Of Fowler. 41 to build homes and produce food. Some of the early families upon arriving in Detroit, went into Ohio for a time, but after a few years they, too, moved north- ward and established permanent residence in Michigan.37 The exact date Of the Lutherans' arrival in the vi- cinity of the Catholic settlement is not recorded, but there is some evidence that event occurred in the mid- 1850'S. The earliest readable tombstone in the Lutheran cemetery three and one-half miles south of the present site of Fowler commemorates the death Of a member of the Nuffer family in 1858, and lumber mill records indicate that the Rossow and Nuffer families were purchasing lumber as early as 1860.38 The Lutheran settlers had to make the Same principle adjustments as did the Catholics who had arrived approxi- mately twenty years before. The Lutheran Germans had de- parted an area containing several types Of settlement pat- terns. Among the most common were the Gutsthe, or large landed estates which were Often surrounded by a cluster Of workers' cottages. Also common in Mecklenburg were: the Rundling villages Of Slavic origin, in which the villages were organized in clusters for defense purposes: some set- tlements Of the Gewanndorf type: and occasional disPersed 37Light, Built on the Rock, pp. 4-5. 38Joseph Bohr, "Ledger of the Bohr Lumber and Grain Mill, 1850-1 66" (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Unpublished records located in the Michigan Historical Collection, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), entries under December 29, 1860. 42 EinzelhOfe.39 All Of these forms, except the last, are nucleated villages. In Michigan, the Lutheran Germans set- tled in dispersed patterns, as had the Catholics, and for the same reasons. The Lutherans also faced similar prob- lems in changing professions, establishing homes, and struggling with the English language. There were, however, a number Of important differ- ences between the initial German Catholic situation and the situation when the Lutherans began to arrive. The Luther- ans found it much easier to converse with fellow Germans than with neighboring English-speaking Yankee pioneers, in spite Of the fact that many of the German Lutherans Spoke Flatt-Deutsch, or "Low German," while their Catholic neigh- bors conversed in Roch-Deutsch, or "High German" dialect: and the Lutheran Germans decided to stay in the vicinity of Westphalia. Although they did not face the total isola- tion that the German Catholics had experienced as a result Of the language barrier, the German Lutherans were isolated from the Catholic social system because of their religion: membership in the Catholic Church was an absolute prerequi- site tO membership in the highly church-centered German Catholic social system. The arrival of the German Luther- ans, then, was the event which split the German-American culture into two distinct cultural sub-systems: and the 39Dickinson, "Rural Settlement," pp. 252-260. 43 basis of the split was the religious difference between the two groups. The traditions Of the German-American culture were carried on in both sub-cultures, for the Lutherans learned readily from the experiences of their Catholic pio- neer neighbors. But the Lutherans were forced to estab- lish a distinct group identity by the mere fact of their exclusion from the German Catholic social systems: and be- cause Of their beliefs in Lutheranism, they also probably wanted to remain apart from the Catholics. Yet the path to a separate identity was not easily taken. The area into which the Lutheran Germans were mov- ing had already been occupied for the most part by various pioneer groups, and clearing and draining Of the privately owned land was well underway. The German Catholics had eXpanded their land holdings contiguously in a tight circle around the village of Westphalia, purchasing land as near as possible to the settlement (See Figure 3), and Yankee and Irish pioneers had purchased and settled much of the land surrounding the German holdings. An 1864 plat map Of Clinton and Gratiot Counties reveals that the first six German Lutherans to settle there purchased available land in relatively scattered locations on the eastern and north- ern fringe of the Catholic-settled area:40 only one concen- uOD. S. Harley, J. P. Harley, J. D. Nash, H. G. Brig- ham, and M. C. Wagner, Map of the Counties Ofgiinton and Gratiot, Michigan (Philadelphia: Samuel Geil, Publisher, 1864). 44 Figure 3: -- 1864: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan. The areas depicted here represent the land owned by German-American settlers and their descendants in 1864. Information on which this map is based was extracted from a plat map of Clinton County. A similar map for Ionia County was not available. Source: D. S. Harley, J. P. Harley, J. D. Nash, H. G. Brigham, and M. C. Wagner, Map of the Coun- ties of Clinton and Gratiot, Michigan(Phil- adelphia: Samuel Geil, Publisher, 1864). 45 MONTCALM COUNTY I GRATIOT COUNTY I I I I I I ' I : IONIA COUNTY CLINTON COUNT ' : I I I ' I I I I - : : I . I ' I I . | I I I I I ' I l .. -1". 8'01": 129 _______ - _ _ Iteb2n20_sz-_. _ _ - -- .I I s | . Pewamo | I l L ' I I I I -_ _ L12": Ire __________________ I I I l ' I I l r I | I I if. I I I l : a . I fit a ' . PORTLAN. I : l I I .. - Lfisfllsmi- _ .Tra .. _ _ "19.1mm .TmL __________ ' ' '39. ____________ 101M. Tm.- _ - .. _ I hnb Tw- E-Ie Tw. Watertown Twp IOewm Twp. LEGEND 4 I 8 64 fl CATHOLIC GERMANS —-— COUNTY BOUNDARY EXTENT OF THE GERMAN CULTURE REGION Cl LUTHERAN Gems ------ TOWNSHIP BOUNDARY N AROUND wESTPHALIA, MICHIGAN E OTHER CERNANS W LAKES ANO STREAMS - ISTO-PLATTEO LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA communes m 9 I Z T 1’ '7 Pwo SCALE IN MILES 46 tration Of three Lutheran homesteads could be found at a site three and one-half miles south of the present loca- tion of Fowler. The scattered pattern of settlement which character- ized the Lutheran Germans during their early years in Clin- ton County is not surprising in view of the difficulty of obtaining good land in an area with a high level of private ownership; nor is it uneXpected in view of the fact that the families were from such widely scattered points of origin in Germany, and had probably not had the Opportu- nity to form a cohesive group based on common backgrounds and previous acquaintances, as had the German Catholics. Although religious convictions among the German Lutherans were probably just as strong as those of the Catholics, and reliance upon religious faith to sustain them in their rugged life just as necessary, the Protes- tant requirements for continuous attendance at services were far less stringent. As a consequence, it was not until September 29, 1861 that the Lutherans banded together for the first time as a religious unit of worship; the St. Peter Congregation of Dallas Township was formed, and whenever Lutheran ministers from Owosso and Grand Rapids journeyed to the area,religious services were held in the homes of members. In 1869 the congregation built a frame church and parsonage on three acres of the Nuffer family property in the aforementioned small concentration of Lutheran farms; Rev. Joseph Smith came to serve as the 47 first resident minister. In 1871 the church affiliated with the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church and became known as the St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, Unaltered Augsburg Confession.L+1 The number of German Lutheran families who immigrated into the area and settled on the eastern fringe of the Catholic lands in later years was considerably smaller than the number of Catholic families who settled in the culture region, and from a much wider range of points of origin]+2 Relatives of the German Lutherans did not follow them and settle in the region in such great numbers as among the Catholic Germans. And the German Lutherans were not pres- ent in large enough numbers in any one township to gain political control of a township until well after the turn of the century. NO clearly defined trade center evolved to exclusively serve the Lutheran community. The Lutheran community members had, however, estab- lished traditions that were based on the way of life they had left behind in Germany; the independence they had exhibited in leaving Germany as individuals who had no idea of their destination; the methods of pioneer survival they learned from the German Catholics; and their formation of #1 “ZThe results of the author's survey indicated Luth- eran Germans settling there originated in such distant points as Bavaria and Alsace-Lorraine. The evidence, which is somewhat sketchy at best, indicates that no two unrelated families came from the same points of origin. Light, Built on the Rock, pp. 5-7. #8 a social system having strong ethnic and linguistic identi- ty with the German Catholics, but isolated from the Catho- lic community because of their religion. The cultural traditions of the Catholic and Lutheran German-Americans were more closely related to each other than to those of any other cultural group in the immediate vicinity; but there were still enough differences between the two groups to justify identifying them as separate sub-cultures within the German-American culture. Expansion of the German-American Culture Region During the 1860's, the Catholic Germans continued to purchase land as close as possible to the village and to thereby expand concentrically outward from it, while the Lutherans located on the north and east fringes of the area of Catholic settlement. In 1864, virtually all of the Ger- man settlers were within a three- to four-mile radius of Westphalia's growing trade center; most of the area within that radius was owned by Germans (See Figure 3). The radius figure of three to four miles is of interest because that is precisely the distance which was the maximum walk- ing distance on the average between the European nucleated village and the most distant fields belonging to it; any field further away caused too much inefficiency due to com- muting time, and was considered non-defendable. In the case of the German-American culture region, the figure has significance because growth beyond that point moved in dif- 1+9 ferent directions at different times for varying reasons, and eventually resulted in the segmentation of the German- American culture region into a series of distinct religious social systems that were spatially differentiated. The village of Westphalia continued to grow. The Germans, as might be expected, were beer-lovers, and in 1861 they built a brewery_that continued in Operation until prohibition was imposed in 1908, when Clinton County "went dry." Another tavern was built in the village in 1862.“3 As more and more immigrants arrived, and more and more babies, it was soon apparent that the frame church was no longer large enough. In 1867 construction was started on a new Church. The scope of the project reflect- ed both upon the prosperity that the region was starting to enjoy and the esteem in which the Church was held in the community. A good local supply of clay for bricks was available, so a brickyard was established to cut the costs on building the church. The new building was com- pleted in 1869 at a cost of $70,000. It included an in- terior furnished with black walnut from the forests of Westphalia, Germany. A Detroit firm made the pews in re- turn for black walnut grown in the township forests and donated by the members. The new church reputedly held more than 1500 peOple. Bricks from the brickyard were “3Norris, "Acculturation," p. 37. 50 also later used in the construction of a rectory, which was completed at the same time as the church; several business buildings; a school; and a convent for the Sisters of Char- 4# In the meantime, virtually all the free land sur- rounding the German settlement had been purchased by pri- vate citizens, and other small trade centers were appear- ing nearby. To the northeast, the community of Dallas had been started in 1857 as the temporary railhead on the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad. As the railroad moved west, more and more peOple came through the town, but few stopped to settle there, and no business would locate there because the town was built on very low, swampy soil. In 1867 the Citizens decided to move the town west three- fourths of a mile to land owned by J. N. Fowler of Detroit. The new town was first called Isabella, but in 1869 it was renamed Fowler.”5 Settlers rapidly moved into Fowler be- cause of its favorable position as a rail shipping point on high ground; most of its early inhabitants were Irish- men,from the Irish settlement in the area, and Yankees. To the northwest of Westphalia, in the year 1857 another small concentration of Yankee settlers along the rail line formed the village of Pewamo. The new town, nam- ed after an Ottawa Indian Chief, was incorporated in 1871. “45t. Mary's Centennial, pp. 13, 30-31, 80. u5Daboll, Clinton County, p. 506. 51 Because of its swampy location, Pewamo also develOped quite slowly; in 1871 it had only a grist mill, a small stave-making business, two general stores, a blacksmith shOp, three small protestant churches, a tavern and post office.“6 The 1870's saw the end of the major period of immi- gration of Catholic Germans into the culture region: . . . the community had absorbed as many persons as it could support, and although the trade center provided employment for many newcomers, Westphalia finally reached the saturation point. Most of the farm land had been purchased and was being developed to a point concomitant with the level of technological sophisto- cation of those times. Lack of transportation facili- ties, a source of power, or any unusual reserve of raw materials for industrial purposes has Operated against the community. 7 Plat maps of the region made in 1873 and 1875 support this contention (See Figure 4). When compared with the map of 186h, the combined 1873-1875 county maps show that the concentric spread of Catholic German land ownership had slowed considerably due to the fact that "outsiders" had already purchased most of the other lands. The primary areas of eXpansion during the period were those on the extreme northwest and southeast of the Catholic zone, on land which had not been previously purchased because it was so swampy. It is noteworthy, however, that some of the h6John S. Schenck, History Of_Ionia_and Montcalm Counties, Michigan (Philadelphia: D. W. Ensign and Com- pany, 1881), pp. 252—256. “7Norris, "Acculturation," p. 43. 52 Figure h: -- 1875: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan. The areas depicted here represent the land owned by German-American settlers and their descendants in 1875. Information on which this map is based was extracted from county atlas- es from the period. Sources: D. J. Lake, Atlas of Clinton County, Mich- i an (Philadelphia: C. 0. Titus, Publisher, 1873); and Atlas of Ionia County, Michigan, (New York: F. W. Beers and Company, 1875). 53 MONTCALM COUNTY I M 122.- __ - _ I : IONIA COUNTY | l I I I I . I I I I I D I I I I I N, Shad. .Tw _ _ _ rN. BIO-'02 Iv-n _______ - .TJIL--- -- hub Tw- Tw LEGEND —-— COUNTY BOUNDARY [I] LUTHERAN CERIIANs ------ TOWNSHIP BOUNDARY E OTHER GERMANS ~65: LAKES AND STREAMS - ISTO-PLATTED LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA communes PHD - CATHOLIC GERMANS - _ _ lumen-i9- __________ | - I I I I GRATIOT COUNTY I - IFUILM TJ’ - c I CLINTON COUNT Fowler - dig In. ---------- ' 119/wa ------------ Louvcm ---- I WDIDrIown Twp Binghgg_ Twp. DOWN Tu l875 EXTENT OF THE GERMAN CILTIRE REGION AROUND l WESTPHALIA, MICHIGAN ! ? § 1 ~'I SCALE IN MILES 52 Figure #: -- 1875: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan. The areas depicted here represent the land owned by German-American settlers and their descendants in 1875. Information on which this map is based was extracted from county atlas- es from the period. Sources: D. J. Lake, Atlas of Clinton County, Mich- i an (Philadelphia: C. 0. Titus, Publisher, 1873); and Atlas of Ionia County, Michigan, (New York: F. W. Beers and Company, 1875). 53 MONTCALM COUNTY I M IE.-_ . _ IONIA COUNTY CLINTON COUN - _- _LWETRm10_R.T ----—-----J--- I . I --- N- BIO-IRS MA ---------- ILODSQOR T - __________ .IE-“S’LL ___________ $303!“: T __. r 1’ . . >§ I I I I Fowler IST. JOHNS I MO I ;| , I ' : O I . ° 1 ' 'I- a . L . U I ' E I I ' h 1. I I a‘. ' 5., __ -__'..':-¥2°2-!E ........... '56 I“ -II--_I:b_ _______ 8 1R9'10T1I_TI:A___I I ’ x I I § I , . I I ‘ ‘ T .1 I I .. u v ‘ .7 ~ g I | ‘ "‘4 ' I , I PORTI. I J I “Jamm- - .Tn.--- .1 mm In ---------- : BB ____________ 10qu M -__ - I I I . I I I I : a : ' n T E TII I wmnm ng IDBWIII Tw LEGEND 4 '875 - CATHOLIC GERMANS —-— COUNTY BOUNDARY EXTENT OF THE GERMAN CIA-TIRE REGION E3 LUTHERAN seams ------ msmp BOUNDARY N AROUND WESTPHALIA, MICHIGAN a OTHER GERMANS W LAKES AND STREAMS I - ISTO-PLATTED LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA CONNUNITIES m 9 . T 3 1’ 3 no SCALE IN MILES 52 Figure #: -- 1875: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan. The areas depicted here represent the land owned by German-American settlers and their descendants in 1875. Information on which this map is based was extracted from county atlas- es from the period. Sources: D. J. Lake, Atlas of Clinton County, Mich- i an (Philadelphia: C. O. Titus, Publisher, 1573); and gtlas of Ionia County, Michigan, (New York: F. W. Beers and Company, 18757. 53 PORTLAN ' I ---3,P.Ir.IIsn.¢- _ .TIIIL--- -- 'Iflv T . E“.. T" LEGEND - CATHOLIC GERMANS —-— COUNTY BOUNDARY § OTHER OERMANS W LAKI AND STREAMS - Ian-PLATTED LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA COIIIMUNITIES PUD I ' I I : MONTCALM COUNTY GRATIOT COUNTY hie—.mo—o— _lvsm.‘rw .—- uA'Fllm I : IONIA COUNTY CLINTON COUNT I I I I I : I I . | I I . - : : ' : I ' I __ -‘JLEIEIIEIILB _______ “Jaws" Twp. ________..4' Q Wotcrtown Tug 1 was: ____________ LOILVQ. In. __-_ I I [DOWN TEE |875 ¥ 4’ SCALE IN MILES 4 l 4 EXTENT OF THE GERMAN CULTURE REGION [:1 LUTHERAN CERMANS ------ TOWNSHIP BOUNDARY E AROUND WESTPHAUA, MICHIGAN 3 54 German Catholics were beginning to break from the "solid" edges of the culture region and purchase homes north and east of Stoney Creek, which for a long time had acted as a barrier both because of its lack of good fords and its location at the "optimum" distance of three to four miles from the village. The purchases were probably scattered in distribution because they had to be made when other pioneers left the area or were willing to sell their home- steads for other reasons. In contrast, the same period witnessed an increase in the number of Lutheran immigrants entering the area, and although the Lutheran pattern of settlement continued to be scattered for the same reasons, there was a notice- able trend in which the new Lutheran arrivals tended to settle to the east of the Catholics, and even to the east of the established Lutheran German homesteads: this shift was probably due both to their desire to be near the estab- lished church and to the availability of land, which was greater away from the edges of the Catholic-settled areas. The 1870's were also a period in which internal ex-x\ pansion of the trade centers was common. The farmers in \ the region had completed the process of clearing most of X their land and were building large, permanent residences I and raising extraordinarily large families (in some cases J with as many as eighteen members in one family). The farm- ,/ I r ers could now ship their wheat and corn and other products // to market by rail, and were, in general, prospering; 55 this strengthened the economy of the trade centers and en- hanced their growth. .By 1873 the village of Westphalia had added a har- ness and saddle manufacturer, a tin shop, a drug store, and had one of the community's sons serving it as an at- torney and law counsellor. The boom-town growth of Fowler by that date had supplied the community with a manufac- turer of shoes and boots: two hotels: two resident physi- cians; a wooden-bowl manufacturer; a sawmill and lumber- yard: two blacksmiths (one of whom. was a wagon-maker); a dealer in medicines, flour and feed: a real estate agency: a general store: and a Justice of the Peace."+8 Pewamo by 1875 had added only a school and the services of two shyster "backwoods" lawyers: it had lost the Pres- byterian Church and a carriage-making business that started seven years before.49 The period from 1876-1896 can best be characterized as a period of segmentation within the German-American culture region: a glance at the county atlases of the 1890's readily reveals the reasons behind such a develop- ment. (See Figure 5). The tremendous increase in the amount of land owned by Lutheran Germans is perhaps the most striking feature, but of even greater importance is “8D. J. Lake, Atlas of Clinton County, Michigan (Philadelphia: C. O. Titus, Publisher, 1873), pp. 23, 51. 49Schenck, Ionia and Montcalm Counties, pp. 252-255. ...u...... h........ ....n... .h. H... .2 C .. 9 r” 1. .2... v. .... 2.... :- .’ .... .. L .. 1.3:...” .u. .. .. _.n f. .. r. .2 ... .. .I. -. .. 1.. r” 7. ... .. ... 2. 2. .U 7. 5. . . a .7. .. v. v. c 7. rr.... - .l, I: 3. v. .n : .u .. f/ .. 5. s. .r. ..... a. ..,, ... .. r. .p. a“ .z. . v. a... i. .... ._. .p. .7 r. Of. I. - I" . I. .. 1... .. .. r! ., .p. 5. C .. .... I . t. z. . . .. ... .l fi . . .. .. .. Z .. .. ... ... ... .o .. ... .. .. I. ... .2 .I. V .‘J a. f. 2 ... a -” 7. .. .o D a.. .. '7. In, .5 .1 ... .... .n f. n. .. .. . .. I” r. z. t. . . I '3' v ... . .: ...n 1...... I .. .. 2.... v f: .. ~ "L4. u... ... 5. L. .. .11... I... .. .. 5.... ... "I. a. w“ V....... .H .. .. ...... q... .. .. ".A... ..... .. .H 2.. .. .. z. T ... .a ”.15... ... . L T S .7153: a...’. :- 12... ... .. ...:.... ..... .1... .H 1.x. . .1... .2... .. 9... ..... ".1. . 1.7. ..... .... . LI... a. .. up. .31... .- 3 7. C .../. ... ..p. .2 v. ..a. r. .. ... 2.}. .1” .U z a. .11.. W ... .. .7... .. .............. .I. .l.....(. o .21.... I 1...... I._ . S. r” a: .z.../ ..»a o 9.3. a. 7. I.” ...:. . on a... L. I, .. . It a. 57 l . MONTCALM COUNTY I GRATIOT COUNTY K _8_Ioomer Tu N Shade Tu . _ _ _ _ _ :Wgshmgton _T I — I IONIA COUNTY CLINTON COUNT I I : I I I I I I I I ‘L' I I gar—in Es... r ______ _ - ____g.,.._.._,_.., I. l >§ I IST. JOHNS I ' I LLGIL ............ LOLVLM ---- ! BI ‘. ! Eo lo TW. LEGEND 4 '896 - CATHOLIC CERMANS —-- COUNTY aoUNDARY EXTENT OF THE GERMAN CULTURE REGION [3 LUTHERAN CERMANS ------ TOWNSHIP BOUNDARY N AROUND WESTPHALIA. MICHIGAN a OTHER CERMANS W LAKES AND STREAMS ' - ISTO-PLATTED LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA COMMUNITIES m 9 . 3 T 1 9 SCALE IN MILES PWD WoIerIown Twp Dowm Tug 56 Figure 5: -- 1896: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan. The areas depicted here represent the land owned by German-American settlers and their descendants in 1896. Information on which this map is based was extracted from county atlas- es from the period. Sources: Standard Atlas of ClintgnCounty, Michigan (Chicago: Compiled and Published by George A. Ogle and Company, Publishers and Engrav- ers, 1896): and Atlas of Ionia County, Mich- igan)(New York: J. B. Beers and Company, 91 . 57 fi I MONTCALM COUNTY I GRATIOT COUNTY I I I I I _IEE-n-I 22.-__._ _IN- OOH-122+. _- -_IEI.IIIUI n. - - _. __LHSIMJ I ' ' : IONIA COUNTY CLINTON COUNT ' : I I : I I I I ' I I I ' I I I ' I I I . I ' I | I I ’ ' ' I I 'H. EIUng IE? _______ - ___________ JOE-JIM T ’92-!E ..... "- I I I I I Dun—II- I I I I I I I I I I IPORTLA . I I ---I.F!9'.IW_ . ____________ OILVEM __-- I I - I I I I I I . I l g i i ; I Donb Tu E TIN I Watertown TI! IDBWIII TN LEGEND I896 - CATHOLIC CERMANS —-— COUNTY BOUNDARY EXTENT OF THE GERMAN CULTURE REGION [:1 LUTHERAN GEM-NS ------ mmsmp economy N AROUND WESTPHALIA, MICHIGAN E OTHER CERMANS W LAKES AND STREAMS ' - I970-PLATTED LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA COMMUNITIES a 9 - T I 3 J MID SCALE IN MILES 56 Figure 5: -- 1896: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan. The areas depicted here represent the land owned by German-American settlers and their descendants in 1896. Information on which this map is based was extracted from county atlas— es from the period. Sources: Standard Atlas of ClintggCounty, Michigan (Chicago: Compiled and Published by George A. Ogle and Company, Publishers and Engrav- ers, 1896): and Atlas of Ionia County, Mich- iggn (New York: J. B. Beers and Company, 57 I ' l l I I I { MONTCALM COUNTY T GRATIOT COUNTY : I_1'§_'°£'_"£T_VL-_._ A's-swam -_- -_Iau:on n. - -_-_.L-.Tnat_on..T I I ' : IONIA COUNTY CLINTON COUNT : I I : I I I I . I ' l I I I I ' I I I . I ' ' . I I l u I I I I I | .933“; I B --_',TLUo_in: M: _______ -- _ ILebsnsn. t k.-- _ 4 ______ {992nm --. I I .x‘ bh' 1' .x »,‘.V ,k '. t ‘ a ‘ -‘ - Fowler I C. ., 0" . \Jfiifis‘» .' v -I" 5 it. 23,; "I 7 I. I393 ' f,~“r.‘; :‘ c ' ; --———-f——-—--———-——-w— I...» TY -~- Tw Mow bum LEGEND 4 '896 - CATHOLIC GERMANS —-— COUNTY BOUNDARY EXTENT OF THE GERMAN CUSHRE REGION D LUTHERAN GERMANS ------ TowNSHIP BOUNDARY N AROUND WESTPHAUA, MICHIGAN E OTHER CERMANS ~43» LAKES AND STREAMS o ' ‘ - l970-PLATTED LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA ooMMUNITIES m L . g I . 9 MID SCALE IN MILES 58 the formation of two distinct concentrations of Lutherans, one of which was centered in Riley Township, and the other around Fowler. EXpansion by the Catholic Germans to the west was essentially stagnant, due both to the high level of Yankee land ownership there and the presence of swampy lowlands near the Grand River. Catholic expansion had increased beyond the four-mile line to the south and to the east, in the latter case pushing into the area being settled by the Lutherans. Of particular importance is the presence of scattered Catholic settlers on all sides of Ithe town of Fowler. The Lutherans were the first to split their religious social system. There were, in addition to the settlers farming just outside of the town, a number of German Lutherans living in the Fowler trade center. These set- tlers considered the eight-mile round-trip to church ser- vices each week to be excessive: At a meeting held on January 6, 1878, this matter was brought under consideration and an agreement was reached whereby, although there would be two churches, they would remain one parish . . . Both congregations were to support the one pastor, assist one another in the maintenance of the parsonage, and to hold their annual meetings jointly. Each congregation was to maintain its own house of worship without expense to the other congregation and each church was to have its own set of officers.50 The settlers living in the Fowler area built their own church, in accordance with the terms of the agreement, but 50Light, Built on the Rock, p. 7. 59 this did not solve the similar problem of the majority of the Lutheran settlers in Riley Township, who were commut- ing a like distance to the original church on the Nuffer property. The Riley Township Lutherans purchased a five- acre plot at the center of the intersection line between Sections 7 and 8 of Riley Township in October, 1886: two years later their new brick church, which is still stand- ing, was completed. The old church was still used for annual meetings and other joint purposes until 189#, when a new frame building was erected in Fowler and the old church abandoned:5l different ministers served each con- gregation, and the split was complete. The Catholic Germans living in the Fowler area had the same problem, although to them it was probably even more critical, as they had a much greater distance to travel than had the Lutherans: and they considered the weekly trip to be a necessity. The English-speaking Catholics in Portland, Eagle, Lyons and Fowler had long been considered by the Diocese to be a part of the West; phalia Parish: Rev. Godez had made weekly visits to these outer areas until his departure from Westphalia in 1873.52 The area near Fowler had a particularly heavy concentra- tion of Irish Catholic settlers: when the Catholic Germans began moving in.it was only a matter of time until the Sllbid. 52St. Mary's Centennial, p. 13. 6O Germans and the Irish near Fowler banded together to re- quest a separate Catholic Church for that community. In 1881 the Holy Trinity Catholic Church was completed, and the new priest positioned the statues of the patron saints of the Germans and the Irish side-by-side on the altar.53 Neither the Germans nor the Irish felt ill at ease with the arrangement, as the services were entirely in Latin. The Catholic Germans in Fowler still had strong ethnic and kinship ties to the Westphalians, but they be- gan slowly to form their own social system and to mix more freely with non-Germans; in doing so, the Catholic Germans near Fowler were forced to use the only common language-- English--much more frequently than those in their parent community. Evidence of this is found in the Fowler Catholic Cemetery, located three miles west and one mile north of the town, where only two gravestones have German inscriptions, in spite of the fact that the cemetery was started in the same year the church was completed. The German Catholics in the Fowler area had es- tablished their own social system. The original split between the two Catholic communities was merely caused by convenience: subsequent differences that appeared were based upon the variations in the rates of acculturation in the two communities. In 1887 the Sisters of St. Dominic, from Racine, Wisconsin, opened a Catholic school in Fowler, 53Kemp, "A Study of German Culture," p. 29. 61 and the athletic rivalry that subsequently sprang up be- tween the two Catholic social systems was probably to a large degree due to a boundary-maintenance reaction of the parent system to the loss of its members to a new parish. Segmentation of the German Catholic portion of the region took another form when forty young Catholics, unable to find satisfactory land available in the area near the community, banded together and travelled north to the Beal City area, approximately eight miles northwest of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, where they purchased land and estab- lished a new German Catholic settlement and parish. At the same time the German Catholic region began to exper- ience out-migration of its young peOple. The large farms simply could not afford to support all of the children in the huge Catholic families once the children had reached maturity. The_German-Americans did not practice primogen— iture: the father usually turned his farm over to one, or at the most two of his sons, and the rest of the sons had to find a farm elsewhere or leave the region and find em- ployment. If;the young girls did not marry at an early age, they, too, left to find work in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Detroit, and other urban areas.54 While Catholic immigration had essentially ended in the 1870's, Lutheran immigration into the area was then at . its height. It gradually began tapering off in the 1880's 5LI'Norris, "Acculturation," p. 44. 62 until it ended in the 1890's: In Michigan up to the great depression of 1893 it is fairly easy to trace the history of the German col- onists. In 1893 the German immigration practically ceased, due to the rise of modern German industry and partly due to the situation in America.55 The new Luthern German arrivals, the grown children of the first Lutheran families, and the Catholic Germans were all competing for lands as they became available in the west- ern portions of Riley and Bengal Townships. The Catholics were probably a little leery of purchasing very far into Riley Township, simply because there was no Catholic Church near enough to that portion of the region to make the weekly travel time to Sunday mass worth settling there. For the Lutherans, this was no problem, as their church was close at hand, and they were able to purchase the majority of the land to the east of their church when it became available as the former Yankee owners died or moved away: for the first time a solid concentration of Lutherans became evident in Riley Township. Economic growth continued during these years. Evi- dence of continued prosperity among the diligent farmers, both Catholic and Lutheran, can still be seen in the huge ,barns built during that period. In 1882, Westphalia was incorporated. New businesses that had located in the com- munity included a wagon-maker, two more cobblers, another general store, an ashery, another blacksmith shOp, a coop- 55Florer, Early Michigan Settlements, p. 7. 63 er's shop, a creamery, a tailor shop, and a cabinet shop. A Volunteer Fire Department was formed in the same year, and wooden sidewalks were built along the roads one-half mile on each side of town to make the going easier for school children. A weekly German newspaper "Die Zeitung" was published for several years in the mid-1880's, but was discontinued when the publisher moved to Lansing. In the 1890's another large hotel was added, and a number of other smaller businesses. Catholic residents were begin- ning to have enough leisure time to form organizations, all of which were church-sponsored: both a band and a choir were performing by this time.56 Fowler also continued its steady growth by adding a variety of small businesses. Catholic German encroach- ment into all phases of that community's life was well- illustrated when the bank was established in 1890, with "Michael Spitzley, the Westphalia Capitalist," as its vice--president.57 Some of the more important businesses added at this time included the Weiber Lumber Company and a well-drilling firm.58 Pewamo experienced its most rapid increase during 56St. Mary's Centennial, pp. 80-107. 57Daboll, Clinton County, p. 506. 58100 Years of Progress: Fowler Centennial, 1857- 1957 (Fowler, Michigan: Special newspaper edition, pub- lisher unknown, 1957), p. 31. 64 this period, having gained by 1881 two more general stores, two grocery stores, a drugstore, a weekly newspaper, an "honorable" attorney, and another grain-milling and ship- ping business. Pewamo owed its sudden upsurge in pros- perity to its growing status as a grain-shipment point and to its new position as a railway freight station for many of the nearby communities. Its population had grown to 350 in 1881, but remained static in the next decade.59 The period from 1896 to World War I saw both expan- sion of the areal extent of the German-American culture region and eXpansion of the newly-formed religious social systems, as well as the appearance of an entirely new social system. County maps made during this period show that the grown children in each group continued to pur- chase land as close as possible to their source area as soon as it became available (See Figure 6). The Catholic farmers in the region eXpanded the limit of virtually solid Catholic land ownership an average one mile dis- tance on all sides. Noteworthy trends included: the for- mation of an almost-solid "lane" of settlement between Westphalia and Fowler: the appearance of German Catholic farmers on all sides of Pewamo, in Portland, and on the south side of the Looking Glass River: the northward ex- tension of scattered German Catholic settlement to the 59Schenck, Ionia and Montcalm Counties, pp. 254. 65 Figure 6: -- 1915: Extent of the German-American culture region around Westphalia, Michigan. The areas depicted here represent the land owned by German-American settlers and their descendants in 1915. Information on which this map is based was extracted from county atlases from the period. Sources: Standard Atlas of Clinton County, Michigan (Chicago: Compiled and published by George A. Ogle and Company, Publishers and Engrav- ers, 1915): and Standard Atlas of Ionia County, Michigan (Chicago: Compiled and published by George A. Ogle and Company, Publishers and Engravers, 1906). 66 I I MONTCALM COUNTY I GRATIOT COUNT I I I IONIA COUNTY CLINTON COUNT a I I I I I I 1 I I I l I I I I I I I I I I I I I Grunbuoh TO: I ----------- —.—--—-> -—4 ST. JOHNS ,N. 8'01": 1» _______ PORTLAND EMU"! .. -——-—-—f—----—--————-——--- -—-———-*-—-—-—----— EI-I. Tw Watertown Tug IDOWIII Tug LEGEND |9l5 fl CATHOLIC GERMANS —-— COUNTY BOUNDARY EXTENT OF THE GERMAN CULTURE REGION I: LUTHERAN GERMANS ------ TOWNSHIP 8°me N AROUND WESTPHALIA, MICHIGAN E OTHER GERMANS W LAKES AND STREAMS o . 4 - ISTO-PLATTED LOCATIONS OF KEY AREA COMMUNITIES . . g 3 J 3 Two SCALE IN MILES 67 Maple River: and the consolidation and expansion of the southern Lutheran social system in Riley Township. The most important Catholic event of the period was the formation of a new Catholic parish in Pewamo, which 60 The new congregation was formed for occurred in 1906. reasons similar to those for the formation of the Fowler parish, but in Pewamo the German Catholics alone domina- ted the new parish. The effects of the move were similar to the effects experienced in Fowler. Pewamo became the third important religious social system in the Catholic German sub-culture. The turn of the century represented the high point in the development of the three important trade centers in the culture region. By 1911, Westphalia had reached the level of its present pOpulation: it . . had a little over five hundred inhabitants, and the following businesses were in operation: two de- partment stores, two hardware stores, two farm imple- ment businesses, a post office, three ice cream parlors, a bank, a butcher shop, several taverns, a bakery, harness shop, two restaurants, a livery shop, barber shop, drug store, two furniture and undertaking estab- lishments, two millinery shops, two doctors, a grist mill, two creameries, a blacksmith shOp and a hotel. The parish hag about five hundred families within its jurisdiction. 1 In 1900 the "largest grain elevator on the "line" was erected in Fowler: other important businesses established there during the period included a bulk oil distributor, 60St. Mary's Centennial, p. 111. 61 Norris, "Acculturation," p. 38. 68 a hardware and implement store, a clothing store, a milk- trucking firm, another general store, a barber shop, and a newspaper.62 A grain elevator was constructed in Pewamo at that time, as was a new Catholic Church, but precise information concerning the stage of develOpment then can not be found. From the style, condition, and number of buildings and abandoned buildings that are present in the village today, and the fact that the population total was only three persons larger in 1906 than in 1881,63 it may be assumed that very little growth had occurred there since the 1880's. Unfortunately, county atlases and plat maps are not available at appropriate intervals to adequately and pre- cisely indicate the changes in settlement trends between World War I and the present, or to indicate periods of rapid spatial growth. The major trends in settlement had already been established, however, by the start of World War I, and this fact is apparent in comparing maps of the extent of the culture region in 1915 and 1969 (See Figure 7). Comparison of the two reveals that the German Catho- lics have been slowly consolidating their position by pur- chasing land within the confines of the 1915 limit of scattered German Catholic settlement, in much the same 62Fowler Centennial, p. 31. 63Rev. E. E. Branch, History of Ionia County, Michi- gan6(Indianapolis, Indiana: B. F. Bowen and Company, Inc., 9 ). p- 515. (‘\ \L‘ culture region around Wes.p alia, h'ich1gar.. nThe areas depicted here represent the land ow? ed by descendan+ s of the settlers of the Ge-man- American culture region in 1969. Information on which this map is based was ex- tracted from current county atlases and plat books. Figure 7: -- 1969: Extent of tr e Ger. -A: rican + r. Sources: The following county atlases or plat books, all published by Rockford Map Publishers, Rockford, Illinois, were used as source material for this map: Triennial Farmers' Atlas and Residents' Directory, Clinton County, Michigan: 1967; Farm Plat Book, Ionia County, Michigan: 1963; Triennial Atlas and Plat Book, Montcalm County, Mich- igan: 1969: and Tri-Annual Atlas and Plat Book, Gratiot County, Michigan: 1962. 7O Bloom; T32 I I I I I _i— I ...-_-..-.._ '___-_-- "'2 Lyon flONTCALM COUNTY ' _- flannel--- GRATIOT COUNTY gammy. _ _ IFullonT ._ D ‘1 J. —_ mun" .7 - . .. _ emu-L-.- ' _ '7 : l # n J : I ' “fir : ' B I Donb T E I r I Watertown Tu Dowm Tw . LEGEND 4 '969 C—3 CATHouc cams —-- oouarrv mm EXTENT or THE GERMAN CULTURE REGION % LUTHERAN GEMS ------ TOWNSHIP WWW N AROUND WESTPHALIA, MICHIGAN OTHER cam - LAK. AND sTREAus - two-Putts!) LOCATIONS or KEY AREA communes ¢ 9 1 Z § 1 9 no SCALE IN MILES 71 manner as their forefathers, and at the same time slowly exPanding the outer limit of scattered settlement. The heaviest purchasing efforts appear to have been concen- trated in a northeasterly direction towards Fowler and in 21 southwesterly direction towards Portland. The line of solid Catholic settlement extends to the western boundary of both Lutheran areas: indeed, the Catholics have pur- chased a number of the farms which formerly marked that boundary, and even the original site of the first Lutheran church is now completely surrounded by Catholic-owned pro- perty. Expansion of the Lutheran area is slight, however, and it appears to have taken an easterly trend in its direction. A few non-Lutheran Protestant Germans are now located at widely spaced points throughout the region. Further segmentation in both the Catholic and Luth- eran portions of the German culture region has occurred during this period, but it has not resulted in the forma- t13-12311 of new parishes: rather, as the Culture expanded sPatially, farmers located on the extreme edges of the region have tended to slowly shift their church attendance to Other, closer communities which had established parishes years before. By the 1920's, Catholic Germans on the sou‘bhwestern fringe began attending St. Patrick's Church in Portland, a parish which had been formed in 1877.6!" Ca"t5hC>1ics on the extreme eastern fringe of the Fowler \ 643t. Mary's Centennial, p. 111. 72 parish have similarly shifted their church attendance to St. Joseph's Catholic Church in St. Johns, which was formed in 1870: cemetery evidence indicates that the first Catho- lic movement into the area occurred prior to 1925.65 Ger- man Catholics now comprise about 41 per cent of the St. Patrick's parish and 19 per cent of the St. Joseph's par- ish. St. John Lutheran Church in St. Johns was organized in 1869 by a group of Lutheran German families not directly connected with the German-American culture region: some Lutheran Germans living in the very eastern—most portions of Riley, Bengal and Essex Townships began attending ser- vices there by the late 1920's, but most of those that ori- ginally joined the Riley church have retained their mem- bership in that church. Less than 20 per cent of the Lutheran parish at St. Johns is composed of former members of the Riley or Fowler parishes. In spite of the impression of continued expansion which the plat maps seemingly provide, out-migration from the region has continued. One of the primary causes is that the rate of natural increase among German families, especially the Catholics, has continued to be high in re- lation to the availability of farmland and the number of 65Because of the deep emotional feelings attached to place of burial, the date of first burials in cemeteries, and in particular in consecrated ground in the Catholic sections, is a highly significant indication that the per- son buried there had become a part of the social system in that community before his death. 73 employment opportunities in the culture region's trade centers. A 15 per cent sample survey taken in the winter of 1969 from 199 farms in the German-American culture re- gion revealed that the mean family size, including only farm-operating parents and their children presently re- siding on the farms, was 6.47 persons in German Catholic families: 3.94 in German Lutheran families: 5.13 in other Protestant German families: 4.29 in non-German families: and an average 5.51 for the entire sample. The latter figure shows that for the region as a whole there are 3.51 children for each set of parents. The German-American culture region has supported a constant population since the turn of the century. If the region's economic base continues to be agriculture, and if the methods of land inheritance persist, then out- migration may be expected to continue. The types of out- migration that might occur have already been suggested: when sons of German farmers do not inherit or take over the family farm, they either obtain available farm land outside of the culture region or leave the area altogether for employment opportunities in the cities: and daughters who do not marry local boys usually move to the cities to obtain work. Visual inspection of Figure 7 gives the impression that since 1915, a number of German Catholics have pur- chased farm land in scattered locations on the edge of the 74 twelve townships in which the culture region is concentra- ted.’ In each township immediately adjacent to the twelve- township tier, a count of names that are unquestionably of German-American culture region origin reveals that some of the Germans leaving the culture region are purchasing farms which are near to the culture region, but well outside the primary and scattered secondary concentrations of Germans (See Table 3). The vast majority in this category were Catholic Germans: Lutherans appeared only in Clinton Coun- ty in Greenbush, Olive, Bingham and DeWitt Townships, all of which are on the eastern edge of the culture region. Many of those interviewed within the culture region stated that sons and daughters had departed their homes to seek their fortunes in nearby Michigan cities. In or- der to discover the directions out-migration has taken, the author checked telephone directories from the ten most-frequently mentioned cities for names known to occur within the German-American culture region with great freq- ).66 uency (See Table 4 Some of the names proved to be unsuitable for this purpose: they were apparently so common A; 661n both the plat map and the telephone book checks, the same selective criteria used in establishing the ex- tent of the culture region were used in eliminating from all counts persons who could not be reasonably expected to be descendants from Germans in the German-American culture region. These methods are deficient in that they ignore the out-migration of an undeterminable number of presently married female descendants: but the problems of obtaining such total information would be insurmountable. It can only be assumed that the information noted here applies to the male descendants of the German settlers. 75 TABLE 3 GERMAN FARM OWNERS WHO HAVE MIGRATED FROM THE CULTURE REGION TO ADJACENT TOWNSHIPS, 1967 German All County and Township Farm Owners Farm Owners Montcalm County Bushnell Township 4 - 280 Bloomer Township 13 286 Gratiot County North Shade Township 3 198 Fulton Township 8 245 Washington Township 8 283 Clinton County Greenbush Township 16 239 Bingham Township 14 227 Olive Township 10 290 DeWitt Township 9 265 Eaton County Delta Township 6 261 Oneida Township 4 242 Roxand Township 15 277 Sunfield Township 6 251 Ionia County Sebewa Township 13 262 Orange Township 11 196 Ronald Township 12 238 Ionia Township 5 231 Sources: The following county atlases or plat books, all published by Rockford Map Publishers, Rockford, Illinois, were used as sources. Triennial Farmers' Atlas and Residents' Di- rectory, Clinton County, Michigan: 1967: Farm Plat Book, Ionia County, Michigan: 1963, Triennial Atlas and Plat Book, Montcalm Coun- ty, Mich1gan:1969: Tr1- Annual Atlas and Plat Book, Gratiot County, Mich1gan: 1962: and Tri- Annual County Atlas and Plat Book, Eaton County, Michigan: 1966. 76 TABLE 4 MIGRATION OF SELECTED CULTURE REGION FAMILIES TO NEARBY CITIES, AS REFLECTED IN TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES, 1967 Family Names City Thelen Fedewa Rossow Martens Lansing 3O 23 3 7 St. Johns 7 6 5 9 Flint O 1 O 1 Saginaw l l 5 6 Detroit 1 7 11 34 Battle Creek 0 O O 6 Kalamazoo O O O 4 Portland 13 24 O O Ionia l 1 O 0 Grand Rapids 2 2 O 6 Sources: 1969 Michigan Bell Telephone Company Tele- phone directories for Lansing, St. Johns, Flint, Saginaw, Detroit, Battle Creek,_Ka1a- mazoo, Portland, Ionia, and Grand Rapids. 77 that there were numerous other German families with the same name who had come from source areas outside the cul- ture region to the cities being checked. The figures for the name of "Martens," a German Lutheran name, are included in Table 4 precisely because they suggest the statistical distortion introduced by such an occurrence.67 Two Catho- lic names, "Thelenvand "Fedewa," and one Lutheran name, "Rossow" were selected as representative of the distribu- 68 The results of this tion which was found by this method. method showed, surprisingly enough in view of what had been said in the interviews, that, with the exception of the Portland, St. Johns and Lansing directories, there were very few names from the culture region appearing in the directories of the cities checked. The directory infor- mation shows that Catholic out-migration concentrated on Lansing and Portland, with some of the Catholics entering St. Johns. The Lutherans, on the other hand, have concen- trated on an eastward out-migration, with names appearing with relatively high frequency (compared to family numbers presently living in the culture region) in Saginaw, 67Families which were known to have had relatively small family size in the German-American culture region could hardly have been eXpected to produce the large num- bers of families of the same name in such widely spread cities in such a short period of time: such names were, therefore, eliminated from consideration. 68Th . . . ese names were d1st1nct1ve enough, for reasons discussed in Appendix I, that families bearing these names could be expected to have direct ties to families in the German-American culture region. 78 St. Johns, and Detroit. The combined information derived from the plat maps, the telephone directories, and natural increase statis- tics suggests a number of possible, but in many respects questionable, conclusions about the nature of out-migra- tion of young German males from the region. The first is that young German Catholic men, being unable to find a farmstead in the immediate area of the culture region, tend to remain in the farming profession and purchase a farm in townships that are relatively close to their source area, or find employment in a town which is also relatively close. The German Lutherans, on the other hand, are barely maintaining their rate of natural increase at a one-to-one replacement level, and have still lost young people through out-migration, both to cities and to scat- tered farmsteads to the east: farm ownership in the Luth- eran area appears to be either relatively static or on the decline.69 The large number of Germans, especially Catholics, found in townships near the culture region 69This contention is strongly supported by evidence gathered in field work and interviews. Many Lutheran farms have passed out of the hands of the original family settling there simply because there were either no male children or relatives interested in taking over the family farm after the death of the owners. This is the reason Catholics have been able to purchase many of the farms originally owned by Lutherans on the western edge of Lutheran settlement. The condition of farm buildings, which is related to the amount of available farm labor (and, therefore, children) was also found to be propor- tionally poorer among the Lutheran-owned farms than on the family-rich Catholic-owned farms (See Chapter III). 79 and in cities nearby, suggests that proximity to their old "home" is still a very important factor to many seeking jobs outside of the region, and that cultural cohesion may still be a relatively strong force among the Germans. The economy of the culture region since 1915 has exhibited trends which tend to contrast in certain res- pects with the image of spatial eXpansion offered by the plat maps of land ownership. The economy has continued to be centered primarily upon agriculture, and perhaps the best indicators of the "health" of such an agriculture- based economy may be found in the growth or decline of the trade centers serving the region. .Jugt prior to World War I, both Pewamo and Westpha- lia encountered a levelling-off phase in their economic activities, from which neither has been able to progress significantly. But Fowler continued to grow slowly until just after World War II: possible reasons for its growth almost surely include the fact that it was the original rail-shipping point for agricultural products from the culture region. In addition, many of the Catholic and Lutheran Germans have close relatives in the Fowler vi- cinity, and visits there were probably reinforced by that situation. At any rate, Fowler had become the primary produce-marketing point for the culture region prior to World War I, and maintained that position until the late 1940's, when decreasing costs of trucking grain locally began to give farmers in the area other Options. This 80 fact alone seems sufficient to eXplain the slow, steady expansion of services in that community. During the "great depression" of the 1930's, the economy of the region, based as it was upon diversified "general" agriculture, apparently suffered relatively lit- tle. After the depression was over, one area bank proudly advertised "No home or farm mortgage foreclosure during the entire period of the depression," and the ownership of farms, as revealed by the plat maps, changed very lit- tle.70 The appearance of the automobile had little effect upon trading or social-behavior patterns prior to the late 1940's: the newer social systems had already been estab- lished before this new form of transportation appeared in the area. The lack of good roads within the area, through which no major transportation route passed, did not facili- tate consolidation of the social systems: the radii of the agricultural hinterlands served by each community stayed relatively constant. Thg_German communities remained in miny respects isolated from the main trends in American culture. The years immediately after the Second World War, however, saw some profound shifts in both the economic and social behavior of the Germans in the culture region.“Both World ars had proved to be a cultural shock to the Germans 70St. Mary's Centennial, p. 141. 81 in Michigan, many of whom enlisted and were consequently fighting their own relatives. The wars also served the purpose, however, of initiating many young men from this isolated culture area to many elements of the larger American culture. They came back to Westphalia more will- ing to interact with other social systems than many of their parents had been, and infused with new understanding of the world outside the culture area. The appearance of radio, television and other forms of mass communication also rapidly eroded many of the cultural barriers that had existed for more than a century. Most important of all, the construction of better secondary roads in the region and the growing numbers of automobiles facilitated greatly increased social interaction rates, both within the region and without. Germans now could purchase farms well out- side the culture region and still be within a few minutes' drive of their close relatives. They also could travel outside the region with relatively little expense, both to market their produce and to purchase goods which were cheaper for various reasons than they were inside the re- gion. The Germans were quick to take advantage of the latter opportunity, and their economic behavior rapidly became very "Americanized" in its nature. These changes also had an effect that was character- istic of a trend occurring then in much of the rest of the rural sector of the American economy: some of the small businesses, such as clothing dealers, in Fowler, Pewamo 82 and Westphalia began to go out of business because they could not compete with the greater efficiency and cheaper prices that could be found in larger communities and cit- ies such as St. Johns, Ionia, and Lansing. The villages of Fowler, Pewamo and Westphalia began to experience a decline in services provided within the community by local people. This decline continues today, just as it does in much of the rest of rural America: the trend has been sharply accelerated by the appearance of discount stores in the larger towns and cities. The effects of this trend can be readily seen in all three villages in the form of numerous vacant or abandoned commercial buildings. The farming profession also has been suffering in recent years, primarily because market prices have lagged behind the inflationary cost of living while the increased use of machinery has greatly raised the fixed costs of operation. Many farmers have felt that another part-time occupation was either desirable or necessary to supplement their income from farming. The improved roads built in the last decade and the abundance of automobiles have made that desire attainable, and many of the farmers now are com- muting to part-time jobs in Lansing, St. Johns, Portland, Ionia, and other communities. Some have even found farm- ing so unprofitable that they have abandoned it in favor of other occupations: while continuing to live on their old farmsteads, they now commute to full-time jobs in the city. A survey taken in 1964 through the Catholic schools 83 in Fowler and Westphalia revealed that 129 out of 294 parents surveyed were employed full-time on their farms: 67 had secondary occupations elsewhere, and 96 had no farm income.7l Among the Lutherans, a similar trend is notice- able, and perhaps better developed: A survey made in January, 1969 showed that thirty-six families derive their entire living from the land, the remaining one hundred twenty-six families have an in- come, either totally or at least partially, separate from farming income. The sources of income are varied and include office, shop (industry), postal employee, clerk, construction, education, Federal employee, pro- fessional and business.72 Care must be used in interpreting these figures, how- ever, as included in them are a number of people who now live in homes that belong in a category peculiar to Ameri- can life in the last decade-~the rural non-farm. "Rural non-farmers" include those farmers who have given up farm- ing as a profession and continue to live on their farm even though they are employed elsewhere. But, increas- ingly, rural non-farmers are persons working in the city who find life in the countryside both more ineXpensive and more refreshing, and who build new homes there with little or no thought of farming the land. In the German-American culture region, the rural non-farms are found both in new housing develOpments in all three villages, and alongside the country roads, es- 71Kemp, "A Study of German Culture," p. 45. 72Light, Built on the Rock, p. 26. 84 pecially near the St. Peter Lutheran Church at Riley. In- terviews in these houses and with numerous area residents revealed an even more significant trend: the majority of new homes are being occupied by sons and daughters who had previously out-migrated to find employment in nearby cities. Because the cost of commuting to their jobs is no longer prohibitive, these young men and women are re- turning to live in the region where they were born. This form of "re-migration," while benefitting the community in terms of tax money and essential services, such as gasoline and fuel oil purchases, is doing little to rejuvenate the decline in other non-essential services in these rural villages, as those who commute to jobs in the larger towns and cities also will probably tend to make their purchases in the cities where they work, if the prices there are cheaper. Available census figures for the townships and vil- lages in which the German culture region is principally located support the view that the farm population of the region has remained relatively constant (See Table 5). Of the three area villages, only Pewamo's p0pulation has remained static. But the increase in the populations of Westphalia and Fowler is deceptive: according to numerous local sources, the increases prior to the 1960's reflected in large part a post-depression trend, in which retired farmers were moving to the villages to be closer to the churches and the social life there after their sons took 85 TABLE 5 GERMAN-AMERICAN CULTURE REGION AND VICINITY POPULATION CHANGES, 1910-1960 Population 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 Townships North Plains 1292 1153 1096 1106 1030 .1108 Lyons 2232 1945 2123 2130 2295 2556 Portland 2743 2746 2674 3123 3795 4462 Danby 1030 951 900 1024 1093 1255 Lebanon 1011 91 . 834 814' 737 70 Dallas 1523 149 1614 1632 1686 192 Westphalia 1427 1317 1249 1297 1417 1581 Eagle 1095 981 1101 1109 1089 1273 Essex 1355 1229 1247 1271 1348 1377 Bengal 980 874 863 925 845 893 Riley 1107 906 875 867 896 982 Watertown 1211 1071 1196 1219 1585 2008 Communities Fowler 476 472 561- 579 675 854 Pewamo 289 316 392 415 432 415 Portland 1832 1899 1902 2247 2807 3330 St. Johns 3154 3925 3929 4422 4954 5629 Westphalia 366 325 328 386 459 560 Sources: U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population: 1960, 1, Characteristics of the PS‘ulation, Part 24, Michigan (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963), pp. 24-16, 24-17: and U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of_Popu1ation: 1930, I, ngulation: Number and Distributign_of Inhabitants (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govern- ment Printing Office, 1931), pp. 520, 523. H: '\ ~"\. V.‘ . 86 over the family farm. In comparison to the young farm owners with large families, these retired peOple Spend relatively little in the community, and must therefore be considered relatively unimportant to the village economy. The businesses and services currently located in the three principle villages appear in Table 6. Fowler obvi- ously offers the widest range of services, and is still a very active grain-shipment point. In all three communities economic decline, at least in some forms of commerce, was reflected in the form of large percentages of abandoned commercial buildings, many of which had been vacated with- in the past five years. The heaviest prOportion of aban- donment was found in Pewamo, where there were as many abandoned buildings as there were operating establishments. The prevalent type of farming is still "general" in nature, even though there has been a slight tendency to- ward consolidation of farms as the ineffiency of the smaller farms gradually takes its toll. Figures for West- phalia Township production for 1945 and 1955, which are considered to be representative of the production for the entire region reflect this fact (See Table 7).73 Corn is 73Census figures for minor civil divisions in the agricultural census taken in 1965 were not available, even to the Extension Service. The agricultural production data for Westphalia Township were compared with the data for the other townships in the region and were indeed found to be typical of the region as a whole. 87 TABLE 6 COMMUNITY BUSINESSES AND SERVICES, 1969 Business or Servicea Pewamo Westphalia Fowler Hardware and Appliances Funeral Home Bowling Alley Electrical Contractor Junkyard Telephone Company Building Gas Station 1 2 3 Restaurant 0 2 1 Bank 1 1 1 Post Office 1 1 1 Fire Station 0 l 1 Taverns 2 3 3 Grocery Stores 1 2 2 Medical Office 0 1 1 Implement Store 1 0 2 Grain Elevator 1 l 2 Depot 1 0 1 Lumber Yard 0 2 l Lumber Mill 0 0 1 Barber Sh0p 1 1 2 Beauty Shop 1 l 1 Furniture Store 1 2 1 Catholic Church 1 l 1 Methodist Church 1 0 0 Lutheran Church 0 0 1 Public Elementary School 1 0 1 Parochial Elementary School 1 l 1 High School 1 1 1 Town Hall 0 1 1 Village Hall 0 l 0 Car Wash 0 1 1 0 1 l 0 1 l 0 1 1 0 l 0 0 1 0 0 l 0 aOther businesses and services found only in Fowler are a department store: a tailor shop: a florist: a drug store: a jewelry store: a feed store: a meat locker: a sporting goods store: two life insurance salesmen: a slaughter house: a welding shOp: V.F.W. Center: a hotel: a fuel oil distributor: two car dealers: a body shop: and a vacuum cleaner service center. bWestphalia and Pewamo public high schools are consol- idated. - 88 TABLE 7 AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS, 1945-1955 1945 1954 Farms Farms Reported Item Reporting Units Reporting Units Crops (Acres) Corn 138 2999 141 4125 Winter Wheat 129 2311 126 2297 Alfalfa 57 _ 592 —-- 1388 Oats 147 2320 --- 2871 Glover 123 1758 --- 1498 Barley 41 436 --- ---- Rye 1 12 --- --- Irish Potato 119 201 --- 250 Sugar Beets 24 1610 --- 179 Soy Beans 5 30 --- --- Dry Field and Seed Beans 105 1468 --- 144 Hay --- --- --- 2974 Livestock (Units) Cattle 148 2052 150 2978 Hogs 136 2429 105 1129 Sheep 113 4379 75 2045 Milk Cows 145 1042 142 1320 Poultry 141 1377 118 15008 Sources: U. S. Bureau of the Census, U. S. Census of Ag- riculture: 1954, "Counties and Mlnor Civil Divisions," Michigan Section (Washington, D. C. : Unpublished records, 1954), Sheet 5, Tables 1- 3: and U. S. Bureau of the Census, U. S. Census of Agriculture: 1945, "Counties and Minor Clvil Divisions," Michigan Section (Washington, D. C. : Unpublished records, 1945), Tables 1, 3, and 4. 89 still the principle cash crop: oats, winter wheat, hay, clover, and alfalfa are also being produced in large quantities. Sugar beets were virtually eliminated during this ten-year period as an important crop, and corn seems to have taken up the remaining acreage. There have been a number of changes in animal hus- bandry practices, however. Cattle production increased by almost 50 per cent during the period, and became the prin- ciple form of livestock-raising: dairy cattle also regis- tered a significant increase. Sheep and hog production, on the other hand, was cut almost in half. According to the County Extension Agent,74 these trends have contin- ued, but with two noteworthy changes: the size of dairy herds is increasing, but the number of farms engaged in dairying is decreasing: and poultry raising has become a specialty, wherein only one or two farms in the whole re- gion are engaged. The farming economy is apparently slow- ly reorienting toward serving the nearby city areas through specialization in livestock and dairying. The churches in the region have all experienced vary- ing degrees of change both in their physical plants and in their functions in the communities. St. Mary's Catholic parish has maintained a fairly constant adult membership of approximately 650 parishoners. Holy Trinity Catholic 7h’F. Earl Haas, Clinton County Agricultural Extension Director, a private interview at St. Johns, Michigan, March, 1969 o 90 Church in Fowler has grown steadily with the size of the community, and now ministers to an equal number of persons, almost all of whom are Germans. The Pewamo Catholic Church has a current adult membership of about 200. Both St. Peter Lutheran Church in Riley Township and St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Fowler have about 150 members on their rolls. All of these churches have been remodeled or re- built since 1915, but such details are irrelevant to this study.75 The ministers of the churches have considered the primary function of the church to be religious education, and, with the sole exception of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Fowler, all have established some kind of parochial school at one time or another. The elementary schools supervised by the Catholic Churches in Westphalia and Fow- ler have been in operation continuously since their incep- tion. In the early 1940's, the Catholic priest in West- phalia was finally able to establish a state-supported parochial high school there. A Catholic elementary school was started in Pewamo in the 1930's, and has similarly persisted.76 The German Lutherans opened a parochial ele- mentary school, St. Peter Lutheran School, near the Riley 75The sources for the figures listed in this para- graph are unpublished church membership lists which have no title and cannot be otherwise cited. . 76Arnold Schaeffer, retired resident of Pewamo, Mich- igan, a telephone interview, December, 1969. 91 church in 1941.77 Although the Lutherans have eXperienced few problems in operating their private parochial elementary school, education has long been a "bone of contention" between the German Catholics and the State of Michigan: The first school was a German affair taught by the priest. The Constitution of 1850 required all classes to be taught in English. During the First World War, German was banned in the schools as subject matter. Later laws placing more stringent requirements upon the school systems have been met with some difficulty in Westphalia. At the present time, the law requires that a child attend school until his sixteenth year. . . during the spring of 1950, the state officials declared the high-school system to be essentially a religious parochial organization because of religious objects used on the walls of classrooms and because all instruction was given by nuns . . . about fifty percent of the books in the library were of a reli- gious nature. At a meeting on July 10, 1950, the community decided that the school should convert to a Church-supported parochial organizagion rather than make the changes the State demanded. The Fowler parish made the opposite decision, and its youth soon began attending the public high school in Fow- ler. The Westphalians, after less than a decade of sup- porting a Catholic High School, found the exPenses too high and capitulated: a new consolidated public high school was built midway between Westphalia and Pewamo at the intersections of Centerline and Clintonia Roads. But financial problems have continued to plague the Catholics: there are not enough nuns to teach many of the elementary 77Light, Built on the Rock, p. 29. 78Norris, "Acculturation," pp. 48-49. 92 grades, and the parochial schools have been forced to hire elementary teachers at current Michigan rates.79 All three of the Catholic parishes have begun to find the costs of such measures to be prohibitive, and have in the last two years commenced turning over first and second grade children to the public schools for instruction. The Historical Basis This chapter has been concerned with tracing the development of the German-American culture region from its origins in Germany through the formation of a clearly distinct culture hearth, in which culture traits from the original culture existed side-by-side with the new traditions initiated in answer to the requirements of American culture, to the establishment of new religious social systems on the periphery of the culture hearth as the culture region eXpanded spatially. The forms that both external and internal migration of its members have taken, the relative isolation its members have enjoyed by virtue of their common language and their location, and the growth of distinguishable spatially significant reli- gious social systems all suggest that the culture region has continued to exist, at least until the recent past. On the other hand, a number of factors suggest that the culture region has disintegrated or dispersed to such an 79Rev. Aloysius Miller, St. Mary's Parish, Westphal- ia, Michigan, private interview, April, 1969. 93 extent that it can no longer be called a culture region: the economic behavior of its members in recent years: their occupational mobility: the scattered nature of their settlement on the edges of the region: their general competence today in the use of the English language: and the fact that it has been 134 years since the first Ger- mans settled in Clinton County. In order to determine whether or not the German culture region is more than a mere clustering of farms belonging to descendants of the Germans who initially established a culture region at that location, it is nec- essary to examine the area today for signs of homogeneity among its members and on the cultural landscape. CHAPTER III THE SEARCH FOR CULTURAL HOMOGENEITY: RESULTS OF FIELD RESEARCH The Need for Field Research The historical evidence gathered in the previous chapter merely served the purpose of establishing the fact that a German-American culture region did at one time exist near Westphalia. It provided indirect indications that social and cultural processes had operated in the re- gion in such a manner as to create two distinct sub-cul- tures, with a subordinate series of social systems within each. The available historical records were not very help- ful in supplying information concerning the effects of that segmentation upon the social and cultural homogeneity of the region over space and through time. The changing structure of the culture region could therefore only be uncovered through the use of field research techniques de- signed to reveal "the areal dimensions of significant gra- dations in the content and situation of the culture under study"1 during the period since the culture hearth was es- lMeinig, "The Morman Culture Region, " p. 545. 94 95 tablished at Westphalia.2 This chapter will be primarily concerned with report- ing the results of my field work, which utilized both the genetic and functional methods to identify intra-regional variations both in the homogeneity of the German-American culture and on the cultural landscape. The Social Bases Westphalia is primarily a religious social system not only because all members of the community are in- cluded within the Church, but also because the Church is the focus of community interest . . . the Church promulgates two kinds of values. First, it enforces the value clusters about a religious principle, and secondly, it reinforces the social solidarity of the group. Norris's characterization of the Catholic German social system at Westphalia Village in 1950 showed com- munity interest to be centered on the Church,which, he be- lieved, was also the primary force preserving the German cultural traditions within the community. The key figure in that combined community-religious social system was the priest, whose frequency and regu- larity of contact with all other individuals in the social system was exceeded by no other member of the community: the primary cause of such contact was the priest's perfor- mance of official functions: hearing confessions, con- 2The general nature of these field techniques is re- ported in Appendix I. 3Norris, "Acculturation," p. 69. 96 ducting masses, etc. The priest was the most highly respected figure in the community, in spite of the fact that he tended to isolate himself from routine interaction with lay members of the community, except when engaged in the performance of his duties. The nuns of the church were even more aloof from the community, remaining a dis- tinct group in both ceremonies and social contact: yet, as school and religious instructors, they held extreme- ly important status-roles within the community,“ and were considered to belong in the priestly status: Members of the priestly status are concerned chief- ly with leading, teaching and deciding. However, this does not mean that this status category does not con- cern itself with the conduct of the group at large in the 'category of events.‘ To the contrary, although they do not participate with the individuals in the system on the same level, they do provide sanctions for the manner in which such activities shall be car- ried out. For instance, mating cannot take place ex- cept through a pattern of interaction with the priest, by the publishing of banns and participating in a pre- scribed wedding ritua1.5 Other social groups within the system achieved status levels based on both religious and secular criteria. All members of the community were considered to be in a "class- mate" status subordinate to the priestly group: the various levels within this status included: the old men who had retired from active farming or commercial pursuits: the wage-earners, who for the most part possessed land, a home, “ibio.. pp. 73-75. 51bid., p. 75. 97 a family, and economic independence, and who held strate- gic power in both secular affairs and religious social activities: the young, unmarried teenagers of each sex, who were busy preparing for their roles as adults: the young children: and the women: Women as a group hold a substantially different status position from men as a group, and this differentiation, which is manifest in the role activities allotted to members of this status category, constitutes one of the more significant thematic emphases of this society. In addition, Norris found general life-styles of indivi- duals residing in town enough different from the life- styles of those living in the country, in spite of close kinship ties between both groups, "to warrant making a 7 distinction between them." Within these groups in the social hierarchy were lo- cated a number of specific ascribed roles which reflected upon the value systems of this segment of the culture. Distinctions between male and female roles were then still very clear on all levels: A premium is placed upon male children for the sim- ple reason that male children are a greater economic asset. Women are considered to be 'weaker' and cannot be eXpected to do the heavy work which a farm hand must do. One farmer put it this way: 'I have two boys and my wife has eight girls.’ The male more frequently originates action to the female, although there are a few instances where the female seems to dominate the males. But the general pattern maximizes the position of the male and minimizes that of the female. This pattern holds with greater force in the open country 61bid., p. 78. 71bid., pp. 76-78. 98 than in the village . . . The male is supposed to as- sume leadership in maintaining order in the family. The roles of male and female are so clearly defined and taught from childhood that there are few discus- sions regarding the validity of male authority.8 Parent-child relations in the region, especially in the rural areas, reflected a deep, inbred respect by children for their parents. This respect could be seen in the man- ner in which young men between twenty and twenty-five years of age instantly obeyed the commands of their fathers while working in the field. Urban values were at that time beginning to find their way into the community, but appar- ently had not done too much to significantly disrupt these relationships as late as 1950.9 Marked changes in many of these relationships were already underway by the time Norris completed his thesis, and he recognized this fact: The ascribed roles which the community defines as essential to maintain itself have been subject to more modification in the last fifteen years than in the preceding one hundred. As compared to nearby satel- lite German Catholic communities such as Fowler and Pewamo, Westphalia remains arch-conservative on all fronts, but it cannot be denied that the old order is changing, giving place to the new. And while most young people do not Openly revolt against the old sys- tem, almost imperceptible changes in the orientation of the group are contiTually altering the total beha- vior of the community. 0 Even more abrupt changes in the social balance have 8Ibid., p. 82. 9Ibid., p. 84. lOIbid., p. 88. 99 occurred during the past twenty years. While the key figure continues to be the priest, his authority and pol- icies relating to the community are now subject to review and limitation by members of the parish through the parish council, an organization of thirteen men chosen by the par- ish for that purpose. From the 1890's to the early 1960's, the priest had been informally advised of parish matters by a church committee of the top leaders from the church social organizations. In 1966 the church committee was re- placed by the parish council in accordance with an edict from the Vatican.11 The change which occurred was univer- sal: but it was significant on the local level in that it changed a key element in the social structure of the Cath- olic community. The education crisis has forced the church school to accept non-religious community teachers who teach side-by-side with the nuns, and to shift in- struction on some levels to public schools, a factor which has probably weakened the hold of the Church on the commun- ity's children. In addition, the status-roles of the nuns have been changed by Vatican policy to coincide more with contemporary modes of dress and behavior, and this has af- fected their relations with the community, although the change is so recent that the effect at this time is diffi- cult to analyze. llRev. Aloysius Miller, St. Mary's Parish, Westphal- ia, Michigan, a private interview, April, 1969. 100 In the post-war years a number of factors led to rap- idly accelerating rates of interaction between the German- Americans and the other cultural groups outside their re- gion: the rapid intrusion of all forms of mass media into the community: the greatly increased mobility of its resi- dents due to the boom in automobile ownership: and the ten- dency of many members of the community to acquire "commut- er jobs" in nearby cities. It may safely be assumed that the increased interaction would markedly affect behavior patterns in the previously isolated German-American cul- ture region, and that changes in the internal structure of the region would almost surely follow. The German Catholics at Westphalia were affected by these changes more than any other group, for their social system had been the most effective in preserving the Ger- man-American cultural traditions. According to numerous local sources, the primary changes included a sharp in- crease in the number of persons in the wage-earning status, which now embraces both men and women commuting to jobs in cities and towns outside the region: an advance in the status position of women, due both to a change in the values in the region and the fact that many of them are now wage- earners as well as housewives: and a change in the rela- tionship between the adolescents and their elders in the community, which is thought to be a result of the "outside influences" that are now "corrupting" the formerly respect- ful attitudes of the younger generation. 101 Information obtained from interviews with members of both the Fowler and Pewamo Catholic Parishes leads to the conclusion that the social systems formed there as each new church became established were very similar in their social structures to the system at Westphalia. The church remain- ed the focus of community attention in those two villages, and the relationships between the priestly status and the Catholic German community have been in both instances ex- actly the same as those described for the Westphalia sys- tem. When each new parish was formed, its secular struc- ture was also probably a copy of the Westphalia system, and many of the traditions from the culture hearth must have been carried over into the new social systems. But there were two fundamental differences between the conditions existing during the formation of the culture hearth at Westphalia and those existing during the forma- tion of the two new related social systems in Fowler and Pewamo. In the first instance, the German Catholics es- tablishing parishes in the latter two communities were not separated by great distances from the cultural influences of their friends and relatives in the culture hearth. In the second place, the Germans establishing social systems in Fowler and Pewamo were doing so in communities already settled by non-Catholic, non-German pioneers. The first factor made it relatively easy for the German Catholics in the satellite communities to retain the traditions of the culture to which they had previously belonged. The second 102 factor probably operated initially to reinforce a sense of ethnic isolation among the German Catholics within the newly formed parishes. Because of this, however, the Ger- man Catholics in the Fowler and Pewamo areas were almost immediately forced to increase economic, political and so- cial interaction with the other settlers and tradesmen that were now their neighbors. The German Catholics in Fowler even had to share their revered church with the Irish settlers, and in both cases there were Protestant churches operating in the village when the Catholic Ger- mans arrived. Given these initial conditions, it was reasonable to postulate that the social systems in both Fowler and Pe- wamo would retain the principle characteristics which would identify them as segments of the Catholic German- American sub-culture, instead of becoming separate sub- cultures with different traditions. It was hypothesized, however, that the higher rates of interaction between Fow- ler and Pewamo Catholic Germans and non-Germans would result in the former groups acculturating, or adjusting to and assimilating the characteristics of the English- language-speaking cultures around them, much more rapidly than would their kinfolk in the relatively isolated, mon- olithic German Catholic social system in and around West- phalia. Analysis of the social structure in the Pewamo and Fowler Catholic parishes today tends to confirm this hy- 103 pothesis. The same changes which occurred in Westphalia in the past two decades have occurred in both of the other villages, but apparently at a much earlier date than at the culture hearth. The process of acculturation may be charted by examining both positive characteristics of the social system, such as the presence of culture traits or elements that have been assimilated by the changing sys- tem, and negative characteristics, in the form of the ab- sence of traits or forms found around the culture hearth. By either criterion, the social systems in Fowler and Pe- wamo have acculturated much more rapidly than has the sys- tem at the culture hearth. Fowler Catholic Germans have sustained the most rapid rate of acculturation, perhaps because of the fact that the German Catholic social system was formed there more than twenty years before a similar group gathered in Pewamo, and perhaps because Fowler was closer both physically and economically to the mainstream of interaction with the rest of Michigan. The best evi- dence in support of these contentions is found in changes which have occurred in values, ceremonies, organizations, and the use of the German language, all of which are dis- cussed below. The German Lutherans, because of their non-Catholic religion, their scattered pattern of settlement, and rela- tively informal organization, formed a sub-culture that was distinct from the German Catholic sub-culture, even though the Lutheran Germans were ethnically and linguistically 104 closer to the German Catholics than to any other group in the vicinity. The German Lutheran sub-culture was from the very start more heterogeneous in its nature and less formal in its relationships within its social system than was the early Westphalia Catholic German sub-culture. The early Lutheran settlers were few in number and scattered in loca- tion: they were, as a consequence, slow in comparison with the Catholics in forming a church congregation and con- structing a church building. But it may not be concluded from this statement that the Lutheran community, once es- tablished, was any less church-centered than the Catholic settlement: unlike the Catholics, the Lutheran Germans never had a small trade center that was exclusively their own community, and for them the binding force that has held their social system together has been the Lutheran Church. Relationships between the established Lutheran Church and the Lutheran social system were markedly different from those within the Catholic German sphere. The Lutheran min- ister was not sent by the Church with the settlers for the purpose of establishing a mission, but was "called" to service in the Lutheran community by a "voters' meeting" 12 As the of all the adult members in the congregation. Lutheran German sub-culture grew in numbers and split into the Fowler and Riley congregations, voters' meetings 12Light, Built on the Rock, p. 6. 105 continued to be an important method of accomplishing major tasks in each social system. The minister was far more subject to control by the church laymen in matters of both procedural policy and financial expenditures than was his Catholic counterpart. After World War I, lay control of the Lutheran minister gradually shifted to committees of laymen, variously called "elders," "trustees," or the "church council." Protestant churches have traditionally emphasized lay participation in making decisions regarding church policy and financial management at the local level more than have the Catholic parishes, and the German Luth- eran churches at Fowler and Riley are no exception. _The fact that the Lutheran minister has been subject to more control than the Catholic priest implies that the minister may have been regarded more as an equal by members of his congregation than were the members of the priestly status in the Catholic communities. In addition, the fact that the minister and the Lutheran churches in the two social systems were associated with the ritualistic and behavioristic guidelines established by the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church serves to confirm the supposition that relations within the communities were more informal: the ritual of the Missouri Synod is much less demanding of the time of the congregation members than is the Catholic ritual. The Missouri Synod merely offers guidelines for the behavior of its local ministers, whereas the Vatican asks its priests and nuns to conform to more rigid canons 106 that greatly restrict their social behavior. The Lutheran minister has therefore been able to mingle more freely and informally with his congregation than his Catholic counter- part. Indeed, the minister has been able to involve him- self directly in many of the parish social activities as a participating member. Like the Catholic priest, he was the key to maintenance of the Lutheran German social system be- cause he was more frequently in contact with all members of the system than was anyone else. Because of his position, he was probably as highly respected in his community as was the priest in religious matters, but he certainly has not enjoyed the same level of influence concerning the secular affairs of his social system as has the Catholic priest. The levels of social status within the Lutheran soc- ial systems are very similar to those found in Westphalia, and many of the same changes have occurred. The most im- portant differences stem from the dispersal of the Lutheran German farmsteads from the very beginning and the related fact that no singularly Lutheran German trade center has been established. Members have gathered primarily to attend church and church-related activities. These relationships have not been reinforced by large-scale economic and secu- lar interaction, with the consequence that social bounda- ries between the status levels are not as well developed in the Lutheran social systems. An additional consequence is that no town-country dichotomy is found in the Riley con- gregation, and there is very little evidence of any such 107 dichotomy existing in the Fowler congregation. In spite of the fact that the German Lutherans ini- tially formed a sub-culture, that sub-culture was never welded together by constant economic interaction and con- centration of settlement, as was the case in the German Catholic sub-culture: and the distance factor split the Lutheran sub-culture into two segments less than ten years after the formation of the initial church congregation. The Lutherans, forced by these circumstances to interact with non-Germans even more frequently than were the Cath- olics, also tended to acculturate much more rapidly than the Westphalians. Evidence concerning the Lutherans' rate of acculturation could likewise only be found in traceable changes occurring in their value orientations, the nature of their local organizations, their ceremonies, and in the use of the German language in their social systems. Spatial Changes in Values Norris identified a series of thematic emphases which he felt to be representative recurring values in the culture of the New England Yankees that had migrated to the vicinity of the region in which the Germans had settled: 1. The Puritan ethic typified in the exhortation to °Feare God & walke ye in hys wayes.’ The desirability of industriousness and hard work. A high value on academic training Emphasis on individualism ,A high value on thrift and frugality Inventiveness O‘Kn-PWN 7. 8. 108 The superiority of the Yankee and his way of life. Health 1 In contrast, he pointed to Kluckhohn's disclosure of thema- tic emphases characteristic of contemporary American cul- ture: xioxmtum I-‘ Consciousness of the diversity of their biological and cultural origins. Emphasis upon technology and upon wealth. The frontier spirit. Relatively strong trust in science and education. Relative indifference to religion. Unusual personal insecurity. Concern over the discrepancy Between the theory and the practice of culture.1 On the basis of his field experiences, Norris propos- ed that the key thematic emphases in the social system of Westphalia in 1950 included: 1. O\OCD\) O\ \n-F-‘U N I-’ Focus of community attention centered upon religion as expressed through the framework and ritual of the Church. Low value of academic training, except for the priestly class. High premium on physical strength and endurance. Regard for personal property and privacy. Consciousness of linguistic, ethnic, and religious homogeneity and distinctness. Strong confidence in that which can be overtly dem- onstrated as of immediate practicality. Thrift and frugality. Subordination of women. Industriousness, 'work for work's sake.’ Rigid authoritarian orientation as emphasized in the virtues of respect, obedience, and immediate response to persons vested with authority, and in the precise definition of roles. 13Norris, "Acculturation," pp. 129-130, citing S. H. Holbrook, The Yankee Exodus (New York: 1950), Chapter xxiii. York: 1949), p. 239. Ibid., citing Clyde Kluckhohn, Mirror for Man (New 109 11. Cultural superiority.15 I used these thematic emphases as the basis of field questioning in order to determine the rates and levels of acculturation attained in the various sections of the Ger- man-American culture region. It is readily apparent, in comparing and contrasting the thematic emphases of the WeStphalian social system with those found in both early and contemporary American culture, that the values in 1950 in Westphalia were still in con- 16 If that were flict with those of the "typical" America. the case, then the presence of these values in the region now would constitute strong evidence in support of the be- lief that a German-American culture region exists and is still thriving today. But if those values have gradually disappeared and been replaced by contemporary American values, at least in some portions of the region, then it should be possible to trace the disintegration of the cul- ture region and discover whether new boundaries to the region can in fact be established. The focus of community attention centered upon reli- gion, as expressed through the framework and rituals of the church, is a theme which is still strong in the three primary Catholic social systems, and especially so in 15Ibid., p. 130. 16Ibid., pp. 130—132. 110 Westphalia. There appeared to be little abatement in attendance at weekly masses or interaction among the mem- bers of the church through social organizations and events. The reasons for the continuation of emphasis on this value probably include the Catholic religion's mandatory require- ments for consistent attendance at masses and confession: the continuing education of Catholic German children in Catholic parochial schools: and the conservative attitudes, characteristic of much of rural America, that place high values on attendance in church. The proportion of this continuing emphasis attributable to the fact that the church-goers were German was impossible to determine. In the Portland and St. Johns segments, attendance and partic- ipation were also at a high level. Among the Lutheran Ger- mans at Riley, the focus on religion has been especially intense because that group had no community around which to center its social system: some evidence of the intensi- ty can be seen in the fact that former members of the Riley parish who moved to Lansing years ago still drive there on Sundays regularly to attend church services. Attendance has also remained constant at St. Paul's Lutheran Church:17 17The information in this section, except where oth- erwise documented, was obtained from repeated interviews 1n the spring of 1969 with the following church pastors: Rev. Aloysius Miller, St. Mary's Parish, Westphalia: Rev. Albert Schmitt, Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Fowler: Rev. Thomas J. Bolger, St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Pewamo: Rev. Herman Rossow, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Fowler: and Rev. Marvin Barz, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Riley Township. ' 111 the German Lutheran congregation there, too, is composed primarily of rural people. It appears that the attitude of growing indifference to religion, which is supposedly characteristic of much of American culture today, is still concentrated in the urban areas in this section of Michi- gan. Norris noticed that the Westphalian social system placed a low value upon academic training, except for the priestly class. During the early years of the culture region, church-related professions were the highest goals to which the youth of the Catholic community could aspire: this is evidenced by the fact that by 1936, Westphalia Parish had produced one bishop, ten priests, sixty-four nuns, and had six more prospective priests in seminaries 18 But the primary occupation throughout the country. _most children in the community desired was that of a land- owning farmer, and the value placed on education suffered accordingly. Parents in the community simply did not en- courage their children to go on for higher education. This pattern apparently held true throughout the culture region until World War 11. Today that attitude appears in the Westphalian social system more than in any of the other portions of the region. State laws require that children attend school until they are sixteen years old. Most of the children in the 18St. Mary's Centennial, pp. 35-43, 96-101. 112 Westphalia and Pewamo school systems now attend and com- plete high school because of that requirement, but only 10 to 20 per cent go on to any form of higher education what- soever. In Fowler, where the Catholic children attend a public high school, there has been a marked increase in interest in higher education in recent years: approximate- ly 50 per cent of the Catholic youths there are going on to college, business or trade schools of some sort, as opposed to the 5 to 10 per cent that did so in 1950. The Lutherans in Fowler were apparently the first to feel that higher education was a necessity: today 70 to 80 per cent of the high school graduates are continuing their educa- tion even further. Children of members of St. Peter Luth- eran Church attend a public high school in St. Johns, and about 60 per cent of those who graduate continue on to high- er levels. The variations in these levels are probably attributable to the readiness of each social system to accept non-German-American values, including the penchant for higher education, which have been infiltrating the area through many different forms of mass media in the past 20 to 30 years. Perhaps the most significant fact is that there is still some reluctance on the part of the children in the Westphalia social system to continue their education. A somewhat-related characteristic is the high value placed on physical strength and endurance in young men, for it is precisedly that quality which makes them useful, 113 good farmers. This pattern is manifest in the avid inter- est in high-school sports that is present in all of the social systems in the region. It is evident that all of the farmers in the area consider this attribute to be ful- ly as important in their sons as intelligence, and in the Westphalia social system, it has been regarded even more highly than in the other systems. The tradition of independence that was initiated when the settlers built their farmsteads in a dispersed pattern of settlement was reflected in a high regard for personal property and privacy among the German-Americans. The importance of personal property may be related to the fact that the most important achievable status-role within the communities in the culture region has been that of farm owner. When he attempted to do field work for his thesis, Norris quickly discovered just how strong the regard for privacy was in the Westphalia area: . . . the bulk of information was secured by the use of non-directive interviews on an informal basis. In this way, it was possible to avoid the appearance of being unnecessarily inquisitorial in a community where any direct question is apt to be resented as an inter- ference in personal affairs . . . No amount of eXplaining was sufficient to convince some pe0ple of the nature of the study. At first, some people suspected the investigator of being a'bol- shevik' or communist: others were convinced that he was a 'Washington man' from the F.B.I., or a secret bank inspector. At various times early in the study it was rumored that the newcomer was a private detec- tive or an income tax specialist checking on local in- comes. It is extremely difficult to explain clearly and concisely the nature of an anthropological study in acculturation to persons not oriented to the level 114 of abstraction which such work involves.19 In both the German Catholic and Lutheran sub-cultures the regard for personal property was still found to be a highly emphasized value in 1969. It is interesting to note, how- ever, that the populace had been "educated" by the mass media and other outside influences to such an extent that I was able to conduct direct interviews successfully, with only seventeen refusals on visits to 226 farms in the cul- ture region. Information was readily obtainable so long as no information was sought concerning property values, taxes, or other items the farmers considered to be "sacred" subjects that were not to be discussed with outsiders. The consciousness of linguistic, ethnic, and reli- gious homogeneity and distinctiveness varied throughout the region. It is highly significant that in all instances the pe0p1e in the culture region considered themselves to be Americans above all else: none were found who thought of themselves as Germans in an American community. The German-Americans could not help but be sensitive of their identity, though, for they have long encountered pressures and prejudices in the world outside their culture region. Many historical records of Clinton and Ionia County pioneer days have seemingly made a point of ignoring the existence of the German settlement. The settlers have endured a cen- tury of being called "Krauts" and other uncomplimentary 19Norris, "Acculturation," pp. 13-15. 115 names by their non-German neighbors, and the German-Ameri- cans have gone through two agonizing world wars fighting against their relatives in the Fatherland. Some antago- nisms still apparently exist, both within the region and outside of it.20 The consciousness of linguistic, ethnic and reli- gious homogeneity is most evident at present in the social system at Westphalia, where the elders and the middle-aged wage-earners still gather after church for a session of chit-chat in the German language. Most of the younger children are not being instructed in the language, however, and its use will probably end after the current generation has passed away. In Fowler and Pewamo, a sense of German identity appears only rarely at special social and family gatherings. The Lutheran German adults in the Riley par- ish continue to maintain a sense of their cultural identi- ty: their centennial pageant, conducted in August, 1969, revealed their awareness of their heritage. Most of the Lutheran children in that congregation, however, are not learning German. The Lutheran Germans in Fowler do not even use the German language at social gatherings or fam- 20For example, while I was eating lunch one day in a Fowler establishment, I overheard one customer say, "Those damned Germans never cared about anybody but their own." -And there are religious antagonisms as well: I first discovered the presence of the Lutheran Germans while on a pilot study in the region in 1968, when I was told by one indignant elderly lady I was questioning that "There are no damned Catholics in this house!" 116 ily reunions anymore. The Germans in the Westphalia social system demon- strated to Norris a strong confidence in that which could be shown to be of immediate practicality, particularly in matters relating to purchases of farm equipment and pri- orities in accomplishing maintenance on their farmsteads. A German farmer would sooner buy equipment to increase efficiency in his production of farm goods, or preserve his barn, than keep his house in prime condition. "A farmer with three or for boys and a dozen cattle would consider a milking machine an unnecessary item as long as he could benefit from an abundant labor supply."21 All of the ministers interviewed by the author perceived that while the "over-thirty" people in their parishes still be- lieved thrift and frugality to be virtuous attributes, the younger generation was consistently and wastefully carefree in its attitudes towards Spending. The adults felt that their sons and daughters were "typically Ameri- can" in this respect. Comments have already been made concerning the su- bordination of women. Women were prepared from birth to assume their functions as housewives and mothers, and were considered to be definitely inferior in status to men. Women were expected to sit on one side of the church and men on the other in both the Catholic and Lutheran churches 21Norris, "Acculturation," p. 139. 117 in the early days of the communities. Although the precise date of the shift to a combined-family seating arrangement could not be determined in any of the churches, elders in the Catholic Church believe it occurred in the German Cath- olic churches at the turn of the century. Surprisingly, the Riley Lutheran congregation maintained separate seat- 22 Women have been excluded from ing until the 1940's. many of the church social organizations and relegated to various "Ladies' Societies." The real emancipation of the women in the culture region as a whole has come in the last twenty years as women have gained economic indepen- dence in increasing numbers and become contributers to the family income. Many of the young unmarried women have left the region to seek jobs and husbands elsewhere, and the independence of women is now an established fact in the culture region. The Germans have long prided themselves on their in- dustry in performing necessary tasks. The good general condition of the farmsteads in the culture region reflects this pride. More than 60 per cent of the German Catholic members of the Westphalia Parish and 70 per cent of the German Lutherans in the parish of St. Peter Lutheran Church work partetime or full-time away from their farms, and it 22St. Peter Lutheran Church Centennial Committee, "Built on the Rock" (Riley, Michigan: Unpublished text of a pageant depicting the history of St. Peter Lutheran Church, August 17, 1969), p. 11. 118 is suspected that percentages for commuting jobs in the remainder of the region are similar. Ministers from all the churches reported that they had received many favor- able comments from industrial leaders in Lansing and other Michigan industrial cities, all of which reflected upon the industry of the German workers from this region. The high value attached to rigid authoritarian ori- entation emphasized in the virtues of respect, obedience and immediate response to persons vested with authority still exists within the region. In both Westphalia and Pewamo, regard for parental authority is still considered to be quite high, but the ministers have noticed signs that it is beginning to erode. Among the Fowler Catholic children, there is a distinguishable trend for children to question parental authority ever more frequently. The Lutheran pastors similarly noted a trend toward dissolu- tion of this norm. Yet both Catholic and Lutheran German ministers felt that the Lutheran German children were more obedient than the average non-German children. The feeling of cultural superiority which Norris ob— served in the Westphalia social system either has totally disappeared or exists in only subtle or rarely-expressed forms. All of the ministers believed that this element has disappeared from the culture region, and this field worker was unable to discover any signs of such a feeling. Most of the evidence that might have been interpreted in this light appeared to be more related to the thematic em- 119 phasis on consciousness of linguistic, ethnic, and reli- gious homogeneity and distinctness. Religious and Secular Organizations The author believed that a comparison of the number and type of religious and secular institutions in the var- ious segments of the region would possibly reveal the strength of the aforementioned focus of community interest on religion throughout the region. Organizations in the Westphalia social system were again used as the basis of comparison.23 In Westphalia, the balance between religious and se- cular organizations is heavily weighted in favor of the former. Church-sponsored organizations include the Knights of Columbus, a men's ritualistic fraternal order which meets every two weeks and presently has 275 members: the Catholic Order of Foresters, which is a men's organization based on insurance benefits, has 200 members, and meets once each month: the Holy Name Society, which is "dedicated to the encouragement of the minor virtues, with special em- phasis on combatting profanity," has a membership of about 300, and meets thrice yearly: the St. Joseph's Society, which is a mutual-benefit insurance society that meets 23Current membership information was obtained in each instance from pastors of the parish in question. Specific information relating to the purpose of these organizations is located in Norris, "Acculturation," pp. 61-68. 120 twice yearly, and currently has 350 on its membership rolls: the Christian Mothers Society, which has 350 mem- bers, meets four times each year, and is concerned with religious training of children, and with preparations for major social ceremonies: and the Young Ladies Sodality, to which 40 single young women presently belong in order "to promote devotion to the Blessed Mother." Norris has clearly outlined the overall function of the religious organizations: These organizations not only serve to reinforce the religious values of the church, but also bring members of special interests based on sex and age into contact for periods of heightened interaction to the end that the statuses which these organizations repre- sent can be clarified and made eXplicit, thus main- taining the equilibrium of the community:2 Most of these organizations were formed in the first twen- ty-five years of this century. Membership has remained constant for the most part in these organizations within the last twenty years, with two exceptions: the Holy Name Society and the Young Ladies Sodality had, respectively, 100 members and 61 members more in 1950 than they do at present. The membership drop in the first of these two may reflect an increase in indifference to religious values, for the Holy Name Society's principle function is not social, but purely religious. The decreasing member- ship in the Young Ladies' Sodality can probably be attri- 2L‘Ibid. 121 buted to the increasing exodus of young unmarried females to jobs in other communities immediately after they gra- duate from high school. Many of the religious groups serve social functions other than those religious functions for which they were ostensibly formed, and in that sense they are very much like the Kiwanis Clubs and other such secular clubs found in many communities with mixed religious composition: the difference in Westphalia is that these functions are still relegated to organizations sponsored by the Catholic Church. The community's bowling alley, for example, was built and is being operated by the Knights of Columbus. In 1950 Norris observed that: Secular activities in the community are based chiefly on recreational interests . . . [Secular or- ganizations] are far less stable for they have no central coordinating agency. However, the secular organizations are not yet those essential to the con- servation of the system.2 Religious organizations have continued their virtual monopoly of community social life in Westphalia. The only formally-organized secular organization is the Junior Cham- ber of Commerce (Jaycees), a community service organiza- tion currently consisting of about 75 young adults, al- most all of whom belong to the Catholic Church. Other more informal organizations include a community band which has been in and out of existence for varying periods of 251bid.. pp. 61, 67-68. 122 time since 1884, a bowling "Boosters League," and numerous card-playing clubs among the women.26 The soft-ball league which was very much in operation in 1950 has been discontinued. The Pewamo Catholic Church has a small membership in comparison with Westphalia: only about 200 adults belong to the church, and the number of religious organizations reflecmsthis fact. The only formally-organized society is the Holy Name Society, which has about 100 members, and apparently fulfills a social as well as a religious func- tion in the community.. Members of the church do belong to the Knights of Columbus, but they have to travel to Port- land, St. Johns or Westphalia for meetings, as there is no chapter located in Pewamo. The only secular club in the community is a "21 Club," which is formed primarily as a social club for couples. Both the religious and secular clubs apparently assume some responsibility for community projects. Catholic religious activities are significant in the community of Fowler. There is a very active Christian Mothers Society, which has approximately 250 members: a Knights of Columbus chapter, with 300 members: a socially active Holy Name Society, with about 250 members: and a Catholic Order of Foresters, which is relatively recent in origin and has only 125 members. 261bid., pp. 61—63. 123 Fowler, probably because the community has a mixed religious content, also has a number of secular organiza- tions which are better developed than they are in any of the other communities. Formal social organizations include the Jaycees, which number approximately 100 and are very active in community affairs: the Busy Bees, an organization of community women: and a Conservation Club. Informal organizations include bowling leagues, card clubs, and pub- lic school-related activities for the children. The Cath- olic and Lutheran Germans and non-Germans alike take part in many of these activities in addition to their own reli- gious activities. There are three principle religious organizations re- lated to the Lutheran church in Fowler, which has 160 adult members at present. Thirty women in the congregation are active in the Ladies' Aid Society, which is a social organ- ization that has taken on many diverse projects and tasks related to the church, including financial support for new furnishings. The primary purpose of the Lutheran Women's Mission League, which was only organized in 1954, is to support the Church mission work abroad. The Walther League is an organization which provides Christian educa- tion and activities for the young people of the church: the current membership is 25. All of these organizations have a social function as well as a religious purpose, but mem- bership in them does not appear to attach the status that ‘12:. is so evident in the Catholic organizational hierarchy. Many of the church members participate in secular activi- ties as well. St. Peter Lutheran Church sponsors the same national organizations, but for the members of that church there are no alternative secular organizations to which they can belong, as there is no community trade center: membership in the church organizations is consequently quite high. The Ladies Aid and the Lutheran Women's Missionary League have been merged into one organization for purposes of convenience in arranging meetings, and the combined group presently numbers 75. The Walther League has 30 active members. A fourth organization, formed because of the need to deal with the problems of maintaining the parochial school at the church, is the 50-member Parish Teachers Association (PTA).27 In neiflun‘Lutheran Church are there formal social organizations for the men. Church responsibilities are relegated to "boards" of men. In Riley, the congregation has established a Board of Elders, a Board of Trustees, a Board of Finance, a Board of Education, and a Church Council. The Fowler Church has a similar organization. The general impression received from this over-view of the religious and secular organizations in the social 27Light, Built on the Rock, pp. 33-37. 125 systems of the culture region is that church activities play an especially important part in the lives of mem- bers of the Westphalia Catholic social system and the Lutheran system at Riley, and that church organizations are probably least important in the social lives of the Lutherans at Fowler and the Catholics at Pewamo. Cultural Ceremonies and Traditions The nature and intensity of ceremonies and visual traditions associated with a culture reflect both the focus of that culture's attention and the extent to which change and acculturation have occurred over time within the culture in response to outside forces. Norris analyzed ceremonies at Westphalia by cate- gorizing them as either rites of passage or rites of in- 'tensification: The rite of passage is centered upon changes which occur in the life of the individual. First Communion, for example, marks a significant change in the inter- action pattern of the child with members of the group in the German Catholic Community. This change is mark- ed by a ceremony which symbolizes that change and is followed by heightened interaction between the child and members of the group. Rites of intensification follow disturbances which are the concern of the en- tire community and so are group-centered. The roga- tory services which mark the beginning of the planting season in the community of this study mark the change in routine activities which accompany this season, and this ceremony brings the members together because of the importance of the crisis. Both rites of passage and rites of intensification serve to increase inter- action for the innate function of re-affirming group solidarity, for the temporal-spatial separation which occurs among members of any group is in itself a cri- sis unless means are found to unite the participating 126 members with regularity.28 Among the rites of passage within the German Catholic religious system in Westphalia were baptisms, first com- munion, confirmation, eighth-grade graduation, high-school graduation, marriage ceremonies, and funerals. Of these ceremonies, the two graduation ceremonies only were unique to the Westphalia social system in that they were primarily religious ceremonies: the rest could be found in ritualis- tic form in both the Catholic and the Lutheran German churches, and may be considered to be characteristic of the Christian religion as a whole. Spatial significance can be attached to such ceremonies only when variations in 'the nature of the ceremony and the attention given to the (ceremony in different parts of the region are examined. For many years in Westphalia the eighth-grade gra- diuation ceremony was the most elaborate and most church- <>Iziented in nature, for it represented the final step in ‘tlieeeducational process of the majority of the community's youth: the young graduates in caps and gowns attended a Dre-graduation baccalaureate mass that was usually a far more impressive ceremony than the actual typical mid- We stern graduation ceremony which followed.29 When the westphalia High School became a parochial school in 1950, x 28Norris, "Acculturation," p. 6. 291bid., pp. 108-110. 127 the same type of ceremony preceded high-school graduation ceremonies. When administration of the Westphalia high school passed from church hands to public control, graduation ceremonies were also shifted in 1961 to the new consolida- ted high school between Westphalia and Pewamo. In the past school year the eighth grade has also moved to the new location as it came under public auSpices. The bacca- laureate masses preceding graduation ceremonies are still observed: in fact, the graduates are required to attend mass in bgth Pewamo and Westphalia. But the eighth grade ceremony is being de-emphasized because so many children are going on to high school, and the eighth-grade gradu- ates no longer wear caps and gowns to mass. It is inter- esting to note that a Catholic priest was included among the last three commencement speakers at the consolidated high school: the influence of the Church is still strong, even in what is now a public school system. The Fowler Catholic Church has similar baccalaureate ceremonial masses for both its eighth-grade parochial and public high-school graduates. No baccalaureate ceremonies are held in the Lutheran churches at either Fowler or Riley. Graduation ceremonies for eighth-graders are held in the church at the St. Peter Lutheran School, but are devoid.of any especially religious ceremony, other than the usual invocation and benediction that typify the secu- ‘Ela. a 299*" Hilfirfln A .01.. .1k 9. -Ph’l . 1 _ 128 lar graduation ceremonies in this country. The only other rite of passage exhibiting interest- ing variations throughout the region was the wedding cere- mony. The pomp and duration of Catholic weddings and the comparative simplicity of most Protestant weddings are well-known. It is of great significance, however, that in the German culture region virtually the entire congregation of each church attends weddings in its church and the post- nuptial activities which follow. In Westphalia, the aver- age estimated wedding attendance is 550: in the Fowler Catholic Church, the average is 400: in Pewamo it is 150: and in the Lutheran churches at Fowler and Riley the aver- age attendance is 150 and 200, respectively. The nature of the festivities following the ceremony is also impor- tant. The "Puritan Ethic" characteristic of the Yankees in the area simply does not allow parties to follow most wedding ceremonies: the German Catholics, though, would not do without their traditional beer at the reception. In Westphalia, a reception with beer and dance band in the parish hall basement is an indispensible part of every wedding. In Fowler, there is beer at the reception, but no dancing. In Pewamo, those who want to hold a recep- tion with beer and dancing are generally forced to use the American Legion Hall in Portland, for there are no facili- ties fbr receptions in the village. Among the German Luth- erans, there is relatively little drinking during wedding 129 receptions, and only at the Riley Church is dancing during receptions seen. Among the secular rites of passage, graduation from public high schools and junior high schools has attached increasing importance as the parochial schools have faded from view. Birthdays are observed in the American tradi- tion. German Catholics used to observe the day of an individual's patron saint, but this practice was discon- tinued years ago and the pattern of discontinuance was not traceable.3O The most important rites of intensification in any religious system are the church services which draw the members together. St. Mary's Church holds either three or four masses on Sunday, depending upon the season, daily masses during the rest of the week, Rosary and Litany services each evening, and numerous other special masses during the year: attendance at weekly mass averages 400- 500 peOple.31 In Holy Trinity Catholic Church at Fowler, only three Sunday masses and two masses during the week are held, and the same_is true for the Pewamo Catholic Church. The Fowler Lutheran Church holds only one service on Sundays, and the Riley Church conducts two services on Sundays: the low frequency of services in comparison to 3°Ibid., pp. 116-117. 311bid., p. 121. fillies its: 1"... . .t a ._ I, 130 the high frequency of Catholic masses is a normal pattern for American Protestant Churches. Some of the special religious rites could be iden- tified as traditions brought from Europe. One of the most important seasonal changes in the lives of the farmers was the time in which spring planting was started. Among the Catholics in Germany there was a special rogation ceremony, and the tradition was continued in America, even to the present, although in somewhat modified form. Norris re- ported in 1950: The procession, headed by the priest, walks a few rods away from the Church into one of the fields. Formerly, these processions were extremely elaborate. Attendance varies according to general planting conditions at the time. If conditions have been unfavorable, there is a large attendance, but if they have been good, the farm- er is more apt to remain at his work.32 Although a rogation service is held in St. Mary's Church three days before Ascension Thursday each year, the pro- cession outside the church was eliminated in 1965: the priest reports that now only about 20 per cent of the farmers attend that service. The Fowler Catholics still hold an outside procession to honor the occasion, but the Pewamo Church discontinued even the service shortly after World War II. In the Lutheran churches a rogation Sunday is observed on the church calendar, but there has not even 321bid., p. 123. .I liniilllnlwililugvlm .Num 131 been an agricultural tone in the sermons in the last two decades, and no evidence of any special ceremonies from the past could be found. w Another rite often attributed to the cultural heri- tage of the German Catholics was the Corpus Christi pro- cession, an elaborate feast and procession held yearly 60 days after Easter to honor the Blessed Sacrament. This procession was common in Southern Germany and Austria at the time the early emigrants departed Westphalia: how- ever, it was apparently not an established tradition in the part of Germany that was the source region for the Westphalia immigrants, for it was not a part of their early religious ceremonies in the settlement. The cere— mony was introduced by Rev. Godez, a native of Austria, sometime in the mid-nineteenth century: They were elaborate ceremonies in which four altars were constructed one-quarter mile north, east, south and west from the center of the village. Evergreen shrubbery was planted about the altars and along both sides of the roads. The altars were profusely de— corated with linen, draperies and flowers. The priest carried the Blessed Sacrament from the Church to each of these altars, followed by the congregation reciting prayers and singing hymns. The Benediction was given at each altar and at the moment of the Elevation, an- vils prepared with gunpowder were set off.33 Full processions were discontinued in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the brief outdoors proces- sions were finally moved inside in the early 1950's, where 33Ibid., pp. 91-92. 132 they are now held on Sundays instead of Thursdays, in order to allow factory workers to participate. No evidence of Corpus Christi processions could be found in either the Fowler or Pewamo Catholic Churches. It is interesting to note that both the Catholic and Lutheran German churches have incorporated Thanksgiving and Memorial Day, both of which are secular holidays, into their calendar of special religious observances.34 Secular rites of intensification include the obser- vance of voting, special family gatherings and reunions, wimnfiT§T“‘nh‘ 4v ”mu-L.“ dances, and the celebration of American holidays. Perhaps the most important occasions for the Catholic Germans in the culture region are the three community picnics held each summer. In Westphalia, the picnic is on the prime date of July 4: it is sponsored by the Catholic Church, with voluntary help from the church organizations, for the benefit of the parish. "Cabling stands, eating places, a band stand, beer garden, raffle and bingo stands are set up on the Church property through coOperative labor," and baseball games and a band concert are featured.35 Similar events are held in Fowler in August and Pewamo in June, and it is traditional for all of the parishioners in each community to attend the other two communities' picnics, both for the purpose of maintaining German com- 3“Ibid., pp. 123-124. 351bid., p. 125. 133 panionship between the social systems and raising funds for each parish. In 1966, St. Mary's Church listed a $17,706.30 revenue from the summer festival in its annual financial report.36 German folklore and traditions surviving to the pre- sent day are a rarity: it would have been necessary for the researcher to live among the people for a long period of time in order to be able to ferret them out, for not one person interviewed would admit to any knowledge of Ger- man traditions currently in use. Probably the major pro- blem in finding such traditions is one of perception: if people perceive themselves as Americans, they tend to view everything they do as "typical American behavior." Some of the older people in the region were able to recall a very few German traditions. The current Catholic priest at Westphalia remembered that in his youth it was "Krist Kindsen," the Christ child riding on a donkey, who brought the gifts to children at Christmas-time: instead of leaving cookies for Santa Claus, the children left straw ‘and oats for the donkey.37 Mourning periods used to last a year or more, and the men wore black armbands and the women wore veils, in keeping with European customs, un- 36St. Mary'sParish’Finapcial Repgrt: 1966, (West- phalia, Michigan: St. Mary's Catholic Church, 1967) , p. 3. 37Rev. Aloysius Miller, St. Mary's Parish, Westphalia, a private interview, March, 1969. 134 til at least 1935.38 In the Riley Lutheran Church: 'Christian Lehre' was a part of the German Luther- an Church from its formation in this country. This was a type of Sunday School in which the younger children, even several years after they were confirmed, would occupy the front pews of the church--the boys on one side, the girls on the other--and as the Pastor would ask questions from the Catechism, the children took turns answering. This custom was part of every Sunday church service well into the 1920's. In commemoration of last year's centen- nial Celebration at St. Peter Lutheran Church, the congre- gation has re-instituted the use of the "klink-beutel"--a satin bag with a wooden handle which was used in the early years of the church--to collect the Sunday offering.39 The nature of culturally-related activity, as re- vealed through ceremonial rites of passage, rites of in- tensification, and traditions observable in the culture region, effectively demonstrates that the majority of the characteristics which can be related to the German-Ameri- can culture region that was quite clearly established in the nineteenth century are to be found in strength only in the Westphalia Catholic social system and the St. Peter Lutheran social system. The other systems appear to be losing or have lost their cultural identity much more ra- pidly. 38Norris, "Acculturation," p. 116. 39St. Peter Lutheran Church Centennial Committee, "Built on the Rock," p. 10. auspz|ru r In C... a s... W, 135 The Use of the German Language There has been considerable language change and linguistic drift in the last century. In the begin- ning, the community had no members capable of speak- ing the English language, unless it was the priest. All verbal and written communication was in German. Today, all formal communication, whether in town meet- ing or Church, is in the English language, and most pe0p1e speak a more nearly adequate variety of English than German. Occasionally, one can find an elderly person who is reluctant to use English, and the more isolated farm families use German almost exclusively. Thus, there will also be an occasional school child who knows little English. But on the whole, English pre- vails over German. Even the language of informal com- munication is a 'Gebrochen Deutsch' which consists of a liberal mixture of both languages. 0 The trend toward universal use of the English lan— guage as the primary means of communication in the culture region has continued, and the author found that in 1969, none of the 199 families interviewed throughout the culture region were using the German language as their pri- mary means of communication within their homes, although numerous families believed that they still had the capa- bilities to converse informally. Available evidence on immigration routes taken by these settlers tends to support the view that there were relatively few people coming into the region with a know- ledge of English: with few exceptions, the Germans migrat- ing into the Westphalia settlement came directly from Ger- many, with only a few brief stops on the way. Language assimilation probably took place principally within the uoNorris, "Acculturation," p. 140. Jar... Jill-I'll tithing 136 culture region, and should be traceable through such docu- ments as church records and store records, and through cemetery evidence. Catholic Church records proved to be only slightly helpful in this reSpect, for the priests kept many of their church records in Latin. This is unfortunate: since the priests were usually the first to learn the English lan- guage, they probably would also have been the first to use English in keeping their records. Consequently, in all three Catholic parishes in the culture region, only the very first baptismal and burial records in the Westphalia Church appeared in German: all the rest were in Latin or English. The township records proved to be even less help- ful, for they were required to be kept entirely in Eng- lish. Early store ledgers were also recorded primarily in English, although the use of the German spellings and distinctive letter characters, such as the umlaut vowels, “1 In all of the Catho- was traceable into the late 1880's. lic portions of the region, therefore, the principle evi- dence for language changes was obtained from tombstone in- scriptions and interviews with area residents. ulBohr, "Ledger of the Bohr Lumber and Grain Mill."‘ Other records of interest are located in the Michigan His- torical Collection, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: they include Theresa Bohr, "Millinery and Dressmaker Sh0p Ac- count Book, 1878-1884" (Westphalia, Michigan), and assorted business records of the Bohr General Store, Westphalia, Michigan, 1850-1866. 137 Two factors were extremely important in starting and accelerating the language assimilation process through- out the region. The Constitution of 1850 required school- teachers in Michigan to teach all classes in the English language, except for classes in foreign language grammer. During the period of intense anti-German sentiment in World War I, the teaching of the German language was pro- 42 hibited by the government. These two occurrences were extremely important to the German Catholics, for their native language was not used in the formal ritual of the church, or in the political meetings, and it was only in the school system that formal requirements existed as to the use of their native language by the children. In Westphalia, teaching of the German language was never again resumed after the war ban was lifted. Announce- ments in the church continued to be made in German well in- to the 1930's. In the German Catholic cemetery there, inscriptions in the English language first appeared in sig- nificant numbers in the 1890's, and the general use of Ger- man on tombstones was discontinued in the 1920's, although a few inscriptions were found that were as recent as the 1940's. The shift to the use of the English language was apparently gradual: today, even those most proud of their heritage use German occasionally at social gatherings after uzNorris, "Acculturation," p. 48. 138 church. But the language has been so modified that four area residents who served in Germany at various times in the last decades found that they had extreme difficulty in communicating with their relatives in Germany. In Fowler, the change came even earlier, perhaps as a result of the greater interaction rates between German Catholics and the Yankees there. Latin was used in the church, and English in the schools, because of the presence of large numbers of Irish in the church. In the Catholic cemetery west of Fowler, which was established in 1881, on- ly two tombstones contain German inscriptions, and the rest are in English. In the Pewamo, St. Johns and Portland Cath- olic cemetery sections, all of which reflect German Catholic use starting generally in the 1920's and 1930's, no in- scriptions in German could be found. Area residents near Fowler and Pewamo still report informal use of the German language, but those in Portland and St. Johns report little or no use of their native tongue. The history of change in the use of the language among German Lutherans is far better documented, in spite of the fact that the early records of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Fowler were destroyed by a fire in the church. Church records at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Riley Town- ship were written in German until January 6, 1930, when the shift was made to English. The record of sermons in German has been preserved: .EWhSHffl ,nmmw 139 Originally, divine services were conducted in the German language and the children went to the "German School" which was a period of instruction in religion, the German language, and other subjects. The Pastor was the Teacher at this school, and the "Schoolhouse" was an addition on the north side of the parsonage. Confirmation, too, was conducted in the German langu- age until 1924 when the class was divided, two members of the class being confirmed in the German language and the remaining ten in English. Beginning in the early twenties, divine services were conducted every other Sunday in the English language and the opposite Sundays in German. This arrangement seems to have continued until 1939. Then, recognizing the growing need for more worship and pastoral services in English, on July 9, 1939 it was voted that English services would be conducted every Sunday and holiday, German services every second and fourth Sunday in an early service. Due to the decline in use of the German lan- guage and inability of the younger pastors to preach German, German serv ces were discontinued in the clos- ing months of 1947. 3 In the St. Paul Lutheran Church, sermons in German were discontinued in the 1930's, when a new pastor who was un- able to speak the language arrived. The Germans in the social system at Fowler reportedly don't even converse in- formally in German any more, and only the elders do in the Riley system. The first English inscription on a Lutheran German tombstone in the old cemetery south of Fowler appeared in 1866, and English and German inscriptions are mixed in the Lutheran cemeteries since that date. German appears on tombstones most frequently in the Riley church cemetery: the most recent tombstone bearing a German inscription is dated 1963. nBLight, Built on the Rock, p. 17. 140 Results of survey questions concerning 1969 levels of German language proficiency in the culture region appear in tabular form in Table 8 and in their spatial relation- ships in Figures 8-10. In order to eliminate as much variance as possible from the statistical data, the per- sons being interviewed were asked a series of control questions designed to establish their proficiency from the author's point of view, rather than from their own. It was readily apparent from the start that those who did speak German either perceived themselves as having very low proficiency, or desired that the author believe that they spoke very little German. The usual comment was "Oh gosh, we hardly speak it at all." When pressed, however, many of these individuals admitted that they could carry on conversations quite well, and even in some cases write the language. A comparison of proficiency levels among German par- ents reveals that a surprising number of families in the region are still capable of speaking German at some pro- ficiency level or another. Only 8 out of 110 German Cath- olics and 10 out of 32 German Lutheran parents interviewed spoke no German at all, whereas 13 of the 16 other-Protes- tant Germans spoke no German. Such a comparison also re- veals that a higher proportion of German Catholics inter- viewed converse in their native tongue at higher fluency levels than do the Lutherans. 141 TABLE 8 GERMAN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY IN THE CULTURE REGION, 1969 Number of Families m m m .P o g 5 m «--I 'P m g are CI4 gun a O (U G) d) B an an EP IE '* 8 st? 8*; 88 5:» Level of Proficiency in: co on on. 26 Adults Compositional Ability l3 7 6 O 0 Fluent Conversation 21 18 3 0 0 Everyday Conversation 33 32 l 0 0 Occasional Conversation 31 24 5 2 0 Only a Few Phrases 29 21 7 l 0 RetiredoElders Compositional Ability _ 5 2 3 O 0 Fluent Conversation 12 9 3 0 0 Everyday Conversation 8 8 0 0 0 Occasional Conversation 4 3 1 0 0 Only a Few Phrases 1 1 O 0 O No Capability 128 87 25 16 41 Minors Compositional Ability 0 O 0 O 0 Fluent Conversation 1 l 0 0 0 Everyday Conversation 3 3 0 0 0 Occasional Conversation - 2 2 0 0 0 Only a Few Phrases 34 3O 4 O O No Capability 118 74 28 16 41 Number of Families in Each Categopy 158 110 32 16 41 142 ,CARSéDN CITY 0 O . o OQREENVILLE. OBELD I NO 0 mAgDSTCN MAPLE <§APIDS O rum-5mm _ 4 3 - ' O o u .3 1 J ' . 3 434 H : IONIA ”.5. m’fi’.‘,.‘pr§1%'.".'. CST 994936 O 9‘. -: - .3 -. .,"41 1......4 a g a 3 I Q 9 t o azasgaif‘anoa. 4 1 1°: 1 a 4' . a. 44:4,: . a 3" :34 :49 a... .3 O 'C)"‘ 49,. 22. - a . u 1.9.. O PORTLAND " & ODE MTT LIACIEBTA 0 axis mummy o O O HASLETT 2- A FEW PHRASES 3- 0cm commmu GRAND LEDGE [— A ' Q- EVERYDAY WWW 5. FLUENT CONVERSATII 6- mm AILITY WHEN SOLE GERMAN LMBUAGE PROFICIENCY ADULTS GERMAN CLLTLRE REGION CLINTm AND ICNIA CQNTIES MICHIGAN EH” 0 2.0 to NM: N i = FARI’STEAD U'ERE PATRWCE mICIMTES Figure 8 143 ‘ ,CARSéIN CITY 0 O . 0 OQREENVTLLE OBELDINC o HBBAgDSTm mamins ° 0 HATFEETIN ‘ O ._ 5.. . IONIA ”a“ PW” _...6w.... .’ OST JOI—INSO LY%6""..'..".°.... .. Q 1 . 3. . ,1 a , . . 'I .I . . O , ”335% o .. . 4 1 .9 4 . I 0- : . . .' i I- : . A G 1 - . 3'. 4 O O PORTLAND ' 1’: ' 3' ODE wiTT wAcoIJsrA o EAd.E HASLgTT LA ' GERMAN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY RETIRED ELDERS GERMAN CLLTURE REGIOQ CLINTON AND 1041A CQNTIES. MICHIGAN II = FARMSTEAD u-ERE PATRCNACE CFIGINATES Figure 9 143 .CARSCEDJN CITY 0 o o ODREENVILLE OBELDINC O HaaAgDSTm MEchpms o o MATI-EUFITCN _ . - -..': O of: 1 u'. .. IONIA . esp :.-:eA-. '_ ST JOH’NSO O LYQBS.,_....5.9... .-O.;.--..- -..1,. o -. "1:531:93 .' :.' . - 9 1 .I1 . i ' . O. . . . .. 9 . I. O _. .4”. 1.1.... “1.. 2‘ O PORTLAND ' ”(if "' ODE wiTT was. 0 ads 0 Lmt'mmv KEY o o HASL<§TT Z-A muses {occasmcmm ORAND LEDGE LA I 5 mcmm 0-WAULITV WHEN SOLE 35583 . I as 5.0 N [__L___J M GERMAN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY RETIRED ELDERS GERMAN CU_TLRE REGICN CLINTCN AND IONIA CCINTIES. MICHIGAN FARMSTEAD U-ERE PATRCNACE ORIGINATES Figure 9 143 - ,CARSCQN CITY 0 o . o (:QREENVILLE BELD I NC ° MAPLE SANDS O O HmfigDSTCN . O o HATFEfTuj. _ '. 4 - IONIA ”an 96,0315;- -- 3 OST JOIjNSO C) ”$5w-W-----0.EII.. -- O ' - . .9. . .1 O ‘ I LESTZ-Afff.‘ .' - 1 1 .54 . a . o : ...,e a. o : 4 t“'.' 3: , o PORTLAND ' 1" ' 3- ODE wITT MCCEJSTA O EAdE O Q HASLCETT GRAND LEDGE [_A ' GERMAN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY RETIRED ELDERS GERMAN ClLTLRE REOICN CLINTCN AND IONIA CONTIES MICHIGAN 0, an no N mu: u = FAH’STEAD u-ERE PATRCNMI mIGIMTES Figure 9 fillllli Egan 11M OCARSCON CITY 0 0 o QOREENVILLE OBELDINO ° mgmm "“56““ o o MATFEFTON . 3 - - ' .' O 32.1. 1'32 '. . . . _z.2.z _z .. IO IA Mg“ page?“ 3.6M? z. .- OST JOl-jNSO (3 N55 .. 5.53.: .z’, ._. _. 3 . I .. . . . 3 . . . g 3 I 3 o CENEN9: a ' ...... .4 . . z . 4 . . .2 O ' ' 0.2 2 1 i . . .. - - . 0 PORTLAND ‘ " f " " "f 2 " ODE wITT UACCgJSTA 0 mi: m mum nagv o o HASLETT 2- A PET. prams O 3- OCCASM (=me GRAND LEDCE L“ ' 4- mon mm S-WWWM C-WWTY RELATIIN SOLE .m GERMAN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY Z: MINORS 3"” GERMAN CULTURE REGION ‘ “ P‘" CLINTON AND IONIA COGNTIES MICHIGAN a” o 2.0 no N HILLS I = FARMSTEAD WERE PATRWCE CFICINATES Figure 10 I . m 145 The mapped proficiency of adult German parents also reflects the current extent of German settlement far better visually than do the proficiency maps for minors and re- tired elders living on their farms. In the map for adults, some clustering of high values of proficiency is evident near the communities of Westphalia, Fowler, and Pewamo, and near Riley Lutheran Church, but high values can also be seen on farmsteads that are relatively isolated as well; perhaps this could be attributed to the fact that the social systems are in fact cohesive, and not distance-de- pendent. The map of language proficiency among retired elders still residing on the farmstead exhibits a clustering of these pe0p1e near Westphalia, with generally high values on almost all farmsteads; the old peOple still know the language and use it. There is a large area of German farms north and west of Fowler which have few elders liv- ing on the farmstead; the author was told that the oldsters like to move back to Westphalia to live out their retire- ment, and this may be the reason for the void. That void may also be partially eXplained, however, by the fact that the area to the north of Fowler is that most recently settled in Catholic expansion of the culture region boundaries, and that many of the families in this area are still relatively young; the map of families con- taining children who speak some level of German nicely . Illnhmfl- I" Viv: J. ._ 5.511 4 . . . : .. » 146 fills that void. Very few of the children under 21 years of age speak German with any degree of proficiency, and that is significant in itself for showing the extent to which the acculturation process is Operative in the region. But the fact that ggmg of the children do is important evidence that the culture region does exist today. It is difficult to draw any clear boundaries on the basis of these maps alone, but, when taken together, the three maps and the statistics do show evidence of some homogeneity with respect to use of the German language within the area that contains the greatest concentration of German settlers. Changes in the Spelling of Names One of the inevitable problems experienced by the early German settlers each time they came into contact with their Yankee neighbors was the difficulty in communi- cating the correct pronunciation and spelling of their names. German phonetics and English phonetics simply did not match easily, and the Yankees were not educated in the differences between spellings in German and in their own language. Accordingly, there was almost immediate pressure on the Germans to change the pronunciation and spelling of their names to conform to accepted English phonetic rules. I attempted to determine precisely what changes had occur— red in name spellings in order to be able to identify and categorize the Germans in the region as to religious affi- 147 liation, and to discover whether or not there might be any spatial dimension to the name changes. The pressures on the German settlers must have been tremendous from their very first days in this country. All legal documents, such as land deeds, required recognizable signatures. Census takers wrote down their own interpre- tations of name spellings in accordance with the way they believed the name sounded; in 1850, for example, the cen- sus shows the English mutilation of a few German Catholic names among fluasettlers in Ionia County: the "Ffichs" fami- ly name appeared as "Fox"; "Koch" became "Cook"; "Pfeifer" became "Fifer"; "Schneider" was spelled "Snider"; and "Hauck" was rendered "Hawk."nu Name spellings listed in the 1860 Census exhibited an even wider range in spelling variations (See Table 9). Apparently, many of the German residents of the area simply accepted the spelling in English which they found easiest to communicate in dealing with non-Germans; many of the spellings today reflect English phonetic similarity to the German pronunciation of the original German family name, as is evident in the examples already mentioned. The only reliable indicators of such change, however, ap- pear to be church records and tombstone inscriptions; all “u"Census of 1850, Ionia County, Michigan" (Allegan, Michigan: Abstracted and typed by Mrs. C. A. Robbins Monteith and Hannah McIntosh, Cady Chapter, N.S.D.A.R., 1956). 148 TABLE 9 SPELLING CHANGES IN GERMAN FAMILY NAMES Original 1860 Census Current Spelling Spelling Spelling Anton Ffichs Anthony Fox Fox Adam Vidua Adam Fedawa Fedewa Anton Ginster- Anthony Kinser- Gensterblum blum bloom Anton Klfickner Anthony Clockner Kloeckner Johann Schmitt John Smith Schmitt, Smith Johann Thelen John Taylor Thelen Quirin Freund Anna Fraunt . Freund Johann Schafer John Shafer Schafer Johann Lehmann John Leyman Lehman Johann Spitzlei Jacob Spitzler Spitzley Englebert Esch Inglebird Ash Esch Conrad Zimmer Conrad Cemmar Zimmer Heinrich Rader- Henry Rademacher Rademacher macher Johann Schfiller John Sheller Schueller Peter Simons Peter Simmons Simon Jcseph Bauer Joseph Bower Bauer :Johann Mfiller John Miller Miller Sources: Joseph Scheben, Untersuchungen zur Methods und Technik der deutschamerikanischen Wander- ungsforschung an Hand eines Vergleichs der Volkszahlun slisten der Townshi West halia Mi ‘ 85 I Chl an, vom Jahre 1 O Bonn, Germany: r—yg— 939 , Tabelle I; and St. Maryjs Parish Fi- nancial Repgrt: 1966 (Westphalia, Michigan: St. Mary's Catholic Church, 1967). 149 others, including county atlases, early censuses, store records and even present county plat maps are notorious for introducing incorrect spellings. It is very signifi- cant that the name spellings, once adopted, have appar- ently in some manner been standardized for each family and have, with a few minor exceptions, remained constant since they were adopted; church records show little or no varia- tion in name spellings of the families in all sections of the region. Plat maps infer that just the opposite is the case, and are certainly to be less trusted than the church records. The changes in and standardization of spelling oc- curred at a very early date in the culture region; most elders interviewed recalled that the name changes had oc- <3urred during their fathers' or grandfathers' lives. No information was available concerning why or how the cxhanges had occurred. And, what is more distressing, the <211anges were not traceable because of the poor reliability Of the early sources in spelling the settlers' names pro- Perly. Consequently, no spatial relationship whatsoever <3<>led be established for the changes, or for rates of ac- cul'turation; name changes only proved valuable in identi- fying landowners as to their religion for mapping purposes. Economic and Cultural Orientation Both the history of the culture region and the field evidence compiled to this point suggest that each of finislflp .- ll hi : . . . H. .1 m. " 150 the three primary Catholic social systems and the two Lutheran social systems exhibit internal social cohes1on to the extent that it is a distinguishing characteristic of the German-American culture. If this is the case, then it is not unreasonable to expect that the economic behav- ior in such a region might reveal patterns of activity that reflect a degree of cultural cohesion. During the survey of the region that I conducted in 1969, 199 farmers in the region were asked to identify the town which they patronized most frequently for each of twelve specified goods or services: heating and plumb- ing services, groceries, hardware, clothing, department stores, farm implements, gasoline purchases, banking serv- ices, drug stores, postal services, automobile services, zand medical services. In order to establish patterns of ssocial behavior with which the economic patterns could be compared, the area residents interviewed were also asked ‘tca identify the town in which they spent most of their escacial or leisure time, the town in which they attended (Blitxrch and the town at which their most recently-deceased aI'lcestors were buried. The information obtained in this I"airliner was then mapped with the aid of the CALCOMP Plotter <>r1 ‘the Control Data Corporation 3600 Computer. 5 \ usThe maps were drawn by MAPIT, a computer program gsgembled by Robert Kern and Gerard Rushton at Michigan Rta‘be University's Computer Institute for Social Science 8Search. The program was modified by the author to fit the data for this study. 151 Interaction in each category appears in the form of lines drawn from the farmstead where patronage for a particular good or service originates to the community in which the good or service was obtained most frequently.u6’#7 It is only necessary to use seven of the fifteen maps that were obtained in this manner: the three maps pertaining to social behavior and the four maps of econom- ic interaction which were found to best approximate the major variations in economic behavior in the survey (See Figures ll-l7). The map showing the primary town where the residents of the rural countryside attend church services clearly segregates the religious social systems within the area. {The farms served by the Westphalia and Pewamo churches are ”61f the respondent did not utilize a particular ser- ‘Vflice or buy a particular good listed on the survey form, or :ijf he obtained that good or service at a community outside ‘tdue boundaries of the computer map, no line was drawn, and c>r11y the farmstead asterisk appears. h7The type of map obtained in this fashion is the sazaxne as the "desire-line" maps which are commonly used in" EB'tlzdies related to central-place theory in economic geog- Iraphy; for example, see Brian J. L. Berry, Geography of §£§££fl§gt Centergiand Retail Digtributions (Englewood Cliffs, GBVV Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967). But a comparative analysis of economic behavior among the Germans and non- Germans at the scale required to use central-place theory vV5153 ‘both beyond the scope of this study because of time considerations and of little value to this study because 1: ‘the small size of the culture region. My intention is ‘3 Ilse these maps merely as a device for comparing the Economic and social behavior of the people living in the ff33than-American culture region; the emphasis is on identi- oylng behavior that might indicate cultural cohesion, not 11 C=lassification of economic behavior within the region. 152 raw-mun ma o-nmu. ICC .CAngN CITY 0 0 . o OSREENVILLE CDBELDINO ° /::5fifnm o O O I PRIMARY TM PATRWIZED FUR SERVICES OERHAN CLLTLRE REGION! CLINTOQ AND ICNIA CQNTIES. MICHIGAN l I = FAHSTEAD u-ERE PATRWAE CRICINATES x \ Figure 11 153 .CARSCSJN CITY 0 o . o OOREENVILLE ELDINC ° To: WWI 1m 09 was f“. _ O O O I PRIMARY Tom PATRCNIZED PM [ GERMAN CLLTLRE REGION CLINTON! AND ICNIA CCLNTIES. MICHIGAN O. .0 h. 1 Ian N I : FARI‘STEAD U-ERE PATRWE CRICIMTES l x x Figure 12 1514 .CARSCSJN CITY 0 o . o OSREENVILLE ELDING ° ::H‘. ”Riamns , 09 m T... . l . O o o LOAEPETH I%W*J§.?%m§@§§§? ° 0 - ¢MM§%;““ )éEjb 471‘ a‘ v 'I’ ' RAT/”7r;- . V.- 4? l ~ \\*.A\ 4&521’ I . Iiiiiilxk O C) PORTLAND ' ‘[ “I EAdJE O O WERE POST RECWT ABCESTORS ARE RHIED GERMAN CLLTLRE REGION CLINTOQ AND ICNIA CONTIES MICHIGAN [ CEMETER I ES 8.0 N I = FARMS‘IEAD U-ERE PATRCNACE ORIGINATES Figure 13 '- 5:,“ b..lm‘vfflr| Yuan! .- i . I 4.. . G a 155 .CARSON CITY 0 O . o 0 GJREENVILLE A 'ELDINC ° To, MEWS . 0.. o o ' ° { \ ”:‘\ Ere- . IO . . §e$§ ST JOHNS egg-gr.“ : 465:1“; El"? , O 0 PRIMARY TCLN PATRMIED FUR [ MEDICAL SERVICES GERMAN CLLTURE REGION CLINTCN AND ICNIA CONTIES. MICHIGAN o 2:) 2.3 N mus II. = FARMSTEAD U-ERE PATROVACE CRICINATES Figure I“ 156 .CARSCSJN CITY 0 O . O GDREENVILLE ELDINC- ° TEN MAPLE ms 09 1.9.3.. 3” O o HATFEORTUJ I, , \ = , IO IA .6. . A§ )ST JOl—jNSO I /‘ ‘ [NW - , A O Aka; ‘ If. F: - (£9... , O o PORTLAND‘\" ' ' \DE UITT O (D . 0 ° ' \\\\ HASLCETT GRAND LEDGE L A NS I NI PRIMARY TCLN PATRCNIZED FER [ BANK INC SERVICES GERMAN CLLTLRE REGICN CLINTCN AND IONIA CCLNTIES MICHIGAN run I! = FARP’STEAD U-ERE PATRCNACE mIGIMTES Figure 15 157 .CARSON CITY 0 O . o O (:pREENVILLE BELDING ° ~T , MAPLE “35 O FLESASLGO f“: O MATI-E‘RTCN " ‘\7§§§;\ _ _, E ”E§§§§§§. ST JOHNS IO IA - a45e~s,-=:~::. . I?” '2.»- f—x—T , O -' alfwf PRIMARY TO~N PATRCNIZED FER [ ORQEggIES CERMAN CLLTLRE REGIOQ CLINTON AND IONIA CONTIES. MICHIGAN mus at: = FARMSTEAD U-ERE PATRMACE ORIGINATES Figure 16 158 .CARSN CITY 0 O OOREENVILLE ELDINO ° "W’- APIDS . IO ;\ ,ST JORNSO O O O ODE wITT C C) O HASLC§TT GRAND LEDOE WISE“ PRIMARY TOJN PATRONIQ‘ED FOR 2 [ CLOTHING PURCHASES 21m CERMAN CLLTLRE REGION CLI'NTON AND IONIA CCLNTIES MICHIGAN .-. FARf‘STEAD MERE PATRONAtE ORIGINATES Figure 17 159 owned almost exclusively by German Catholics, and the farms served by St. Peter Lutheran Church are owned by German Lutherans. The Fowler parish area in this map includes both German Catholics and German Lutherans, but the Luth- erans are concentrated to the north and east of Fowler. St. Johns churches are attended by some German Catholics and Lutherans as well as the majority of people in the area who have other religious faiths. Portland attracts some of the German Catholics. The other systems are not related to the culture region or its people. Several interesting visual impressions may be ob- tained from this first map. Most striking is the fact that the boundaries between the social systems are so clearly delineated. In the case of Westphalia, church attendance appears to be somewhat distance-dependent, with a five- to six-mile maximum radius of travel; the road pattern is square, which accounts for the visual elonga- tion in east-west and north-south directions. Church at- tendance in Pewamo is elongated along an axis tending northeastward; this pattern is most probably caused by the barrier effect of the Maple River to the northwest and the proximity of the Fowler and Westphalia systems to the east and south. Cultural cohesion is indicated by the elonga- tion of attraction of the Fowler system to the north and the Westphalia system to the south. Also evident is the fact that the Riley Lutheran Germans are located to the east of St. Peter Lutheran Church; this map shows clearly 160 that Lutheran settlement was pushed eastward as the Catho- lix: settlement expanded contiguously outward from West- phalia. The patterns revealed in the map of travel for social jpurposes are very similar to those in the map of church attendance, although there are some important differences. Some of these differences were caused by variations in in- dividual perceptions of precisely what constituted social ' . ”1"?“ 171‘ "needs" or "purposes." Many of the farmers just laughed {a TMhen they were asked where they spent their leisure time. Others perceived social time as time spent in various forms of entertainment, including movies, sports events, bowling, and card-playing. But most significant of all is the fact that an estimated 80 per cent of the German Catholics per- ceived social time as time spent in church-related activi- ties. This is not the case among the Lutherans, who have fewer social organizations sponsored by their church; most of the Lutherans spend their social time in St. Johns or Lansing. The importance of the automobile in affecting these patterns of interaction is also apparent; those who live within the region, but near to major highways, tend to travel greater distances to spend their leisure time in such communities as Ionia, St. Johns, and Lansing. The rapidly shifting values in the region are also reflected in the travel of a few of the members in each religious social system's area of influence to the larger communities 161 farther away for this purpose, even in the heart of the Westphalia segment; thirty years ago, habitual spending of social time at movies and similar forms of entertain- ment at such distances away from the church and the com- munity would have incurred community disapproval. The map of cemeteries where the most recent ancestors :— have been buried reveals both the extent of the culture region, in terms of farmers who are of German descent, and the direction that migration and new settlement within the region have taken. The dominating feature is the cemetery at Westphalia; the outlines of that pattern virtually coin- cide with the outlines of the three primary Catholic reli- gious social systems shown on the map of church attendance. Since strong emotional ties generally determine the place where dead are interred, this pattern may be considered indicative that in the recent past, throughout the entire German Catholic sub-culture, there has been a sense of af- filiation with the culture hearth at Westphalia. The pat— terns on the cemeteries map also support two conclusions made previously: the German Catholic eXpansion through land purchases in recent years has been directed to the north and east; and the Lutheran concentration is now to the east of its former church centers. The pattern of travel for medical services differs in many respects from the patterns already examined. Some German Catholics who long since moved to the far edges of 162 the region return to Westphalia for medical services from the "family doctor there. But there is a distinct ten— dency for pe0p1e in all sections of the region to travel to the town in which they feel they can receive the best medical services, irregardless of any cultural attraction to one center. The larger centers with a greater variety of medical specialists attract people from greater dis- tances, as might be eXpected; such a pattern of behavior is common throughout America, and the existence of that pattern is an accepted fact. The pattern of banking activity approximates the patterns of religious and social interaction, but there are some subtle differences. The size of the hinterland served by each community appears to vary proportionally with the papulation of the town. One interesting aspect of this map is the behavior of the German Lutherans at Riley, many of whom apparently patronize Fowler for their banking services more than they do St. Johns, even though the latter city is in some cases both larger and closer; possible reasons for this behavior might include family ties with the Fowler Lutherans. It is highly noteworthy that none of the German Lutherans bank in Westphalia. Grocery shopping patterns are quite typical of the general shopping habits of contemporary rural occupants in this country. Patronage of the Fowler, Westphalia, and Pewamo community grocery stores has fallen off consi- 163 derably. The farmers have discovered that it is cheaper in the long run to travel to supermarkets and discount houses in Ionia, St. Johns, Portland and Lansing, than to pay for the convenience of making short trips to their neighborhood community stores, which by economic necessity cannot charge the lower prices found in the larger cities. The patterns evident in the map of religious social sys- tems may still be seen, but are much weaker and eroded on their peripheries. The most striking change in shopping behavior is seen in the map of travel for purchases of clothing. The ori-' ginal social system patterns have completely disappeared. Of the three German communities, only Fowler now has a clothing store; the other clothing stores in those communi- ties have long since gone out of business, because they could no longer compete with the stores with wide ranges of goods and low prices in the larger cities. Residents of the culture region feel that the same trend is apparent in most of the other areas of retail trade, and that the community service centers are gradually dying. The maps of patronage for church services, social needs and cemeteries have proved useful in identifying the religion-centered social systems in the culture region and in outlining general boundaries of both the culture region as a whole and the social systems within the re- gion. In the maps of economic patronage, however, beha- 164 vfixxr did not strictly follow the patterns established in religious and social orientations of the area citizens, but in some cases differed radically and followed patterns one might expect to find in any heterogeneous rural area in the Midwest. The only logical conclusion is that German cul- ‘tural.cohesion no longer extends to the economic sphere, except in those instances where extreme emotional sensi- I 'tivity attaches, as was the case in banking behavior. Evidence on the Cultural Landscape Spatial variations in the way of life of a culture 1 are usually reflected in some outwardly visible manner on the cultural landscape that is their home. Field research aimed at uncovering such variations was initially concen- trated on an examination of patterns of land use, settle- ment and field patterns, and relics of the pioneer and ear 1y farming days, as the researcher believed that spatial variations in these items could be most readily observed. The most immediately apparent effect of man's oc- cupance of the area is the almost total clearing of the virgin forest area that covered Clinton and Ionia counties in the 1830's. The early settlers were forced to cut down the hardwoods in order to obtain land to farm. As soon as the more desirable flat, dry areas had been cleared, the settlers had to clear and drain the numerous tamarack swamps that dotted the till-plain and moraine upon which they had settled; drainage ditches are a common feature, '1 165 even today. An analysis of land use patterns within the seven German-occupied townships in Clinton County reveals the extent of clearing operations (See Table 10). TABLE 10 1960 LAND USE IN CLINTON COUNTY, SELECTED TOWNSHIPS Per Cent Per Cent Per Cent Township Farmland Forested Unused Lebanon 83 12 5 Dallas 96 2 2 Westphalia 93 6 1 Eagle 89 7 4 Essex 93 5 2 Bengal 97 2 l Riley 9a 5 1 Sources: BDJ-series aerial strip photography of Clin- ton County, Michigan, taken in the summer of 1950 by Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation, Lansing, Michigan; and untitled land-use maps of townships in Clinton County, prepared by the Tri-County Regional Planning Commis- sion, Lansing, Michigan, in 1960 for its own use. The high percentage of cleared land is not an unusual fea- ture of this small portion of the American Corn Belt; Birch notes that "most Corn Belt counties have over 90 per 48 cent of their land area in farms." Examination of aerial photographs of southern Michi- 483. P. Birch, "Farmstead Settlement in the North American Corn Belt," Southampton Research Series in Geogra- phy, No. 3 (Southampton, England: November, 1966), p. 29. 166 gan revealed that the types and patterns of land use found within the culture region were not appreciably different frxnn the types and patterns of land use that characterize true "dairy and general farming area" of the southern por- tirni of the Lower Peninsula, the agricultural area in which the German region is located.49 The majority of the land 513 devoted to the raising of wheat, but hay, corn, oats axui pasture are used also as feed crops for dairy cattle, hogs, and poultry. As has been previously noted, the immigrants settled ‘the land in a completely different manner than that to TMhich.they had been accustomed. The nucleated settlement :firom.which the farmers in Germany commuted to their small, scattered "strip" holdings each day was replaced by a pat- tern.of settlement in which the farmers lived on their isolated farmsteads. The change was not a matter of time- _ consuming, gradual adjustment, but an abrupt change forced ’ on the farmers by the Township-and-Range system of land sur- vey. The villages and trade centers never were residences from which the farmers commuted. And the street patterns which evolved in the communities were as rectilinear in their orientation as the land platted to the town by the surveyors; there was no hint in the new American settle- “93. B. Hill and Russel G. Mawby, Types of Farming in Michigan, Special Bulletin 206 (East Lansing, Michigan: AngCultural Ex eriment Station, Michigan State University, September, 1954 , pp. 25, 32-33- 167 .. ments of the generally confused pattern of the "heap vill- age" that most of the Germans had left behind. The location of the farmsteads in the countryside axui the field patterns on the farms similarly reflected za linearity in pattern, and were no less a revolutionary change to their owners. The German-Americans, who had been accustomed to farming narrow, elongated, odd-shaped, and widely-scattered strips while in Germany, consistently jpurchased their land in regular-shaped square or rectangu- .lar tracts because this was the way the land was sold. frhe Old-World custom of dividing the land among all the children of the owner after his death was discarded for the 'most part, and where the land was divided or sold, it was generally passed on in regularly-shaped parcels. The con- sequence is that, even today, both land-ownership and field patterns are rectilinear. Again, this pattern is not peculiar to the German-American culture region, but is typical of settlement in the American Corn Belt: . . . land was consistently transferred to private ownership, in areas where the land acts applied, as regular-sized and regular-shaped tracts arranged with north-south and east-west boundaries. These tracts were most commonly square quarter sections (160 acres), square quarter-quarter sections (40 acres) and whole sections, as well as rectangular 80 and 320 acre por- tions of sections. These blocks, or combination of smaller tracts, and, in particular, the 160 acre quar- ter sections became the basis of the common Corn Belt farm units. _Once settlement was established, some of the land was divided off and sold by settlers to be acquired by neighbouring farmers. Many of these par- cels were also geometrically shaped units . . . Even today, after several generations of modification and enlargement, many farm units reflect the original geo- 168 metric divisions of the land. In the same way the fields reflect these geometric arrangements of the landscape.50 The initial temporary dwellings built by the pioneers were often log cabins built as a matter of expediency near 21 source of water or on the highest ground in the midst of the swampy land they were draining, as I regretfully dis- covered while I was checking former log cabin sites! The second, permanent farmsteads were, however, almost without exception located on the side of the farm nearest the roads, which eventually were built along the section lines; this jpattern is typical of most of the American Midwest.l Since ‘the farmsteads were relatively isolated from the very be- ginning, and the boundaries of farms did not meet with great frequency except at section corners, the farmsteads ‘today generally appear at random intervals along the roads, and are not often grouped together, except in the case where members of the same family built houses in close proximity.51 One hundred and forty-three years have passed since the first German settler arrived and cleared his land in the Westphalia area, and it has been eighty years since the last major stream of immigration into the culture region 50For a thorough discussion of the theoretical ex- planations for the growth of these settlement and field patterns, see B. P. Birch, "Farmstead Settlement in the North American Corn Belt," pp. 25-57. 5lIbid. 169 dwindled to a mere trickle. The traces of the initial sta- ges of settlement have for the most part disappeared in ‘that interval. The initial temporary log-cabin residences lurve all disappeared, perhaps falling victim to the German jpenchant for neatness. Only one log barn was found.52 The early pioneers fenced their lands with zig-zag, split-rail :fences, behind which they planted Osage Orange thistle 'bushes, so that when the fences rotted, there would be a :natural hedge of thistles to take their place and keep the cattle penned. Both the fences and the thistles proved ineffective, and were replaced as soon as better wire sub- stitutes were available. A few rotting remnants of these fences and occasional patches of Osage Orange can still be seen,53 but they are rapidly being cleared off the land. There are surprisingly few German place and feature names in the region, except in the instances where German proprietors used their names for local business concerns. Westphalia is the only German town name; Lehman, Hanses, and Thelen Roads, and Kloeckner Creek (all named after German pioneers) are the only other features bearing Ger. manic names. There are, then, relatively few pioneer relics avail- able on the cultural landscape, and investigation of land 52See below, p. 181, Figures 24 and 25. 53The best example of such a rail fence can be seen in Section 4, Riley Township. 170 use, field and settlement patterns revealed little evidence that could be interpreted as a distinguishing characteris- tic of the cultural landscape in the German region. Analysis of House Types Since all of the original log pioneer dwellings in the culture region had been destroyed prior to the begin- :ning of the research for this thesis, it is impossible to draw any conclusions about the source of the ideas used in constructing such dwellings. We are left with only the following description of such structures: Houses were constructed of logs, and the cracks were filled with a clay and straw mixture. The board ceil- ings were supported by logs, and access to the loft was by a ladder. A clay chimney housing an open fire- place was erected at one end of the cabin. Shingles for the roof were split by hand, and whatever nails and hinges were needed had to be purchased. Most of the furniture, including beds, cradlea, cabinets, chairs and tables were made by hand.5 It was therefore necessary to shift attention in the search for cultural homogeneity to the second, more perma- nent dwellings, most of which were built between 1850 and 1900, and are still in use today. At each household I visited while conducting my field survey, the major house type, roof form, chimney type and placement, building ma- terials, and axis orientation were recorded, along with the nature of any decorative woodwork, or "gingerbread." The survey yielded a surprisingly small variation in house 54 Norris, "Acculturation," p. 28. 171 types (See Table 11). The most frequently-encountered house type was that which Birch identifies as the "Prairie Tee" house (See Figure 18) which . . is generally composed of a light but strong frame which is clapboarded over and has been built by the 'balloon' method of construction . . . Tee houses are composed_of two parts with the main downstroke of the ground plan and the end of the crossbar together form- ing the front of the house in most cases. Roofs are almost always of the gable form and basements are com- mon. Variations do occur in this arrangement, some houses having the floor plan arranged with the front of the house in some other position. Finley and Scott separated out Tee, E11 and inverted Tee arrange- ments although the distinction between these are often difficult to make so that all of these variants are here grouped together . . . Other variations also oc- cur in the width of the ground plan . . . most of these prairie houses display too little style or decOration to allow them to be associated with any particular ori- gins. The main factor by which variants can be distin- guished is the arrangement of the storeys. Many of the houses . . . have two storeys . . . Houses with one storey throughout are also common.55 In the German-American culture region, all varieties of the "Prairie Tee" were found. They were commonly of frame con- struction, with peak or "gabled" roofs, and an offset in- ternal chimney. In all but seven cases, the houses were oriented with the crossbar of the "T" perpendicular in axis-orientation to the road, with the porch and front door located along the base of the "T" facing the road. The next most commonly-seen house consisted of wide- ranging variations on the "I-Type" house described by 55Birch, "Farmstead Settlement in the North American Corn Belt," pp. 51-53. flatly“... I}... MI I. i 172 TABLE 11 HOUSE TYPES AND CHARACTERISTICS —1——.__r—.—r—-—';é——'——_ m m 5 m -a 4» m 23 a 5: a: g: 5 House Type or 33%. H E Ef’ E5 E4; éfi Characteristic (Em 2‘8 33 33 33'. 2 8 House Types Prairie Tee 94 78 54 19 5 l6 I-Type ' 24 17 14 l 2 8 Square, Two-story 31 22 15 3 4 9 Cross 17 15 10 3 2 2 Estate 2 l 0 O l l Shotgun l O O O O l Bungalow 1 l O 1 O O Upland 8 8 5 3 O 0 Modern Miscellaneous 21 16 12 2 2 5 Characteristics Peak Roof 163 132 92 28 12 31 Pyramidal Roof 31 22 15 3 4 9 Shed Roof 3 3 2 l O 0 Internal Chimney 130 124 84 26 14 26 External Chimney 7 33 25 6 2 14 "Gingerbread" 25 22 16 6 0 3 Construction Material Frame 174 140 95 30 15 34 Brick 12 9 7 l l 3 Stone 10 7 7 O O 3 Axis Orientationa Prairie Tee, Perpen- dicular to Road 87 72 51 18 3 15 I—Type, Parallel to Road 24 17 14 1 2 7 Cross, Perpendicular 17 15 10 3 2 2 A11, Parallel 84 64 44 10 10 20 A11, Perpendicular 114 94 66 22 6 .20 aOrientation with respect to the long axis in relation to the major road serving the farmstead. the Prairie Tee house, this is the orientation of the crossbar of the "T." In the case of 173 q o I. O. . . n.0ufiauvauaopufi .- ..-.......:..:.m. .. ,.- r . . J J. .3 . i": Oi r ,1 . a" " { T I ‘ fig .‘ .*,:>‘.‘A : ,rewe A I : 7.4—.5 _ L, .o $pu€ a i;- .,-!n 0 Figure 18: -- "Prairie Tee" house. Note y... 'Y& m“. single story on the stem of the "T", and the porch with "gingerbread" wood decoration. ',J"r‘\‘".\ ‘ x .r I «:r.‘ 544de r I 5 O r T‘ -. .1 ..}fi A" RES“. Y e 9 e . e w‘! a. ‘ . . . .Mqugnmvwé...1w . Y e. . \ . I L U I». 5*. l., 3. I? . / we I 5 A '-", ”A; (A R {A Figure 19: -- "I-Type" house. The two- story_section to the right has been added. The original unit on the left has the front door facing the road, a common feature of the "I- Type" houses observed. 174 Kniffen; such houses all have in common: "gables to the side, at least two rooms in length, one room deep, and two full stories in height."_ The "I-Type" house, accord- ing to Kniffen, diffused westward from the Middle Atlantic States and is to be found throughout the Midwest.56 Near Westphalia, it was found with the long axis always parallel to the road and the door in the front, and more often than not with a one- or two-story addition built on the back (See Figure 19). I The "Square, Two-story, Pyramidal-roof" house was also observed frequently. This type of house generally contained two-room depth and width, was of frame construc- tion, had a full-length porch attached at the front, and, with one exception, faced the road. Ten of the 31 houses of this type observed were built in brick, and in seVeral instances, the clapboard had been replaced with stucco as an outer covering. This type of house (See Figure 20) is commonly seen throughout the Upper Midwest. The author discovered one fairly common area house which has not been mentioned previously; because of the shape of its floor plan when viewed from above represented a cross, it will simply be referred to as a "Cross-Type" house (See Figure 21). This house is often seen with a 56Kniffen, "Folk Housing," pp. 553-560. I I .‘l- III... . ‘ljlfill'.naj.¥§lfifl.m .m . _ 175 Figure 20: -- "Square, Two-story, Pyram- idal-roof" house. The front door and porch of this type invariably face the road, but are seldom used. Note the large addition to the rear of the basic unit. "‘ ‘4- ' i t. .’ v:..' -‘T‘.‘ a - Figure 21: -- "Cross-Type" house. The long axis is perpendicular to the road. The section to the right appears to have been added after the original construction (Note the lower roof line . i II: I i, a! 176 two-story "TI front section and a one-story rear addition, but is just as frequently encountered in the form of a two-story building which its owners maintain was con- structed entirely at one time. Small, shed-type additions were often added at a later date, and the fact that they wggg added on is most readily apparent, whereas the main structure appears to have been constructed as a single unit. The long axis is always perpendicular and the crossbar parallel to the trend of the road. One other house observed has not been mentioned else- where, but appeared in the culture region only twice and may not therefore be considered a significant house type to this study: the "Estate-Type" house (See Figure 22). This large house appears from one side to be a "Square Two-story Pyramidal-roof" house, but when viewed from above, it has an "L" shape. The'Estate-Type'houses were two stories in height, had a front porch, and had shutters, in classical New England style. The owners knew nothing of the origin of the house type, but both houses observed were located in areas which were originally settled by Yan- kees and later occupied by the Germans; they were presuma- bly built by the Yankees, and are discussed here only be- cause of the fact that they were unusual features. Other miscellaneous house types built near the turn of the century were seen with low frequency. One small house, nicknamed the "Upland" house type by the author, 177 0.. I.. When house ap- M---. 18 0“ .-\. ..‘ ‘ ' o . ‘ uh- ~ “:0 0-. . 1‘, story house. Note the style shutters. e o O“. - . . . .... 3.3% .. s D d from the left side, th two Figure 22: -- "Estate-Type" house. viewe . o a. c ooce‘ to O.Go:o¢o v\‘Kooneoo..o090.. . .5 Chute..- .. coho. .. . HA... c. .5ka hush... . ... . o .. O. VTWO. I ¢\Or¢ue\ . o \‘HIVINH-VP‘HNH {eatfibcofihoomhmwe 18 O t pears to be a square, New-England- 1 Most of the rural non-farm Figure 23: -- Modern ranch-style home. homes observed belong in this category. This type is usually characterized by a rec- tangular floor plan, two-to-three-room length and two-room depth. 178 for lack of a better name, was similar in many respects to Kniffen's "Tidewater-Type" house; this house usually had one-room width, was two rooms deep, and one story high-— often with an attic room--and more often than not had ei- ther a rear lean-to shed-roof addition, or a shed-roof addition on the side beneath one gable. Examples of Knif- fen's "shotgun" and "bungalow" houses were also seen, though rarely.57 The most often-observed modern house recorded in the culture region was the ranch-style home (See Figure 23), which is usually one story high, rectangular in floor plan, and occasionally has a basement. Other types, such as Split-level homes and modern colonial-style homes, had been constructed on former farmsteads. The significance of the newer dwellings observed was that many of them were on rural non-farms. The most uniform aspect of all of the house types observed was that their orientation was either perpendicu- lar to or parallel to the road system, a factor which again reflects the effect of the Township-and-Range sys- One tem, but is in no way unique to the culture region. might be misled by the large proportions of a few house types that were found; any conclusion of homogeneity pe- culiar to the culture region rapidly disappears when- 57Fred Kniffen, "Louisiana House Types," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XXVI, No. 4 (De- cember, 1936). PP. 179-193- 179 ever adjacent areas are subjected to a cursory check, for all of the house types found in the area are found in simi- lar numbers in adjacent areas, and, indeed, throughout much of southern Michigan. Even within the culture region, the use of a single house type is not restricted to any one religious or ethnic category, as a glance at the sur- vey results shows (See Table 11). Nor is there any parti- cularly uniform spatial arrangement of the house types ; a map of house types constructed during the field research was useful only in conveying the fact that the "Prairie Tee" house was present in large numbers and dispersed throughout the area.58 Only 25 houses were decorated with any type of "gingerbread" decorative woodwork, and no uni- formity could be detected in the styles that were observed; only two examples of "Bavarian-style" eaves handiwork, which reminds one of the ski-lodge architecture popular to- day, were seen. The discovery that was most deflating of all to any notions of possible diffusion patterns for house types in the region occurred when one area resident informed the interviewer that the resident's "Prairie Tee" farmhouse had been built according to plans obtained from the Sears- Roebuck catalog at the turn of the century: This comment was confirmed by another resident of the same type of 58This map is not reproduced herein as it was deemed insignificant. 180 house, and a similar claim was made by an owner of a "Square, Two-story, Pyramidal-roof" home. The author was unable'u>verify these claims by obtaining the actual house- plans,1xu:the Sears-Roebuck catalogues, starting in the spring of 1908, did advertise building plans with illus- trations that bore marked similarity to many of the house types observed; Sears even furnished a builder's "kit" of lumber and materials for some of the house plans.59 To complicate matters futher, the most elaborate "ginger- bread" observed in the German-American culture region could also be found in the pages of the same catalogues. This discovery suggests that perhaps other agencies offer- ing building plans may have been operating at an earlier date, and makes it impossible to make any valid conclu- sions about the origins and dispersals of house types, either within the region or without, unless the exact date of construction of each house and the origins of the house plans are investigated. One of the few valid generalizations that can be made about house types within the culture region is that the larger houses, particularly the "Square, Two-story, Pyrami- dal-roof" house and the "Cross-Type" house, seem to be lo- cated on the larger and more prosperous farms. Extreme caution must be used in any further attempts to connect 59Sears, Roebuck and Company, Catalogue No. 117, Spring (Mail) Edition (Chicago: 1908), pp. 594-597. 181 house types with the German culture : the only safe general- izathnlwhich can be made in this respect is that the ori- entathxxof the farm buildings represents the completeness of the adaptation of the Germans to the settlement pat- terns imposed by the Township-and-Range system of land survey. Analysis of Barn Types The barn types found in the culture region were also examined with reSpect to style, type, and orientation. One remarkably well-preserved example of a double-crib log barn, similar to that identified, but not described, by Kniffen,6O is still standing on the southwestern quarter of Section 9, Westphalia Township. be 120 years old, originally belonged to William Theilman, The barn, estimated to a member of the first pioneer group to settle in the area. The cribs of the barn were constructed with square-notched logs, and the original log beams still support the roof. The floor between the two cribs was heavily planked, and may have been used for thrashing purposes. The exterior of the barn had been covered by planking in 1929, and sheds were added on the end (See Figures 24 and 25). According to the present owner, the barn was typical of several which had been destroyed in the area, but once again there 60Fred Kniffen and H. Glassie, "Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective," Geographical Review, LVI (1966), pp. 40-66. 182 .nflno mwmsopm as: one no“ wsfismao on» can .cmms upm>o wsfixsman szmsuosw: on» .msoavossn mod esp Pm madnoposuooumsdm map 8902 .shmn woa on» “o soaposupmsoo HGHAGPCH :: .Avmmav mm Gasman .osm some :0 cocoa one: momnm use mxsmam spa; umno>oo one; mwoa may n.0NaH one wswusa .snmp woa nano:mflpsoa :: .Ao>opwv 3N Guzman D . 1 ‘h l' . .‘ ‘I'OOQ-".‘ .’ '1' ‘3‘ v‘.‘ .-.-. 0.]. I 183 wasrx>hint available as to the origins of this type of barn. Even though, as Kniffen suggests, such barns dif- fused westward from German Pennsylvania, no positive con- necthnlcan be made between the German Pennsylvanian barns and Umebarns in the culture region near Westphalia; avail- able evidence indicates that most of the Germans in West- phalia came directly from Germany, and it is not likely that they made an intermediate stop in Pennsylvania on the way . The second stage of barn building in this region oc- curred between the 1850's and 1880's; the product of this era was a small, rectangular barn of hewed-timber construc- tion, covered over with vertical planking, and having a gabled or "peak" roof (See Figure 26). Livestock were kept on the ground level, and an artificial bank was built up to the second level to accomodate wagons for unloading hay into the storage cribs there. This barn is somewhat similar to the "New England English Barn,"61 and its methods of construction may well have been obtained by the Germans from their Yankee neighbors, for there are numerous barns of this type throughout the Yankee areas surrounding the culture region. .As the farmers expanded their operations by clearing more and more land, they found that they were also in need 61Fred Kniffen, "Folk Housing," p. 558. 184 Figure 26: -- New England "English" Barn. This barn type is usually less than one hundred feet in length and has two hay storage cribs on either side of the door. Note the gabled roof and the man-made road "bank" to the main hay storage area Figure 27: -- New England barn modified to increase hay storage capacity by addition of a gambrel roof. The modification here is clearly visible at the old gable-roof line. 185 of more storage space for hay for their livestock; the solution came in the form of a gambrel-roof addition to their present barn (See Figure 27), which increased the hayloft storage considerably, or in the building of larger and longer barns with gambrel or curved roofs. The third period of large barn building lasted until the great de- pression of the 1930's. There were several design varia- tions (See Figures 28 and 29); barns with high gambrel roofs, in which the lower portion of.the gambrel roof was on an angle with the vertical of about 65 to 70°, were the most papular barns throughout the area, but in the north- west corner of the culture region, barns with a low gam- brel roof (with an angle of 45° on the lower portion) ap- peared to be just as prevalent. Although in many sections of Lower Michigan the barns built prior to World War I have fallen into disre- pair and are being replaced by modern sheet-metal-covered Tpole barns," in the German-American culture region the old barns have been kept in such good shape that relative- ly few of the new structures have been erected. Analysis of barn types was directed toward the older structures (See Table 12). High gambrel barns appeared in the greatest numbers, and the "medium" barn size was most papular. The orientation of the barns, as in the case of the house types, was the single most consistent characteristic, with the barns being oriented either paral- 186 I O N .0 .. ‘ NI N. .0 ‘I C: 3.0 OI.-.“000900000909‘f01000‘. .0 .0 .0 0....6000 COOO‘COCI OI 3.9.00.0..00u0 I 0.0. Onesovoooaobod. so.O'Colflonon.o.on.uooteoecu 0- o... . a. . s. 0 .. s o 0 out: .0 .0 O. .0 a. o. .. o. o. a. o. 0 I . o O I o o O 0 I O O O G . .h .0 .- 0: .0 .a o o I. O. 94 4 I... o. o. o o. o. .c:.co. O I. I 0 ~ 9. Q l o 0. O . s . ~ gambrel-roof barn. 1g- Figure 28: -- H h These barns were generally more than one hund- red feet in length; most of them have been built since the 1880's. the area, and were generally greater than one hundred and fifty feet in length. Note the double doors and the built-up roadway. in Figure 29: -- Curved-roof barn. These barns were observed to be some of the largest barns 187 TABLE 12 BARN TYPES AND CHARACTERISTICS m to m P o g a m "* s *6 2 23.9. 5 fit: 5 m 5 o e w-l p. s 8:: E .2: s P I 8 Barn Type or ‘35 "‘ 53 31?: 8‘5 ‘68 ‘33 Characteristic mm '5! (5 on on cm. 2 o Banniypes log 1 1 l O O 0 English 51 38 27 6 5 13 High-Gambrel 99 82 50 23 9 l7 Low—Gambrel 3 3 0 0 l Curved-Roof 21 20 18 2 0 1 Barn Sizes Large (Over ISO') 20 16 14 l l 4 Medium (100'-150') 101 87 58 22 7 14 Small (Under 100') 55 41 27 8 6 l4 Orientation Parallel to Road 111 90 59 25 6 21 Perpendicular to Road 65 54 4O 6 8 ll North-South Axisa 79 63 49 7 7 16 East-West Axisa 96 80 50 23 7 l6 Banked Barn Faces:b North l6 15 10 3 2 1 East 7 5 4 1 0 2 South 15 13 9 4 0 2 West 17 15 13 0 2 2 aOrientation of the b long axis of the barn. The side of the barn to which the banked roadway to the main storage area is constructed, or is located in the instance where the barn is located on a hillside. quill-Eva ”any. .133 .W 188 lel to or perpendicular to the road. Where a second barn was constructed on a farmstead, it was generally oriented perpendicular to the axis of the first, in order to con- serve space and leave the maximum amount of land available for farming purposes. The figures for orientation and axes must be interpreted with Some caution, however, for the author was limited by time considerations to conduct- ing interviews primarily along east-to—west roads, and that fact introduces some bias into the sample; it is pro- bably reSponsible for the larger figures for barns parallel to the road and barns with an east-west axis. In spite of the fact that only 34 of the 176 farms with barns were 10- the orientation of barns on cated on north-south roads, This those famsteads appears to follow the same rules. contention was later strengthened by unrecorded observa- tions made during traverses of north-south roads for other purposes. Farmers had in some cases constructed their barns on the side of a small slope to take advantage of a natural roadway to the second level, but the orientation of barns "banked" in such a manner was also consistently perpendicular or parallel to the grid system of roads. Orientation in this case also may be interpreted as cul- tural adjustment to the survey system. Since the scope of this study precluded an examina- tion of barn characteristics in all of the southern por- tion of Michigan, it was impossible to accurately differ- “I’lfillurllflql 1.1.4. 189 enthflw the barns within the region from those in the sur- rounding areas. And the fact that barn plans as well as Imuselflans appeared in the Sears Roebuck catalogs highly increased the complexity of classification for purposes of analysis of diffusion of barn types and particular features on barns. But certain characteristics were either notably pre- sent or absent within the region, as compared to the imme- diate surrounding Yankee area. Curved-roof barns appeared to be more popular within the culture region. And gambrel- roof barns in the Yankee areas, with very few exceptions, had a curled quarter-circle semi-trough at the bottom of either side of the roof; this feature did not appear in the German-American region with any great frequency. Travelling barn painters left decorative markings, such as four-leaf clovers and special-design decorative white trim, as their own special signature and a form of advertising; such markings consequently were of little use as indicators of cultural homogeneity. Findings of the preliminary study for this thesis in- dicated that the number and condition of buildings on the farmsteads might serve as indicators of both inter-culture and.ixrtra-culture differentiation. In the 199-farm sample, 'the runnber of buildings in addition to house and barn on each farmstead averaged: on all German farms, 4.53; on German Catholic farms, 4.66; on German Lutheran farms, “IIEFHLJUIV s} ”.43 I . .4 a. 190 4.69; on German Protestant farms, 3.31; and on non-German farms, 3.46. The German Lutheran and German Catholic farms together averaged more than one additional building per farm more than other farms in the sample. The condition of all farm buildings on each farmstead also varied among the same categories (See Table 13). The proportion of build- TABLE 13 CONDITION OF FARMSTEAD BUILDINGS (OTHER THAN HOUSES) m m m .P o 5 e 0 0 m I: n fa 0’ m. 8 ii 0 5 a. 5.» 5 «4 n. E ES. El 5: s «P I s Condition of SE "" a, a, i; S *3 {3 0 g 3 Buildings m m 5.1 c5 (5 o o .4 (5 61 z. :5 Excellent 51 44 39 5 0 7 Good 43 36 24 8 4 7 Fair 54 4O 27 7 6 14 Poor 4O 29 14 10 5 ll ings in good and excellent condition to those in fair and poor condition on the German Catholic farms was approxi- mately 1.56 to l. The same ratio for the German Lutherans was 1 to 1.30; for the other German Protestants, 1 to 2.75; and for the non-Germans, l to 1.79. These findings confirm- ed the general visual impression that the German Catholic farm buildings were far and away the best-maintained build- ings in the area. Such results are understandable in view of the fact that the larger Catholic families have more 191 children and are able to accomplish more of the less-essen- 62 But even tial work, i.e. upkeep for appearance's sake. more interesting is the finding that on the farms of the German Lutherans, who are merely maintaining a stable pop- ulation growth rate, the buildings are still in generally better condition than on the farms of their German Pro- testant and non-German neighbors. The well-known German penchant for neatness and cleanliness is apparently re- flected within the German-American culture region in the condition of these farmstead buildings. Cemeteries The value of cemetery studies in tracing the growth of the culture region and the use of the German language within the region has already been amply illustrated. During the course of my field research, I visited twenty- one rural and town cemeteries which proved to be of value in relation to this study in several other respects. It is logical to exPect that burial practices, which are accompanied by religious rites of passage designed to soothe the emotional disturbances caused by deaths, In a cul- would be strongly affected by religious factors. ture region differentiated from the surrounding area by both strong religious and ethnic distinctions, it is even 62See above, p. 73. 192 more reasonable to assume that burial practices might show sharp regional variations. The Catholic Church requires that all Catholics be buried in consecrated ground. This requirement has been so strictly observed that there are very few "small-family- plot" cemeteries in the culture region. Where Protestants and Catholics are buried in the same cemetery, as was the case in St. Johns and Portland, there are segregated sec- tions of consecrated ground reserved for the Catholic burials. Rural cemeteries in the culture region tend to be segregated both by religion and by ethnic stock, although in the past three decades burials have been segregated more on the basis of religion than of ethnic stock. The German Catholic cemetery at Westphalia is the largest of such cemeteries and perhaps the most uniform in its reli- gious and ethnic composition; many German Catholics who have moved to relatively distant sections of the region still prefer to be interred at Westphalia when they die. A small German Catholic cemetery is located south of Pe- wamo. The German Catholics in Fowler share their cemetery with the Irish. the Riley Church and at the location of the first German There are German Lutheran cemeteries at Lutheran Church south of Fowler, although the latter is no longer in use. And there are numerous Yankee ce- meteries throughout the culture region, cemeteries which 1111}!!! {In {Irraw— ,.., . . , 193 are remnants of the culture that resided there before the Germans eXpanded spatially over the land the Yankees had owned. A similar trend has occurred even among the Ger- mans; the old Lutheran cemetery south of Fowler is now entirely surrounded by land owned by German Catholics. Another way in which the cemeteries showed a regional variation was in the level of upkeep. The cemetery at Westphalia is exceptionally well-landscaped; it even has an elaborate grotto for memorial services. The church spent approximately $2,200.00 in 1966 for maintenance help alone,63 and that amount appears to be an average exPendi- ture; the cemetery reflects the extensive care it receives. The Fowler cemetery is also clean and well-maintained. The original Lutheran cemetery south of Fowler has been unused since 1939, and when the author viewed it for the first time in 1968, it was grown over with weeds. But 1969 was the Centennial Year for the St. Peter Lutheran Church, and The cemetery at the Riley the cemetery has been cleaned. Most of the church is also landscaped and very well-kept. rural Yankee cemeteries, especially those in what is now an area of exclusively German settlement, are not as well maintained; there tend to be more Yankee cemeteries with fewer graves in each cemetery. Relatively few of the Yan- kee cemeteries are located near churches, and the small 63St. Mary's Parish Financial Report: 1966, p. 5. 194 numbers of descendants still left in the area have not maintained them on an organized basis like the churches. Price has shown that "tombstones themselves may be categorized as cultural landscape features."6u Tombstone styles generally followed the same chronological pattern as that which he identified. Unfortunately, a thorough examination of the German tombstone inscriptions would have been far beyond the range of this study; the author believes that research in that direction would, if pursued, prove to be helpful in identifying traditions and other characteristics of the early cultures. Yet some interest- ing features were observed; several of the tombstones, in old-world fashion, had receptacles in which a picture of the deceased was placed. One tombstone in the Westphalia cemetery held direct evidence of acculturation in the form of a name change: on one side of the obelisk was the name Anna Maria Schmith, an inscription in German, and the date of death: 21 August 1879; on the opposite side of the same tombstone inscribed in English was the name of her husband, who died in April of 1907: A. M. Smith. Tombstone inscriptions also gave evidence of the harsh environment the pioneers faced. The area the settlers moved into was swampy, and the attendant rattlesnakes took a toll; the words schlangen-gebissen appear both on the 61"L. W. Price, "Some Results and Implications of a Cemetery Studz," Professional Geographer, XVIII (July, 1966), pp. 20 -205. 195 burial records and on some of the early grave markers.65 Fires were a deadly hazard in an area where burning was the accepted way of clearing brush. And the epidemics took many lives, especially among the children. The Cen- tennial Committee of St. Peter Lutheran Church, when it was examining the old cemetery south of Fowler, observed: "0f the 83 tombstones which are today readable and could be deCiphered, 32 children had never become teenagers; 41 (nearly half) had never reached the age of 25 years, while 12 had passed the years of three- score and ten . . . When an epidemic would strike, parents would almost fearfully assume their children would fall victims. One family rushed their three- year-old son with his long curls to the photographer so they would at least have a nice photo of him. This family had 2 happy situation because their son did not become ill: 6 Cemetery evidence, then, has proved useful in a num- ber of different ways, and has the potential to provide considerably more information than the time allowed for this study would permit the author to obtain. It served as an indicator of culture spread and acculturation and showed the influence of religious and ethnic considerations in burial practices. The German cemeteries in general show better upkeep than their Yankee counterparts in the nearby areas. And the fact that the Catholic cemetery at Westpha- lia and the Lutheran cemetery at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Riley are by far the best-maintained within the region 65St. Mary's Centennial, p. 54. 66St. Peter Lutheran Church Centennial Committee, "Built on the Rock," p. 8. 196 is almost certainly a manifestation of the importance those churches and grounds hold for the Catholic and Luth- eran German-Americans that maintain them. CHAPTER IV THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF THE CULTURE REGION: PROCESSES, CURRENT SYNTHESIS, AND CONCLUSIONS Processes Shaping the Culture Region Having studied in detail the culture history, the characteristics of the culture as they vary over time and through space, and the reflections of the works of men on the cultural landscape, the cultural geographer can then proceed to an analysis of the processes which have helped to shape the evolution of the culture area. In the German- American culture region in Clinton and Ionia Counties, it is possible to identify six major cultural processes that have been responsible for the particular spatial develop- ment that the region has experienced: (l) demographic changes and movements; (2) the conscious perpetuation of cultural solidarity; (3) .cultural spread; (4) the develop- ment of technology; (5) social segmentation; and (6) ac- culturation. Each of these processes has~ had a direct ef- fect on the form and function of the culture region, and upon the spatial patterns associated with it. Demographic changes and movements have spatial sig- nificance in that they affect the numbers and the charac- teristics of the occupants in the culture region, and 197 JIIELE1’L’: . -1. .‘4'. y 198 therefore their ability, relative to the rest of the cul- tures in the immediate surroundings, to establish, perpe- tuate, and spread the traditions of their own culture. The demographic movements and changes of import in the German-American culture region may be divided into four categories: (1) in-migration; (2) natural increase; (3) out-migration; and (4) re-entrance of out-migrants. The original causes of in-migration among the German Catholics coming to Westphalia were listed as military 0p- pression, low wages, and religious intolerance. The Ger- man Lutherans described compulsory military prescription and economic oppression as the general reasons they had No left the Mecklenburg Province--very similar reasons. doubt the later economic depressions and famines in Eur- ope added impetus to the flow. The un-mentioned suffi- cient conditions necessary to the development of this pattern of movement must have been the promise of a bet- ter way of life in America and the fact that immigration Later, as was shown so clearly in the case of was Open. the Catholic letters to relatives at home, family contact and encouragement must have been a factor. The German Catholic in-migration was channeled, both by the Diocese of Detroit and by kinship; the German Lutheran in-migration was more haphazard, with relatively few other family mem- bers following the first from each family to come, and with most of the Lutherans having apparently heard of the 199 existence of a "bunch of Germans [no religion or origin specified] settling somewhere near Ionia." In-migration of German Catholics apparently dwindled in the 1870's, for a number of unspecified reasons. Pro- bably the bettering of economic and social conditions, a trend that became apparent in Europe in the latter half of the nineteenth century, had something to do with it; also, by that time most of the empty land in the vicinity of Westphalia had been purchased and occupied, and the con- stant communication between the German Catholics and their relatives must have relayed that fact. Among the German Lutherans, the in-migration did not consist of relatives following the first families into the region, but of in- dividual families trickling in one at a time; this perhaps accounts for the slow continuation of Lutheran in-migration after Catholic in-migration had ceased. But the imposition of immigration quotas, followed closely by the First World War, put a stop to all further significant in-migration into the culture region. The rate of natural increase, especially among the Catholic Germans, was high, with many families having more than a dozen children. This may have had something to do with the fact. that the Catholics have the reputa- tion of being prolific, but it probably resulted more from the need for many hands to help with clearing the land and maintaining the farm in an environment that often 200 took a heavy toll of young lives. The "family farm," which was and still is the economic unit in the region, led the German Catholics to place a high value on large fami- lies. Yet this still does not explain why the early Luth- eran families had on the average considerably fewer child- ren, usually between three and five; and the author was unable to discover the reason--it must lie somewhere in the value systems maintained by the two different reli- gions. In the twentieth century the rates have dropped considerably, perhaps due to the availability of better medical facilities, a factor which has tremendously re- duced infant mortality and has also eliminated the need for large families in order to have even a few children survive; to the lack of available land in recent years, which forces excess children to out-migrate; to the ris- ing costs of living, which have made large families an economic burden; and to better methods of contraception. Out-migration has taken several forms. In one case, an entire group of German Catholics departed and formed a new parish at Beal 'City; the young women who have not married in the community have travelled to nearby cities to find employment; and some of the excess young men, who could not find a farm or did not want to go into the priest- were forced to travel to nearby towns and cities to hood, obtain a job. The cause of out-migration is simply that the families within the region have been so large that not 201 a11.