History of Lehigh county, Pennsylvania and a genealogical and biographical record of its families, Vol. I, Part 10

Author: Roberts, Charles Rhoads; Stoudt, John Baer, 1878- joint comp; Krick, Thomas H., 1868- joint comp; Dietrich, William Joseph, 1875- joint comp; Lehigh County Historical Society
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Allentown, Pa. : Lehigh Valley Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1158

USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > History of Lehigh county, Pennsylvania and a genealogical and biographical record of its families, Vol. I > Part 10

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"Let men of God in courts and churches watch, O'er such as do a toleration hatch, Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice, To poison all with heresy and vice. If men be left and otherwise combine, My epitaph's I die no libertine."

Had they sought refuge in the Carolinas among the more genial cavaliers, the English gentry of the South, they might have been re- ceived as hewers of wood and drawers of water, but as freemen, never. The proprietors had almost absolute authority. Eight men were to be

HISTORY OF LEHIGH COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

sovereigns, no more and no less. The interest of the proprietors, "a government most agreeable to monarchy," and the dread of a "numerous aris- tocracy" were the inspiring principles. Leetmen, or tenants renting a few acres on large estates, possessed no political franchises, and, what was still worse, the law prescribed "all children of leetmen shall be leetmen, and so to all genera- tions." These contrasts, so strikingly presented by Diefenderfer in "The Palatine and Quaker as Commonwealth Builders," are at least a grain of comfort when the Pennsylvanian is inclined to grieve over the fact that he was not rocked in a New England cradle, or did not romp as a child in a Virginia mansion.

THE CHARACTER AND RESOURCES OF THE GER- MAN PIONEERS

What did they bring? The next point for consideration is the character of the German pioneers, or what they brought into the Quaker province. Colonies do not represent actualities so much as possibilities. States and nations lie dormant in early settlers. They can be devel- oped only by long historic struggles. We ideal- ize the band of Pilgrims, but a prophet would hardly have foreseen, in the stern realities of their first winter and in the travail of the first generation, the future glory of New England. One of the members of the first colony on the James river described it as composed of poor gen- tlemen, tradesmen, libertines, and such like. Captain Smith said of them: "A hundred good workmen were better than a thousand such gal- lants." Probably with these men in view, Bacon declared it " a shameful and unblessed thing," to settle a colony with "the scum of the people." It is not our purpose to make a comparison of the relative worth of the early colonists, but to em- phasize a principle illustrated by all. Therefore we may cite the statement of Dr. Rush concern- ing the Germans in Pennsylvania: "The princi- pal part of them were farmers, but there were many mechanics, who brought with them a knowledge of those arts which are necessary and useful in all countries. These mechanics were chiefly weavers, tailors, tanners, shoemakers, combmakers, smiths of all kinds, butchers, paper- makers, watchmakers, sugarbakers." Probably no better material ever crossed the Atlantic to break the virgin soil, to build hamlets, to begin commerce, and to practice religious and social virtues than these German pioneers.

Yet behind and in all of the colonies, North- ern, Middle and Southern, there was more than the eye could see and statistics could enumerate. They were the representatives of distinct na-

tionalities, cutting from a mother vine laid in new ground to bear in time their own rich clus- ters of grape. They came with little property, but they had great ideals. Earlier or later in our history the blood of their sires would have to tell. Bancroft says of the American fathers in general: "That the wildest theories of the hu- man reason were reduced to practice by a com- munity so humble that no statesman condescended to notice it, and a legislation without precedent was produced off-hand by the instincts of the people." Wordsworth, always keen to see great- ness in littleness, the eternal in the temporal, en- shrined this idea in verse, saying:

"A few strong instincts and a few plain rules Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought More for mankind at this unhappy day, Than all the pride of intellect and thought."

It may be well to define the period of the coming of the colonial Germans, their number and their place or habitation. Early German im- migration was confined to the century between 1683 and 1783. After the Revolution began the Germans ceased to come, and in the last decade of the century the increase from abroad was re- duced to a minimum. From 1783 to 1789 only 1,893 persons, about 315 per year, arrived. Out of 2,176, landed at the Philadelphia port in 1789, only 114 were Germans. Woodrow Wilson esti- mates that there were not more than 400,000 German immigrants in the increase of the nine million inhabitants in the United States from 1790 to 1830. According to these figures neither America nor Pennsylvania drew largely on the German nation for its citizenship in the first gen- eration of the Republic.

Historians differ widely respecting the number of Germans in Pennsylvania at different stages of the eighteenth century. So far as figures are concerned we can do no better than to accept the careful estimates of Diefenderfer. He con- cludes that in 1727 there were about 15,000 Ger- mans in the province; in 1750, 47,000, and in 1776, 90,000. If Dr. Franklin was not exact in his figures, he was probably correct in the propor- tion which he assigned to the Germans.' In 1776 he claimed that there were 160,000 colonists, of whom one-third were Germans, one-third Quak- ers, and the rest of other nationalities.

In the study of a people's influence, so far as numbers are concerned, the relative proportion is of more value than exact figures. There is a remarkable unanimity in the conclusion of the authorities that the proportion of Germans was one-third of the whole number.

The habitations of the German pioneers were determined largely by their occupations. They

THE GERMAN PIONEERS.

were in the main farmers and mechanics. Differ- ing in language from the Quakers, they built up communities of their kind in fertile valleys along the banks of the Perkiomen, Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill, Conestoga and Susquehanna. In course of time they became the virtual possessors of the now prosperous counties of Bucks, Mont- gomery, Lancaster, York, Lebanon, Berks, Le- high, and Northampton. If one were to draw three semi-circles with Philadelphia as center, the Quakers resided in the space of the shortest radius, the Germans in the belt beyond, and the Scotch-Irish in the frontiers. In each of these districts, however, there were small groups of the other classes.

We may group them also according to their religious predilections. The Mennonites settled first in Germantown and spread over the con- tiguous territory, now Montgomery county. Later another group of this faith became the pioneers in Lancaster county, when a little colony of eight families built homes on the Pequea creek. The Tunkers, arriving in 1719, scattered among the Germans along the Schuylkill, in Falkner's Swamp, Oley and Lancaster. Some of them came under the influence of Conrad Beissel, who was the leader of the cloister at Ephrata. The Schwenkfelders, in 1735, settled along the Perk- iomen in Montgomery county, where their de- scendants still reside. The Lutherans and Re- formed occupied the counties named above, and became the most aggressive of the German ele- ment. The Moravians, coming by way of Georgia, located at Nazareth, Bethlehem, Emaus and Lititz. The Solitaries of Ephrata and the Woman in the Wilderness in the region of the Wissahickon were only temporary religious groups which passed away with the colonial period.

When we come to take an estimate of the con- tributions of the Germans to the Commonwealth, we shall have to consider their means and their men; these together were the capital which they brought abroad. A citizen of a state becomes val- uable to it by what he adds to the wealth of the community, for his obedience to law, for his fi- delity to family, for his educational zeal and his religious practices. In the light of these contri- butions a people's worth to a nation must be de- termined.

A general survey of a century's immigration shows a diversified condition among the immi- grants both in regard to material resources and intellectual and moral conditions. Considering the causes for their departure from the homeland, we may safely presume that they came without wealth and without a high degree of social cul- ture. As a rule they were poor peasants or hum-

ble burghers. Yet there were degrees of poverty among them. The colonists who came from 1683 to 1717 were well-to-do. They had the means to pay their passage down the Rhine and across the Atlantic. They had money left to buy lands and to pay for them in part or altogether. Loeher says: "Prior to 1727 most of the Ger- mans commigrated and were persons of means." Many of the Palatines, however, were so poor that they consumed their scant means in the jour- ney across the ocean. Numbers of them, who had converted their property into money, were robbed on ship board by the ship owners, captains, and Newlanders. The only resort of such unfortu- nates upon their arrival at Philadelphia was to sell themselves and their children into servitude to pay their passage money .. Another class, who had not enough money to leave their homes and to purchase a passage on the vessels, sold themselves before they embarked as redemptioners for a cer- tain number of years to the ship owners, who con- ducted a traffic of souls between the Old World and the New. The redemptioners came in large numbers from 1728 to 1751. They naturally were poor and for years were at the mercy of their masters. "Yet," says Gordon, "from this class have sprung some of the most reputable and wealthy inhabitants of the province."

We need not sing the praises of the German farmer and mechanic. Their pre-eminence was recognized in colonial times and their fame is world-wide now. In 1774 Governor Thomas wrote to England of the Germans: "They have by their industry been the principal instruments of raising the State to its present flourishing con- dition, beyond any of his Majesty's colonies in North America." The exports from the colony, in 1751, exceeded one million dollars, due largely to the thrift of the Germans. Wherever they located in the rural districts they rapidly sup- planted the farmers of other nationalities, notably the Scotch-Irish. Proud thus contrasts these two races : "The Germans seem more adapted to agriculture and improvement of a wilderness, and the Irish for trade. The Germans soon get es- tates in the country, where industry and economy are the chief requisites to procure them." If "agriculture may be regarded as the breasts from which the State derives its supports and nourish- ment," the German farmer will always hold a high place in the development and support of our Commonwealth.

When men cultivate the soil they cultivate also the domestic virtues. These of course belong to all nations, yet the German from time imme- morial has attracted special attention of annalist and eulogist in regard to his home life. Tacitus, in his De Moribus Germanorum, says: "The

HISTORY OF LEHIGH COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

matrimonial bond is strict and severe among them; nor is there anything in their manners more commendable than this." The Roman historian was naturally impressed by the fact, which he re- cords, that "every mother suckles her own chil- dren and does not deliver them into the hands of nurses." He adds, further on, that "hospitality and convivial pleasures are nowhere so liberally enjoyed." The traveler and casual observer in Germany will at once be impressed with its do- mestic simplicity and yet real culture. The un- translatable word Gemuthlichkeit conveys the spirit of their social life. The American traveler, who can in any measure understand the German language, will agree with Goldsmith, who said: "The most liberal hospitality and disinterested- ness mark the character of the Germans in Eu- rope." These virtues were not only prominent in colonial pioneers but may be traced in our gen- eration. Pennsylvania-German hospitality has its crudities and informalities which may grate upon the urbane guest, but it is the outflow of a generous and deeply social nature. If I should seek for a single passage which describes the subtle and indefinable contributions of the Ger- man to the growth of our State and at the same time throws light on the life in his home, it is the one in which Dr. Rush grows most eloquent : "The favorable influence of agriculture, as con- ducted by the Germans in extending human hap- piness, is manifested by the joy they express upon the birth of a child. No dread of poverty, nor distrust of Providence from an increasing family depresses the spirits of these industrious and fru- gal people ..... Happy state of human society ! What blessings can civilization confer that can atone for the extinction of the ancient and patri- archal pleasure of raising up a numerous and healthy family of children, to labor for their parents, for themselves, and for their country, and finally to partake of the knowledge and hap- piness which are annexed to existence! The joy of parents upon the birth of a child is the grate- ful echo of creating goodness. May the moun- tains of Pennsylvania be forever vocal with songs of joy upon these occasions! They will be the infallible signs of innocence, industry, wealth, and happiness in the State."

One of the most serious charges brought against the German pioneers was their ignorance and want of interest in education. A citation of views expressed by our historians will show a wide difference of opinions. Mrs. Lamb writes : "These earlier German settlers were mostly hewers of wood and drawers of water, differing materially from the class of Germans who have since come among us, and bearing about the same relation to the English, Dutch, and French set-

tlers of their time as the Chinese of to-day bear to the American population on the Pacific coast." Parkman calls them "dull and ignorant boors, which character their descendants for the most part retain."

Historians equally as great have taken di- rectly opposite positions. Macaulay calls the same people "honest, laborious men, who have once been thriving burghers of Manheim and Heidelberg, or who had cultivated the vine on the banks of the Neckar and the Rhine. Their ingenuity and their diligence could not fail to en- rich any land which should afford them asylum." These diverse conclusions are due to several rea- sons. It was not prejudice in the historians, but want of knowledge of the conditions which led them to make such unwarranted statements. It is only latterly that men of Pennsylvania have written up their own history and that the various elements in the Commonwealth have received their due.

It may be freely admitted that the culture and education of the German colonists were not of a high order; but of what colonists may this not be said? The missionaries who came from Ger- many bore testimony to the ignorance and boor- ishness of many of the people. Yet, on the other hand, there are undeniable facts which show that there was a proportion of German citizens of more than average culture and at times of great learning.

The members of the sects were an eccentric people, but far from ignorant. The churchmen would regard them as heretics and schismatics; the English citizens, as ignorant fanatics. Pas- torius was a learned man. Although he once lived in a dug-out, he enjoyed the society of Thomas Lloyd, the president of the Provincial Council, and died, having been a school teacher, a land agent and a member of the Provincial Assembly. William Rittenhouse was the builder of the first paper mill and the progenitor of David Rittenhouse, the self-taught genius, sur- veyor, philosopher, astronomer and patriot. Even Kelpius had been a favorite student of Dr. Fab- ricius at the University of Altdorf. From his lit- tle cave on the banks of the Wissahickon he kept up an extensive correspondence with kindred spirits in Europe and America. He received a delegation from the Seventh-day Baptists of New England, who consulted him on religious ques- tions. Koester, also of this community, composed the first Latin work written in Pennsylvania. Under Conrad Beissel a printing press was estab- lished at Ephrata in 1745, and in the fity years which followed one hundred and fifty publica- tions were printed and mostly written in that forest cloister. The largest book printed in

THE GERMAN PIONEERS.

America, up to that time, with 1,512 pages, en- titled the Martyrer Spiegel, came from Ephrata. Christopher Dock was one of the first school teachers, whose little treatise on pedagogy has been honored by a translation by Governor Pen- nypacker. From Saur's press came the first Ger- man newspaper in America, called the Ge- schichts Schreiber. It had 4,000 subscribers scattered throughout Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas. In 1743, he pub- lished a German Bible, the first Bible printed in any European language in North America. Father and son issued 340 different publications probably consisting of half a million copies.

Whatever else we may say of the quaint and quiet secretaries that found an asylum in America, we cannot charge them with illiteracy. But they were not in sympathy with the so-called higher education nor with the English charity schools.

The German educational spirit was mainly found in the Lutherans, Reformed, and Mora- vians, though among the members of these Churches there were many who had grown in- different to culture in their separation from the fatherland and in their struggle with the wilder- ness and adverse elements of a new world. There may have been enough ignorance and boor- ishness to give ground for Franklin's now famous letter in 1753, in which he said: "Those who came hither are generally the most stupid of their nation .. ..... Their clergy have little influ- ence on the people, who seem to take pleasure in abusing and discharging the minister on every trivial occasion." Yet, in the same letter, almost in the very next sentence, the learned philosopher contradicts himself and proves that his charge of ignorance must have been too sweeping. "They import many books from Germany," he con- tinues, "and of the six printing houses in the province, two are entirely German, two half Ger- man, half English, and but two are entirely Eng- lish." Both Schlatter and Muhlenberg were dis- tressed at the illiteracy of their people. The former felt constrained to report the untoward conditions in Holland and Germany and became the indirect cause for the English charity schools. The latter wrote in his diary in 1743: "It seems to me as if the time had come for God to visit us here in Pennsylvania with special favor. Indeed it is high time. If affairs had continued a few years longer as they have been, our poor Lu- theran people would have wandered off com- pletely into heathenism ....... So sad, so degraded is the condition of the poor Lutheran people, that you could hardly bewail it enough with tears."

In spite of these signs of intellectual decay the traditions and ideals of the church people were

favorable to education. After the erection of a cabin in the wilderness they built a church and a school-house. They brought with them their Bibles, catechisms, hymn-books, and devotional literature. Many of the immigrants were accom- panied by preachers and teachers who began their ministry upon their arrival. Probably at no time since was the education of the ministers of the German Churches in Pennsylvania of a higher grade than during the colonial period. Muhlen- berg, Schlatter, and Zinzendorf were university men and were ardent supporters of higher educa- tion. In the Reformed Coetus, from 1747 to 1793, there were sixty-four ministers; of these, twenty-nine were educated in Pennsylvania, and thirty-five in the universities of Germany and Switzerland. Dr. Weiser says that between 1745 and 1770, in the space of twenty-five years, no less than fifty graduates of German universities labored in the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. The students of Harvard University were aston- ished at their fluency in foreign tongues. Some of them were called to chairs of ancient lan- guages. A Latin letter from the Reformed clergy to Governor Morris, in 1754, not only is proof of their ability to use the language of scholarship, but of their culture and dignity in addressing an officer of the State.

The founding of Franklin College in Lan- caster, 1787, bears testimony to the educational enthusiasm of Drs. Weyberg and Hendel of the Reformed Church, Drs. Helmuth and Muhlen- berg of the Lutheran Church. The provision that a certain number of trustees were to be chosen "from any other society of Christians" besides that of the Lutheran and Reformed, is proof that the institution was to serve the German element in general. The colleges and seminaries which have since been built by the German Churches in the Eastern and Western parts of the State are an additional evidence of the regard which the truly representative Germans held higher learn- ing. The Moravians became pioneers of educa- tion for young women in this country. Nazareth Hall, the Moravian Seminary for ladies, and Lin- den Hall count among their alumni members of the most prominent families of New England and the South.

In every department of knowledge German scholars in our colony became noted. Dr. Rush wrote about the faculty of Franklin College in 1787: "A cluster of more learned or better- qualified masters I believe have not met in any university." Muhlenberg was a botanist of na- tional reputation. Melsheimer was called the father of American entomology. Reichenbach was a distinguished author. Casper Wistar was

HISTORY OF LEHIGH COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

a celebrated physician, adjunct professor in sur- gery and author of a system of anatomy in two volumes. The mention of these names will sug- gest many other men of prominence to whom space will not permit us to allude. Enough has been said, however, to illustrate the attitude of the German pioneer toward education, and to show the intellectual attainments of their repre- sentative men. Then already, not to speak of the century which followed, they contributed a very commendable portion to the literary, scientific, theological, and pedagogical life of the future Commonwealth.

In civil and political affairs the Germans could not at first play an aggressive part. They suf- fered the disadvantage of being foreigners who were acquainted with neither the customs nor the language of the proprietors and inhabitants of the province. Their rapidly increasing num- bers aroused the jealousy and enmity of the English settlers. In a message to the General Assembly Governor Thomas, in 1741, writes: "I am not insensible that some look with jealous eyes upon the yearly concourse of Germans to this province." In the letter (1753) already re- ferred to, Franklin says: "They behave, how- ever, submissively enough at present to the civil government, which I wish they may continue to do, for I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling with our elections; but now they come in droves and carry all before them, except in one or two counties .. .... In short, unless the stream of importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon out-number us, that all the ad- vantage we will have, will, in my opinion, be not able to preserve our language and even our gov- ernment will become precarious." The anti-for- eign feeling manifested itself very early, not so much in the cry "America for Americans," as in the cry "America for Englishmen." It was due to economic and political fears; German labor was crowding English labor, and German votes were deciding elections. But, in spite of the act of Assembly imposing a tax of forty shillings on every alien coming into the province, in spite of the law's delays in granting the privileges of citi- zenship, the German pioneer continued to come and build his home in the forests of Penn.

Having been naturalized they proved them- selves worthy of their calling. Dr. Rush says: "As members of the civil government the Ger- mans are peaceable and exact in the payment of their taxes. Since they have participated in the power of the State many of them have become sensible and enlightened in the science of legisla- tion. Pennsylvania has had the Speaker's chair

of her Assembly and the Vice-President's office filled with dignity by gentlemen of German fami- lies. The same gentlemen have since been ad- vanced to seats in the House of Representatives under the Constitution of the United States. In the great controversy about national government a large majority of the Germans in Pennsylvania decided in favor of its adoption, notwithstanding the most popular arts were used to prejudice them against it." In the pre-Revolutionary period, however, the Germans were more influential by their loyal performance of the duties of citizen- ship than by their direct part in the Provincial Assemblies. The governing bodies were largely composed of English-speaking members. While the sectarian influence was dominant among the Germans, they naturally affiliated with the Quakers in politics as well as in religion. But the church people found men of their own type in the Scotch-Irish, both of whom were Calvinists by profession. These two elements united in politics and controlled the colony during the Revolution and in the organization of a State government. In the Constitutional Convention of 1789-90 the German element was in the ma- jority. They voted unanimously to make the Legislature a Senate and a House, and to have the Governor elected by the people and not by the Assembly and Supreme Council, as under the Constitution of 1776. In the line of distin- guished Governors from Snyder to Pennypacker, we count nine of German blood. For more than forty years the executive authority of the Key- stone State was vested in sons of German an- cestors.

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History of Lehigh county, Pennsylvania and a genealogical and biographical record of its families, Vol. I, Part 10

Author: Roberts, Charles Rhoads; Stoudt, John Baer, 1878- joint comp; Krick, Thomas H., 1868- joint comp; Dietrich, William Joseph, 1875- joint comp; Lehigh County Historical Society Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Allentown, Pa. : Lehigh Valley Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1158

Author: Roberts, Charles Rhoads; Stoudt, John Baer, 1878- joint comp; Krick, Thomas H., 1868- joint comp; Dietrich, William Joseph, 1875- joint comp; Lehigh County Historical Society
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Allentown, Pa. : Lehigh Valley Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1158