Altenburg

Altenburg means old castle, but the town was named for a duchy, not a city. Many of its settlers came from the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, while the city of Altenburg seems not to have sent a single colonist. It is one of seven communities the Saxon Lutherans founded here in 1839, all named for places in Saxony. Trinity Lutheran began that year in a log cabin, later replaced by a limestone church and then a frame one. Since 1985 the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum has kept mid-19th-century buildings, an exhibition hall, a reading room and a research library.

What the plaque says

Altenburg Some 700 Saxon Lutherans settled, 1839, in Perry County and formed the parishes of Altenburg, Wittenberg, Dresden, Seelitz, Frohna, and one settlement, Johannisburg, in Cape Girardeau County. The community of Paitzdorf (Uniontown) was organized, 1840. The Saxons came to Missouri mainly for the purpose of freeing themselves from the Saxon State Church. Under their pastor, Martin Stephan, they formed an emigration society (Auswanderungs-Gesellschaft) with an $88,000 communal fund. 665 members sailed from Bremen, 1838, in five chartered ships for St. Louis by way of New Orleans. One of the ships was lost at sea. Other members joined the group in Missouri and a number of them remained in St. Louis and founded a parish there. The immigrants bought 4,475 acres of Perry County land with $9,234 from the communal fund. The colony survived the physical hardships of settlement and the spiritual blow of finding Martin Stephan, their pastor, a false leader. After his exile from the colony, the group was led by the great pastor, C. F. W. Walther. (See other side) Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953 Altenburg (Continued from other side) Of the original settlements made by the Saxons in Perry County, Altenburg, Frohna, Wittenberg, and Uniontown survive. From the Saxon colonists, probably most distinct of German cultural groups to settle in the U. S., have come the Missouri Synod, one of the largest Lutheran bodies in the nation, and outstanding Concordia Seminary. The first Evangelical Lutheran seminary west of the Mississippi River, Concordia was founded, 1839, near Altenburg in the Dresden community. The school building, called the Log Cabin College, was moved to Altenburg across from the impressive Trinity Lutheran Church, 1912, and is kept as a memorial museum. The seminary was removed to St. Louis, 1849. A replica of the first building is on the campus there. Some two miles below Wittenberg, early river landing of the colonists, is Grand Tower Island, a mass of limestone rising 85 feet out of the Mississippi River. The "Island" is also known as Cap St. Cosme and Rock of the Cross, for there, Dec. 12, 1698, Catholic missionary priests De Montigny, Davion, and St. Cosme planted a cross. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Trail of Tears State Park — 14 mi
  Rugged river hills north of Cape Girardeau where nine of the thirteen Cherokee detachments crossed the Mississippi in the winter of 1838 and 1839, and where floating ice left them camped on both banks.
• Bollinger Mill State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A four-story mill of 1867 on an 1825 stone foundation on the Whitewater River, beside Missouri's oldest covered bridge, where farmers broke down the toll gates in 1906.
• Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park — 35 mi
  Three National Park Service houses in Missouri's first permanent European town, built of upright logs in the 1790s and told through the French families who owned them and the people they enslaved.

More markers nearby

• Cape Girardeau — 20 mi
• Marble Hill — 31 mi
• Sainte Genevieve — 35 mi