Saxon Migration Archives

Easter Sunday is a good day to look back at some of the crosses I’ve photographed over the years. We’ll start off with an aerial photo of Bald Knob Cross in Illinois at Alto Pass. Here’s how the photo was taken (and saved in the darkroom).

Bald Knob Cross from the ground

Here’s the cross from the ground.

Ft. Jefferson Cross at the Confluence

The Ft. Jefferson Cross at the Confluence in Wickliffe is pretty at night. By the way you CAN make the images larger by clicking on them.

Cape LaCroix Creek marker

The Cape LaCroix Creek marker has been a rolling stone looking for a home.

Old Lorimier Cemetery grave marker

When I took this photograph in the mid-1960s, the angel in the picture had wings and arms. She was vandalized twenty years later.

Elder B.A. Armour in 2013

Elder B.A. Armour’s faith is as important to him today as it was when I photographed him baptizing people in the Mississippi River off New Madrid in 1967.

New Madrid baptism

Elder Armour is on the left, and J.C. Pullen is on the right. The congregants marched from the Church of God in Christ church, through downtown New Madrid, and down to the river.

St. Mary’s Cemetery

I photographed this cross at St. Mary’s Cemetery twice – almost exactly 48 years apart.

Judas got a raw deal

Ken Saunders, a British citizen, walked across the country trying to convince people that Judas really wasn’t a bad guy. He liked what he saw of Missouri.

Dutchtown Cemetery

This old wooden cross is in the Dutchtown Cemetery on a ridge overlooking the slowly diminishing community below it. The dead outnumber the living.

St. Vincent’s Church at sunset

I was really planning to shoot Fourth of July fireworks, but St. Vincent’s Church at sunset caught my eye.

Crucifix came over with the Saxons

This Crucifix in Altenburg’s Trinity Lutheran Church, was made in Oberammergau, Germany, and came over with the Saxons in 1839. The Last Supper was installed in the altar in 1938.

Guardian Angels Catholic Church

The Guardian Angel Catholic Church in Oran is one of the most ornate houses of worship in the area.

Seelitz, in eastern Perry County, was a short-lived town near Altenburg. It was one of the seven colonies established in 1839 in the Saxon Migration.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

Not a good location

Gerard Fiehler from the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum walked me back to where a memorial stone contains the names of some of the earlier settlers. You’ll notice that many of the dates are from the first two years of the settlement.

Seelitz, I was told, was located in a low area that it made it disease-prone. The other problem was that the the early inhabitants were mostly students and professional men poorly prepared for carving out farms and houses from wilderness.

Rev. Stephens exiled

The Rev. Martin Stephan was the leader of the movement. He and his followers, with a communal treasury of $88,000 (you can see the chest it was kept in at the museum), landed in Wittenberg with the goal of farming about 4,500 acres of land that resembled what they had left in Saxony, Germany.

Rev. Stephan, however, was accused of “voluptuous living and dictatorial conduct” and put in a boat for exile to Illinois. It is rumored that he had been tapping the till and some of the wives.

That was the start of the Missouri Synod

Despite all the difficulties, the Saxon immigration was the start of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, which was established in 1847.

The beautiful and still active Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg was built in 1867.

Cape Central High Photos

Ken Steinhoff, Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of 1965, spent half a century in the ink-slinging business for papers in Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.

He retired in 2008 and has been spending time scanning hundreds of thousands of images because “photos once taken as news have grown enough whiskers that they’ve become history.”

Please comment on the articles when you see he may have left out a bit of history, forgotten a name or when your memory of a circumstance conflicts with his.

(His mother said her stories improved after all the folks who could contradict died off.)

Your information helps to make this a wonderful archive and may end up in book form.

Tag: Saxon Migration

Crosses I Remember