Book offers info about Germans
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Not much is known of the Germans in Acadiana. Most works seem to have spotlighted the Cajun families, but now it’s time to take a look at the little community of Roberts Cove, an unincorporated community located three miles northwest of Rayne in Acadia Parish. It really isn’t a town but rather a scattered rural community with the St. Leo’s Catholic Church complex as a community and cultural center.
The Rev. Peter Leonard Thevis, a native priest of Langbroich, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, was asked to come to New Orleans by Archbishop Jean-Marie Odin in 1867, mainly because of the large number of German immigrants there. It was actually on Jan. 13, 1880, that the Rev. Thevis, accompanied by his brother Peter Joseph Thevis, his nephew John Gerhard Thevis, and Herman Grein arrived in Rayne by train, and actually to the prairie land three miles north of Rayne to look over the area. The site selected for the future colony was known as Roberts Cove. It was named for Benjamin Roberts, the original owner of a Spanish land grant.
In 1881, 13 families joined them. These German Catholics were fleeing the Gangelt, Geilenkirchen district of Germany to avoid religious persecution and military impressments. The Rev. Hennemann, OSB, of the Benedictine order, purchased land that included a house which served as both rectory and chapel and another building which served as a school house in the spring of 1883. The Benedictines helped to establish the parish of St. Leo IV in 1885.
Roberts Cove was staunchly Germany until the World War I period when harsh anti-German wartime legislation initiated a decline of the German language and the other cultural elements. Now there are few remaining German speakers and relatively few overt manifestations of German culture, yet the community is still viewed as a German ethnic enclave.
Roberts Cove is known for its annual Germanfest in October. The event is held the first weekend in October at St. Leo’s Catholic Church, and this year it fell on Oct. 4-5. Visitors are treated to local German food, heritage, and genealogy. German singing and German folk dancing is performed by descendants of the original settlers, and the Roberts Cove German Heritage Museum is open for visitors.
With the publication of a new book, Roberts Cove can now take its place among the unique places that can be found throughout the state of Louisiana. The Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has released Reinhart Kondert’s tribute to this community, and Lawrence and Mary Cramer have provided the genealogy. A History of the Germans of Roberts Cove, 1880-2007 is an excellent publication, and it will be a welcome addition to any Louisiana library collection, both public and private.
This hidden treasure in the heart of Acadiana is now a wonderful book written by Kondert. He shows how these early residents escaped the hardships of their native Germany and adapted to the new homeland becoming innovative pioneers in rice culture. They established their own church and school in order to maintain their ethnic cohesiveness, and they passed on their language and culture of the fatherland to their future generations.
After World War I, the citizens of Roberts Cove gave less thought to maintaining their German identity. The generations since this time have dispersed, intermarried with outsiders and lost but all but a vague recollection of their Teutonic heritage. Just when it appeared that their past history was fading away, a group of concerned individuals launched efforts to keep alive the memory and customs of the community. In the early 1950s, Father Gerard Wolbers of St. Leo’s Church began interviewing the last of the original colonists. He also encouraged the singing of German songs and introduced a German architectural style in the new church constructed in 1954.
It was also in this period that a crusade was begun to rejuvenate the ethnic and historic consciousness of the Cove’s inhabitants. This was done by Charles Zaunbrecher, a native priest of St. Leo’s and descendant of a Roberts Cove pioneer. Family reunions were begun in 1956, and today these celebrations are enjoyed by hundreds of people in the Louisiana version of the Germanic Oktoberfest.
The book includes a comprehensive genealogy of the founding families, namely (in alphabetical order): Achten, Berken, Bunt, Cramer, Dischler, Gielen, Gossen, Grein, Habetz, Heinen, Hensgens, Huesers, Jabusch, Jacobs, Janssen, Knipping, Leonards, Meyer, Moeder, Neu, Ohlenforst, Olinger, Reiners, Ronkartz, Schaffhausen, Schatzle, Scheufens, Schlicher, Spaetgens, Stamm, Theunissen, Thevis, Vondenstein, Virtz, and Zaunbrecher.
A History of the Germans of Roberts Cove, 1880-2007 will be on sale today at the Roberts Cove Germanfest celebration. It is priced at $30. Orders can also be sent directly to the Center for Louisiana Studies, P.O. Box 40831, Lafayette, LA 70504.
The Center for Louisiana Studies was established in 1973, and its major purpose is to plan, promote, and pursue programs of acquisition, research, and interpretation designed to provide scholars, students and interested individuals with a better understanding of Louisiana’s history and culture. It is the official press of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. With more than 100 titles in print, the center is the largest publisher of exclusively Louisiana-related books in the world. It also serves as a research facility and archival repository. Their office is in the Dupre Library, Room 321, located at 302 E. St. Mary Blvd. You can also contact them at cls@louisiana.edu, or by phone at (337) 482-6027. If your would like to fax an order for the book, that number is (337) 482-6028.
The Center for Louisiana Studies grew around the university’s copies of the Louisiana Colonial Records Collection. Begun in 1967, the collection attempts to draw together available microfilmed copies of any and all primary source records focused on the discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the Mississippi Valley between 1682 and 1803. To date, more than 1,000,000 pages of archival material have been photoduplicated from French archives, and more than 1,500,000 pages have been copied from Spanish archives. In addition to this, more than 20,000 pages of documentary evidence from British depositories are a part of this, and more than 165,000 pages of material have been collected from various Louisiana sources. Together with the Library of Congress and the University of Memphis, the center is one of only three repositories for the colonial documents of France in the United States.
The Rev. Peter Leonard Thevis, a native priest of Langbroich, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, was asked to come to New Orleans by Archbishop Jean-Marie Odin in 1867, mainly because of the large number of German immigrants there. It was actually on Jan. 13, 1880, that the Rev. Thevis, accompanied by his brother Peter Joseph Thevis, his nephew John Gerhard Thevis, and Herman Grein arrived in Rayne by train, and actually to the prairie land three miles north of Rayne to look over the area. The site selected for the future colony was known as Roberts Cove. It was named for Benjamin Roberts, the original owner of a Spanish land grant.
In 1881, 13 families joined them. These German Catholics were fleeing the Gangelt, Geilenkirchen district of Germany to avoid religious persecution and military impressments. The Rev. Hennemann, OSB, of the Benedictine order, purchased land that included a house which served as both rectory and chapel and another building which served as a school house in the spring of 1883. The Benedictines helped to establish the parish of St. Leo IV in 1885.
Roberts Cove was staunchly Germany until the World War I period when harsh anti-German wartime legislation initiated a decline of the German language and the other cultural elements. Now there are few remaining German speakers and relatively few overt manifestations of German culture, yet the community is still viewed as a German ethnic enclave.
Roberts Cove is known for its annual Germanfest in October. The event is held the first weekend in October at St. Leo’s Catholic Church, and this year it fell on Oct. 4-5. Visitors are treated to local German food, heritage, and genealogy. German singing and German folk dancing is performed by descendants of the original settlers, and the Roberts Cove German Heritage Museum is open for visitors.
With the publication of a new book, Roberts Cove can now take its place among the unique places that can be found throughout the state of Louisiana. The Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has released Reinhart Kondert’s tribute to this community, and Lawrence and Mary Cramer have provided the genealogy. A History of the Germans of Roberts Cove, 1880-2007 is an excellent publication, and it will be a welcome addition to any Louisiana library collection, both public and private.
This hidden treasure in the heart of Acadiana is now a wonderful book written by Kondert. He shows how these early residents escaped the hardships of their native Germany and adapted to the new homeland becoming innovative pioneers in rice culture. They established their own church and school in order to maintain their ethnic cohesiveness, and they passed on their language and culture of the fatherland to their future generations.
After World War I, the citizens of Roberts Cove gave less thought to maintaining their German identity. The generations since this time have dispersed, intermarried with outsiders and lost but all but a vague recollection of their Teutonic heritage. Just when it appeared that their past history was fading away, a group of concerned individuals launched efforts to keep alive the memory and customs of the community. In the early 1950s, Father Gerard Wolbers of St. Leo’s Church began interviewing the last of the original colonists. He also encouraged the singing of German songs and introduced a German architectural style in the new church constructed in 1954.
It was also in this period that a crusade was begun to rejuvenate the ethnic and historic consciousness of the Cove’s inhabitants. This was done by Charles Zaunbrecher, a native priest of St. Leo’s and descendant of a Roberts Cove pioneer. Family reunions were begun in 1956, and today these celebrations are enjoyed by hundreds of people in the Louisiana version of the Germanic Oktoberfest.
The book includes a comprehensive genealogy of the founding families, namely (in alphabetical order): Achten, Berken, Bunt, Cramer, Dischler, Gielen, Gossen, Grein, Habetz, Heinen, Hensgens, Huesers, Jabusch, Jacobs, Janssen, Knipping, Leonards, Meyer, Moeder, Neu, Ohlenforst, Olinger, Reiners, Ronkartz, Schaffhausen, Schatzle, Scheufens, Schlicher, Spaetgens, Stamm, Theunissen, Thevis, Vondenstein, Virtz, and Zaunbrecher.
A History of the Germans of Roberts Cove, 1880-2007 will be on sale today at the Roberts Cove Germanfest celebration. It is priced at $30. Orders can also be sent directly to the Center for Louisiana Studies, P.O. Box 40831, Lafayette, LA 70504.
The Center for Louisiana Studies was established in 1973, and its major purpose is to plan, promote, and pursue programs of acquisition, research, and interpretation designed to provide scholars, students and interested individuals with a better understanding of Louisiana’s history and culture. It is the official press of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. With more than 100 titles in print, the center is the largest publisher of exclusively Louisiana-related books in the world. It also serves as a research facility and archival repository. Their office is in the Dupre Library, Room 321, located at 302 E. St. Mary Blvd. You can also contact them at cls@louisiana.edu, or by phone at (337) 482-6027. If your would like to fax an order for the book, that number is (337) 482-6028.
The Center for Louisiana Studies grew around the university’s copies of the Louisiana Colonial Records Collection. Begun in 1967, the collection attempts to draw together available microfilmed copies of any and all primary source records focused on the discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the Mississippi Valley between 1682 and 1803. To date, more than 1,000,000 pages of archival material have been photoduplicated from French archives, and more than 1,500,000 pages have been copied from Spanish archives. In addition to this, more than 20,000 pages of documentary evidence from British depositories are a part of this, and more than 165,000 pages of material have been collected from various Louisiana sources. Together with the Library of Congress and the University of Memphis, the center is one of only three repositories for the colonial documents of France in the United States.
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