German Coast

Early settlements

As early as 1718, John Law and the Company of the Indies began recruiting French settlers to settle Louisiana (New France), though not specifically to what would become the German Coast. The early French settlers were not suited or prepared for the harsh conditions in Louisiana. In 1719, Jean-Pierre Pury, a director at the Company of the Indies, proposed recruiting Germans and German-speaking Swiss farmers to Louisiana and that same year with a twenty-five-year charter, Law merged the Company of the West with his Company of the Indies. Also in 1719, a small group of German settlers arrived in the Louisiana French colony and were transported by waterways thirty miles west of New Orleans to a location along the west bank of the Mississippi River, north of Ouachas Lake. This area of German settlers was called les Allemands or the Germans.

In 1720, Germans were recruited in early spring to settle in les Allemands. Roughly four thousand individuals (four hundred and fifty families) mostly from Rhineland, but also from Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Swedish Pomerania, Alsace–Lorraine, Belgium, and Switzerland traveled across France to Lorient in Brittany to make the voyage to Louisiana. Those families who were Lutherans and Calvinists were advised to convert to Catholicism as soon as possible, or their travel through France could be problematic. Some converted; while others did not.

On March 7, 1721, the settlers set sail and arrived in Old Biloxi on June 4, 1721. On December 15, 1721, French Governor Bienville issued an order for boats to transport the recently arrived German-speaking settlers including newly named Commandant Charles Frédérique d'Arensbourg, born Karl Friedrich von Arensburg, to the already established villages of Hoffen, Marienthal, and Augsburg on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

The settlers left for the settlements in January 1722 and of the roughly four thousand individuals that initially began the trip in Europe, when they reached their port of embarkation in March 1722, a Company of the Indies official counted only three hundred thirty settlers because many of them perished due to the harsh conditions of their long journey to Louisiana.

Besides "les Allemands", the collective name that the German settlements were sometimes referred to was Karlstein, but the area eventually became known as the "German Coast" and these settlements opened the present-day River Parishes to European settlement. In addition to the area sometimes being referred to as Karlstein after Charles Frederick d'Arensbourg or Karl Friedrich d’Arensbourg, who for more than 55 years, was the acknowledged leader of the German Coast; the name of the tract of land given to him was also named Karlstein. The German Coast was located along the west bank of the Mississippi River extending roughly from Taft north to Lucy in present-day Louisiana.

By 1723, the area included several dozen homes, contained in the settlement of Hoffen (later built Glendale, Hymelia, Trinity, and Killona Plantations), Karlstein (later built Waterford Plantation), Augsberg (to the rear of Killona and Waterford Plantations), and Mariental (behind the present site of Agrico and OxyChem industrial plants at Taft).

When the Company of the Indies folded in 1731, the settlers became independent land owners. Despite periodic flooding, hurricanes, and the rigors of frontier life, the German pioneers made a success of their settlements. Their farming endeavors provided food not only for themselves but also for New Orleans' residents. The German settlers continuously supplied the markets of the city using the Mississippi River to transport their surplus produce in small boats or canoes, known as pirogues, returning home through Lake Pontchartrain into Bayous Trepagnier and Sieur, and other tributaries to the Mississippi River. Some historians credit these German farmers with the survival of early New Orleans.

By the end of the Spanish era, the German Coast had become so well known for its abundance that it acquired the designation of Gold Coast. At the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the German Coast was renowned as the best cultivated part of Louisiana.