Ceremony lauds founding German immigrants
John Schinckel and Ben Fuhendorf would have been proud on Saturday as descendants of German immigrants attended the second annual Founder’s Day ceremony, this time held at Fairmount Cemetery in Davenport.
The first cousins arrived here in 1908 from Germany but rest in Fairmount now.
“This is to honor the German immigrants who are buried here and who came to establish the area,” said Noreen Steenbock, secretary of the Schuetzenpark Gilde.
John Schinckel’s son, Jack, is the president of the American Schleswig-Holstein Heritage Society.
Many of the Germans in the area came from a part of northern Germany known as Schleswig-Holstein.
“There was a huge wave of immigration after the failed revolution of 1848,” said Kody Darnall, president of the Schuetzenpark Gilde.
In the mausoleum, such names as Sonntag, Schreiber, Grosskopf and Beitz provided proof.
And despite the Saturday rain and intermittent downpours, about 80 people attended. The Bix Beiderbecke Youth Jazz Band, directed by Nikki Whittaker of Knox College, played a few tunes, including one of Bix’s own, “In a Mist.” The ties were obvious, as Bix’s paternal grandparents were born in Germany.
Carol Schaefer said the event was to remind us “what we owe to those who came before us,” both German immigrants and others.
“Think of those who sailed the oceans, left their families … to start a new life. They made a special effort,” he said, to find the freedoms in the United States.
Historian Scott Christiansen spoke of such immigrants as architect Frederick George Clausen, who designed the Peterson (Redstone) Building, Central High School, churches and other buildings. He said his own great-great-grandfather Jürgen Peter Ankerson had a vineyard that overlooked the cemetery.
Christiansen then read the words of Henry Lau, spoken a 100 years ago at the fifth annual gathering of the German American Society of Scott County. “Oppressed and troubled they left,” he read. They were searching for “a better existence.” They traveled here by riverboat and by land and “before them lay primeval forest and prairie.”
North Scott High School student Hailee Gehrls sang three patriotic songs, and alderman Ian Frink spoke a few words. A color guard from the American Legion Davenport Post 26 provided a gun salute outside, and John Adams played taps.
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