This framed engraving depicts the rifle club of the “Saint Louis Turnverein 1860”; all the members depicted are identified, including A. Bottger (on left) and A. McLean (on right).
Beginning in the 1830s many Germans were lured to Missouri by the romanticized descriptions of the state promoted by the Giessen Emigration Society, which described Missouri as the American Rhineland. German immigrants established organizations known as “Turnvereins,” similar to those they had belonged to in Germany. The group’s local societies acted as social, athletic, gymnastic, and political centers for German-Americans in the community, with members known as “Turners.”
Robert J. Rombauer discussed the shooting club in his book The Union Cause in St. Louis in 1861: “Soon after the organization of the society a rifle section was formed with about fifty members, who were pledged to military obedience when in service; they elected their officers and instructors and bought their own rifles; took up regular weekly drills, arranged target practices and trial marches to neighboring cities.”
Image Courtesy Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 30050
