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During the 19th century, a variety of ethnic groups would settle in Perry County, including French, Belgians, and Swiss, along with a number of German Catholics. Possibly the most significant, however, was the arrival of Saxon Lutherans from Germany in the late 1830s. These were traditionalist Lutheran adherents who objected to the Kingdom of [[Prussia]]'s attempts to force them into a single church with [[Calvinists]], and chose to emigrate to America. Some 500-600 arrived in Perry County in 1839 and settled in its eastern portions (as well as in northeastern Cape Girardeau County to the south). Among the communities they established are the modern cities of Altenburg and Frohna, as well as the unincorporated communities of New Wells, Uniontown, and Wittenberg; and they would be instrumental in the founding of the [[Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod]].<ref>https://books.google.com/books?id=MooAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1&dq&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=false</ref> Eastern Perry County continues to have a strong German Lutheran presence, with some of the older residents still able to speak an old Saxon German dialect.<ref>https://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/when-we-re-gone-it-will-be-german-dialect-has/article_45715974-e8bd-5abd-888d-a14777195eee.html</ref>
During the 19th century, a variety of ethnic groups would settle in Perry County, including French, Belgians, and Swiss, along with a number of German Catholics. Possibly the most significant, however, was the arrival of Saxon Lutherans from Germany in the late 1830s. These were traditionalist Lutheran adherents who objected to the Kingdom of [[Prussia]]'s attempts to force them into a single church with [[Calvinists]], and chose to emigrate to America. Some 500-600 arrived in Perry County in 1839 and settled in its eastern portions (as well as in northeastern Cape Girardeau County to the south). Among the communities they established are the modern cities of Altenburg and Frohna, as well as the unincorporated communities of New Wells, Uniontown, and Wittenberg; and they would be instrumental in the founding of the [[Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod]].<ref>https://books.google.com/books?id=MooAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1&dq&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=false</ref> Eastern Perry County continues to have a strong German Lutheran presence, with some of the older residents still able to speak an old Saxon German dialect.<ref>https://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/when-we-re-gone-it-will-be-german-dialect-has/article_45715974-e8bd-5abd-888d-a14777195eee.html</ref>
==Geography==
Perry County is located in the northern part of southeastern Missouri, between the St. Francois Mountains and the Mississippi River. It has a roughly triangular shape, with the apex to the north, the base to the south, and the river forming its northeastern leg. It is bordered to the northeast and east by the state of [[Illinois]], to the southeast by [[Cape Girardeau County, Missouri|Cape Girardeau County]], to the southwest by [[Bollinger County, Missouri|Bollinger]] and Madison Counties, and to the northwest by St. Francois and Ste. Genevieve Counties.
The county has a total area of 484.16 square miles, including 474.35 of land and 9.81 of water.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20131021170230/http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/docs/gazetteer/counties_list_29.txt</ref> It has two main topographical divisions; by far the largest are the foothills of the St. Francois Mountains (themselves the eastern edge of the Ozarks), which are gently rolling in the central part of the county around Perryville and more rugged to the west. Its highest point is an unnamed hill in the far west, near the border with Madison County, rising to about 1,080 feet above sea level. The other part of the county is the floodplain in the northeast along the Mississippi River (mostly north of Brazeau Creek), and is several miles wide in some places. These include the Bois Brule and the Brazeau Bottoms, which average about 360 feet in elevation. These lowlands have by far the most fertile soil in the county, and were the area of first settlement in the early 19th century.<ref>https://www.peakbagger.com/peak.aspx?pid=6574</ref>
The three major highways in the county are Interstate 55, which passes from northwest to southeast on a line skirting the western edge of Perryville; U.S. Route 61, which passes through the center of Perryville but otherwise generally parallels the interstate several miles to the east; and Missouri State Highway 51, which enters the county from the southwest, intersects I-55 and U.S. 61 at Perryville, and continues north to the Mississippi River, where it crosses the Chester Bridge into Illinois.
==Communities==
==Communities==