Hi, sometimes I like to browse through the archives out there on the
internet. All that work ad those millions of postings. 
Back in 1994 I wrote the following about Stallo and Damme in
soc.genealogy.german
It scares me to think of any errors I made back then and it's even worse if
I think of my mortality and all this stuff is out there from me. I can die
and still be of help. Wild!
Enjoy!
Fred
The emigration waves we find from the Palatinate and other more southern
areas
of Germany did not really start in North and NW Germany until after 1830.
The
Industrial Revolution was about to get into full swing in England and
export-import customs started to change. The demand for the annual Holland
labor migration was also starting to drop off as the Netherlands started a
decline in trade due to sourging British, American and German merchant
marine
development. At home on the farm the meager existence of the Heuerleute
became
worse for the lack of additional income from home labor such as spinning,
knitting and other side incomes. Things were getting desperate and the
advertisements seen in the various local newspapers about gold on the
streets
of America started to look better every day. Actually it was the potential
of
land that turned people into making that fateful decision which would take
them mostly forever away from siblings and parents.
In 1817 the Amt Damme (administrative district of Damme) had been created in
a
border change between Oldenburg and Hannover. Holdorf, Steinfeld, Damme and
Neuenkirchen made up this district. It was poor farmland as it was
surrounded
by infertile moors which were too acidy & moist to farm but a meager living
could be made as long as not too many mouths had to be fed. In 1827 Holdorf
was removed from the Amt and in 1871 more of the old Amt Steinfeld was also
added to the region. In 1879 it all became a part of the Amt Vechta which
adjoined the Amt Cloppenburg.
Stallo organized a group of emigrants to go to Cinncinati with him and to
this
day much of the German population of the city has roots in Oldenburg as
later
relations and friends kept following. Stallo did not stay long in Cinncinati
however. He went on to found Stallotown, Ohio which was later renamed
Minster
for the city of Muenster, Westphalia.
Clifford Neal Smith in his monograph #12 "Emigrants from the Former Amt
Damme,
Oldenburg mainly to the United States, 1830-1849" (1981) lists these people
as he found them in an essay written by Johannes Ostendorf, a renown local
historian of the Oldenburger-Muensterland, in the Oldenburger Jahrbuch of
1942/43.
A 'History of St Augustines Parish, Minster, Ohio" (1982) goes into much
detail as to the background and people involved in the settlement of the
town
of Minster.
I'll include portions of a couple earlier posts which may have some
relevance
on this matter.
