Do you have any German heritage? Happy Word Cloud Wednesday!

Beginning in 1870, Lawrence County experienced a massive influx of German families. The Cincinnati-based German Catholic Homestead Association purchased several thousand acres of land in Lawrence County at that time and convinced hundreds of newly-arrived German families to relocate to Lawrence County and begin farming the land.

These families brought their language, customs, and religious traditions with them. The German Migration is responsible for the founding of every Catholic Church in Lawrence County. Today, all three of these places of worship are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The German Migration continued for at least two more decades, finally slowing near the end of the 19th century. The 1880 census gives us a glimpse of the migration near its peak, when there were 284 German-born people living in Lawrence County.

This word cloud shows the surnames of every German-born person living in Lawrence County in 1880. The larger the name, the more frequently it appears in the census. Many of the spellings are not correct by modern standards, and some names appear more than once in different spellings, but they have been left as the census enumerators wrote them to preserve historical authenticity.

Many of these surnames are still very common in Lawrence County. Let us know if you see your own or one to which you are related!