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Texas Day by Day

April 20, 1842


German nobles unite for Texas colonization

On this day in 1842, the Adelsverein (the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas) was provisionally organized by twenty-one German noblemen at Biebrich on the Rhine, near Mainz. The society was formed to establish a new Germany on Texas soil by means of an organized mass emigration. In May 1842 the association sent two of its members, counts Joseph of Boos-Waldeck and Victor August of Leiningen, to Texas to purchase land. In January 1843 Boos-Waldeck bought a square league (4,428 acres) in what is now Fayette County, near Industry, as the base for future colonization. The first immigrants disembarked in Texas in December 1844, near Carlshafen (later Indianola). The society brought more than 7,000 Germans to Texas. It also established Texas as a major goal of subsequent emigration from Germany.

Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
ADELSVEREIN
BOOS-WALDECK, COUNT LUDWIG JOSEPH VON
LEININGEN, CARL FRIEDERICH WILHELM EMICH III, PRINCE OF
GERMANS

Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
Texas baritone makes professional debut in New York (1924)
Last Confederate general dies (1928)


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