Louisiana's German Coast:
A History of St. Charles Parish
By Henry E. “Gene” Yoes, III

The civil parish of St. Charles is one of the oldest settled areas in Louisiana. French and Spanish explorers visited its Indian tribes, and by 1719, shortly after the founding of New Orleans, Germans settled in such numbers that it was officially called the County of the German Coast. Decades later, Acadians joined them.

From 1760 through 1865, St. Charles was the home of some of Louisiana's most prominent citizens including sugar refiner Etienne de Bore, Confederate General Richard Taylor, Confederate Ambassador Pierre Rost, Louisiana Governors Jacques Phillippe Villere and Michael Hahn, and Louisiana's first Superintendent of Education.

The parish also figured prominently in the Rebellion of 1768 against Spanish Rule, as well as the Slave Insurrection of 1811, the largest slave insurrection in the history of the United States.

Louisiana's German Coast: A History of St. Charles Parish by Henry E. “Gene” Yoes, III, a former associate of the St. Charles Herald, chronicles the lives of those who visited and settled in parish over the centuries in compelling fashion and is one of the more comprehensive histories of any of the parishes in the state.