Settlement Paper

Louisiana is made up of a diverse background. People immigrated to Louisiana from all around the world in hopes of better lives and everything associated with it, my family was no exception. No one in my family seemed to have very extensive knowledge of our background or how we immigrated to America. Through research I discovered that Vicknair is a derivative of the German surname Wichner. According to this my family must have descended from Johann Nikolaus Wichner, who came to America in the 1720’s. Actually all Vicknair’s in Lousiana can trace their heritage back to him. Supposedly under French and Spanish occupation of Louisiana the government documents got crossed and there were some difficulties in translation so Wichner became Vicknair. Johann would have settled in the area that has become known as the German Coast. Johann migrated at a time when many immigrants were migrating into America all looking for a better life with more opportunities than what they left in their home countries.

The German Coast was originally settled by a large population of Germans who settled in the area following the collapse of John Law’s Company of the Indies. The area he was attempting to settle was near southern Arkansas. Settlers realized that this area was environmentally harsh and challenging to sustain crops so they traveled back near New Orleans. The German Coastal Parishes are slightly west of New Orleans. My family still resides in St. Charles Parish, which is one of the German Coastal Parishes. To this day twelve percent of St. Charles Parish residents claim to have German ancestry.

There are records of Johann’s voyage on the ship the “L'Elephant” in 1720, but know one really seems sure of why he decided to come to Amer...

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...is a shame however that despite this many families like mine struggled under this agrarian society.

Although I was unable to find much information through talking to my family members I learned a lot through Internet sources. Through all my research I have gained a much greater knowledge of my families background of why and how it came to be in Louisiana. I feel like I will continue to research this even though the paper will be complete; this paper has really sparked my interest about why my family chose to migrate and where in Germany my family came from. I now feel like it important to know your family history. I was surprised to see how little my family could tell me about our history. I always assumed that they would know all of those kinds of things. I actually look forward to being able to tell them the things that I learned while doing this paper.