Block, Upload, Automoderated users, edit, move, protect, rollback
57,799
edits
Changes
→Background
A native of [[Frankfurt]], [[Germany]], Countess Leon was the daughter of Johann and Anna Maria Heuser. She claimed to have married Bernhard Müller (1788-1834), a [[Christian]] mystic, also from Germany, who was known as Count Leon, or Count de Leon. The couple had three children, Johanna Schardt, Joseph Maximilian, and Anna Stahl.<ref name=lahist/><ref>''A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography'' does not clarify if the two daughters' last names are middle names or husbands' names, nor does it indicate if the son used the surname "Muller" or "Leon."</ref>
A native of [[Frankfurt]], [[Germany]], Countess Leon was the daughter of Johann and Anna Maria Heuser. She claimed to have married Bernhard Müller (1788-1834), a [[Christian]] mystic, also from Germany, who was known as Count Leon, or Count de Leon. The couple had three children, Johanna Schardt, Joseph Maximilian, and Anna Stahl.<ref name=lahist/><ref>''A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography'' does not clarify if the two daughters' last names are middle names or husbands' names, nor does it indicate if the son used the surname "Muller" or "Leon."</ref>
==Arrival in the United States]]
==Arrival in the United States==
In 1831, the Countess and her husband came to the [[United States]] with a like-minded group of believers. The couple first joined a Rappite colony in Monaca in Beaver County, [[Pennsylvania]], but because of a schism they left that group and instead headed down the [[Ohio River]] southeast to Louisiana. They soon established their proclaimed "New Jerusalem" at Grand Ecore north of [[Natchitoches, Louisiana|Natchitoches]]. When the Count and several other relatives died of [[cholera]], the Countess moved some eighty miles north from that location near the Red River to present-day Webster Parish.<ref name=lahist/>
In 1831, the Countess and her husband came to the [[United States]] with a like-minded group of believers. The couple first joined a Rappite colony in Monaca in Beaver County, [[Pennsylvania]], but because of a schism they left that group and instead headed down the [[Ohio River]] southeast to Louisiana. They soon established their proclaimed "New Jerusalem" at Grand Ecore north of [[Natchitoches, Louisiana|Natchitoches]]. When the Count and several other relatives died of [[cholera]], the Countess moved some eighty miles north from that location near the Red River to present-day Webster Parish.<ref name=lahist/>