History of York County, Pennsylvania : from the earliest period to the present time, divided into general, special, township and borough histories, with a biographical department appended, Part 46

Author: Gibson, John, Editor
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: F.A. Battey Publishing Co., Chicago
Number of Pages: 1104

USA > Pennsylvania > York County > History of York County, Pennsylvania : from the earliest period to the present time, divided into general, special, township and borough histories, with a biographical department appended > Part 46

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Meadow.' Frederick and Peter Myers, John Schley and Conrad Smith are also named as having come in about this time and as having added, built and improved the town. * * *

"We find Melchior Keener, fresh from Pennsylvania, in 1761, building a wharf aud warehouse as well as dwelling. These enter- prising Germans were at work in extending the city long before the Purviauces, Patter- sons, Lawsons, Spears, McLures, Calhouns and other Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, to whom the city owes so much of its prosperity, had come over. Keener and Hartz were among the managers for the lottery in 1763 to build a new market house; Steiger in 1756 was Jones' Falls commissioner; Isaac Griest, Vanbibber, Keener and Myers, were found tak- ing up lots along the water-front and improv. ing them, and in 1769, when the first fire com- pany, the old Mechanical, was organized, Deaver and Lindenberger are among the cor- porators. It is Steiger and Yeiser who undertake to change the course of Jones' Falls; it is Dr. Weisenthal who, after long and distinguished services, lays the foundation for the Medico Chirurgical Society and the University of Maryland; it is Jacob Fite who bnilds Congress Hall; it is Leonard Harbaugh and Michael Diffenderfer who cut Calvert Street through, leaving the court house perch- ed on a rock and inaccessible to any but those who require justice and equity or marriage licenses. Of those who subscribed to the cost of this underpinning, we find the largest sum but one to have been given by Engelhardt Yeizer, who gave £125. Henry Speck also contributed, Adam Fonerden, Peter Hoffman, George Presstman and Erasmus Uhler. This was in 1784. This Peter Hoffman was the founder of the house of Peter Hoffman & Sons, and of the honored Hoffman family in Baltimore. He came from Frankfort-on the Main, settled first in Frederick County, came to Baltimore in 1778, and established a flour- ishing dry-goods trade. His store and resi- dence were where Hamilton Easter's now stands. He was a commissioner of Baltimore Town, along with Englehardt Yeiser and George Lindenberger and one of the found. ers of the Calvert Street Spring. once so fash- ionable as an evening resort. George Presstman was the first member of the family of that name, and came from Pennsylvania.

" About this time there was an important accession to our German population of young and enterprising men, like Hoffman, of the mercantile burgher classes, who came direct from Germany, from Hamburg, Bre- men, Frankfort, etc. They were attracted

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by the fact that the German population of Frederick County imported largely of Ger- man goods by way of London, and that Balti- inore was the port through which the Germans of York, Lancaster and the Cumberland Val- ley of Pennsylvania entered their goods. These young men were educated, had some capital, commercial enterprise, spirit and knowledge, and were in a position to extend remarkably our commercial intercourse with the continent. Our people, besides, would not take British goods, and being forbid to manufacture, had the more need of those of Germany. We notice among those now arriving, besides names previously given, those of Garts, Rathel, Schaeffer, Eichel- berger, Hultz, Stenhouse, Gildert, etc. The Presstmans were among the original purchase ers of the lot for the Baptist Church, built in 1773, where the shot tower now stands, and Isaac Griest was one of the commis- sioners appointed by Baltimore Town to spend $11,000 in laying out roads in Balti- more County.

"This was in 1774, on the eve of the Revolution, and we find the well known names of Frick, Diffenderfer, Raborg, Ley- poldt, Schultze, Heide and Schaffer as among Germans who came to us from Europe just as the war broke out. The part which our German fellow-citizens took in that great struggle was manly, patriotic, distinguished. They furnished a great many soldiers, and the Baltimore, Frederick and Lancaster Ger- mans fought face to face with the Hessians on many a bloody field. The majority of the battalions of sharpshooters which Daniel Morgan and Michael Cresap took to Cam- bridge as soon as Bunker Hill was fought, was recruited from among the Germans in Frederick, Connocheague and the Valley of Virginia. Maryland had nearly a full Ger man regiment in service during the whole war and Baltimore always had one company and sometimes two in this regiment. These brave fellows were among the sturdiest and siernest fighters who fought under the ban- ners of Smallwood and Gist.

John Jacob Astor landed in Baltimore from Waldorf in 1783. Gartz & Leypoldt established their sugar refinery in the same year, and John Fritz Amelung brought over a ship-load of glass blowers for his works on the Monocacy. Cruse, Peter Hoffman's nephew, tried to set up a steam flour-mill. David Stoddert, the first secretary of the Navy, set up a ship-yard, at which Abraham Vanbibber launches Indiamen of 600 tons. Thomas Rutter was elected sheriff of Balti more County at the same time that Col.

Howard became governor of the State. In 1789, under Town Commissioners Harbaugh and Diffenderfer among others, the paving of the streets is begun at an expense of £2,799, and in the same year the German churches and societies raised lots of money by lotteries. In the first anti-slavery society of Maryland, founded this year, we find the names of Isaac Griest, Adam Fonerden and James Eichelberger. In 1790 Yeiser, Garts and Sluby are named among the incorpor- ators of the bank of Maryland ; Jacob Hart and John Stricker, incorporators of the Falls turnpike.

In Thompson & Walker's " Baltimore Town and Fell's Point Directory" for 1796 we find, besides the German names given above, others which are still current in the com- munity, such as Alricks, Altwater, Bantz, Bausman, Beck, Eiselin, Horne, Emich, Engle, Fischer, Fowble, Forney, Foss, Getz, Hart- man, Hershberger, Heiner, Heintze, Kaufman, Keilholtz, Kolb, Keyser, Kurtz, Lowderman, Lurman, Lutz, Messersmith, Miltenberger, Baltzer, Munnikhuyseu, Mumma, Riddle- moser, Rinehart, Reinecker, Rutter, Schwartz, Schriver, Seidenstricker, Schryock, Sumwalt, Sourwein, Steever, Steeger, Stump, Stricker, Stouffer, Sultzer, Uhler, Klopper. Ziegler, Zimmerman, Zollicoffer, etc. Henry Stouf- fer's daughter was Robert Garrett's wife and John W. Garrett's mother-a cross of Scotch- Irish Presbyterian upon Pennsylvania Dutch Reformed that is by many considered to yield the sturdiest race in the world. In James Robinson's Directory for 1804 the German names have greatly increased, but we cannot attempt to single them out. Balti more was now a city; it had a population of 30,000; it was incorporated and had a munic- ipal government; it is not possible to cata- logue individuals any longer. We must now confine ourselves to dealing with groups. In the city government of that year we find George Presstman in the second branch of the city council, Henry Stouffer. William Lorman, George P. Keeports, Christopher Raborg, Baltzer Schaeffer, John Schrin and John Mackenheimer, in the first branch; Peter Frick is a city commissioner; Adam Fonerden, a health commissioner; Frederick Sumwalt, a pump superintendent ; John Esender, a sweep master.

"We have treated the sources whence our original German population was derived, and set forth the honorable and important part which it played in the foundation of our be- loved city. It remains now to show that our German citizens have as large a share to-day in developing our industries, maintaining our

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HISTORY OF YORK COUNTY.

manufactures, commerce, credit and civic re- pute and standing, as they had in originally establishing it. The facts are ample for the purpose and they must convince every one who is not a skeptic wilfully and from prepense malice. The population of Baltimore of German descent constitutes our most indus- trious classes; they are productive far beyond their ratio in the aggregate population ; they produce more, consume less, and consequent- ly save more per capita, than the other classes of people. It must follow that they are accumulating capital more rapidly, get- ting rich faster than the other classes. In- dustry and economy are their rules, but they do not spare enterprise, and they put their thrifty hands upon every branch of trade. There is an old German proverb which says: 'Nurnberg's Hand geht durch jedes Land,' but so does the German hand go into every land. and we find it most prosperously employed here in every industry, from Wilkens' hair factory to Knabe's piano works; from Schu- macher's Bremen steamers to Knapp's school. We see it in the intelligent and elaborate network of German charities, in the brilliant German social organizations. We see it in the German signs upon our business houses and the German faces upon our busy streets. The descendants of Germans in Pennsylva- nia are 1,200,000 strong. Within the last forty years 2,000,000 have come into this country, every man of them with four hands. This population is 'a giant asleep.' They are one-third of us and the heaviest third, too. Nearly all the direct immigration to Balti- more of late years, and the larger part of the indirect immigration has been of Germans. For the three months ended December 31, 1877, of 497 immigrants landed in Baltimore 384 were from Germany and Austria, and this is about the normal proportion-four- fifths, and over one per cent. per annum in the aggregate. * * * *

"They come from every part of Germany and Austria, and they are of all trades except those of gentleman, idler and tramp-artists, clergymen, engineers, doctors, teachers, scientists, bakers, blacksmiths. butchers, carpenters, clerks, mariners, masons, painters, shoemakers, tailors, weavers, unskilled labor- ers, etc. When business revives and this country offers again its old chances for a livelihood to all, you must multiply this immigration by five to restore it where it was in 1872; by ten to put it where it prob- ably will be. These people nearly all have trades; nearly all bring a little money with them. They are the most valuable immi- grants that the world affords."

What has been so well said by Mr. Scharf about the enterprise, intelligence, and patriot- ism of the German settlers of Baltimore is equally true of those of York, whence many of them went. Leonard Harbaugh, whom he mentions in connection with the wonderful achievement of "cutting Calvert Street through, leaving the court house perched on a rock" was the seventh son of the elder Yost Herbach, the great grandfather of the late Rev. Henry Harbaugh D. D. as also (on the mother's side, of the author of this sketch. Doctor Harbaugh, in his Annals of the Har- baugh Family, gives a brief account of his granduncle Leonard, furnished by one of the latter's sons, (Benjamin,) then (1853) still living in Baltimore; the substance of which, together with other interesting facts in rela- tion to the Harbaugh family, owing to its intimate connection with the early settlement and history of the county, will probably, not be deemed out of place here.

Yost Harbaugh, the elder, was a Swiss immigrant who first settled in Maxatawny Valley, (now) Berks County, in the year 1736. from whence, about the year 1743, he removed to "Hallam" Township, on Kreutz Creek, this county, where he became the owner of a tract of nearly 200 acres of land near where Kreutz Creek Church now stands. The land was originally taken up (in 1736) by John Huntzecker, and after passing through various ownerships, became vested in -- Stoner, in the possession of whose descendants it still remains.

YOST HERBACH.

Yost Herbach, once the owner of this land, died in 1762 in possesion of it. He left to survive him ten children, of whom seven were sons, some of whom and their descend- ants may claim more than a mere passing notice. George, Ludwig, and Jacob, the eldest three, were born in Switzerland and came with their parents into the province of Pennsyl- vania, and to the old homestead just de- scribed, where they grew up to manhood and then removed to and settled in a beautiful little valley, nestled among the winding and broken ranges of the South Mountain, partly in Frederick County, Md., and partly in Adams County, Penn., where they became land owners, prosperous farmers, the heads of large and respectable families, and partici- pants in the founding of churches and schools. So numerous did their descendants become and so firmly attached to their new mount- ain home, that the valley itself took their name and will, probably, continue to be known through all time as Harbaugh's Val-

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ley. The descendants of Jacob alone, of whom Dr. Harbaugh was one, when the lat- ter compiled his family annals in 1856, were 321. The traveller or the excursionist as he is swung round Horse-shoe Curve, near Sabillasville, on the Western Maryland Rail- road, approaching Penn-Mar, enjoys a fine view of this picturesque and peaceful little vale. All the descendants of Yost Herbach (the elder) in America, living and dead, num . ber several thousands. But few of them re- main in York County, and the name bas, probably, entirely disappeared from the local tax lists and current records, though several families, descendants of the original settler, (Yost) reside in Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Col- ambiana County, Ohio, and other parts of the West.

Rev. Dr. Henry Harbaugh was a son. of George Harbaugh, a worthy farmer, a de- voted Christian, and highly respected citizen of Franklin County, Penn., and a son of Jacob who was the third son of the elder Yost Her- bach. Dr. Harbaugh, though brought up on his father's farm, was a student while a plow-boy, and it is said a carpenter; from his very childhood he was religiously inclined and by dint of his own rigid application and perseverence he became an eminent scholar and theologian, and the author of several well written books : 1, "Heaven, Or an Earnest Scriptural Inquiry into the Abode of the Sainted Dead." 2, " The Heavenly Recognition, Or An Earnest and Scriptural Discussion of the Question, "Will We Know our Friends in Heaven ?" 3, "The Heavenly Home, Or the Employments and Enjoyments of the Saints in Heaven." 4, " The Future Life," (three vols.) 5, "The Birds of the Bible." 6. "The Fathers of the German Reformed Church in Europe and America." 7, "Union With the Church, the Solemn Duty and Blessed Privilege of All Who Would be Saved." Their very titles show the ruling feature and bent of his mind, and that he lived, so to speak, rather in the future than in the present world. There was, however a humorous as well as a pathetic side to his nature. He was a poet, but courted the Muse only too seldom; yet he wrote quite a number of fine pieces in verse, chiefly in the Pennsylvania German (his native dialect) which, since his death, have been collected and published in a neat little volume entitled Harbaugh's Harfe.

John Harbaugh, the fourth son of the great ancestor Yost, was born in 1735, in Switzer- land, or on the passage hither. After his mar- riage he owned, and resided for many years on the mill property, now Small's, in Springgarden

Township. In 1777 he was commissioned a magistrate, which office he held for a number . of years. During the Revolutionary war he was a member of a "committee of sympathy, support, and safety for York County," and was very active in correspondence with, and furnishing aid to our army. He died in 1803 and was buried in the old German Reformed graveyard on North Beaver Street. Some. few of his descendants, children of his daughters, Mary, the wife of the late William Johnson, Sr. and of Elizabetb, who was the wife of John Adam Bahn, deceased, live in, or near York. Yost, the sixth son, was born on the homestead on Kreutz Creek in 1741. In 1755, when he was but fourteen years old, he did duty as a teamster in Braddock's expedition; also to Bloody Run in the Indian wars, and, during the Revolution he was a captain in actual service. In 1799 he represented York county in the State legislature. He was a very large man, fully six feet in height and well proportioned. His dress continued throughout his long life to be of the old con- tinental style, and his habits strictly temper- ate, his diet plain and frugal, and his temper and disposition calm and sober. He was a man of robust frame and health, industrious ways, and great powers of endurance. Even in his old age, he was accustomed to make an annual trip, sometimes on horseback and some- times on foot, without overcoat or umbrella, from his residence near York (now Mr. Jacob Yost's, just north of the Chicken Bridge) on a visit to a daughter (Mrs. Benjamin Emmert, ) then residing on what is now the historic An- tietam battle field. Though he was what is usually called an uneducated man, he pos- sessed great native vigor of intellect, abund- ance of strong, practical, common sense, keen, ready wit, a high notion of personal honor and integrity, a deep sense of moral and re- ligious obligation, and, withal. a wonderfully retentive memory. He remembered, and, in his extreme old age, loved nothing so well (unless it was his accustomed bowl of mush and milk) as to sit. on winter evenings by the big fire on the hearth, surrounded by groups of merry young folks, and tell them tales of the olden times, of times and things when he was young, of the early days when the Indians were still about ; of the little Indian village on Canoe Run, near Kreutz Creek church ; how the town of "Little" York had to be guarded and defended against their hostile incursions ; how some sturdy, robust farmer of the neighborhood came with his rugged plow with a wooden mold- board, and drew a furrow around the town along which the armed sentinels

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HISTORY OF YORK COUNTY.

paced to and fro, in the dead of night, ready to sound the note of alarm and give the terrible warning of the approach of the savage foe. How, when he still lived on his farm, now Samuel Rutter's, near Emigsville, where still stands the old Swiss stone barn erected by him in 1793, and which still bears his name carved in a stone in the gable, the children (of whom the writer's mother was one) went to gather whortleberries in the woods on the hill beyond the Codorus, and found in the leaves and bushes several pretty little puppies, as they supposed, which the girls took pity on and carried home, where they were told by him, to their great surprise and consternation, that the little foundlings were young wolves! How some of the har- vest hands proposed to kill them, and how he, on the score of prudence as well as humanity, accompanied by several of the men with loaded rifles and an ample supply of ammunition against a not improbable emer- gency, carried the mistaken and nnwelcome pets back to their forest home, and left them as nearly as possible where they had been found ; fortunately without encountering the old wolf-folks. For many years afterwards that hill was known in the neighborhood by the name of "der Wolf Berg" (Wolf.hill). In those days, he said, it was nothing unns- ual for wolves to attack and destroy sheep at night, if left exposed in the fields, and even to carry away the younger lambs. To the young, there is nothing so entertaining and fascinating as tales of wild and startling adventure, and often did our still more wild and startling midnight-dreams take on the hues and shapes of the stories we had lis- tened to in breathless silence. broken only by our beating hearts, at the knee of grand- father Harbaugh, when gathered around the old-time family hearth-fire on a long winter evening. Well and sweetly did Scotland's greatest poet sing :

Thus while I ape the measure wild Of tales that charmed me, yet a child; Rude though they be, still with the chime Return the thoughts of early time; And feelings roused in life's first day Glow in the line and prompt the lay.

All these tales of our venerable grandsire, were told in our native dialect, then compara- tively in its infancy. Grave and stern as he was, none the less fond of a good practical joke, and he excelled most unlettered men of his time in quick, keen wit, sarcasm and repartee. He lived to the great age of al- most ninety, (eighty-nine years, nine months and nine days), and died in the full posses- sion of all his senses and mental faculties on

August 16, 1832, of Asiatic cholera, after an illness of four days, at the residence of his daughter, Mrs. Benjamin Emmert, and lies buried now, side by side with many of those who fell in the cause of their country on the bloody field of Antietam. He lived and died in the faith of the German Reformed Church, to which his ancestors and nearly all of his posterity. the latter now numbering more than 200, belong or did belong, while living. Among the survivors are some of the descend- ants of his daughter Eve, late wife of Daniel Wolf, of West Manchester Township, (de- ceased); of his son John (deceased), Adams County; of his son Jacob, late of York County (deceased), namely: Mrs. Sarah Spangler (widow), of Jackson Township, and her children : Caroline. wife of Reuben Lauer; Henry W. Spangler, Esq .; Susan, wife of Charles E. Smyser; Sarah, wife of Martin Smyser; Julia Spangler; Leah, wife of William Eyster; Dr. Benjamin F. Spang- ler; Edward W. Spangler, Esq. and Dr. Ja- cob R. Spangler, all of whom except four (three of whom are unmarried) have children.

Mrs. Sarah Spangler, the venerable mother and grandmother, now in her seventy-eighth year, her daughter Julia and son Henry, still reside in the old Mansion House, formerly and for many years kept, and so well and favorably known as the " Seven-Mile House," a good and true old-time country hotel; a pleasant and popular resort for sleighing par- ties from towns and villages of the surround- ing country. Many and pleasant are the memories inseparably associated with the place. And,

As the shingles lie close to the rafters, And to gable the ivy clings fast, So the heart of the lone, widowed mother, To the homestead will cling to the last.

LEONARD HARBAUGH.

Leonard, the seventh son of Yost Harbangh, the elder, was born on the old homestead on Kreutz Creek, May 10, 1749, and married Miss Rebecca Rinebeck of Germantown. He was the same person named among other prominent Pennsylvania Germans, by Mr. Scharf, as having settled in Baltimore at an early day. From one of his sons, Benjamin, who still resided in that city as late as 1853, it was learned that his father removed from York to Baltimore about 1775, where he resided until 1792. He was an architect and builder, and undertook by contract, the con- struction or reconstruction of many large public and private edifices. He was ingen- ious in planning and designing, and skillful in execution. On the spot where Battle Monu-

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ment now stands, stood a very large two-sto- ried brick building which was used as a court honse. From immediately under this house he removed all the earth and replaced it with stone arches, forming a basement; after which the building and basement continued to be used for about fifteen years, when it was removed. Many of the private residences built by him have also been removed to make room for streets and more fashionable dwell- ings. Among the buildings and improve- ments erected by him in Baltimore, were several churches, hotels, warehouses and bridges. He also designed and constructed the first mud or dredging-machine that was used for cleaning ont and deepening the har- bor for vessels and other purposes. In 1792 he removed to Washington, D. C., and was soon engaged in the erection of numerous public and private buildings; among others, the war and treasury offices, which were afterward destroyed by the British troops, (in 1814). He was also engaged (with others) in the erection of the President's house, the original Capitol buildings, and the recon- struction thereof after their destruction by the British. Under a contract with the Potomac Company. he cut a passage through an immense wall of rock that stood across the river at Big Falls, just above Georgetown, and made the Potomac navigable for long- boats up to and even beyond Cumberland. Afterward he commenced a similar enter- prise in the Shenandoah River at Harper's Ferry and made that river navigable (for long-boats) by building locks and cutting canals for a distance of more than one hun- dred miles above the ferry. After the com. pletion of this work, he removed to the settle- ment on the Monocacy, near Frederick, Md., where he erected an immense stone bridge for a turnpike road company, across the Mon- ocacy Creek, at a cost of $55,000. Finally he returned to Baltimore and resumed the building of various kinds of honses. At the time of his death, however, September, 1822, he was engaged as superintendent of the carpenter work on the rebuilding of the Cap- itol. His death was cansed by mortification in the joint of one of his toes. He preferred death to amputation, at the age of seventy- six, and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery at Washington. He was the father of fourteen children, thirteen of whom were sons. Some of them, or their numerous descendants, are still living in or near Balti- more and Washington. Rev. Reck Harbaugh. one of his great-grandsons, was living at Prince- ton or Burlington, N. J., in 1852, and was pastor of a Presbyterian congregation. Leon-

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History of York County, Pennsylvania : from the earliest period to the present time, divided into general, special, township and borough histories, with a biographical department appended, Part 46

Author: Gibson, John, Editor Publication date: 1886 Publisher: F.A. Battey Publishing Co., Chicago Number of Pages: 1104

Author: Gibson, John, Editor
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: F.A. Battey Publishing Co., Chicago
Number of Pages: 1104