USA > Maryland > Annual report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1st-6th, Vol. 1-6 > Part 12
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kissen, 1 Schnupftuch etc. Smith hinterliess eine alte Brat- pfanne, 1 Strick, 1 Bügeleisen, 1 quire Papier, 3 paar alte wollene Strümpfe, 1000 Nägel, 2 Bohrer, 1 Stück von einem Rahmen, 1 paar alte Schuhe. Eiserne Nägel sind immer bei Zahl und Grössen angegeben. Die Archiven von 1686-1753 sind noch nicht veröffentlicht. Dagegen haben wir die Berichte von 1753-1757, die Zeit des englisch-französischen Kriegs in den Colonien, ziemlich vollständig.
General Horatio Sharpe, ein intelligenter, energischer Mann. wurde 1753 von Lord Baltimore als Gouverneur der Provinz ernaunt. Er landete in Annapolis am 10. August 1753. Am 10. Februar 1754 berichtete er an Lord Baltimore: "Die Ur- sache, dass die Eigenthümer von Pennsylvanien einen viel höheren Preis für ihr Land erzielen, wie in Ihrer Instruktion erwähnt ist, liegt darin, dass dieselben von Anfang an die deutsche Einwanderung erlaubt und befördert haben."
Am 2. Mai 1754 berichtet er: "Ich habe seit meiner An- kunft die Gelegenheit benutzt, die Stadt Baltimore zu besu- chen, welche in der That das Ansehen der meist empor blühen- den Stadt der Provinz hat; jedoch hat sie kaum meinen Erwartungen entsprochen, kaum dass sie in Anzahl der Ge- baude und Einwohner mit Annapolis rivalisirt; ihre Lage in Bezug auf angenehme Luft und Aussicht steht weit hinter Annapolis zurück ; wenn man jedoch Bezug auf Handel nimmt, so lässt das sich weit ausdehnende Land welches dahinter liegt, keinen Vergleich zu; würden einige reiche Herren sich dort niederlassen und den Handel begunstigen, so würde es bald ein blühender Platz werden, aber weil Wenige, ausser den Deutschen, welche im Allgemeinen wohlhabend sind. (masters of small fortunes) sich dort niederlassen und anbauen, so befürchte ich, dass sie keine bedentende Rolle spielen wird."
Diesem Bericht des Gouverneurs von Maryland zufolge. muss man wohl annehmen, dass unsere liebe Stadt Baltimore ein deutsches Kind war, welches den biederen Gouverneur in seinen Erwartungen arg täuschte, denn die alte, runzliche Schwesterstadt Annapolis ist neben diesem Riesenkinde so zu- sammengeschrumpft, dass jeder Vergleich aufhört. Es waren diese ersten deutschen Einwohner unserer Stadt, welche die
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spätere deutsche Einwanderung hierher lenkten, und der deut · schen Einwanderung allein ist es zu verdanken, dass Baltimore so gewaltig über alle anderen Städte an der Chesapeake Bay empor ragt.
In dem Bericht vom 2. Mai 1754, sagt der Gouverneur weiter: "Solch ein Gesetz, wie Sie in Ihrer Instruktion für die Naturalisation der deutschen Protestanten wünschen, 'welche in Ihre Provinz einwandern, wurde in der Oktober-Sitzung in dem Unterhaus der Gesetzgebung eingereicht, jedoch nicht angenommen. Diese Leute werden jedoch nicht durch den Mangel eines solchen Gesetzes grosse Unannehmlichkeiten zu leiden haben, da durch einen Parlamentsakt, welcher in Eng- land in Kraft ist, alle solche Fremde, nach etlichen Jahren Aufenthalt in irgend einer seiner Majestät's Ansiedelungen, naturalisirt werden."
Bis jetzt glaubte man, dass Oberst Ludwig Weltner, wel- cher im Amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitskrieg ein deutsches Maryland Regiment kommandirte, der erste deutsche komman- dirende Offizier in Maryland gewesen sei, aus den Archiven geht jedoch hervor, dass schon in 1757 in Maryland deutsch kommandirt wurde.
December 25, 1755, schreibt Lord Calvert an den Gouver- neur Sharpe : "Es wird hier davon gesprochen, im Parlament den Vorschlag zu machen, ein Regiment von 1500, bestehend nur aus Schweizern und Deutschen, zu bilden, nach Pennsyl- vanien zu senden und es dort unter dem Kommando eines Herrn Prevost, ein Deutscher, zu vervollständigen." Im Ja- nuar 1757 war dieser Alexander Prevost im Range eines Majors in Maryland im Kommando von sieben Compagnien Königl .- Amerikanischer Truppen, welche meist hier geworben waren, und nahm an dem Krieg gegen die verbündeten Franzosen und Indianer Theil.
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Dieses erregte die Eifersucht der englischen Offiziere und am 2. Mai 1756 schrieb General Sharpe, ein Bruder des Gon- verneurs, von West Maryland einen Protest an den Gouver- neur, gegen die Ernennung von Schweizer Offizieren in fol- genden Worten : "Kann man annehmen, dass 4000 unserer
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Einwohner sich beeilen werden, unter diesen Fremden zn die- nen, denn ich musste mich sehr tauschen, wenn nicht die Deutschen, welche geraumer Zeit unter uns gewohnt haben, ebenso wie die Engländer, diese Schweizer als Fremde be- trachten." Diese Truppen, welche mehrere Jahre in Maryland einquartiert waren, wurden hanfig in den Archiven erwähnt.
SKETCH OF
DR. SEYFFARTH.
SKETCH OF DR. SEYFFARTH.
Read December 9, 1889 by Jno. G. Morris.
CHIE purpose of our Society is not only to investigate and record recondite and little known facts relating to the history of the Germans generally in this country and in Maryland particularly, but also to exhibit the career of German individuals who have distinguished themselves in any department of human effort.
Following out this design of our Society, I will give a brief sketch of a very celebrated German Scholar, who for 60 years pursued a brilliant career, thirty of which were spent in this country. I allude to the late DR. GUSTAVUS SEYFFARTH, the learned Aegyptiologist, who died in New York, Nov. 17, 1885. He was almost as much a Marylander, as he was a Missourian or a New Yorker. He spent some time in Balti- more, where I had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with him and of enjoying his visits at my house.
He was a German by birth and education, and yet a cos- mopolitan by practice and inclination. Having no family ties to keep him at home any where, he lived in this country nearly 30 years, sometimes in St. Louis, Baltimore, Boston. New York and probably at other places; wherever he could find books relating to his favorite subject, or Egyptian relics or men who pursued similar studies, there he went and stayed until he had learned every thing such sources could supply : but he finally settled in New York, where the treasures of the Astor, Lenox and other libraries, and the Abbot and other Egyptian collection were open to him.
He was born July 13th, 1796, at Uebigau, a Saxon village, near Torgau. He finished his university course with high distinction, and in early life showed a particular fondness for
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the study of language. This he demonstrated when yet a young man by a latin dissertation on the popular pronunciation of Greek and Hebrew letters, which he regarded as wrong and which he sought to modify. The public defence of his theory in a Latin disputation with members of the Philosophical Faculty of Leipzig, secured for him the privilege of deliver- ing publie lectures (1823), when he was 28 years of age.
At this time already, he had mastered several oriental languages, and when Prof. Spohn died before he had com- pleted a great work on "The language and literature of the ancient Egyptians", our Seyffarth, being the only person in Leipzig familiar with Coptic, the fundamental language of Egyptian literature, was invited by the University to complete and edit Spohn's work. He accepted this offer and his seientific career was thus impelled in a new direction.
Having examined the immense mass of Spohn's Manu- scripts, he came to the conclusion that it would be impossible for him to accomplish his task, unless he previously examined all the Egyptian museums in Europe and copied the principal papyri and inscriptions. Accordingly, during the years 1826- 1828, he visited the public and private collections of Aegyptian antiquities of 16 different cities of Europe and took copies of all important inscriptions, which now constitute his "Biblio- theca Aegyptiaca Manuscripta," a work of 15 vols. in royal folio, and which is by his will, the property of the New York Historical Society. The Saxon Government aided him by a donation of 400 Thalers.
In 1856 he came to the United States and accepted a professorship of Archaeology and Cognate Sciences, in the Lutheran Concordia Collegium at St. Louis, Mo. Here he gave gratuitous instruction for several years. In 1859, he moved to New York, where the treasures of the Astor library gave him ample opportunity for pursuing his favorite studies. His writings since 1821, treat of the following subjects, Egyptian Philology and Palaeography: the ancient astronomy of the Aegyptians, Greek, Romans and Cypriotes, universal history and chronology, especially of the old and new tes- taments, of the Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians, Chinese, &c.,. Mythology, ancient Geography, Apologetics, &e.
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The titles of his books and dissertations in German, Latin, English and French, amount to 127, 55 of which were first published in this country. Besides these, there are 31 volu- minous manuscripts. - He was a very diligent student and untiring investigator, who for months together devoted 12 to 16 hours a day to his work. None but an enthusiastic German would ever have the patience to persevere in one branch of learning to this extent. But he did it and never grew weary of it. His severe studies did not seem to injure his health, for he lived to be 90 years of age.
He made himself so familiar with the topography of Egypt that he seemed to know the precise and relative position of every ruin, obelisk, pyramid, temple and of every thing else that is ancient in that wonderful country. He knew the measurement of every structure, its internal and external ornamentation, its inscriptions, sculpture and exact confor- mation, and yet he told me himself, that he had never visited Egypt, but he read every thing ever written upon the subject, and he had a wonderful memory.
The great Egyptiologists, as Champollion, Lepsius, Ebers, Brugsch, Bunsen and others, violently opposed Seyffarth's theory and a furious controversy ensued, the details of which would neither be edifying or interesting to us. To some extent it was acrimonious and undignified.
Of Champollion's theory of the hieratic writing of the ancient Egyptians, Seyffarth says, it has given rise to number- less absurdities. Brugseh-Bey, for instance, (by the way, Brugsch was in this country in '76 (?), when I had the pleasure of meeting him) discovered that the Egyptians were fond of lager beer, and that some thousands of years B. C., breweries existed in Egypt. Ebers, too, learned, that "one gallon of lager beer" constituted a dose for a siek Egyptian.
Many important Egyptian antiquities were brought to light by Dr. Seyffarth. Among them are:
1. The origin of Manetho's Egyptian History, written in hieratic characters.
This he was enabled to do by examining a huge box, preserved in the Egyptian museum of Turin, which contained
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at least half a million of papyrus fragments, of which the largest were three inches long. He spent six weeks in putting them together, and obtained a papyrus eight feet long and one foot broad, and he found that it corresponds in all re- spects to the Greek Manetho, as preserved by Josephus, Julius Africanus, Eisenbein and others. He does not hesitate to state that this papyrus scroll was written by Manetho himself. It is not perfect, but enough remains to show its great import- ance in Egyptian Archaeology.
The Doctor cannot help giving a severe blow to his rival Champollion, in saying, that the same box had been examined two years before by Champollion and having selected one frag- ment, he ordered the custos to put the rest of it in the privy. "So we owe to Champollion's researches the loss of the most important relic of Egyptian Antiquity."
2. There are more than thirty other discoveries which the Doctor made, or hieroglyphics which he decyphered, which were unknown to the learned world before. Many of these are very interesting to the Egyptiologist and have brought much credit to the investigator.
It was he, who was the only man in this country, who could read the inscriptions on the obelisk, which was erected in New York Central Park, on January 22, 1880. It was the gift of the viceroy of Egypt and will always constitute the most interesting object in those grounds. It is said that our climate is destructive to the material, although, I believe, that measures have been taken to prevent it. It represents accord- ing to Seyffarth, the names of Thutmor III, and of Ramses II, who lived two hundred years later. The former was the noted Pharaoh, who perished while pursuing the Israelites in the Red Sea, in 1866 before Christ. He estimates this obelisk to be about 3750 years old, and asks: "Is it not a singular act of Providence that, after so long a time, the name of a hero of a tragedy unparalleled in history, has come to light ?"
The Doctor has also settled the chronology of many events in Egyptian and Sacred history, and therein has displayed a wealth of astronomical and historical knowledge that is simply amazing.
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He bequeathed most, if not all, of his literary treasures to the New York Historical Society ; it consists of more than 60 printed volumes, with the addition of almost equally numerous manuscripts. A great dictionary of the Egyptian hieroglyph- ical language, absorbed the energies of the later portion of his life. During those years, an aged man, with a deep disfigur- ing scar in his check, was sometimes to be met at twilight, walking for recreation to Central Park. He lived near by and the exercise only followed a day's severe labor in his study and the man who spent from 12 to 15 hours a day in literary labor, needed recreation in the evening. Three years before his death, he delivered a lecture on the subject of the in- scriptions on the obelisk in Central Park, and he was so per- fectly absorbed in his theme, that he continued his lecture over several hours, for the stopping of his watch misled him as to the flight of time. He was then 86 years of age, but this mental effort was followed by so serious an illness that it was thought he would die, but he held out nearly four years longer. "No man was ever so thoroughly absorbed by the fascination of penetrating by slow degrees the long sealed product of high civilisation and sacerdotal culture preserved from the days of Menes and Atholis."
The earliest of his productions is the Rudimenta Hiero- glyphica, published in Leipzig in 1826, when he was 30 years of age, but he had previously edited the works of Spohn ; and thus through a period of more than 60 years, he pursued his favorite theme with unabated industry. He was compelled to maintain his ground against the bitter opposition of three generations of Egyptiologists, but he also had many able vin- dicators and defenders.
Of course, he committed some errors, but as soon as he became conscious of them, he abandoned and corrected them. After a Professorship of 32 years duration at Leipzig, he came to this country. He had issued during that period an average of one publication annually on Egyptian literature. The reason of his leaving his native country, is no where stated.
As I stated before, he lectured in Concordia College, St. Louis. In a subsequent unsuccessful experiment to establish
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a Lutheran Seminary, at Danville, N. Y., he lost some thou- sand dollars, and then settled in the city of New York. I said that a great number of volumes remain in manuscript, which will probably never be published. Many of his recently pub- lished works first appeared in different periodicals, or were printed by scientific associations. Like those of earlier date, they are in vehement conflict with accepted theories. He was almost without sympathy in his tremendous struggle, but he was defended and respected by such men as Prof. Uhlemann of Göttingen and Profs. Wuttke and Delitzsch of Leipzig. Many others have revered him as a man of profound philolo- gical learning.
He claims to have discovered the principle of syllabic hieroglyphs, without which, he maintains, no adequate in- terpretation is possible. Champollion and his school held, that Egyptian literature originated from ideologie writing and con- sists partly of phonetic figures and partly of phonetic images, what the difference really is, I am not competent to determine, but it appears, that Seyffarth's system has triumphed, and Champollion's grammar is out of date.
I thought, that this brief sketch of an eminent German, who spent nearly 30 years of his life in this country, who so- journed in Baltimore for some time, and was personally known to some of us, was proper to be brought before this Society.
He died in 1886, in New York, in his 90th year, and as far as I know, has left no successor who will equal him in the breadth of his general attainments and in the profundity of his Egyptiological knowledge.
We have eminent scholars among us who are pursuing oriental studies, but they confine their researches to the archae- ology of the holy land and Assyria, and not to Egypt as Dr. Seyffarth did. I know but one man who is making this a specialty, and he is a young Lutheran minister in New York, named Mohldehnke, who has already written several pamphlets upon the subject, but who, I presume, has neither the time nor opportunity to prosecute this work.
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The First German Settlement
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NORTH AMERICA.
THE FIRST GERMAN SETTLEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA.
IE 6th of HE 6th of October is generally accepted by the German Americans as the anniversary of the founding of their first colony in this country. It was on this day in the year 1683 that the good ship "Concord" arrived at Philadel- phia with a number of families, who had left Germany to escape religious persecution, and with the intention to found a permanent settlement in the new colony of Pennsylvania, where they could worship God in their own manner, nmolested. They were, however, not the first Germans who came to America. Already in the year 1608, but one year after the first settlement of the English at Jamestown, some German mechanics came to Jamestown, on special invitation, to carry on their trade. In 1623 at Albany and 1625 at New York, then New Amsterdam, there were many Germans among the first Dutch settlers. Peter Minnewit, the Dutch Governor of New York from 1626 to 1631, who purchased Manhattan Island, 22,000 acres, from the Indians for 60 Dutch florins ($20), was a native of, and had been a deacon of the Reformed Church at the city of Wesel on the Rhine. From 1626 to 1633 the Swedes, by printed circulars distributed in Germany, invited the Germans to join them in their colonisation efforts in North America, and their first expedition with two ships in 1638 was commanded by said Peter Minnewit of Wesel, who had left the Dutch and entered the Swedish service. Their settlements were on the Delaware, and we find many German names among the first settlers. The earliest Swedish historian of their American colony mentions, that Germans accompanied the Swedes in their emigration to America. John Printz, the Governor of New Sweden from 1642 to 1653, was a German nobleman. All these Germans, however, were in the minority in the respective settlements, and freely intermingling with the mass of the population, soon lost their identity.
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The Germans who crossed the ocean in the ship Concord, were all natives or had been residents of the town of Crefeld and its vicinity; many among them were related to each other, and all were united by the bond of sincere and deep religious convictions, for which they had suffered much cruel persecution. They belonged to the Quakers and Mennonites, harmless sects as they were usually called, who seem to have by their passive resistance exasperated the dominant religious anthorities far more, than the aggressive Puritan who wielded the bloody sword in so many terrible battles, and offered praises and thanks to the Almighty on a field soaked by the blood of his fellow-men, slain in the strife for political and religious supremacy.
The relation between England and Germany was in the 16th century very close. English actors gave regular Shake- spearean performances on the stages of German theatres. Many Englishmen were in the German, and many Germans in the English State service. The English Quakers sent many mis- sionaries to Germany. Penn was there in 1671, also in 1677. Wm. Ames and George Rolf converted in 1657 the inhabitants of Krisheim to the Quaker religion. Wm. Caton, Stephen Crisp, Wm. Moore, Robert Barrlay, George Keith, Benjamin Furley, Gertrude Diricks and Elisabeth Hendricks were ardent missionaries in Germany. They were especially successful among the Mennonites, who are nearest to the Quakers in their religious tenets. The Pietists were also friendly to the Quaker, and those who emigrated, generally joined the Quakers. The Quakers were in Germany as in England and New England espe- eially the object of assault by the rabble; the Government im- prisoned and fined them, at the instigation of the churches and ministers of the dominant sects, and a reward of five florins was offered to informers who would tell of the existence of a Quaker in the country.
In 1681 Penn acquired the proprietary right of the colony of Pennsylvania, and in the same year published in Germany the act of religious toleration in his new Province. His friends in Crefeld, Krisheim and Frankfort resolved to seek refuge from their persecutors by emigrating en masse to the new colony. Several of them preceded the bulk of emigrants as an advance-
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guard to locate the new settlement. On the 10th of March 1682, and the 11th of June 1683, the Crefeld friends, namely: Jacob Telner, Dirk Sipman, Jan Strepers, Govert Remke, Lenert Aret, and Jacob Isaac van Bebber purchased 18,000 acres from Wm. Penn at 40 shillings for each 100 acres, of his agent, Benj. Furly. The Frankfort company about the same time purchased 25,000 acres. But few of the Frankfort people emigrated, their pur- chase subsequently acquired more the character of a commercial speculation, but they sent as their agent Daniel Pastorius, a Doctor of several German Universities, a man of the most pure and noble character, and superior in learning to any man who then and for a long time thereafter resided in North America. Pastorius left Rotterdam on the 4th of May 1683, and arrived in Philadelphia on the 20th of August, accompanied by six emigrants and the family of Isaac Dilbeck. He there awaited the arrival of the ship Concord with the Crefeld friends and in the meantime made preparation and plans for the new settle- ment. He erected for himself a temporary house 30 x 15 feet and wrote above the door in Latin : " Parva domus sed amica Bonis, procul este Prophani," (in English : "Small is my house, the good are welcome here, the profane stay away,") which gave William Penn, who visited him in his hut, great amusement and he encouraged Pastorins, for whom he felt the highest regard and warm friendship, to continue his building of dwellings. Pastorius often dined with Penn and with the Governor of the Province.
At last on the 6th of October the long expected Crefeld friends arrived. They had sailed from Gravesend on the 24th of July and had a pleasant successful voyage. Two days after their arrival they agreed upon the site of their settlement, which they called Germantown. They wanted to locate their entire 43,000 acres they had purchased at the same place on the Schuylkill river, but Penn only allowed them 5, 700 acres. and the next year by a re-survey took the 1000 acres, which bounded on the river, away from them again. On the 24th of October the survey of the lots was completed, on the 25th they distributed the building-lots by drawing chances, and imme- diately began to dig cellars and erect their dwellings. Each dwelling was located in a small garden, bounding east and
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west of the main street, 60 feet wide, leading through the settlement. Although well provided with provisions, clothes, and especially tools, ropes &c. when they left Germany in June, it was a long time till they could, by the harvest of the fol- lowing year, which was to be raised out of new, unbroken ground, expect to reap sustenance for their frugal life. There was suffering and privation, but still more christian fortitude, reliance upon God, meekness and patience among these hardy pioneers. Pastorius writes of these days: "It can not be written enough, nor impressed enough on the minds of our wealthy descendants, in what poverty and want, but also in what chris- tian cheerfulness and untiring energy and industry Germantown was begun. Before the cold weather had fairly set in, every family was safely housed. The emigrants were mostly me- chanies, such as tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, locksmiths, especially weavers, but all understood farming also, as is the custom in small country towns in Germany. Their industry was so great that one year after their arrival they offered linen, hosiery and cloth for sale at their store in Philadelphia, which belonged to the Frankfort company and was in charge of Pasto- rius, and which linen, hosiery and cloth was manufactured by them out of flax and wool raised by them. They soon became renowned for the quality of their goods, and in a book, entitled: "A Short Description of Pennsylvania," published by Wm. Bradford as early as 1692, George Frame sings in rhymes of Germantown: -
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