CAPE GIRARDEAU'S 19TH CENTURY RENAISSANCE MAN

It's fitting that a street is named for Nicholas Gonner in Luxembourg. After all, the first comprehensive map of Cape Girardeau's streets was drawn by that European country's favorite son.

Gonner, who in 1866 emigrated with his wife and three children from Luxembourg to the U.S. and directly to Cape Girardeau, was a 19th century Renaissance man.

The sign in Luxembourg commemorates his prowess as a poet in the Luxembourgish language.

In Dubuque, Iowa, where he moved after leaving Cape Girardeau in 1872, he edited the Luxemburg Gazette and later a Catholic weekly called "The Iowa."

His book "Luxembourgers in the New World" still is considered the best study of the immigration of Luxembourgers from 1850 to 1890, a period which saw Napoleon III negotiating with the Netherlands to buy the country.

In Dubuque, according to a recent reissue of the book, Gonner "became the personification of all things Luxembourger in America. After he had been active for some 26 years in the United States, his fellow Luxembourger-Americans proposed that he be named honorary consul of the Grand Duchy, recognizing his many achievements in establishing a distinct Luxembourger identity in their new homeland."

In his chapter on Luxembourger emigrants in Missouri, Gonner wrote that the state attracted few.

But he noted that "A few Luxembourgers found their way into the southeastern part of the state as early as the end of the 1850s. They settled near Kelso, Scott County, not far from New Hamburg, in a very fertile stretch of land."

He states, "they have made good progress as farmers and are today (1889) very well off."

Gonner's wife's maiden name was Dittlinger, a name still found in Cape Girardeau, Benton and Sikeston. Albert Dittlinger, the late husband of Helen Dittlinger of Cape Girardeau, was distantly related to the family. Her son Eric and grandchildren Edward and Robin live in Sikeston.

Gonner was good with language, but he was trained as a civil engineer. In Cape Girardeau, he and partner Michael Dittlinger designed and built St. Mary's Cathedral -- Gonner wanted a church where the Mass was said in German.

In 1871, Gonner completed a map of Cape Girardeau that courts more recently have given the same legal standing as the Government Land Office survey.

J. Kensey Russell, Cape Girardeau's city engineer, says Gonner's precisely drawn plat still is of constant value to the city. "We use the survey to establish where public land is and where private land is," he said.

As an example, Russell pointed to the large impending sewer project that will separate the storm sewers from the sanitary sewers in the older part of town.

"Knowing where the property lines are is important in obtaining easements and knowing where you can and can't dig," he said.

In Gonner's survey, the city was bounded by Normal Avenue on the north, by Henderson Street to the west, and by Jefferson Street on the south.

Gonner died in 1892 at his home in Dubuque after a severe cold developed into pneumonia.

His grave marker carries the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.