Countess Leon

Elisa Heuser Leon, or the Countess Leon

* * *

Born |  1799
Frankfurt, Germany
Died |  1881 (c. aged 82)
Hot Springs, Arkansas
Spouse |  Bernhard Müller, or Count Leon
Religion |  Christian

The Countess' house at the Germantown Colony north of Minden, Louisiana

Countess Leon, or Elisa Heuser Leon (1799-1881), was a founder and leader of the communal Germantown Colony established in 1835 north of Minden, Louisiana.[1]

## Background[edit]

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.[1][2]

## Arrival in the United States[edit]

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. 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.[1]

For nearly four decades, the colony flourished under a communal arrangement until it began to decline after the American Civil War. It dispersed in 1871, when Webster Parish was created from [adjacent Claiborne Parish to the immediate east.[3] The Countess then relocated north to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where she died in 1881.[4]

One of three Utopian Society settlements in North Louisiana, the Germantown Colony, located off Louisiana Highway 531, was the most successful and lasted the longest, having peaked at fifty to sixty pioneers but usually with fewer than forty. The settlement had been planned by Bernhard Müller, but he died at Grand Ecore on August 29, 1834, of yellow fever.[5][6]

The Countess is remembered for having maintained Old World grace and culture in rural Louisiana.[1]Though it is believed that Countess Leon died in Hot Springs in 1881, A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, a publication of the Louisiana Historical Association, maintains that the death year is unsubstantiated. The publication uses two principal sources for its sketch of Countess von Leon: Pauline Jennings, "Elisa Leon: First Lady of the Germantown Colony," North Louisiana History, formerly known as the North Louisiana Historical Association Journal," VIII, No. 2 (Winter 1977), and Rita Moore Krouse (1921-1995) of Minden, Fragments of a Dream: The Story of Germantown (1962), VIII, No. 2 (Winter 1977).

## References[edit]

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography. lahistory.org. Retrieved on February 12, 2011.
2. ↑ 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."
3. ↑ "Respect for the Past, Confidence in the Future," Webster Parish Centennial, 1871-1971, pp. 13-14.
4. ↑ David James, III, "Germantown: Once Thriving and Socialistic," Minden Press, July 7, 1958, pp. 1-2.
5. ↑ Brochure, Germantown Colony & Museum, 120 Museum Road, Minden, Louisiana 71055
6. ↑ A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography attributes Berhnard Müller's death to cholera.