Noelle Nelson, the acting chief executive of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, which is backing the project, said the settlers' first-hand accounts at the State Library are "unrivalled".

BBC: Australian project hunts lost indigenous languages

Outside of the busy town centre, the Sauer-Beckmann farmstead in the Lyndon B Johnson State Park, 18 miles east of town, showcases how German settlers lived on the farm.

BBC: A German enclave in central Texas

Sparsely peopled by bedraggled settlers in the mid-18th century, it is today the fourth most populous state in the union, with more than 19 million polyglot citizens and 29 electoral votes, more than 10% of those needed to elect a president, as Al Gore can never forget.

WSJ: Book Review: Finding Florida

The New South Wales State Library says fragments of many lost languages exist in papers left by early settlers.

BBC: Australian project hunts lost indigenous languages