USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. II > Part 5
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AGREEMENT TO SELL GOVERNMENT TO CROWN. 509
future, more harasssing to Penn than the debt to the mortgagees, was the present support of those depen- dent upon him. He had been overworked, and his ill- ness at different times is reported. Logan, during his stay in England, noticed that age and the great strain had affected Penn, that there was a diminution of "the usual strength and brightness of his great genius." Logan wrote this to the mortgagees on 10, 19, 1711, as he was off Spitthead, waiting to sail back to America, and urged that Penn be induced to settle the fate of Pennsylvania in his lifetime, and, too, while his friend Harley was in power, securing for himself a good sum of money, and for the Quakers of Pennsyl- vania certain rights. These rights were to be liberty of conscience in the matter of worship, an exemption from oaths, and from the maintenance of priests, and from bearing arms, and, moreover, not so much for the value of the privilege, as because they were the most substantial part of the population, the right to serve on juries, and to hold legislative and judicial office.
William Penn was probably hurried by a demand made upon him by the Crown for the moiety reserved in the deed of Aug. 24, 1682, of the rents of the lands below the twelve miles circle around New Castle (see page 35). In a report somewhat later of William Blathwayt to the Lord High Treasurer, this moiety is said to have been computed at £6200. Penn treating for a surrender, further prosecution was laid aside.
The Attorney-General drafted an instrument of sur- render and an instrument whereby the Queen accepted the surrender, and Penn supplicated that she declare in express terms that she took the people of his re- ligious persuasion, as well as the other inhabitants, under her protection. These drafts were sent on Feb. 25, 1711-12, to the Lord Treasurer, Robert Harley, who had been created Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer.
Penn in London, being taken ill, made a will on April
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6, 1712, devising the powers of government to the afore- said nobleman and another nobleman, who was Lord Steward of the Household, in trust to sell to the Queen or any one else. Of the provisions of the will, this alone need be mentioned here. Penn, speaking of his illness as a fever, confirmed this will on May 27, after he got back to his home at Ruscombe, Berkshire. On July 17, the Lord Treasurer, declining to pay £20,000, agreed to move the Queen to accept the surrender of the govern- ment, and to allow Penn £12,000, to be paid in four years from the date of the deed of surrender, and the Queen's share of two ships seized at New Castle to be accepted in part payment. Penn acquiesced in the terms, and the Queen agreed. On a warrant signed Sep. 6, 1712, £1000 of the consideration was paid from the Treasury to Penn.
Before the necessary instrument of surrender could be ready, Penn was disabled by an apoplectic attack, and when, after recovery, he was arranging to have the matter carried through, he, in January, 1712-13, had the stroke that rendered him permanently incompetent, although he lived for five and a half years more. Dur- ing part of that time, he attended Friends' meetings, and even more than once attempted to speak in them, but was mentally incapable of sustained effort. His signature was on special occasions secured to papers connected with the government of Pennsylvania, but the direction of his business was in the hands of his wife and the mortgagees.
On April 21, 1714, the Queen ordered the perfecting of the agreement for the transfer of the government, and that the Lord Treasurer take steps to have this accomplished by an act of Parliament: but there was not sufficient time before her dismissal of the Earl of Oxford from his office, followed in a few days by her death.
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CHAPTER XVII.
THE GERMANS.
Language of the residents of Pennsylvania be- fore 1709-Want of religious bond in national elements of population-Lutheranism in the Ger- man Empire-Pietism-The Reformed denomina- tion-The first German settlers at Germantown become Quakers-Protest against negro slavery- Pastorius-The Wissahickon community-Falk- ner's Swamp and vicinity-Rev. Gerhard Henkel -Reformed Dutch from New York join the Pres- byterians - Settlers at Oley - Antipædobaptists and Anabaptists-The Mennonites-First paper mill-First organized Mennonite congregation- Houses of worship at Germantown and Skippack -The Swiss the first to make a foreign district- Swiss Mennonites from the Palatinate are the first settlers in Lancaster County-Additions to their number-Rev. Samuel Guilden-The Amish- The exodus of Palatinates to England-Various Germans and Swiss come to Pennsylvania- Baumanites, or "New Born,"-The immigration becomes large-The Dunkards-Beissel, the Ger- man Seventh Day Baptists, and the Ephrata Com- munity-The "Monastery" on the Wissahickon- Palatinates in New York invited to Pennsylvania by Keith-They settle on the Tulpehocken-Not Mennonites-The Dutch Reformed become inde- pendent of the Presbyterians-Increase in Pala- tinate immigration-A German Reformed congre- gation-Further history of the Reformed-The German Lutherans-The "Pennsylvania Dutch" language-Jews and small sects-Dr. de Benne- ville.
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It was in the early years of Gookin's administra- tion that there began that Teutonic immigration to the frontiers of Pennsylvania which threatened at one time to make Penn's colony alien from his countrymen, and which has made the nationality of the population of large regions distinct. At the date of Evans's removal from the Lieutenant-Governorship, the white inhabi- tants of what was properly called the "Province" were of English blood, or practically had become Eng- lishmen, or were in the process of being Anglicized.
The keeping separate of the nations which were in- troduced into Pennsylvania, and there put under a common government, depended upon language and re- ligion and the number of intermarriages. Where the circle of persons of common race and religion was not too small, the young members, and older ones who had lost their life partners, were likely to mate within it, and seldom did a marriage allying the circles happen until a third generation had grown up. In the matter of language, on the contrary, there was by 1709 unity among the children of those who had come to the shores of the Delaware. As almost always the minority must learn to talk to the majority of an intermingled popu- lation, so, until the Germans came into almost exclu- sive possession of a large portion of the Province, and then except in that portion, it was not practicable for men dwelling in the civilized part of Pennsylvania to refuse to speak English. To be sure, with the earlier Germans, who settled in the midst of people from the British Isles, while the active and rising generations were perforce learning English, the mother tongue long continued to be the language of the fireside, the pulpit, and the bookshelf, except that on the bookshelf Latin and Netherlandish might be found. From before the year 1700, devotional and controversial books in German were printed in Pennsylvania.
Races are very frequently kept distinct by peculiar-
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ity in religion. When, however, certain opinions and practices are not spread coextensively with the whole race, they tend to separate those connected by blood and language, and to tie them respectively to strangers adopting such opinions and practices. The drawing together of the non-Quaker English and the Swedes has been spoken of. The emigrants to Pennsylvania other than Swedish did not come from those parts of Europe where the Christians were all of one way of worshipping. Before the Nineteenth Century, nobody settled in Pennsylvania or Delaware from the countries of the Greek Church; and before the American Revo- lution, nobody but Jews-or a converted Jew, Isaac Miranda,-came from Italy, Spain, or Portugal, and scarcely a Roman Catholic from France or Austria. Of the two Lutheran nations outside of Germany, Den- mark with Norway furnished no colonists during Eng- lish rule, and Sweden sent scarcely anyone to join her sons and grandsons, from the final capture of her fort on the Delaware until the advent, in our own day, of all European races to our shores. The few French Prot- estants mentioned in the chapter on the People had lived in England, and probably felt drawn to any Protestants who baptized infants. Peter Bezellon, al- though once called a Roman Catholic, married into a British family, and is buried in the Protestant Epis- copal graveyard of St. John's, Pequea. In the days of the Penns, the emigrants to Pennsylvania and Dela- ware not from the British Isles, or from English colo- nies, were of the peoples much divided by religion, even in small districts, viz : the Germans, the Swiss, and the Netherlanders.
When the different states of the Roman Empire, as Germany still called herself, were authorized to estab- lish their own religion respectively, the Evangelical, or, as it was called, Lutheran, expressed in the Augsburg Confession, became the form of Christianity in Saxony
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and other regions and some cities, ecclesiastical affairs being placed in the charge of a local Consistory, nomi- nated by the civil ruler. Notwithstanding the advance of many Protestants to greater changes than Luther had made, and the reaction promoted in favor of Roman Catholicism, the majority of the inhabitants of Saxony and certain of the other places long continued to desig- nate themselves as of the Confessio Augustana in its original or unaltered (sometimes spoken of as "un- alterable") form. These gave their support to a the- ology further elaborated and crystallized by the quite general adoption of the Articles of Smalkald, the Apology for the Confession, Luther's Shorter and Longer Catechisms, and the Form of Concord as "sym- bolical books," i.e. those expressing the creed. The toleration coming after the religious wars, while ar- ranging for the Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Calvinists to dwell side by side, did not take away churches, colleges, or plurality in numbers from the religion of the State, or of the local ruler. On the other hand, Lutheran faith and worship spread in some places where it did not have the favor of the prince, or of the majority.
Under the leadership of the Rev. Philip Jacob Spener, who became Pastor at Frankfurt on the Main in 1666, and started "colleges of piety," or Bible classes, in that city, and who became Court Preacher at Dresden in 1686, there was a movement among the Lutherans in Saxony and elsewhere to develop more religious feeling in the heart than was appealed to by the perfunctory or doctrinal preaching into which the ministers of the State Church had lapsed. The name "Pietists" was given to those who participated in this movement. They very closely resembled, if they did not largely inspire, the Methodists, who arose later in the Church of England. We should distinguish the Pietists, even those who went further than Spener,
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from the various kinds of religious persons who could not be classed as Lutherans, yet with whom the Pietists had so much in common that the name is often ex- tended to such. Sudden conversion, which the Pietists looked for, was often manifested physically in the way which, according to some, caused the early Chil- dren of the Light to be called Quakers or Tremblers, and which was similar to the demonstrations of various religious enthusiasts. The initial criticism of digni- taries, the private meetings, the lessening of regard for accepted theology, and the encouragement of the laity to teach themselves, caused something like an alignement with the unauthorized sects, which was made more apparent by the withdrawal from worldly pleas- ures. The aforesaid features and the raising of ex- citement led to opposition by the authorities in some places. Rev. August Herman Franke, a leader at Er- furth, was expelled from that city. However, Fred- erick, Elector of Brandenburg, afterwards the first King of Prussia, gave Spener a pastorate in Berlin, and founded, with the aid of the Pietists, the Univer- sity of Halle. There, Franke, after becoming one of the professors, founded an orphanage, and, later, a divinity school, in connection with it, for training mis- sionaries for foreign lands. Although the Lutheran body was split into two parties, the Pietists strictly so called never left it, but, in fact, for some time changed its attitude.
During the period which this history covers, the National Church, i.e. the predominant religious organi- zation, in the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, in a large part of Germany, and in Holland looked back to Zwingli as prophet or reformer, had rather bitter mem- ories of Luther, followed the theological and ecclesias- tical system of Calvin, expressed itself in the Heidel- berg Catechism and Confession, and named itself Re- formed. Among the articles of religion established by
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national authority, the Canons of the Synod convened at Dort, or Dordrecht, by the Estates General in 1618, bound the Dutch of New York and Pennsylvania, and all who took their theology from them.
There were too few adherents of the ecclesiastical establishment of any part of Germany among the emi- grants to Penn's dominions before his death to set up a branch; and there were not enough Lutherans or Cal- vinists from the entire region south of the Baltic, North Sea, and English Channel to make up a Lutheran or Reformed body apart from their fellow believers from north of those waters. The Germans who came, were of the unauthorized or scarcely tolerated sects which will be mentioned further on; and it was some time before the members of any one sect became sufficiently numerous to hold themselves aloof from other people: while the differences between the sects neutralized any national feeling between those separated by religion who were natives of the same region. During a longer or shorter period, conformist and dissenter respec- tively sought in the new country the worship and teach- ing most resembling what they had left at home, if they were not content, temporarily at least, to attend what was nearest geographically, which, in the rural parts, was usually the Quaker Meeting. When the Swedish Church was no longer the only refuge for those avoiding the Quakers and the Anabaptists, it continued to be the proper fold for all Lutherans, its clergy being familiar with the various languages: on the other hand, all Calvinistic, non-liturgical pædobap- tists would be suited with the ministrations of English speaking divines calling themselves Presbyterians, whose religious services differed from those of the German and Dutch Reformed practically in language alone.
The first Germans, as far as we know, who settled in Pennsylvania after Penn acquired title, were Fran-
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cis Daniel Pastorius from Frankfurt, a native of Somerhausen, and his four servants, who arrived in Philadelphia on August 20, 1683. He came as the agent of a number of German purchasers from Penn called the Frankfurt Land Company, who at first bought 14,000 acres, and afterwards 9000 more. Thir- teen men, all apparently from Crefeld, with their fam- ilies, making thirty-three souls, arrived a few weeks after Pastorius, and, with him and his household, were the first settlers of Germantown, laid out to include 2675 acres of the Frankfurt Company's purchase and 2675 acres of the purchase by certain persons living at Crefeld. Most of these actual settlers at Germantown had been Mennonites, possibly some had declared them- selves Quakers, but by 1692 nearly all were embraced in the Society of Friends. It was from the Meeting in Germantown on 2mo. 18, 1688, and by writing signed by Gerret Hendericks, Derick op de Graeff, Pastorius, and Abraham op den Graef, that there was issued the first expostulation by a Quaker assemblage against negro slavery. The communication was passed on, through the Monthly Meeting held at Dublin, in Philadelphia County, and the Quarterly Meeting held in the town of Philadelphia, to the Yearly Meeting at Burlington, the intermediate bodies avoiding the question. The Yearly Meeting said that it was not proper to give a positive judgment. It is noticeable that Pastorius, member of Quaker Meeting, and furthermore opposed to George Keith, speaks in a letter of June 1, 1693, of the name "given in holy baptism" to an infant son of Pastorius (Sachse's German Sectarians, p. 197) : evi- dently Pastorius was not a thorough neglecter of the sacraments, nor even a Mennonite as to infant baptism.
It was not always either a desire to better one's self in this world, or expulsion from home for religious beliefs, that took persons to the Sylvania of Penn. There were a number of pious men and women, able
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to live in some European town, who came from a yearn- ing for a wilderness, or from missionary zeal, or from a combination of both feelings. In Julius F. Sachse's works The German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania and The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, much in- formation can be found as to the religious history of the Province, besides details as to certain colonists from the central parts of Europe who came on the heels of the settlers of Germantown, but independently of them. The first of these books is mainly devoted to the first Lutherans known to have come in a body to Pennsylvania after the cessation of the Swedish colo- nization, viz: certain Pietists who had been captivated by mysticism, and were looking for a near Millenium, and who, as a community, or "chapter of perfection," as they called it, came in 1694 to the hillside northwest of the Wissahickon near the Schuylkill (now in the 21st Ward of Philadelphia), and there lived in huts as anchorites. All were Germans except Kelpius, Mag- ister of the chapter, who was a Transylvanian by birth, but a graduate of Altdorf. Benjamin Furly of Rotterdam and other leading Quakers aided the emi- gration. Kelpius remained friendly to the Lloydians, when he heard of the Keithian controversy, but Köster, the Vice Magister, took an active part with the Keith- ians, and started, and for a while kept together, in Plymouth Township, at a place which he called Irenia, a rival company called the True Church of Philadel- phia, or Brotherly Love. Although unordained, he preached and even administered the communion to English-speaking people, as well as Germans. Ed- wards's Materials towards a History of the Baptists is wrong in saying that Köster was immersed by Rutter. Sachse and also Schmauk, in his History here- inafter mentioned, quote an account of Köster in the Geschichte Jerztlebender Gelehrten by his acquaint- ance, Rev. Ernst Ludwig Rathlef. Köster returned to
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Europe, leaving Pennsylvania in December, 1699, and died in the Lutheran fold. Daniel Falckner, another member of the chapter of perfection, had been a licen- tiate at Erfurth before his arrival, and was probably ordained a Pastor for the American Germans, while making a visit to Europe. Returning, he assisted the Swedish ministers, and, after marrying, and so with- drawing from the community, took charge of Lutheran churches in New Jersey and New York. His brother Justus Falckner's ordination by the Swedish Lutheran clergymen on the Delaware is mentioned in the chapter on the People. Deaths, removals, and marriages dis- solved the Pietistic community aforesaid.
The Frankfurt Company, whose estates Daniel Falckner managed, received 22,377 acres at Mana- tawny covering part of the present township of Potts- grove, all of New Hanover, and part of other townships of Montgomery County. These thirty-five square miles, instead of, as Eshleman suggests, the Nottingham dis- trict, were the "New German Tract," which, accord- ing to Logan's letter of 1702, were asserted by the Indians not to have been purchased from them. The dispute seems to have been adjusted shortly after- wards, or to have lain dormant until settled by the re- lease made by the Delawares in 1718. Most of Fred- erick Township was long known as Falkner's Swamp.
What German Lutherans Falckner or his successor in the management, John Henry Sprogell, induced to settle in the Manatawny region, seem to have united in worship with the neighbouring Swedes, and the Lutheran Congregation of Falkner's Swamp, for which land was given in 1719, and for which the second house of worship was erected about 1721, was alternately served by German and Swedish preachers. According to Rev. Theodore Emanuel Schmauk's History of the Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania 1638 to 1820, Rev. Gerhard Henkel, ordained in Germany in February,
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1692, came to Pennsylvania in 1717, and settled at Falkner's Swamp, and preached there for a number of years off and on. His nuncupative will was pro- bated in 1728, when, by mistake of his Christian name, he was spoken of as "Jacob Henkel" of the Township of New Hanover, Phila. Co., "clerk." The testator had named among his children a son Gerhard Anthony Henkel, whom the record makes "Gerrard." Rev. Samuel Hesselius of Weccacoe seems to have had charge from March, 1720, to October, 1723. The attend- ance before long was wholly German.
The other great division of Continental Protestant- ism, the Reformed, which had alternated in ascendancy on the Delaware with Swedish Lutheranism, and had given way to the latter after the final surrender to the English, was reintroduced by persons coming from New York after the grant to Penn, and rather tended to draw away German Reformed and some of the other Germans from much association with those who held adverse doctrine. Without seeking the Lower Coun- ties, to be alongside of the preceding Dutch settlers or their children, colonists of Dutch race came to Bucks County, and bought land from Penn's grantees. Per- sons of such names as Van Dyck, Van Horn, Van der Grift, and Van Sandt settled near the Neshaminy, Dirck Croesen from Staten Island owning a tract in Southampton Township, Bucks Co., as early as 1684. (See Publications of Genealog. Soc. of Penn., Vol. V, p. 24.) For marriage ceremony, and probably for communion, some of these disciples of the Synod of Dort resorted to Rev. Jedidiah Andrews of Philadel- phia, until Rev. Paulus Van Vlecq, a native of Hol- land, who had been schoolmaster at Kinderhook, New York, came to minister to this outlying district. The ministers at New York in 1709, for want of directions from Amsterdam to make any ordinations, had refused to ordain him; so it appears that it was independently
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of the Reformed Dutch authorities that he received such ordination as was recognized by the Presbyterians. On May 20, 1710, he was "established pastor of the Christian church at Shamminie (Neshaminy) Ben- salem and Jermantown (Germantown)," making elders and deacons for "Sammeny" and Bensalem the next day. On the 28th and 29th of the same month, he baptized at Wytmess (Whitemarsh) and Schepack (Skippack) sixteen children of families, at one time Mennonite, which had joined the movement to German- town, and, if Dutch, were not New York Dutch. On June 4, a church was established at Wytmess, with elders and deacons. In September, Van Vlecq was ad- mitted, after some debate, to the Presbytery of Phila- delphia. Leonard Van De Grift, one of his elders at Sammeny, was admitted as an elder. During the next year, Van Vlecq was married by Rev. Jedidiah Andrews to Jannetye Van Dyck. On some evidence that, at the time of such marriage, a former wife was living, and on Van Vlecq's fame for drunkenness, untruthfulness, &ct., the Presbytery, in 1712, wrote to "the Dutch people" not to countenance him, but to expect supplies from the Presbytery. The records of the congregation cease for a number of years. He, about 1715, left the country.
Ultimately, Reformed Dutch Churches were gathered out of the people whose religious services this member of the Presbytery had led, although the majority in some localities were satisfied to remain Presbyterians.
The Walloons and many of the Swiss were of French race. The Protestants leaving France because of the revocation of the edict of Nantes were, as a rule, Cal- vinists, and found the established religion of Holland, of certain cantons of Switzerland, and of certain parts of Germany to their liking. It was therefore to be expected that any Protestant of French name coming to Pennsylvania, unless his family had been for some
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time settled in England, would be of the Reformed denomination: and particularly so, if, like the Le Fevers and De Turcks, he had made some stay in New York. The first settlers of Oley (now in Berks County), however, did not start any church of their own. John Le Dee and others, having leave given to them in the Fall of 1709 to look out for lands beyond Perquicomink (Perkiomen Creek), chose Oley, and settled there with- out a survey. By further leave, said John Le Dee and Isaac De Turck and John Frederickfields, all Ger- mans, procured a surveyor to lay out to Le Dee 300 acres, to De Turck 300, and to Frederickfields 500. A formal warrant on which such survey could be returned, was signed on 4mo. 11, 1712. John Bartolet appears among other persons of French name owning land at Oley later. All Frenchmen in the part of Pennsyl- vania controlled by Germans became included in the designation "Pennsylvania Dutch."
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