GERMAN BENEVOLENT CLUB - GERMAN SOCIETY

 

The German Benevolent Club was organized in Logansport in April of 1866. This photo shows the old “German Hall”, which stood at 427 5th Street (Now South 5^th St.). Estimated to have been built about 1876, it was the home of all the German societies/clubs in Logansport – and there were a lot of those in the early days of Logansport - just as there were for other immigrant groups. This building was also known as “Graf’s German Hall”. Note: this building, rather the remaining portion of it, would later become part of Amelio’s; doing business as "Amelio’s on The River" as of 2022, using that area as the restaurant/pub’s family dining area.

Amelio's By The River - before even more recent improvements to the exterior. The white siding area was original to the German Benevolent Club building.

Another German Society known as the Deutscher Verein met in rooms on the upper floors of the Kreuzberger building, which stood on the southwest corner of Third and E. Market Streets; razed many years ago. This was for German born residents and their descendants and was active for a long time. The Germania Gesang Verein, was a “singing society” which would meet for practice in the upper floors of the Kreuzberger building. Pictured below. The Mike Anderson Dodge, Ram, Chrysler, Jeep dealership occupies this corner as of 2022.

The Stone Building located at the corner of Clinton and Sherman Streets on Logansport’s south side, address 989 Sherman Street, is a reminder of an early German home.

 In the 1990s it was home to a tea house called Rose-Moor Emporium. Now it is a private residence. Made of limestone, the building is 20 by 70 feet, two-story, with a full basement. The walls are two feet thick at the base and narrow up to 18 inches at the top. The original stairs went down from the kitchen to the basement floor, which was originally, and for many, many years - dirt. The builder was Gottfried Gruenoch, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian war, who, like thousands of other Germans, emigrated to America to get away from Bismarck’s military service. He was a stone mason by trade. In the early 1800’s there were as many as 11 of these structures, in a “German settlement”. This settlement was even further outside of Logansport than Shultztown. 

Shultztown—named for Dr. J. B. Shultz—was west of Burlington Ave., A stand of trees stood between Burlington Ave. and Shultztown. That area was bordered by Anthony St. east, Howard St. north, Biddle St. south and by the Railroad to the west.

About 1868-1870 a German newspaper, the Fort Wayne Banner, printed in Fort Wayne was distributed by John A. N. Frentzel, a local editor or “newspaper gatherer”, in Logansport. But it wasn’t a financial success and soon ended.

From 1899 to 1913 or so, John Day (born in Bavaria) published a successful German language newspaper—the Freie Presse to accommodate the increasing German population of the Logansport area.

Those with German background can be thanked for involvement with St. Joseph Catholic Church, St. James Lutheran Church, beer brewing and beer gardens, expert meat butchering and butcher shops, cigar making and many other things, as all worked together to make Logansport, Indiana a great place to live.