Author Archives: jwsingerton

For over eighty years, the Leopoldine Society (Die Leopoldinenstiftung) promoted Catholicism in North American through raising donations and supporting missionary work. Named for the late Empress Marie Leopoldine of Brazil and the patron saint of Austria, the Society exerted a considerable influence over frontier communities in the American Midwest. Altogether the Leopoldine Society raised 4,250,000ContinueContinue reading “The Leopoldine Society in America 1829-1914”

Baron Frederick Eugene Francis de Beelen-Bertholf (1729-1805) Baron Frederick Eugene de Beelen-Bertholf arrived in Philadelphia on Tuesday 9th September 1783 along with his wife Jeanne-Marie Therese, daughter Clemencé Auguste  and two sons Frederick Eugene Jr. and Constantine Antoine. Their new home, the capital of the new republic, convulsed under the ‘Fall Fever’ which at its heightContinueContinue reading “The Beelen-Bertholf Papers”

Maria von Born (1766-1830) The Project Maria von Born’s life was one of the most extraordinary women of her time. She broke conventions and defied expectation as she drastically set the course of her own life from her birth in Prague to her life on the frontier to her career in Philadelphia and return to Central Europe. HerContinueContinue reading “Beginning Her World Anew: Maria von Born”

Detail from the first map of North America produced in Vienna (1788) The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy (Charlottesville/London: University of Virginia Press, 2021). UVA Press Store: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5768 Open-Access Edition: https://open.upress.virginia.edu/projects/the-american-revolution-and-the-habsburg-monarchy Amazon: DE UK US In 1783, the Peace of Paris treaties famously concluded the American Revolution. However, the Revolution could have come toContinueContinue reading “The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy”