A young German-American girl named Maria Ludwig earned a place in history by bringing water to cannon crews in the heat of revolutionary war battles. Known today as “Molly Pitcher,” she took her husband’s place, manning the artillery, when he was killed in the Battle of Monmouth in1778.

Between 1852 and 1854, more than half a million Germans arrived in New York. Although most German-Americans settled in Manhattan at first, they began to move to Queens to establish farms and settle the undeveloped areas. Their contribution to Queens’ early development can still be seen today.

Perhaps the most visible and long lasting German-American family name in Queens is Steinway, famous for the pianos that bear their name to this day. Arriving in 1850 on a steamer from the German port city of Bremen, a prominent New York newspaper listed William Steinway as one of the city’s 400 millionaires 33 years later.

Poppenhusen Institute: Conrad founded College Point where he manufactured rubber and brew.

The Steinways began manufacturing in Manhattan in 1853, with a factory on Varick Street. In 1870, just two years away from selling their 25,000th piano, the Steinways bought a mansion located on 80 acres in Astoria, Queens. On Nov. 5, 1872, 10th Avenue was renamed Steinway Avenue. It would later be changed to Steinway Street.

During the 1880s, the Steinways began construction on a new factory complex in Astoria, at 37th Street and 19th Avenue. The Astoria plant produced the heavy iron “plates” that held the piano strings in place. Several other parts for

Steinway pianos were produced in Astoria and sent to a factory on Park Avenue and 53rd Street for final assembly.

The Steinway piano was such an exceptional produce, earning the First Grand Gold Medal of Honor at the Paris Exposition Universelle, that demand in Europe led one of the Steinway brothers to open a factory in the city of Hamburg, in their native Germany in the 1880s.

In 1909, Steinway and Sons moved all piano making operations to the Astoria factory. William Steinway sought to plan a community for workers in the neighborhood, building home sand parks and establishing the Steinway Kindergarten, a private school for pre-schoolers. In February 1889, he had established the Astoria Homestead Company to buy and sell real estate in the area. Around the Astoria factory many traditional German beer gardens thrived, catering to the hundreds of workers at the sprawling complex.

During World War II, the Nazi’s seized the Hamburg factory, selling pianos for hard currency, then using the facility to produce war materials. In Astoria, the Steinway factory produced hundreds of olive drab upright pianos for the military, and then put on 1,200 workers to producing troop-carrying gliders. In July of 1943, Allied bombers leveled the factory in a raid on Hamburg.

Steinway pianos are still being manufactured at the Astoria plant, as they have been since 1909.

In the 1850s, another German-American, Johann Knorr came to the United States and soon settled in the quiet Queens neighborhood of Ridgewood. Many Germans were moving to Ridgewood from Williamsburg, Yorkville and Harlem, near the end of the civil war. Knorr, a master cooper by trade, began making beer barrels in Ridgewood, catering to the needs of the many brewers in the area such as the Welz-Zerwickws Brewery which was once located on Myrtle Avenue near Madison Street. Knorr and his sons, Martin and Christopher, built a factory at Irving and Decatur Streets in 1908. Their wooden beer barrels were used throughout the city and teams of draft horses pulling wagons of barrels became a familiar sight in Queens. By the 1920s, Knorr and Sons were supplying the barrels used in almost every brewery in the northeastern United States.

Philip Licht came from Germany in 1832. Settling in Ridgewood in the 1850s, he established the Eagle Fireworks Company on Forest Avenue, one of two major fireworks producers in Queens at the time. A dozen buildings produced rockets and firecrackers, and during the civil war the plant produced fuses for artillery shells.

The other fireworks plant in Ridgewood was established in 1865 and stood on Knickerbocker Avenue. The consolidated Fireworks Company was founded by German-born Theodore Scharfenburg, who died in 1908.

Ridgewood and neighboring Glendale still bear a noticeable German accent. German can still be heard on the street and many of the shops and restaurants feature authentic German entrees and pastries. Neiderstein’s Restaurant on Metropolitan Avenue is something of a landmark in Glendale. Parts of the original Neiderstein’s were already 25 years old when the Civil War ended.

German-American neighborhoods such as Ridgewood often featured beautiful picnic grounds where families could spend a day outdoors, eating, drinking beer and listening to traditional music. One of these beer gardens, the Ridgewood Park and Coloseum was located on what is now appropriately named Summerfield Street.

A beer hall, carousel and bowling alley were among some of the diversions available to German-American families. Nearby Banzer’s Park also offered ample picnic grounds, and was later renamed Cypress Hills Park. At what is now the intersection of Myrtle Avenue qand Woodhaven Boulevard, a two-story saloon and restaurant once stood in what was called Eldorado Park.

College Point was another prominent German-American neighborhood in Queens. In the1860s, the farmland in College Point was a popular weekend retreat, well served by a ferry to Manhattan’s Yorkville. By the 1880s, the residents of College Point were primarily Prussian-American employed in German-owned businesses.

Major employers included the Hugo Funk Silk Mill, the Conrad Poppenhusen Enterprise Works (a rubber factory), the Germania Marine Works and several breweries. Poppenhusen operated the largest of the factories, manufacturing combs from a patented rubber process, which was secured as collateral for a loan to inventor Charles Goodyear.

Poppenhusen built a bridge to Flushing and homes for his workers in College Point. In 1868, he established he Poppenhusen Institute to provide instruction in the arts and sciences. Poppenhusen also founded German-American social benefit organizations, kindergartens, insurance companies and railroads.

The Poppenhusen Institute still stands on 14th Road in College Point.