Once We Were Strangers: A German Immigrant Family the Nineteenth-Century Midwest

Based on nearly 200 family letters and documents translated from Old German, chronicles, through the pens of ordinary people, the conditions in Württemberg which led to emigration and the sweep of American history from the 1850s to the nominal end of the frontier in 1890. In addition, provides the unusual opportunity to follow a German immigrant family for an extended period, almost from cradle to grave. Using remarkably rare documentary evidence, Allen explores the largely untold story of German assimilation, uncovering the pressures the Lodholzes faced and how they responded to the antebellum Midwest. This family’s story is full of hardship, endurance, joys, and sorrows, and is interwoven with the history of westward expansion, German migration, and Kansas, with a particular emphasis on German settlement patterns prior to the Civil War.