Settlement Of The German Coast

About 4,000 people recruited from the Rhineland and nearby regions left Lorient in 1720, and many died on the way. The settlers sailed on March 7, 1721, and reached Old Biloxi on June 4. In December Governor Bienville ordered them upriver to the villages of Hoffen, Marienthal and Augsburg, and they moved in January 1722. Karl Friedrich von Arensburg, later d'Arensbourg, served as their commandant and recognized leader for more than fifty-five years. When the Company of the Indies folded in 1731, the settlers became independent landowners.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Destrehan Plantation — 1.5 mi
  A River Road house begun in 1787 where, in January 1811, a tribunal of five slaveholders tried people who had risen on the German Coast, and where an exhibit now tells the revolt.
• Whitney Plantation — 17 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 18 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 19 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.

More markers nearby

• "Denver" — steps away
• Watercolors — 0.7 mi
• Ormond Plantation — 0.7 mi
• Inside Church of St. Charles Red Church — 0.7 mi