North American Communities with German Namesakes

This was originally intended as a normal brief blog post about German (and Austria/Swiss) place names in the USA. However, as I was researching and writing this post, I began to realize that the topic was far more extensive than I thought. My simple blog was mushrooming into something more like a book!

So this post now will have to serve as an introduction to a future multipage account of all the many places in the US (and Canada) that owe their names to a town or city in Europe. Besides German names in my home state of Nevada, there are two towns with Italian names: Genoa and Verdi (don’t ask how they are pronounced locally!). The state of Georgia has Athens and Rome. Paris, Texas is a place and a German movie.

Okay, here’s my introduction to “Germany in the USA and Canada.” Please understand that not even half of the names/places I know of are covered in this introduction. Feel free to contact me with suggestions via the comments or our German Way Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Let’s start with my home state of Nevada, which by some accounts was almost named for the German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Humboldt County (pop. 16,800) is one of Nevada’s 16 counties, named for the Humboldt River which was named for that German guy. As you’ll learn below, Humboldt is a very popular geographic name in North America and many other parts of the globe – even on the moon.

Berlin in North America

The gold-mining ghost town of Berlin, Nevada was abandoned in 1907. Today it is part of the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. PHOTO: parks.nv.gov

Whenever German friends come to visit, my wife and I always have to take them to Berlin, Nevada, about 160 miles east of Reno, an easy day-trip. It’s a former gold mining town dating back to 1897. Now a well-preserved ghost town, Berlin is near the fossilized remains of the whale-like Ichthyosaurs that swam in the ocean that once covered parts of Nevada 225 million years ago. Today Berlin is part of the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park that offers camping, hiking, tours of the former mining town, and the fossils found in the custom-built Fossil House. Berlin ostensibly got its name because many of the miners/prospectors were natives of Germany. Unlike the German capital, Nevada’s Berlin was abandoned by 1907.

Nevada is not the only US state with a Berlin. Some states even have more than one – if you count variations such as Berlin Heights or Berlin Center (both in Ohio). The two largest USA Berlins (both pronounced BUR-lin for some reason) are Berlin, Connecticut (pop. 19,800) and Berlin, New Hampshire (pop. 10,000). Besides Nevada, the following US states have at least one Berlin: Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin.

Iowa had a Berlin from 1913 until 1918, when it changed its name to Lincoln in response to the First World War. The same thing happened in Canada. (See more below.) Indiana’s Berlin is no longer on the map.

Canada’s Former Berlin
Canada had a city named Berlin until 1916. Kitchener, Ontario (pop. 219,150), 62 miles southwest of Toronto, was settled by German Mennonite farming families from Pennsylvania. Beginning in 1796 the Mennonites purchased all of the land from the loyalist Colonel Richard Beasley, creating 160 farm tracts. By 1800 the first buildings were built in what would become the city of Berlin, Ontario.

Following more immigration by Germans and Swiss settlers, in 1853 the growing community of Berlin became the county seat of the new County of Waterloo, elevating it to the status of village. By 1869, Berlin had a population of 3,000. On 9 June 1912, Berlin was designated a city. Only four years later the city’s name became a liability during World War I. In 1916, while the war was still raging in Europe, Berlin was renamed Kitchener, after Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, a British Empire field marshal recently killed when his ship hit a German mine.

Augsburg

I was able to find just two US Augsburgs (below). There is also Augsburg University, a liberal arts institution in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Augsburg was the first seminary founded by Norwegian Lutherans in America. It was named after the confession of faith presented by Lutherans in Augsburg, Germany (Augsburger Bekenntnis) in 1530. Augsburg opened in 1869, in Marshall, Wisconsin, and moved to Minneapolis in 1872. Augsburg students are known as “Auggies.”

Augsburg, Arkansas is a small unincorporated community in Pope County. It is named for the German city of Augsburg in Bavaria. The first German-speaking Lutheran families began arriving in 1883. In 1884 they built their first church, the Zion Lutheran Church.

Augsburg, Illinois is an unincorporated community in Wilberton Township, Fayette County.

Bern • Berne • New Bern

The clock tower in downtown Berne, Indiana is modeled after the original Zytglogge in Bern, Switzerland. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

German Switzerland and Austria have also contributed to geographic names in the US. (Geneva, New York got its name from French-speaking Switzerland.) Austria’s Vienna is the namesake of about a dozen US communities. See “Vienna” below. The Swiss capital of Bern (also spelled “Berne” in English) and/or the canton of Bern lend their name to at least three US communities in Indiana, New York, and North Carolina.

Berne, Indiana (pop. 4,200) was settled in 1852 by Mennonite immigrants who came directly from Switzerland. By 1895 the community was the second largest city in Adams County. The town and the surrounding area still have an Amish population that speaks a Swiss German dialect. The town shows its pride in its heritage with a replica of the Swiss city’s clock tower that stands in the center of the town at Muensterberg Plaza. Construction of the clock tower was completed in 2010. Berne is located about 35 miles south of Fort Wayne.

Berne, New York (pop. 2,800) in Albany County was first settled by Palatine German refugees in 1795. The town’s name was originally spelled “Bern” before the Berne Post Office was established in 1825.

New Bern, North Carolina (pop. 29,500) was settled in 1710 by Swiss and German (Palatine) immigrants under the leadership of Christoph von Graffenried, 1st Baron of Bernberg. The new colonists named their settlement after the Canton of Bern, the Swiss region from which many of the colonists and their patron had emigrated. The English connection with Switzerland had been established by some Marian exiles who sought refuge in Protestant parts of Switzerland.

Bremen

There are about a dozen places named Bremen in the United States, from Maine to North Dakota, plus one in Canada. While most of them are very small and some not even incorporated communities, they all share their name with the Hanseatic League city of Bremen in Germany. (Watch for more about North American places named Bremen.)

Welcome to Bremen, Georgia, founded in 1883. PHOTO: Bill Golladay (Wikimedia Commons)

Brunswick (Braunschweig) • New Brunswick

You may not think of Brunswick as a German name, but it’s called Braunschweig in German, and the British connection comes via the House of Hanover (Hannover in German) and three King Georges (I-III). The German city of Braunschweig (Brunswick) was an influential city in the Hanseatic League (Hansa) and was an administrative seat for the Duchy of Hanover. The city and the duchy were the source of place names in the US and Canada.

Selected Brunswicks…

Brunswick, Georgia (pop. 16,250) was founded in 1771. The town was named for the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Herzogtum Braunschweig-Lüneburg) in Germany, the ancestral home of George II and the House of Hanover.

Brunswick, Maine (pop. 20,400) has origins as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Brunswick dates from 1714, when a consortium from Boston and Portsmouth bought the land (the Pejepscot Purchase). In 1717 the township was named “Brunswick” in honor of the House of Brunswick (Braunschweig) and its scion, King George I. A stone fort called Fort George was built in 1715 near the falls.

New Brunswick, Canada is a Canadian province that was created in 1784 with the partition of Nova Scotia into two areas which then became the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. New Brunswick was among the first places in North America to be explored and settled by Europeans. Nearly all of New France, in what is now Canada, was surrendered to the British with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. After the American Revolution, about 10,000 loyalist refugees settled along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy. The province prospered in the early 1800s and the population grew rapidly. With Confederation in 1867, New Brunswick was one of four founding provinces of Canada, along with Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada (now Ontario, and Quebec).

Dresden

The German city of Dresden in Saxony has a dozen counterparts in the USA and Canada. The Canadian Dresden (pop. 2,800) is an agricultural town in southwestern Ontario. Dresden is known as the home of Josiah Henson, the former American slave whose life story was the inspiration for the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Dresden, Ontario is the site of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site, and the town was an important terminus of the Underground Railroad via overland and marine routes.

In the US there are eleven Dresdens, most with fewer than 600 inhabitants, in the following states: Iowa, Kansas (2), Maine, Missouri, New York (2), North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. The largest US Dresdens are in Maine and Ohio. Like their German counterpart on the Elbe River, both are also located by rivers. Dresden, Maine is a town of about 1,600 inhabitants that was incorporated in 1794. Located on the eastern side of the Kennebec River, the town was originally settled in 1752 under the name Frankfort by French and German (Protestant) Huguenots. The village of Dresden, Ohio, with about 1,500 residents, is located on the Muskingum River.

Flensburg, Frankfort (Frankfurt), Hamburg

We’ll have more about these place names later.

Humboldt

As we mentioned above, the surname of the German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt has been used to label many places and things around the world. Wikipedia’s disambiguation page for “Humboldt” lists a dozen US states with a community (or two) named Humboldt. Canada has its own Humboldt (pop. 5,800) in Saskatchewan, named after the German explorer, and dating back to 1875.

The following US states have communities named Humboldt: Arizona (Dewey-Humboldt), Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada (Humboldt City, a ghost town), Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Tennessee.

Other Humboldt geographic designations:

• Counties named Humboldt in California, Iowa, and Nevada
• Mountains: Humboldt Range (East and West)/Humboldt Peak in Nevada; Humboldt Peak in Colorado
• Humboldt Bay, Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, and Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California
• The Humboldt River in Nevada
• The Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada

Additionally, the Humboldt name is found in the Latin names for seven plants and eight animals. Schools and colleges in the US and many other counties also bear Humboldt’s name. There is a Humboldt Crater on the moon.

To learn more about the man and his life story, see our Alexander von Humboldt blog post.

Kiel, Lübeck/Lubec, Schleswig-Holstein

More about these places coming soon.

Minden

Minden in Germany is a town of about 83,000 inhabitants in northeast North Rhine-Westphalia. Minden extends along both sides of the Weser River. It is the capital of the district (Kreis) of Minden-Lübbecke, which is part of the region of Detmold. There are two towns named Minden in the US:

Minden, Louisiana (pop. 13,000) is a town located 28 miles east of Shreveport. Minden was founded in 1836 by Charles Veeder of Schenectady, New York. He named the town Minden for the city in Germany. During the Civil War, a large Confederate encampment was located near Minden. It housed about 15,000 Confederate soldiers. The town served as a supply depot for the Confederate Army. About 30 Confederate soldiers who died in the Battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill are buried in the Old Minden Cemetery.

Minden, Nevada (pop. 3,400) is the county seat of Douglas County, located in the Carson Valley on US 395 about 45 miles south of Reno, 15 miles south of Carson City, and 15 miles west of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada range. Minden is one of the top gliding locations in the world.

Munich, Stuttgart, etc.

There are several of these in the US. More later.

Vienna

There are 12 communities in the USA named for Austria’s capital city – if you count the ghost town in Idaho.

Vienna, Virginia (pop. 16,485), a Washington, DC suburb on the Potomac River, is the largest and best known. Vienna, West Virginia has about 10,000 residents. The rest of the US Viennas are mostly small, often unincorporated communities located in Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, and New York.

Weimar

At least two states have towns named for the German city of Weimar (Thuringia). The largest is appropriately in Texas. The local pronunciation of Weimar in the USA is usually WHY-mer. In German it’s VYE-mahr.

Weimar, Texas (pop. 2,200) was founded as “Jackson Station” in 1873, in anticipation of the new Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway line (now the Southern Pacific), but the name was soon changed to honor the German city. The small town grew quickly, establishing itself as a center of trade for pecans, poultry, and dairy products. By 1888 Weimar had its own newspaper, The Weimar Mercury, still published weekly.

The nearby town of Schulenburg, Texas (pop. 2,900) is also a railroad town first settled by people of German, Austrian and Czech descent, and the area still shows evidence of their culture. Incorporated in 1873, the Texas town is named for Louis Schulenburg, a former landowner. The Schulenburg Sticker newspaper, still published weekly today, was founded by German immigrant Ernst Goeth in 1894. Another early newspaper was the Texas Volksfreund. Schulenburg has a rich musical heritage, especially polka music, and is home to the Texas Polka Music Museum.

Weimar, California (pop. 209) in Placer County is midway between Reno and Sacramento on Interstate 80, not far from Colfax, California in the Sierra foothills (elevation 2,500 ft). Weimar is now home to the Weimar Institute, a college and a boarding high school associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The name is related to George Geisendorfer, founder of the town, who was born near Weimar, Germany. Weimar was originally known as New England Mills, but Geisendorfer changed the name to Weimar when the post office rejected the original name.

More to Come

Thank you for reading this summary of German place names in North America. We’ll announce the forthcoming more comprehensive article(s) on this topic in the near future.

– HF