USA > Pennsylvania > Berks County > Some early lineages of Berks County, Pa. : Clauser (Klauser)-Hicks (Hix) and associated lines > Part 1
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ـكيسم .
Ins Winh
. الصبى
الهادى
Gc 929.2 C577b 1180258
M.L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01220 1122
GC 929.2 C577B
1.
SOME
EARLY LINEAGES
OF
BERKS COUNTY, P A.
CLAUSER (KLAUSER) - HICKS (HIX) AND
ASSOCIA TED LINES
BY
BEULAH HIX BLAIR, M. A.
(Mrs. Julian M. ) 1142 - 11th Street Boulder, Colorado
Copyright 1959 by Beulah H. Blair
Published by Riley's Reproductions, Inc., Denver, Colorado
Page
Introduction
History
V
Pennsylvania German Language xxiii
References
xxvi
Churches
xxvii
Petitions
xxxi
Counties and Townships xxxiii
Acknowledgments (Arthur Schuman) xxxiv
Comments
XXXV
Abbreviations
xxxV 1
PART ONE
1180258
Clauser and Associated Lineages
- po250000 H
Hans Jarick Klauser 1
Clauser, Western Berks County 6
Clauser, Eastern Berks County
89
Althouse 104
Kauffmann 108
Schertel (Shartle) 146
Claass (Claus) ·
·
177
Hettinger
181
PART TWO
Hix (Hicks) and Associated Lineages
Hicks (Hix) . 186
Heyer (Hoyer) 248
Spatz
251
- Bendery
2/14/62
Contents
Contents
Page
Schneider
268
Weber
270
Runckel
·
272
Kerschner
278
PART THREE
Lineages Associated with those of Parts One and Two
Nunemacher 283
Weiss · 300
Leob
302
Goettel
305
Henne
314
Wagner
323
Schierman
325
Reigel
.
.
328
Albrecht
330
Maps of Surveys
Clauser
5
Althouse
104
Kaufman
108
Schertel
150
Hicks
.
188
Appendix:
Coats of Arms
340
Index
344
INTRODUCTION History
After the death of my father, Franklin Hix, in June 1902, my uncle, Milton Clauser, persuaded my mother, Eliza- beth, to join him and his family in Denver, Colorado. It was, therefore, in the early spring of 1903, that my mother sold her property and with her two youngest children, Charles and me, left Shartlesville, Pennsylvania for the West. My older brother, William, remained in school at Philadelphia. He died in 1910 at Ithaca, New York.
Before we left the East, the Shartlesville Primary School, on April 3, 1903, presented my brother and me each with a book. On the flyleaves were written the name of the teacher, Miss Amy K. Wagner, and the names of the scholars: Florence Kantner, Lila Lesher, Lillian Rentschler, Kate Mengel, Cora Hollenbach, Edith White, Esther M. Hix, Mary K. Burger, Mammie Emerich, Hannah Long, Minerva Rentschler, Esther Machmer, Edna M. Ney, Bertha Stoyer, Sallie Schlaes- man, Walter Ritzman, Clarence Degler, John J. Albright, George Stoudt, Miles Degler, Herbert Degler, Francis Rentschler, Frank Aschenbach, Oscar Schlaesman, Miles Schlicher, Daniel Schlaesman, Claude Stoyer.
In that spring of 1903, as we approached Denver by train, we saw for the first time mountains covered with perpetual snow.
V
The transfer from the small Pennsylvania German town of Shartlesville to the West confronted my brother and me with language difficulties. Although English was spoken in the Shartlesville schools and in Sunday School, Pennsylvania German was the language of the home and the town, and Standard German the language of the church. However, with the help of my uncle's family we soon became familiar with English.
My uncle, a supervisor in the Denver schools, lived in a three-storied residence at the corner of 39th and Goss (now Tejon) in North Denver. His homestead in Estes Park was used for our summer vacations. During the first two years the two-day journeys between Denver and Estes Park were made, by carriage and a covered wagon for luggage. We went up the North St. Vrain and over what was then known as Rowel Hill. Our stop for the night was spent at the Hall Ranch, a short distance above Lyons at the mouth of the St. Vrain Canyon.
These trips were soon simplified by my uncle's purchase of an automobile. He bought one of the first three Stanley Steamers shipped to Colorado for sale in 1904. The car carried four people, weighed eight hundred fifty pounds, cost seven hundred fifty dollars, and traveled eighteen miles an hour. It was endowed with unusual power and great endurance for wear and tear, which made it ideal for steep, rough mountain roads. At that time, the roads, not only to
vi
Estes Park but over the Continental Divide, were not the wide paved highways now in use.
The inventor of this car, F. O. Stanley, came to Estes Park each summer for many years. He built the Stanley Hotel and established the first bus service (Stanley Steamers ) between the Park and the valley towns. Although Mr. Stanley was the first to drive a car to Estes Park, my uncle was a close second.
Soon after our arrival in the West my mother took up a homestead of one hundred sixty acres on the east ridge of Estes Park. She was required to build a habitable house; to cultivate a small area, which she used for a vegetable garden; to pay three dollars an acre; and to live on the tract part of each year for three years. In a short time she made Estes Park her permanent residence and bought a
business building in the village, as well as a home nearby.
It was during my late teens that I became curious about the origin of my Pennsylvania German ancestors, all of whom
The Pennsylvania Germans are had settled in Berks County. £ the Germans who settled in Pennsylvania before the eighteen hundreds . Germans of a later period seem not to be included in this clannish group. It is estimated that there are about six million descendants of these Pennsylvania Germans in the United States today.
. At the time the Pennsylvania Germans came to this country, there was no German kingdom. Germany, as we
vii
ordinarily think of it, was composed of a number of small states or principalities, each ruled by an elector, duke, bishop, king, prince or margrave. Sometimes the same royal family ruled several different states, which were separated by other states. For instance, the two states, the Upper and Lower Palatinates, were separated by Wurttemberg, but
nevertheless were ruled by the same family. In 1715 the Lower Palatinate included what is now the eastern part of Rhineland Pfalz, west of the Rhine River, containing the cities of Worms and Spires. It also included a part of what is now known as Baden, on the east side of the Rhine River, where Heidelberg and Manheim are situated. The principality of the Upper Palatinate in 1715 was located in what is now Eastern Bavaria along the Upper Danube River. It began near the town of Neuburg on the Danube and extended eastward including the cities of Regensburg and Munich.
Apparently many of the Pennsylvania Germans came from the Palatinates because in time the term Palatine became a general term applied to all Pennsylvania Germans. However, a very large number of them came from the other middle and southern states within the Rhine Valley. Among them were Wurttemberg, which included part of Swabia, Baden, Franconia, Lorraine, Nassau, Hesse-Cassel and Bavaria. Very few came from Hanover; however, some came from the German states of Switzerland. The names of the German states are confusing because a state of several centuries ago may have had the
viii
same name as a state of today, although the state of today may not include as much as an inch of the state by the same name several hundred years ago. Comparatively few settlers came to Berks County from the Low Countries or northern German states. The south boundary of the Low Countries ex- tended roughly from a point slightly north of Liege on the Muse River, over to Dusseldorf, to Elberfield, then dipped
to the northeast to Magdeburg on the Elbe. About one-third south almost to the small river Sieg. From there it bent
of the German states were north of this boundary, including the northern part of the Rhine Valley. These Low Countries
had a monopoly on names ending with brink, buttel, fleth, hude, koog, and kuhl. Few if any of these names were found in early Berks County.
French Huguenots were among the early settlers of Pennsylvania. Although a few came directly from France, most of them were descendants of those who had emigrated to German and Swiss states during the persecutions in France, and who had intermarried with the Germans. It is believed that Pennsylvania received at least as many Huguenots as any other colony. Some of these settled in Berks County in Alsace (Elsass) Township in the Oley Valley. Most of them came from Alsace, Franconia, Baden, Hesse-Cassel and the Palatinates. It is doubtful that any came from Wurttemberg, for its Lutheran clergy refused to give refuge to the Huguenots, who were Calvinists.
ix
.
Besides German names, names of other nationalities were found on church records. Among the French were de Chant, Delanney, Delcamp, de Vries, Berthelot, Gannat, Jacques, Morrett, Perlett, Undree, La Seur, Le Fevre, Le Marr. Al- though names beginning with de were found among Swiss, German, and Dutch immigrants, they may have been those of French Huguenots who had fled to various countries at an earlier period. In some cases, the de in a Dutch name in Pennsylvania may have evolved from Ter, like Ter Dirk to
De Turk. Van is Dutch and Von is German. Among early German names are found von Bieren, von Bestenbost, von Haven and von Lude. Also among the early settlers of Berks County are found British names : Boone, Connor, Copeland, Hicks (Hix), Hikins, Lightfoot, Morgan, Price, Jones, Morris, Turner. These British were seldom the original immigrants but rather their descendants.
Berks County, which was predominantly Lutheran and Reformed in the early days, as was the entire Pennsylvania German area, had a small percentage of its population repre- sented by a number of other beliefs. These were the Swedish Lutherans, Moravians, Mennonites, Amish, Dunkards, Quakers (1760), and a few Episcopalians, Catholics, and Baptists.
The Amish, who came from the Swiss and German states, had their earliest settlement (1766) about two miles west of Hamburg, Berks County, where they built a schoolhouse, the foundation of which was still visible in 1953, but
x
since then has been wiped out by road operations. Many of the Amish and Mennonites came from the District of Thum, Switzerland, where the names Kaufman, Gerber, Burger, Lehman, Raber, Weber, Zimmerman, Himmelberger, Schlabech, Mosiman, and Ulrich are quite common, and so it is possible that some of the settlers bearing these names in the region of the Amish schoolhouse came originally from the German Swiss states.
The Baptist Brethern (Dunkards ) had an early church west of Shartlesville, later known as Seiffert's school- house, which is now used as a filling station. They still have a church in Bethel Township. Their church, established in 1860 in Centre Township, was short lived .. Like the Dunkards, the Moravians had a church in Bethel Township by 1745, and their church near Bernville, Penn Township, was established as early as 1742.
Although these specific settlements are in the region where most of the families with which I am concerned set- tled, none of the families were connected with the sects of these localities. Most of them were Lutheran or Reformed - the two religions followed by ninety percent of the Pennsylvania Germans. It is much too long a story to give here in detail the events which caused these people to come to America. Primarily, they came because they wished to escape religious persecutions, but also because they had endured a long series of destructive wars which produced
xi
poor economic conditions and widespread demoralization.
The struggle between Protestant and Catholic princes eventually led to what is known as the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), which gradually involved most of the European countries. Although the Treaty of Westphalia ended the war and gave to Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists equal rights, it did not settle the persecutions, because each prince, when he came into power, forced his faith upon his subjects.
Furthermore, the War of the Palatinate (1688-1697) was soon begun by Louis XIV, not only because he wanted the Palatinate for his sister-in-law, wife of the Duke of Orleans and sister of Elector Charles, who had no male issue, but because he resented those subjects of independent spirit who had harbored the French Huguenots when he had driven them abroad by religious persecutions.
Louis XIV sent huge armies into the Rhine Valley that methodically devastated the area by burning crops, villages, and cities, until only desolation remained. The ruins of the Castle of Heidelberg is an example of his vandalism.
The Treaty of Ryswick, 1697, ended this war, but peace did not last long, for again in 1700 Louis XIV started another war instigated by dynastic ambition. He was eager that Philip, Duke of Anjou, his second grandson, should inherit the crown of Spain. His ambition resulted in the War of the Spanish Succession. Eventually, for various and
xii
complicated reasons, most of the European countries were again involved.
What is important to us here is that most of the fight- ing in these wars was carried on in the Rhine Valley all the way from the Netherlands into Bavaria. By the time the War of the Spanish Succession ended with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), people from the Rhine Valley had already begun moving down the River to Holland, where they took ships for the New World. After 1727 the ships sailing from Holland stopped in England, probably docking at the wharves of London's West India Company. After they received their clearance, they usually sailed to Cowes on the Isle of Wight or Portsmouth nearby. From here their two or three months' journey across the Atlantic began.
The people of the German states suffered more continu- ously than did the French Huguenots; nevertheless, they too were persecuted. As early as the 16th Century, under the leadership of Catharine de Medici, more than one hundred thousand were slain. By the end of the reign of Louis XIV over four hundred thousand had fled to the eastern section of England, to the Netherlands, to Switzerland, and to the German states.
Across the Channel in England persecution by imprison- ment of the nonconformists took place in the sixteen hundreds. One of these sects, the Quakers, had as one of their leaders, William Penn, son of Admiral Wm. Penn, to whom King Charles
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II was heavily indebted. In order to pay this debt, the King gave Penn the colony of Pennsylvania on March 4, 1681. Penn was made the sole Proprietor with ample power to form a government which, however, had to be approved by the King.
Penn Was interested in the colony as an experiment for religious liberty, but his children, who were his heirs and who had returned to the Church of England, were interested only in the colony as a business venture. In 1778, the State bought the remaining unclaimed land from the Penns with the idea of selling it to future settlers after the Revolution.
Some of the members of the Penn family came to the colony. William Penn came over in 1682 with about one hundred colonists. He visited New Castle, Delaware, for he already had a proprietary interest in that colony as well as in the colony of New Jersey. From New Castle he went to Philadelphia, a town site which he had previously selected at the junction of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers.
During the early 1700's Penn's son, William, lived in Philadelphia. Later his son, John, made a year's stay, but son, Thomas, lived there for fifteen years. In 1765 John Penn, a grandson, became governor and continued in that office until the Revolutionary War. William Penn, Sr. made another trip in 1699. £ He died in 1718, the most successful of all the colonial proprietors, and one of the great figures of his time.
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Being half Dutch by birth, William Penn was deeply aware of the religious and economic persecutions on the Continent. He made several journeys into Germany and Hol- land to explain to the people his avowed purpose of estab- lishing a colony to provide for religious freedom. As a result, a large number of Germans came to Pennsylvania. By 1727 there were fourteen thousand of them in this colony; by 1776 there were one hundred thousand; and by 1790 one- third of the population of the state, or about one hundred forty thousand, were Germans. As these immigrants arrived, they spread out in all directions from Philadelphia. It was
quite natural that Berks County was first settled in the southeast section along the Schuylkill River, then west along the Tulpehocken.
However, the first settlers in western Berks did not come from Philadelphia, but from New York, where they had arrived in 1710 and had settled in the Schoharie Valley. Because of several unprincipled characters, Governor Hunter and Livingstone, a landed proprietor, they were deprived of their lands and improvements. Therefore, in the spring of 1723 and again in 1728, at the invitation of Sir William Keith, governor of the Province of Pennsylvania, a number of these families came to Berks County, where they settled along the banks of the Tulpehocken and its tributary creeks.
About a decade later, Germans who had arrived at Philadelphia settled north of this group and also west of
XV
the Schuylkill River along the Blue Mountains. It is this second group mentioned, of western Berks County, to whom most of the lineages here given belong.
Soon after the arrival at Philadelphia the immigrants made contact with the land officers, who informed them where desirable tracts of land could be had, to which they would receive the title from the Proprietors. After they had selected a tract, a small fee was paid and a warrant issued instructing the public surveyor to measure and plot the land in the settler's name. Once the warrant was issued, the settler had full possession of the land. He could sell his tract and get a warrant for another tract, even though the first was not paid for to the Proprietors. The rate before 1750 was five to fifteen pounds sterling for one hundred acres. During the French and Indian Wars and the Revolutionary War, the rate was about half as much. In order to get a Patent, which was in the form of a Deed, the settler had to pay the full amount to the Proprietors. These settlers had the usual problems of frontiersmen, but it was not until after 1750, when the French aroused the Indians against the settlers, that the people north and south of the Blue Mountains had to defend themselves and their property against the ravages of the Indians.
Originally, the eastern part of Pennsylvania was inhabited mostly by the Delaware and Shawnee Indians, who had relinquished their last claim to Berks County in 1732.
xvi
They moved west and north, finally coming under the power of the Iroquois Indians or Six Nations.
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania had no militia system; thus the settler found himself in a bad state of affairs. The Quakers, most of whom were settled in Philadelphia, were opposed to war. They were in power and refused to have a militia in spite of the fact that the governors sent from England were in favor of one. The Quakers received support from some of the Mennonites and Amish, who, also as a matter of religious convictions, were opposed to bearing arms. George Fox and Menno Simons had much in common, for both opposed war, oaths, and bringing suits in law. The Moravians and Schwenkfelders were averse to bearing arms except in self-defense. But it must be remembered that the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania Germans were Lutheran and Calvinists, whose tenets contained no absolute injunc- tions against military combat.
This theory of non-resistance was possible for awhile, but finally it became a serious danger. Not until the leg- islature of the Province was purged of the Quakers through an act by the King was it possible to pass laws for a militia and fortifications. After Braddock's defeat in 1753 at Ft. Duquesne until about 1764, Indian brutality and ferocity was most intense in Berks and Lancaster Counties. Upon learning that the Indians had united with the French, the government built a line of forts from the
xvii
Susquehanna to the Delaware River. These forts were about twelve miles apart along the Blue Mountains of Berks (which then included Schuylkill) and Lancaster (now Dauphin and Lebanon) Counties.
The purpose of these forts was different from those of today. They served mostly as places of refuge in times of danger, but because of the distance between them, they were not entirely satisfactory. The Indians were guerilla fighters who could easily evade the forts. This meant that the settlers were usually killed while at work in the fields.
These forts were occupied by soldiers selected by the Governor, usually chosen from the German settlers. £ They sent out scouting parties and kept constant watch.
Fort Henry or Dietrich Six's was located in Bethel Township, Berks County about three miles north of Millers- burg. Fort Northkill, built in 1754, was two miles east of Strausstown in Upper Tulpehocken on the Northkill, which empties into the Tulpehocken Creek at Bernville. Dietrich Snyder's fort, or rather watch tower, was less than two miles east of Fort Northkill along the road that leads from Strausstown to Pottsville. From the tower, the countryside could be seen for a distance of twenty miles. Any building or crop set on fire by the Indians could be detected, a message could be sent to Fort Northkill, and measures could be taken to drive the Indians away.
xviii
Ft. Lebanon, erected in 1754, on the fork of the two branches of the Schuylkill, about one and a half miles east of Auburn, Schuylkill County (then Berks); Fort Henry; Northkill; and Dietrich Snyder's were those with which the families given here were most directly concerned. Ft. Franklin at the east end of Albany Township was also on the Berks frontier.
The most western fort of this chain was Ft. Hunter, near Harrisburg on the Susquehanna. There were also Ft. Harris at Harrisburg; Ft. Manada, Dauphin County; Ft. Swatara, Lebanon County; Ft. Everet, Lehigh County; Ft. Allen, Carbon County; Ft. Augusta on the Susquehanna at Shamoken, Northumberland County.
During this period of warring with the Indians, the settlers remodeled some of their buildings to serve as fortifications. Jacob Kauffman used both his home and his
mill as forts. His brother, Christian, and Christian's brother-in-law, Snabele, were killed by the Indians in 1758. A Jacob Clauser and his wife were killed near the Blue Mountains on March 6, 1756. A Spatz family of six was killed near Fort Northkill. In 1754 the Frederick Mayer family was almost completely wiped out. £ Members of the Hochstetter family just west of Shartlesville were murdered. An eight-year-old boy, probably of the Jacob Reichard family, near the Jacob and George Kaufman places (later Daniel Berger's), was kidnapped. In 1755 the family of John
xix
Frantz, a Mr. Lebenguth, the wife of Michael Ditzler, a Mrs. Kobel, and Rudolph Kandel were all murdered in Tulpehocken which was in the area where John Clauser had settled. Mrs. Kobel may have been related to Godfrey Kobel, a neighbor of Conrad Weiser. In Schuylkill County, murders were committed by marauding Indians as late as 1795. They burned the Red Church near Orwigsburg in 1757. It is believed that here and at Cressona there once were Indian villages. The farm of Conrad Hicks was located near Cressona, and stories of Indian raids were passed down by his descendants. No doubt hundreds of settlers were killed whose names will never be known.
During the period between 1754 and 1764 settlers from north of the Blue Mountains and from counties west moved into that part of Berks south of the mountains. The farmers of the area both fed and housed them temporarily. Some
moved to Reading while others went as far as Philadelphia. Those years were full of danger and confusion.
A few years after Braddock's defeat, the Royal American Regiment under Colonel Henri Bouquet defeated the Indians at Ft. Duquesne. This regiment, the most effective unit in the French and Indian War, was made up almost entirely of Germans from Pennsylvania and Maryland. Its chaplain,
Michael Schlatter, and several of the commanders were Pennsylvania Germans. The Pennsylvania Germans participated in most of the battles between 1754 and 1764. It was the
xx
Germans along the Blue Mountains and south through Lancaster County who furnished the wagons, and it was the German popu- lation that furnished most of the provisions. This was also the case in the Revolutionary War.
The Pennsylvania Germans knew the art of rifling gun barrels; so they were equipped with weapons not available in other colonies. They knew how to temper steel, how to bore rifle barrels, and how to fashion the stocks of guns from the roots of the black walnut. The famous Kentucky rifles of a later period, including the brass ornaments, were made in Berks and Lancaster Counties.
When Washington assumed command of the Continental troops at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1775, one of his first acts was a call for companies of riflemen from Berks, Lancaster, York, and Northampton Counties. The first com- pany to respond came from Berks under Captain George Nagel. The others followed within a few days.
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