4/20/1842: German nobles unite for Texas colonization

[Craig Tx]

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.