German Coast, Louisiana

In colonial Louisiana, St Charles and St John Baptist parishes are called the First and Second German Coast, respectively.

The German Coast was a region of early Louisiana settlement located above New Orleans on the Mississippi River — specifically, in St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes of present-day Acadiana. It's name dervies from the large population of German pioneers, who were settled in 1721 by John Law, and the Company of the Indies. When the company folded in 1731, the Germans became independant land-owners.

Most of the German Coast settlers hailed from the Rhineland region of Germany and the German-speaking cantons, and at other places today bearing their name, Bayou des Allemands and Lake des Allemands ("Germans Bayou" and "Germans Lake," in French). However these areas were not solely settled by people from Germany or Acadia, in fact many of the "Germans" came from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France and some from Switzerland and Belgium.

Links

 * The German-Acadian Coast Historical and Genealogical Society
 * History of the Cajuns — The German Coast of Louisiana - Includes a Census of the 1724 German Coast
 * Families of the Louisiana German Coast
 * Getting to Gemütlichkeit: German History and Culture in Southeast Louisiana
 * 1811 German Coast Slave Uprising
 * German Coast, Louisiana - German-American Heritage Sites on Waymarking.com
 * German Settlers in Louisiana and New Orleans
 * Google Books - The settlement of the German coast of Louisiana and the Creoles of German descent, by John Hanno Deiler (1909)
 * Louisiana German Coast Families (Rootsweb)
 * German Coast Historical and Geneaogical Society]
 * Louisiana's German Coast: A History of St. Charles Parish