Chapter Five of ”Coming Together, Portrait of a Family” By: Winona Garmhausen
Chapter Five: The German Catholic Immigrants of the 1840’s
In 1844, the same year that Josiah Clawson died, only a few miles to the west, a great deal of excitement was beginning to take place. A whole new community had began to spring up in 1842, at first called Section 10 and then Ten Mile Woods by its Northern German immigrant residents, and later named Delphos by its patron and founder, The Reverend John Otto Bredeick. This year also marked another special event. A roadway was hacked out of the wilderness from the Auglaize River through the Clawson property to this new German Village. Among these German settlers who arrived in 1844 and 1845 were the antecedents of the maternal side of our family. These ancestors, however, did not seek the Auglaize River for its commerce and transportation possibilities but instead came to build canals that would become the vehicle of their industry. They were, after all, from the land of canals just below the Holland border.
Reverend Bredeick, the founder of Delphos, Ohio, was the scion of a wealthy mercantilist German family in the German state of Westphalia. For many years, the Catholics of this northernmost German state had been severely prejudiced against and persecuted for their beliefs and found themselves with little opportunities beyond serfdom and hard labor. In Westphalia the Napoleonic Wars had brought to power a repressive anti-Catholic king who stripped Catholic citizens of their rights and their property.
Born to wealth and opportunity, John Otto Bredeick had resolved early in life to help his people. His ultimate solution was to physically remove these poor people from the lands of their overlords to the freedom and open spaces of America.
As Bredeick grew up, the political situation in his German state become almost intolerable and it was feared that a religious revolution was inevitable. The population was angry and crushed into ignorance by a king who denied them access to education, commerce and industry. The Catholics were forced to work as subsistence farmers for wealthy landholders and had little hope, little happiness, and much suffering. Most were unable even to sign their names, much less read a book or buy on the open market. Few were allowed to travel freely and many were jailed, tortured, or put to death for their faith.
There were, of course, exceptions to the rule, those Catholic families of wealth and power. Some were royals themselves, cousins to the rulers and therefore tolerated as long as they practiced their religion quietly. The king did not dare take their property as he would risk losing advantage of their wealth and skills. Many royals were not qualified to manage such holdings had the lands and businesses been confiscated.
So it was that certain of the families of Germany were able to live their faith quietly and without great difficulty. Among these was the Bredeick family of the city of Verl, Germany. For hundreds of years this family had quietly practiced their religion and often provided sons and daughters to the seminary and convent. The Bredeicks, who maintained close ties to the rulers of both Hanover and France, provided excellent educational opportunities to their children and served as retainers, lawyers and advisors to the royals.
The eldest of seven children, John Otto was born June 23, 1789 to Johann and Maria Bredeick. As the heir to the Bredeick fortune, John Otto was set on a path of classical study, the law and public service. Like many of his contemporaries, his goal was to work for a unified and powerful Germany. But he had another goal of equal importance -— to alleviate the suffering of his Catholic countrymen. He was intensely political and well aware of the freedom of religion offered in America. His efforts to work for Catholic religious freedom within the government were to no avail. In 1818, at the age of 29, he left public service and entered the seminary for the diocese of Osnabruck. This was a dream that John Otto had postponed since his youth, hoping that his time in public service would affect the religious tolerance changes he sought.
Because of his family connections, John Otto was allowed considerable freedom while in the seminary and maintained close ties with his family, especially with his brothers Josef Leopold and Ferdinand.
John Otto Bredeick was ordained a priest at Osnabruck in 1822 and rose swiftly up the ecclesiastical ladder becoming Rector of the cathedral parish in 1828. Plans were being made to elevate him even further in the church hierarchy when his brother Ferdinand was arrested for taking part in anti-government activity. Ferdinand had been part of the underground resistance movement since he was a teenager and had been saved many times by his influential brother from punishment for his efforts in stirring up the poor to resist the ruling classes. Using all his political powers and his position as Rector, John Otto was able to negotiate his brother’s release, but at a price. Ferdinand would have to leave the kingdom, and indeed, all Germany, to be forever exiled from the land he loved. A considerable bribe to the authorities gave the Bredeick family time to decide a course of action.
The entire Bredeick clan gathered to consider what could be done. It was decided that twenty-six-year-old Ferdinand be sent to America with funds available from John Otto’s fortune to find land suitable to relocate a large number of the German Catholic families from northern German towns and villages. Ferdinand was given explicit instructions, which he took great pains to memorize, a wallet full of cash and extravagant letters of credit. He was put in the care of a priest, Father Johann Hortsman of Glandorf, Germany, whom Reverend Bredeick had previously given permission to establish a settlement in the swamplands of northwest Ohio.
Ferdinand met with Father Hortsman upon arrival in New York and reported to his family that the eastern states were very much like home. He was not, however, favorably impressed with Hortsman’s chosen site in Ohio but instead proceeded to Detroit in 1834 and rode horseback west through Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, down into Kansas and Missouri and then back east. He determined at last to purchase lands in western Indiana and Iowa and notified his family of his decisions. That being done, he returned to “new” Glandorf, Father Horstman’s settlement, to marry a young lady he had met there on his previous journey.
This was a fateful trip for Ferdinand, for it was in Glandorf that he met Samuel Forrer, a young engineer sent by the State of Ohio to survey and lay out a system of canals in northwest Ohio that would eventually connect Lake Erie to the Ohio River. Forrer proposed three possible routes for the canal system, one to follow the flow of the Auglaize River and two cutting through the flat lands and the swamps. Forrer’s enthusiasm about the canal's’ role in the future development of Ohio was contagious. Based on his new friendship with Forrer and believing in the possibilities that the canal system would bring to northwest Ohio, Ferdinand advised his German family that he had made a new choice.
This kind of development was most exciting to Ferdinand, as the Germans in northern Germany were masters of canal building and could readily see the potential for settlement, commerce and industry along its banks. In a practice that would be frowned upon today, advising the Bredeick family members and a political friend, William Webb, who would later become Governor of Ohio, Forrer quickly bought up numerous parcels of land along all three proposed routes, Banking on the choice of the canal following the Auglaize River, Ferdinand bought extensive land at Fort Jennings and took up residence there with his new family near the old 1812 fort. After the State of Ohio chose one of the non-river routes for the canal construction, Forrer made another bold move. Again not to be outdone, Forrer bid to become the primary construction engineer for the Miami Extension Canal to run from present-day St. Marys, Ohio to Defiance, Ohio.
Fortunately, Ferdinand had purchased a number of parcels of land that became the ideal site for a new community where there was generous wide water and a millpond. These conditions suggested construction of dry and wet docks, boat yard, mills and other water related businesses. Boat builders were recruited from the Lake Erie area to construct the canal boats. In three years they constructed eighteen vessels.
Meanwhile, back in Germany John Otto chafed to be away from his clerical duties and spent the years until 1844 attempting to convince the superior of his diocese to release him for foreign duty. Had he not been held in such esteem, his release would have been accomplished much more easily, but because of John Otto’s wealth and family connections the Church was extremely reluctant to let such a rising star go, especially to an unknown fate in a faraway land. Ferdinand’s brother-in-law, Theodore Wrocklage, traveled to Germany to make a presentation directly to the Bredeick family and to the Bishop.
As a result John Otto was given permission to put together a group to sail to America in 1842; however, the Bishop rescinded his pledge to let John Otto accompany them. This mission was financed by John Otto and his brother Joseph. The people who chose to go were penniless peasants and serfs who were uneducated, untrained, and completely dependent on Theodore Wrocklage, their guide and protector. Many volunteers backed out when they learned that John Otto would not accompany them. Just forty-two persons made this first voyage to their new homeland. On board the ship were the supplies they would need to start their lives in the settlement, Ten Mile Woods, the beginnings of which were being built around the new canal system.
These settlers arrived first by ship to New York, and then traveled across New York State to Buffalo on the Erie Canal. From Buffalo they traveled by lake to Toledo, Ohio, and then by canal again to Defiance, Ohio. These hearty Germans were impressed with the new canal waterways and their eventual importance to the development of their new home. From Defiance they traveled overland by wagon and on foot through dense forests over the Defiance Trail, which followed the Auglaize River. It would have not been uncommon for them to have encountered the wild animals that still inhabited the area of northwest Ohio. Among those would have been wolves, bears and puma. They arrived safely at their final destination on November 1, 1843. The settlement that they reached must have been a great shock to them after hearing the glowing reports of Wrocklage and Reverend Bredeick. Only a few rude structures existed, occupied by persons who had moved to the Ten Mile Woods from Fort Jennings and Glandorf Piles of mud and great gaping holes in the earth around the canal construction dominated the site. The first night the exhausted immigrants slept in their wagons. By the next morning these hearty folk were up and ready to pitch in to “conquer” the swamps and forests they had encountered along the way. None had funds, so they took no-interest, long-term loans from the Bredeicks for large one- and two—dollar-an-acre tracts of land outside the settlement. They had no education or training to be shopkeepers or other mercantilists. What they were qualified to be were farmers — men who, for the first time in their lives, would own the land they farmed. Anticipating this, John Otto ordered that “Americans” be enticed to the settlement to begin building the businesses and services that this growing community would need.
The winter of 1834 was unusually harsh, and as a result most of the inhabitants moved to cabins already erected on the Auglaize River. For the first time these “late comers” became temporary neighbors to those like the Clawsons and Hartshorns who had already taken up residence along the river. In the spring the Germans moved back to Ten Mile Woods to begin building the settlement in earnest, The immigrants were soon joined by Americans who had been given free lots on which to construct their stores and shops. It was Reverend Bredeick’s wish that his new town grow and prosper rapidly, and he had no wish that the community would become a national enclave for Germans seeking to build “a new Germany.” Every effort was made to attract men of ability and education and men who had influential contacts.
Reverend Bredeick finally received permission to come to America in 1844, and this time the group sailed under his direction and protection. Sailing with Bredeick on this 1844 voyage were all the persons who would become our maternal ancestors. When
Bredeick arrived at his settlement in October 1844, he faced the reality that the immigrants who preceded him had not done well without his leadership. Only a humble gathering of huts and cabins greeted him. His dreams of an eventual metropolis of a million people at the hub of a thriving canal system must have seemed far away indeed.
Surveying the needs of the little community, Reverend Bredeick quickly called a meeting of all the inhabitants. In this meeting he laid out the ground rules for setting the community on the right course. Among his pronouncements were that he would immediately assume management of the canal lock operations, that his large cabin would serve as a church until a community building could be built, that he would plot his property into a city, and, most revolutionary of all, that the following morning all residents were to begin formal schooling until each could read and write. Probably most shocking of all the pronouncements to the German immigrants was that Reverend Bredeick had set aside land not only for a Catholic church but also for Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches in their community. What Bredeick was personally promising to his new community was a literate society and religious freedom, a concept as alien as ownership of land had been in the old country. One can imagine the wonderment these humble peasants must have experienced at hearing their leader’s vision. Reverend Bredeick pledged that never again would religious hatred be allowed to oppress anyone - at least not in this new community which he had re-named Delphos.
However, the near result of Bredeick’s pronouncements was to drive these new Americans back to the land. Some had dreamt of becoming merchants, shopkeepers, and integral members to the new community. This was not to be in the beginning; their lot was either to till the land or work by the day on the canal system. Bredeick put the word out far and Wide that he would give choice lots on the canal frontage to manufacturers, financiers, bankers, mercantilists and other professionals who would join his new “plantation.”
The German immigrants had left the oppression of the old world behind; the effect of all these rulings and preferences was to cause almost immediate resentment. When Bredeick announced that he would build a very large church in the center of the settlement, resentment boiled over. They felt that this was inappropriate to the new world as it would be a symbol of what they had left behind in their home. As the new church, huge in its proportions, began to take shape, many citizens traveled miles out of their way to attend small and humble churches that they felt more befitting their new status as Americans.
As the canal system was being completed, its builders sensed the importance of rail travel which was inching its way across the country. John Otto, always alert to emerging trends, began to plan for and lobby for Delphos to become an important rail center. To achieve this goal he did two important things. He managed to push through the Ohio Legislature a charter for the City of Delphos in February 1851, and he donated heavily to those groups in the East who were to determine which westward cities would become railway centers. All was in place for Delphos as a strong contender in 1854 when disaster struck the little city: a cholera epidemic broke out and was so devastating that by 1855 Delphos had lost half its population. The railroad authorities, fearing sending workers into the area, crossed Delphos off their list. Delphos would later have access to cross- country passenger and freight service, but it never became a rail center of the proportions John Otto had hoped. Samuel Forrer, always the transportation visionary, advised Reverend Bredeick to concentrate on roadways as the key to the future. In this speculation Forrer proved to be correct as the canals were quickly usurped by the railroads and, in turn, the railroads’ functions would in time be given over to highway travel and transport. Ferdinand Bredeick had died in 1846 leaving his older brother grief-stricken. When the rail center possibility fell through, Reverend Bredeick was further saddened and his health began to decline. John Hertz, his friend and the planner/builder of the wooden church, died in the cholera epidemic, leaving the construction project for others to finish. A greatly weakened Reverend Bredeick addressed his congregation in the imposing drafty church structure on Easter Sunday 1858. In his remarks he urged his flock to move forward in building the community they had all envisioned when they arrived at Ten Mile Woods. Father John Otto Bredeick died August 21, 1858, his dreams of a great utopia in Middle America unfulfilled.
Reverend Bredeick made generous bequests to both Delphos and nearby Ottoville, where he had also founded a new congregation. To both he left the funds to build magnificent new Catholic facilities, some of which stand today as a monument to his vision. It is believed that St. John’s Catholic Church in Delphos is the largest non-cathedral church in America. Throughout his years in Ohio, John Otto had also contributed large sums of money to help the oppressed Catholics in northern Germany that he had reluctantly left behind.
After the cholera epidemic, many of the farm folk moved into Delphos and took over the businesses and shops vacated by the non German Americans who had lost their lives. These men and women were no longer the uneducated serfs and peasants who left their homeland to follow the plan laid out for them by their trusted mentor) John Otto. They were now literate landholders and capable independent farmers. Perhaps, after all, they were the instruments 0f the fulfillment of Reverend Bredeick’s dreams.
Delphos never became the shining city of a million souls that John Otto envisioned. Instead, it became a typical small Midwestern town, the center of commerce and society for a portion of northwest Ohio and a refuge to those who prefer the pace and closeness of small town life. All around its edges are the large farms where the surnames of those who came to Ten Mile Woods so long ago are repeated through the generations. Among those acreages are the farms of our maternal ancestors who all came to America from a village in Northern Germany called Melle under Reverend Bredeick’s care.
Notes
Background information concerning the formation and settlement of Delphos, Ohio, was drawn from Allen and Van Wert County histories, articles in the local paper The Delphos Herald, and the book Reflections 1812-1960. The principle sources, however, were three publications: Delphos Vicenqui — Bicentennial History Book, The Centenary of St. John the Baptist Church, Delphos, Ohio, 1881-1981, Reverend John Bredeick, A Bicentennial Perspective, January 23, 1789-January 23, 1989, and Samuel Forrer Absentee Landlord.
Inquiries concerning these publications may be directed to the Delphos Chamber of Commerce, the Delphos Public library and the Delphos Canal Commission.
In 1844, the same year that Josiah Clawson died, only a few miles to the west, a great deal of excitement was beginning to take place. A whole new community had began to spring up in 1842, at first called Section 10 and then Ten Mile Woods by its Northern German immigrant residents, and later named Delphos by its patron and founder, The Reverend John Otto Bredeick. This year also marked another special event. A roadway was hacked out of the wilderness from the Auglaize River through the Clawson property to this new German Village. Among these German settlers who arrived in 1844 and 1845 were the antecedents of the maternal side of our family. These ancestors, however, did not seek the Auglaize River for its commerce and transportation possibilities but instead came to build canals that would become the vehicle of their industry. They were, after all, from the land of canals just below the Holland border.
Reverend Bredeick, the founder of Delphos, Ohio, was the scion of a wealthy mercantilist German family in the German state of Westphalia. For many years, the Catholics of this northernmost German state had been severely prejudiced against and persecuted for their beliefs and found themselves with little opportunities beyond serfdom and hard labor. In Westphalia the Napoleonic Wars had brought to power a repressive anti-Catholic king who stripped Catholic citizens of their rights and their property.
Born to wealth and opportunity, John Otto Bredeick had resolved early in life to help his people. His ultimate solution was to physically remove these poor people from the lands of their overlords to the freedom and open spaces of America.
As Bredeick grew up, the political situation in his German state become almost intolerable and it was feared that a religious revolution was inevitable. The population was angry and crushed into ignorance by a king who denied them access to education, commerce and industry. The Catholics were forced to work as subsistence farmers for wealthy landholders and had little hope, little happiness, and much suffering. Most were unable even to sign their names, much less read a book or buy on the open market. Few were allowed to travel freely and many were jailed, tortured, or put to death for their faith.
There were, of course, exceptions to the rule, those Catholic families of wealth and power. Some were royals themselves, cousins to the rulers and therefore tolerated as long as they practiced their religion quietly. The king did not dare take their property as he would risk losing advantage of their wealth and skills. Many royals were not qualified to manage such holdings had the lands and businesses been confiscated.
So it was that certain of the families of Germany were able to live their faith quietly and without great difficulty. Among these was the Bredeick family of the city of Verl, Germany. For hundreds of years this family had quietly practiced their religion and often provided sons and daughters to the seminary and convent. The Bredeicks, who maintained close ties to the rulers of both Hanover and France, provided excellent educational opportunities to their children and served as retainers, lawyers and advisors to the royals.
The eldest of seven children, John Otto was born June 23, 1789 to Johann and Maria Bredeick. As the heir to the Bredeick fortune, John Otto was set on a path of classical study, the law and public service. Like many of his contemporaries, his goal was to work for a unified and powerful Germany. But he had another goal of equal importance -— to alleviate the suffering of his Catholic countrymen. He was intensely political and well aware of the freedom of religion offered in America. His efforts to work for Catholic religious freedom within the government were to no avail. In 1818, at the age of 29, he left public service and entered the seminary for the diocese of Osnabruck. This was a dream that John Otto had postponed since his youth, hoping that his time in public service would affect the religious tolerance changes he sought.
Because of his family connections, John Otto was allowed considerable freedom while in the seminary and maintained close ties with his family, especially with his brothers Josef Leopold and Ferdinand.
John Otto Bredeick was ordained a priest at Osnabruck in 1822 and rose swiftly up the ecclesiastical ladder becoming Rector of the cathedral parish in 1828. Plans were being made to elevate him even further in the church hierarchy when his brother Ferdinand was arrested for taking part in anti-government activity. Ferdinand had been part of the underground resistance movement since he was a teenager and had been saved many times by his influential brother from punishment for his efforts in stirring up the poor to resist the ruling classes. Using all his political powers and his position as Rector, John Otto was able to negotiate his brother’s release, but at a price. Ferdinand would have to leave the kingdom, and indeed, all Germany, to be forever exiled from the land he loved. A considerable bribe to the authorities gave the Bredeick family time to decide a course of action.
The entire Bredeick clan gathered to consider what could be done. It was decided that twenty-six-year-old Ferdinand be sent to America with funds available from John Otto’s fortune to find land suitable to relocate a large number of the German Catholic families from northern German towns and villages. Ferdinand was given explicit instructions, which he took great pains to memorize, a wallet full of cash and extravagant letters of credit. He was put in the care of a priest, Father Johann Hortsman of Glandorf, Germany, whom Reverend Bredeick had previously given permission to establish a settlement in the swamplands of northwest Ohio.
Ferdinand met with Father Hortsman upon arrival in New York and reported to his family that the eastern states were very much like home. He was not, however, favorably impressed with Hortsman’s chosen site in Ohio but instead proceeded to Detroit in 1834 and rode horseback west through Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, down into Kansas and Missouri and then back east. He determined at last to purchase lands in western Indiana and Iowa and notified his family of his decisions. That being done, he returned to “new” Glandorf, Father Horstman’s settlement, to marry a young lady he had met there on his previous journey.
This was a fateful trip for Ferdinand, for it was in Glandorf that he met Samuel Forrer, a young engineer sent by the State of Ohio to survey and lay out a system of canals in northwest Ohio that would eventually connect Lake Erie to the Ohio River. Forrer proposed three possible routes for the canal system, one to follow the flow of the Auglaize River and two cutting through the flat lands and the swamps. Forrer’s enthusiasm about the canal's’ role in the future development of Ohio was contagious. Based on his new friendship with Forrer and believing in the possibilities that the canal system would bring to northwest Ohio, Ferdinand advised his German family that he had made a new choice.
This kind of development was most exciting to Ferdinand, as the Germans in northern Germany were masters of canal building and could readily see the potential for settlement, commerce and industry along its banks. In a practice that would be frowned upon today, advising the Bredeick family members and a political friend, William Webb, who would later become Governor of Ohio, Forrer quickly bought up numerous parcels of land along all three proposed routes, Banking on the choice of the canal following the Auglaize River, Ferdinand bought extensive land at Fort Jennings and took up residence there with his new family near the old 1812 fort. After the State of Ohio chose one of the non-river routes for the canal construction, Forrer made another bold move. Again not to be outdone, Forrer bid to become the primary construction engineer for the Miami Extension Canal to run from present-day St. Marys, Ohio to Defiance, Ohio.
Fortunately, Ferdinand had purchased a number of parcels of land that became the ideal site for a new community where there was generous wide water and a millpond. These conditions suggested construction of dry and wet docks, boat yard, mills and other water related businesses. Boat builders were recruited from the Lake Erie area to construct the canal boats. In three years they constructed eighteen vessels.
Meanwhile, back in Germany John Otto chafed to be away from his clerical duties and spent the years until 1844 attempting to convince the superior of his diocese to release him for foreign duty. Had he not been held in such esteem, his release would have been accomplished much more easily, but because of John Otto’s wealth and family connections the Church was extremely reluctant to let such a rising star go, especially to an unknown fate in a faraway land. Ferdinand’s brother-in-law, Theodore Wrocklage, traveled to Germany to make a presentation directly to the Bredeick family and to the Bishop.
As a result John Otto was given permission to put together a group to sail to America in 1842; however, the Bishop rescinded his pledge to let John Otto accompany them. This mission was financed by John Otto and his brother Joseph. The people who chose to go were penniless peasants and serfs who were uneducated, untrained, and completely dependent on Theodore Wrocklage, their guide and protector. Many volunteers backed out when they learned that John Otto would not accompany them. Just forty-two persons made this first voyage to their new homeland. On board the ship were the supplies they would need to start their lives in the settlement, Ten Mile Woods, the beginnings of which were being built around the new canal system.
These settlers arrived first by ship to New York, and then traveled across New York State to Buffalo on the Erie Canal. From Buffalo they traveled by lake to Toledo, Ohio, and then by canal again to Defiance, Ohio. These hearty Germans were impressed with the new canal waterways and their eventual importance to the development of their new home. From Defiance they traveled overland by wagon and on foot through dense forests over the Defiance Trail, which followed the Auglaize River. It would have not been uncommon for them to have encountered the wild animals that still inhabited the area of northwest Ohio. Among those would have been wolves, bears and puma. They arrived safely at their final destination on November 1, 1843. The settlement that they reached must have been a great shock to them after hearing the glowing reports of Wrocklage and Reverend Bredeick. Only a few rude structures existed, occupied by persons who had moved to the Ten Mile Woods from Fort Jennings and Glandorf Piles of mud and great gaping holes in the earth around the canal construction dominated the site. The first night the exhausted immigrants slept in their wagons. By the next morning these hearty folk were up and ready to pitch in to “conquer” the swamps and forests they had encountered along the way. None had funds, so they took no-interest, long-term loans from the Bredeicks for large one- and two—dollar-an-acre tracts of land outside the settlement. They had no education or training to be shopkeepers or other mercantilists. What they were qualified to be were farmers — men who, for the first time in their lives, would own the land they farmed. Anticipating this, John Otto ordered that “Americans” be enticed to the settlement to begin building the businesses and services that this growing community would need.
The winter of 1834 was unusually harsh, and as a result most of the inhabitants moved to cabins already erected on the Auglaize River. For the first time these “late comers” became temporary neighbors to those like the Clawsons and Hartshorns who had already taken up residence along the river. In the spring the Germans moved back to Ten Mile Woods to begin building the settlement in earnest, The immigrants were soon joined by Americans who had been given free lots on which to construct their stores and shops. It was Reverend Bredeick’s wish that his new town grow and prosper rapidly, and he had no wish that the community would become a national enclave for Germans seeking to build “a new Germany.” Every effort was made to attract men of ability and education and men who had influential contacts.
Reverend Bredeick finally received permission to come to America in 1844, and this time the group sailed under his direction and protection. Sailing with Bredeick on this 1844 voyage were all the persons who would become our maternal ancestors. When
Bredeick arrived at his settlement in October 1844, he faced the reality that the immigrants who preceded him had not done well without his leadership. Only a humble gathering of huts and cabins greeted him. His dreams of an eventual metropolis of a million people at the hub of a thriving canal system must have seemed far away indeed.
Surveying the needs of the little community, Reverend Bredeick quickly called a meeting of all the inhabitants. In this meeting he laid out the ground rules for setting the community on the right course. Among his pronouncements were that he would immediately assume management of the canal lock operations, that his large cabin would serve as a church until a community building could be built, that he would plot his property into a city, and, most revolutionary of all, that the following morning all residents were to begin formal schooling until each could read and write. Probably most shocking of all the pronouncements to the German immigrants was that Reverend Bredeick had set aside land not only for a Catholic church but also for Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches in their community. What Bredeick was personally promising to his new community was a literate society and religious freedom, a concept as alien as ownership of land had been in the old country. One can imagine the wonderment these humble peasants must have experienced at hearing their leader’s vision. Reverend Bredeick pledged that never again would religious hatred be allowed to oppress anyone - at least not in this new community which he had re-named Delphos.
However, the near result of Bredeick’s pronouncements was to drive these new Americans back to the land. Some had dreamt of becoming merchants, shopkeepers, and integral members to the new community. This was not to be in the beginning; their lot was either to till the land or work by the day on the canal system. Bredeick put the word out far and Wide that he would give choice lots on the canal frontage to manufacturers, financiers, bankers, mercantilists and other professionals who would join his new “plantation.”
The German immigrants had left the oppression of the old world behind; the effect of all these rulings and preferences was to cause almost immediate resentment. When Bredeick announced that he would build a very large church in the center of the settlement, resentment boiled over. They felt that this was inappropriate to the new world as it would be a symbol of what they had left behind in their home. As the new church, huge in its proportions, began to take shape, many citizens traveled miles out of their way to attend small and humble churches that they felt more befitting their new status as Americans.
As the canal system was being completed, its builders sensed the importance of rail travel which was inching its way across the country. John Otto, always alert to emerging trends, began to plan for and lobby for Delphos to become an important rail center. To achieve this goal he did two important things. He managed to push through the Ohio Legislature a charter for the City of Delphos in February 1851, and he donated heavily to those groups in the East who were to determine which westward cities would become railway centers. All was in place for Delphos as a strong contender in 1854 when disaster struck the little city: a cholera epidemic broke out and was so devastating that by 1855 Delphos had lost half its population. The railroad authorities, fearing sending workers into the area, crossed Delphos off their list. Delphos would later have access to cross- country passenger and freight service, but it never became a rail center of the proportions John Otto had hoped. Samuel Forrer, always the transportation visionary, advised Reverend Bredeick to concentrate on roadways as the key to the future. In this speculation Forrer proved to be correct as the canals were quickly usurped by the railroads and, in turn, the railroads’ functions would in time be given over to highway travel and transport. Ferdinand Bredeick had died in 1846 leaving his older brother grief-stricken. When the rail center possibility fell through, Reverend Bredeick was further saddened and his health began to decline. John Hertz, his friend and the planner/builder of the wooden church, died in the cholera epidemic, leaving the construction project for others to finish. A greatly weakened Reverend Bredeick addressed his congregation in the imposing drafty church structure on Easter Sunday 1858. In his remarks he urged his flock to move forward in building the community they had all envisioned when they arrived at Ten Mile Woods. Father John Otto Bredeick died August 21, 1858, his dreams of a great utopia in Middle America unfulfilled.
Reverend Bredeick made generous bequests to both Delphos and nearby Ottoville, where he had also founded a new congregation. To both he left the funds to build magnificent new Catholic facilities, some of which stand today as a monument to his vision. It is believed that St. John’s Catholic Church in Delphos is the largest non-cathedral church in America. Throughout his years in Ohio, John Otto had also contributed large sums of money to help the oppressed Catholics in northern Germany that he had reluctantly left behind.
After the cholera epidemic, many of the farm folk moved into Delphos and took over the businesses and shops vacated by the non German Americans who had lost their lives. These men and women were no longer the uneducated serfs and peasants who left their homeland to follow the plan laid out for them by their trusted mentor) John Otto. They were now literate landholders and capable independent farmers. Perhaps, after all, they were the instruments 0f the fulfillment of Reverend Bredeick’s dreams.
Delphos never became the shining city of a million souls that John Otto envisioned. Instead, it became a typical small Midwestern town, the center of commerce and society for a portion of northwest Ohio and a refuge to those who prefer the pace and closeness of small town life. All around its edges are the large farms where the surnames of those who came to Ten Mile Woods so long ago are repeated through the generations. Among those acreages are the farms of our maternal ancestors who all came to America from a village in Northern Germany called Melle under Reverend Bredeick’s care.
Notes
Background information concerning the formation and settlement of Delphos, Ohio, was drawn from Allen and Van Wert County histories, articles in the local paper The Delphos Herald, and the book Reflections 1812-1960. The principle sources, however, were three publications: Delphos Vicenqui — Bicentennial History Book, The Centenary of St. John the Baptist Church, Delphos, Ohio, 1881-1981, Reverend John Bredeick, A Bicentennial Perspective, January 23, 1789-January 23, 1989, and Samuel Forrer Absentee Landlord.
Inquiries concerning these publications may be directed to the Delphos Chamber of Commerce, the Delphos Public library and the Delphos Canal Commission.
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