USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > Bethlehem > A history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741-1892, with some account of its founders and their early activity in America > Part 24
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13 That first school in what is now South Bethlehem - a school for bad boys - is interest- ingly mentioned by the author of The Crown Inn, as in the house of David Boehringer, whose name at the time was often mentioned in connection with it. That it was the Yssel- stein house seems to have escaped the observation of that usually accurate writer. Boehringer, and others occupied it jointly for a season. The project of establishing a hattery in the house, as mentioned in The Crown Inn, was never really consummated.
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In references which the records of this period contain to neighbors across the river, some new names and new movements appear which have connection, in one way or another, with the gradual acquisition of property on that side by Bethlehem. The name of Paul Sieg is met with between May, 1746, and the spring of 1747, as a tenant in one of the houses there owned by the Brethren. In June, 1746, Jost Vollert, already referred to in connection with the Crown Inn, who had first visited Bethlehem in January, 1745, became one of the resi- dents of those outskirts of the settlement, occupying a house built in 1742 by Tobias Weber. His two tracts of 81 and 11472 acres, now "the Hellener place," being held by an uncertain title, were conveyed anew by proprietary patent, in March, 1757, when the Moravians became their purchasers. Vollert will be met with again at a later time at the "point of the Forks," in connection with an episode in which Bethlehem figured there, after the town that became the seat of the new county was founded. More interesting, because the site of their domicile within the present precincts of Lehigh University, was, during the period after they had been forgotten and before they had again been brought to remembrance, invested with a kind of mystery, are the occupants of "the old man's place," Valentine Loescher and his wife. They were an aged couple when they first found a place in the local chronicle, on the occasion of a friendly visit by Joachim Sensemann, who took them a present of eatables with the good wishes of the Bethlehem people, on December 6, 1746. No man has recorded whence or how they reached that lonely cabin on the mountain-side, or by whom and when it was built. They were poor, humble, pious people. Their names are associated with the first recorded discussion of an artificial water-supply on the south side, for the tavern and the institution in which boys who were not good were to be placed in training. This was on April 24, 1747, when it was suggested in a board-meeting that "the spring at old Loescher's" might be utilized. When visited by Bishop Spangen- berg during the summer of 1748, the old man was found cutting a better path from his house down the hill, so that, when he should die, the Brethren could more easily bear his remains to the grave. But he was not destined to end his days there. In 1751 the tract on which his home stood was surveyed by Nicholas Scull, Jr., the Bethlehem authorities having secured a proprietary title to it. Loescher was a squatter, but he was left in undisputed possession. In 1752, Henry, an Indian, died there of small-pox, and was buried
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in the grave-yard "near the tavern," and shortly after that, an infant of his widow which also died a few weeks later and was buried at the same place, was baptized in the house of the old people by one of the Bethlehem clergy. On January II, 1756, when the bands of savages roaming through the woods in those days of terror made their situation very dangerous, they were conveyed away "to their children at Philadelphia," and with this their history closes. In the summer of 1765, the logs of the house were moved down to the river and there laid up again in a dwelling for the ferryman. Another temporary resident of the south side, whose name does not other- wise figure among the people of Bethlehem, was Henry Guth, who occupied quarters on the Ysselstein farm, after the widow transferred her residence across to Bethlehem in 1745. The burial is recorded, September 8, 1747, of John Vaas (Fahs), "an old neighbor towards Maguntsche." It is mentioned elsewhere that he had tried the merits of the "healing waters" of the Chalybeate springs up in the Blue Mountains that had attracted the notice of the Brethren in 1746, when traveling to Gnadenhuetten, and were discussed by the medical conference.
Relations were generally cordial between Bethlehem and the people south of the Lehigh, throughout the Saucon Valley. They did not seem to take a sinister view of the prosperous advance made by the intelligent and united industry of the Moravians, or to become much excited by the bugaboo of peril to Protestant government through their presence and activities, like some of their neighbors to the northward, whose minds were inflamed by this agitation and who thought it their duty to try to influence the government against them, as had been done in New York. It seemed impossible at that time to convince them otherwise. This inimical attitude, carried to the extent of studied annoyance in various matters which concerned both parties in neighborhood affairs by certain of the people, led the authorities at Bethlehem to take steps for better guarding their interest in connection with such affairs, and with public matters generally. These interests were becoming sufficiently important, even in a purely material sense, that they could not be meekly left unprotected, to be continually harassed by adverse manoeuvres inspired by groundless prejudice. One such step was to escape from the jurisdiction of a magistracy appointed from among and swayed by men who cherished this disposition ; strangely blind to the benefits which the people of the surrounding country and they them-
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selves would enjoy through what was being done at Bethlehem to open up and develop the region, to increase its enlightened and orderly population, to advance all kinds of public improvements and try to transform the savages on the borders into civilized and Christian men. Accordingly, in response to representations from Bethlehem, Henry Antes, then the most suitable and competent man, was appointed a Justice of the Peace by the Governor and Council of Pennsylvania, December 17 O. S., 1745, to have jurisdiction at Bethlehem and on the Barony of Nazareth. He was duly proclaimed, whereof Secretary Richard Peters, on June 5, 1746, brought notice to him at Bethlehem, with the announcement of his right, in this capacity, to attend the next session of the Bucks County Court at Newtown. There, on June 22, he was sworn in and, on June 25, received his written commission "to keep the peace within his juris- diction, and to keep and cause to be kept all ordinances and statutes for the good of the peace and for the preservation of the same, and for the quiet rule and government of the people; to chastise and punish all persons that offend against the ordinances and statutes," etc.
Just a month later, a high-handed instance of the kind of vexation from which the Bethlehem people sought to escape by having a magistrate with their domain as his jurisdiction, independent of others, occurred in an unwarranted use of civil office by a neighbor- ing justice, to worry them and bring odium upon them before the public, under the pretense of zeal for law and religion. The precious harvest of 1746, on which so much depended, was imperiled by con- tinual rain to such an extent that, at the end of July, the situation was becoming desperate. On Sunday, July 31, the first clear, dry day for more than a week, the men who lived on the Nazareth tract determined, after the morning service, to get in the cut grain, much of which was perishing in the field. They concluded that, under the circumstances, this rescue of their bread for the coming winter would be a justifiable "work of necessity," within the meaning of the law. A spy hastened to inform the constable of the "Irish Settlement" who, towards evening, came upon the scene with some others and demanded their names, with a view to lodging complaint against them, as "Sabbath breakers," before the justice of that settlement. The grain was safely housed and they closed the day with a service of thanksgiving and a meal together of bread and milk. On August 3, that constable, armed with a warrant from the said justice, went to Gnadenthal to make arrests. Antes, who had to be away from
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home for several days, had instructed them that if this happened, they should deny the right of another justice to thus invade his juris- diction, and submit to arrest only under force. The arrests were not then made. The next day, while this alleged new evidence of con- tempt for the law of the land, and for Protestant sentiment and cus- tom, and this supposed alien defiance of the government on the part of the Moravians was being warmly discussed in the neighborhood, those same Moravians at Bethlehem and Nazareth were engaging in the only services of thanksgiving held in the Forks of the Delaware in compliance with the proclamation of the Governor, for the victory of the British arms over the forces of the Pretender, whose secret emissaries they were charged by those neighbors with being. On August 6, the aforesaid constable suddenly appeared at Bethlehem, with a posse of thirty excited and boisterous men, to make the arrests by force, in the face of a written notice from Justice Antes that the whole affair lay in his jurisdiction and that the other justice was exceeding his authority. Antes was at Bethlehem and tried to rea- son with them, but, seeing that this was in vain and that they were bent upon creating a disturbance to the scandal of the place, he waived the point of non-jurisdiction, and trusting the good sense and fairness of the court, as well as its ability to discern the real animus and purpose of the whole procedure, gave bond for the appearance of all named in the warrant. The constable, being thus assured, as he supposed, of receiving his fees eventually, left with this. The disagreeable fiasco terminated in September, when the Nazareth men were exonerated without costs. Another matter that required atten- tion, in self-defense, was the injustice to which they were subjected in the assessment of taxes ; this being, up to 1747, controlled entirely by inimical persons. On February 23, 1747, when the court had examined the statement and protest from Bethlehem and recognized that the Moravians were being unfairly taxed in comparison to their neighbors, the Sheriff of Bucks County came to Bethlehem to con- sult with Justice Antes about the matter. The result was that on March 13, Antes returned from court with a concession granted in the rate, and authority to collect the taxes in his jurisdiction.
A third matter that caused some complications was the laying out of roads, northward and westward, in which a studied disregard for the plans of the Brethren in the location of stations on the Naza- reth land, was shown by other parties concerned. In May, 1746, the first unofficial road to Gnadenhuetten was traced through the woods
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by John Levering and Shebosh (John Joseph Bull). It was soon obstructed by fences. In June, 1747, the court authorized the laying out of a road, but when, in September, an attempt was made by Jas- per Payne and John Brownfield of Bethlehem, Solomon Jennings and sundry men along the line, the effort to establish a convenient and direct course was so unreasonably obstructed by some on the joint committee that it was postponed. A new committee, appointed by the September court, went at the task in November. It was laid out as far as "Stahl's farm" on November II, and the remainder of the way to Gnadenhuetten on the 15th. This road, which was approved by court in March, 1748, was twenty-five miles in length- four to five miles shorter than the original course. At the March term, in 1747, when the trouble about the taxes was adjusted, the court authorized Antes to lay out the road past Gnadenthal, between that place and the Irish Settlement.
All of these things combined to induce another step in the direc- tion of better local order in civil matters. March 21 N. S., 1747, the first petition was laid before the Court of Quarter Sessions at Newtown for the creation of a separate township, to be known as Bethlehem Township. Payne and Brownfield, having, on April 4, finished running the line "towards the Irish Settlement," reported to the June court and on June 25, returned with the confirmation of the new township, together with the order for laying out the Gnadenhuetten road. With an evident sense of relief and gratifica- tion, the remark is recorded that the two settlers, not connected with the Brethren, whose farms lay within the township line, were of the peaceable and friendly sort of neighbors. At the September term of court the first township officers were appointed: Anton Albrecht, constable; Jasper Payne, a commissioner ; William Frey, overseer of the poor, with Henry Antes as local Justice of the Peace.14
14 The original Bethlehem Township included the entire area of the present Upper and Lower Nazareth Townships. The first boundaries were maintained, as it seems, with slight deviation, in the township as constituted under the organization of the new County of North- ampton in 1752. A petition of December, 1787, was confirmed at the June term of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Northampton County in 1788, for the setting off of the northern part into a new township to be called Nazareth Township. The division of the latter into Upper and Lower Nazareth Townships did not take place until 1807. In 1788, in connection with the establishment of the other adjoining township lines, an effort was made to have the lines so run that the Moravian land on both sides of the Lehigh and Monocacy would remain in Bethlehem Township, but it failed. The lines, as established in
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Meanwhile, movements of larger import, bearing upon the status of the Moravian Church and the security of its growing interests in Pennsylvania and all the American colonies, were in progress in Eng- land. These were receiving the support of prominent men who were not only friendly disposed, but materially interested in the matter, and of broad-minded statesmen who were planning for the best development of the country and for the common weal, above mere racial prejudice and petty religious bigotry. Among these were General James Oglethorpe, the Honorable Thomas Penn, Proprietor of Pennsylvania, and Lord Halifax, President of the Board of Trade. On February 3, 1743, the Assembly of Pennsylvania, after protracted skirmishing between them and Governor Thomas on various involved and related points, had passed and laid before the Governor and Council, "an act for naturalizinig· such foreign Protestants as are settled or shall settle in this Province who not being of the peo- ple called Quakers"-their case had been settled by previous legis- lation-"do conscientiously scruple the taking of any oath." It immediately received the approval of the Governor, to be sent to England for confirmation. In compromising with the Assembly, the Governor waived his contention, which had also been that of the Proprietors, that the religious bodies had in view should be specified in the act. To this the majority of the Assembly had been averse. Shrewd politicians among them, while ostensibly contending on the lines of broad statesmanship against what seemed class legislation, saw that, by such specification, they would endanger their popularity, awaken antagonism in other matters and lose votes among people who were inimical to those who would thus be specified, principally the Moravians; and among foreigners who might seem to be dis- criminated against by not being named. The Governor having yielded on some points, the Assembly consented to pass a quaran- tine hospital bill which he had desired since 1738, both as a humane provision for sick and indigent immigrants and as a measure of self- defense; the Assembly having observed dilatory tactics and, under the pressure of anti-foreigner sentiment from certain quarters-for-
June of that year, for Allen, Salisbury and Saucon Townships, left some of the land in each of these three. With the report of the line run October 6, 1788, between Bethlehem and Naza- reth Townships, rendered to Court, December 16, by George Golkowsky, the Moravian sur- veyor, Jonas Hartzel, Joseph Horsfield and Henry Lawall, a memorandum states that the area of Bethlehem Township was then 12,872 acres, that of Nazareth Township 12,900 arcres ; Allen and Forks Townships embracing respectively 29,000 and 12,882 acres.
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eigners meaning all who did not speak English-had preferred to urge more stringent restrictions on immigration.
Parliament had withheld assent to a proposed similar naturaliza- tion act of the Assembly, in 1739, under the contention that the for- eigners meant should be specified; and, in 1740, had passed a gen- eral act for all the American colonies providing that "on and after June I, 1740, all persons born out of the Ligeance of his Majesty, his Heirs or Successors, who have inhabited and resided, or shall . inhabit or reside for the space of seven years or more, in any of his Majesty's colonies in America, and shall not have been absent out of some of the said colonies for a longer space than two months dur- ing the said seven years, shall take and subscribe the oaths, etc., or, being of the people called Quakers, shall make and subscribe the declaration of fidelity, and take and affirm the effect of the Abjura- tion Oath, etc., shall be deemed, adjudged, and taken to be his Majesty's natural-born subjects," etc. The inception of measures favorable distinctly to the Moravians, as being also people "who do conscientiously scruple the taking of any oath," whom the Assembly of Pennsylvania had, in 1743, refused to specify, was the introduc- tion of the subject in the Royal Privy Council. In considering the Pennsylvania act of 1743, the statement of Proprietor Thomas Penn was produced, explaining that "none else are meant in these words but the Moravian Brethren who also enjoyed the benefits of this act, showing themselves truly worthy of these privileges. They ought therefore to be specified by name (as well as the Quakers) in this act, as a peaceful and sober people." Neither the Privy Council nor the Board of Trade being at liberty to amend the wording of such an act passed in Pennsylvania for itself, Oglethorpe and Penn, whose opinions had much weight, took the initiative to have the matter brought into Parliament in 1747. The foolish and outrageous action into which the Assembly of New York had been stampeded by preju- dice and ignorance, in the excitement of 1744, and a similar agita- tion by other elements in Virginia, which resulted in a proclamation of like tenor by the Governor of that colony at this very time, did much to induce better-informed and larger-minded men in England and in the Provinces to move in the direction of justice towards the Moravians, and of encouraging them, as desirable colonists, through a general act of Parliament. April 6, 1747, General Oglethorpe, on the strength of the Pennsylvania act of 1743 and the explanation of its primary intent by Proprietor Penn, moved in the House of Com-
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mons "that a clause be inserted in the act of 1740 in favor of the Moravian or United Brethren, exempting them from the taking of an oath." It was passed, was concurred in by the House of Lords and, on June 28, received the royal sanction, to take effect, Decem- ber 25, 1747. The material part containing the new matter of this act is as follows: "And whereas many of the people of the congre- gation called the Moravian Brethren, and other foreign Protestants, not Quakers, who conscientiously scruple the taking of an oath, are settled in his Majesty's colonies in America, and demean themselves there as a sober, quiet and industrious people, and many others of the like persuasion are desirous to transport themselves thither ; and if the benefit of the said act made in the thirteenth year of his pres- ent Majesty's reign (1740) were extended to them, they who are now there would thereby be encouraged to continue their residence in his Majesty's colonies, and others would resort thither in greater numbers, whereby the said colonies would be improved, their strength increased, and their trade extended ; be it therefore enacted, etc., that from and after the 25th day of December, 1747, all Foreign Protestants who conscientiously scruple the taking of an oath," etc. Upon this follows the same provision and condition of naturalization, after seven years' residence, that were contained in the act of 1740. It will be observed that in these acts nothing is said on the subject of bearing arms, on which the Brethren took the same position as in the matter of an oath. Circumstances were now bringing a test upon them in this respect also in Pennsylvania. The movements agitated under the critical outlook of the time, when both foreign invasion and Indian alliance on the part of England's enemies were feared, led those who were suspicious of the Moravians to embrace new opportunities of making them prove their loyalty. These move- ments, when they took definite shape in the autumn of 1747, in the formation of the association at Philadelphia for the general defense of the city and the Province, also aroused the people throughout Bucks County ; and the test of willingness to join the "Associators" began to be pressed upon the men of Bethlehem by zealous and officious persons. Occasional bands of Pennsylvania deserters from the English camps up the Hudson, where, after the abandonment of the proposed movement into Canada and the failure to establish an alliance with the Six Nations against French interests, troops were kept many months unpaid, ill-clothed and disaffected, with the thought of impressing the Indians with a show of power, came down the country through Nazareth and Bethlehem on their way to Phila-
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delphia, at intervals from May to October, 1747; sometimes with a sheriff and posse in pursuit, but evidently not trying very hard to capture the runaways.
This unwonted sensation in the neighborhood drew the attention of the hard-working, peaceable men of the Economy more particu- larly to the public unrest of the time and added to the excitement of the other people in the Forks. Then the attitude of the Brethren towards these men, as they passed through, foot-sore and hungry, asking for something to eat and, of course, receiving it, regardless of how their conduct in thus forsaking their posts was to be viewed, was also watched with the purpose of detecting symptoms of Mora- vian treachery against the government. Bishop Spangenberg took occasion, before the close of the year, to give the farmers, mechanics and laborers at Bethlehem and Nazareth the necessary explanations in reference to the public situation and to the meaning and object of organizing Associators. He drew attention to the basis on which the Brethren desired that exemption from taking oath, like the Quak- ers, which was provided for in the act of Parliament, the outcome of which was then yet being awaited at Bethlehem. From his state- ments it is clear that the reason, as then urged, was not a general principle adopted as a fundamental one of the Church-a part of its creed, as has been commonly but erroneously supposed; but as a matter of deference to the sentiments of a considerable number of individual Brethren who had such scruples, and as a matter of expe- diency over against people like the Quakers and the Mennonites in Pennsylvania, to whom the Brethren desired to "keep the open door" for preachers of the atonement in the blood of Jesus, as they held it and set it forth, by thus taking common ground and making com- mon cause with them in such a 'point on which they laid so much stress. The other scruple, that about bearing arms, in which gov- ernment concession and protection was hoped for, was rather more a matter of general principle than that about taking oath ; although, even in this, and at that time, by no means all who joined the Breth- ren had this in view as an article laid down and adhered to always and everywhere, or advanced it as one of the reasons for joining them. Not all made it a matter of personal conviction. Many would have seen their way clear to do militia duty when called upon by the State, without inconsistency. But when it was deemed best to make the objection to bearing arms a fundamental article, and exemption from such service a condition of settlement in different realms, because of the general missionary character all settlements
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