Teutopolis: City of the Germans

In eighteen thirty-nine, a company of one hundred forty-two German Catholic families from Cincinnati began settling Effingham County, Illinois, on land chosen by a scouting committee that included Clemens Uptmor. They purchased ten thousand acres of government timber at one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, organized under the name Deutsche Land-Compagnie, and set about building a community from scratch. The Bishop of Cincinnati suggested naming it Teutopolis, City of the Germans, from the ancient tribal name Teutons.

The dense forest was brutal to clear and the town struggled for four decades. What endured was the parish. Saint Francis of Assisi Church, established almost from the start, became the anchor of a Catholic community that has held together for nearly two centuries, a piece of the German Catholic Midwest planted firmly in central Illinois.