USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania: The German influence in its settlement and development, Pat VII > Part 10
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The inflowing tide of German immigrants to the Prov- ince of Pennsylvania, through the port of Philadelphia, is not secondary in importance to the coming of William Penn himself and the establishment of his Government on the banks of the Delaware. Considered in its historic bearings, it is not only one of the most noteworthy events associated with the colonization of America, but is besides invested with a more special interest, all its own, of which I shall attempt to give the more important details.
The first Germans to come to America, as colonists in Pennsylvania, were, as a rule, well to do. Nearly all of them in the beginning of that mighty exodus had sufficient means to pay all the charges incurred in going down the Rhine to the sea, and enough besides to meet the expenses for carrying them across the ocean, and yet have some left when they arrived to pay for part or all of the lands they took up.85 The large tracts taken up by the colony at Ger- mantown and at Conestoga are all-sufficient evidences of this. And this continued to be the rule until about 1717,86
#5 FRANZ LÖHER, Geschichte und Zuständen der Deutschen in America, p. 80.
86 Also RUPP.
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Pennsylvania the Land of Pro
and perhaps later, when the great exodus from the Palati- nate set in. Then the real race to reach the New World began. The poorer classes had not been unobservant of what was going on. If America was a place where the rich could become richer still, surely it must be a place where the poor also might better themselves. At all events, nothing could be lost by going, because they had the merest pittance to begin with. Besides, all the accounts were favorable. Those already in Pennsylvania sent back glowing descriptions of the ease with which land could be acquired, the productiveness of the soil, the abundance of food, the freedom from taxation and the equality of all men before the law to their natural rights and their religious creeds.
Such arguments were irresistible to men whose fathers and themselves had felt all the pangs that poverty, perse- cution and wrong can bring upon the citizen. The desire to flee from the land of oppression to the land of promise became paramount, and to attain their wish, no hardship was too great, no sacrifice too costly. Unable to raise the sum necessary to bring them here, they sold their few meager belongings, and with the proceeds were enabled to reach a seaport. Once there, they found plenty of men ready to send them across the Atlantic. The terms were hard. They knew they would be, but long before they reached the western Patmos, the "Insel Pennsylvanien" as it was frequently written in those days, they often rea- lized what kind of a trap it was into which they had fallen. What they suffered on the voyage, how they were mal- treated, and how many of them died, forms perhaps the most pathetic picture in the history of American coloniza- tion, not excepting that drawn by Las Casas three hundred and fifty years ago, nor the later one limned in Longfel- low's Evangeline.
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The evidence concerning the manner in which this im- migration was aroused, fostered and carried on, is cumu- lative rather than diverse, and there is a close resemblance in the many narratives I have examined. It is true, the same series of facts presented themselves to every investi- gator and the result is a somewhat tedious sameness in the various accounts. Once the facts were put on record they became public property and the latest writer simply fol- lowed those who had preceded him. So graphic, how- ever, are some of these accounts that I have deemed it a matter of interest to give several of them, those of Mittel- berger, Pastor Muhlenberg and Christoph Saur at some length. Their testimony, coming from both sides of the ocean, and from men personally familiar with all the cir- cumstances they describe, has never been challenged and has accordingly become part and parcel of the history of German immigration into America.
The persons without means, who availed themselves of the facilities offered them by shipmasters to come to this country, were called "Redemptioners " by their contem- poraries, and down even to our own times. It deserves to be stated, however, that this term does not appear in the indentures entered into between themselves and those by whom their obligations were discharged and to whom they sold their personal services for a term of years. Neither is the term to be found in any of the legislative acts of the period. Such persons, whatever their nationality-many came from British lands-were called indentured or bond servants, and those terms were invariably applied to them. As such they were known in all the Acts of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania and those of the three lower counties, New Castle, Kent and Sussex. It was the cominon term prevailing in the mother country and natur-
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5
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DOMESTIC UTENSILS.
1 COPPER KETTLE.
Z JAPANNED TINWARE.
3 EARTHENWARE PIE DISH.
4 JAPANNED COFFEE POT.
SHAVING OUTFIT. A.D. 1733.
1 SHAVING GLASS.
2 BASIN TO CATCH LATHER.
3 RAZOR AND STROP.
4 SHAVING MUG.
5 POWDER AND PUFF BOX.
6 AMSEL AND STAND.
DANNER COLLECTION.
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Various Classes of Immigrants.
ally followed them to this. It is found in Penn's Condi- tions and Concessions issued while he was still in England, in 1681, and was reiterated many times subsequently.
But while we must distinguish between the men who had money to transport themselves and their families to Pennsylvania, and those who came under conditions to sell their services until their obligations were repaid, we must not lose sight of a broad distinction between some of these indentured immigrants. They may very appro- priately be divided into two classes. The first was com- posed of persons who were honest men and good citizens ; men who came here of their own volition, who had under- gone many trials at home, some because of their religion and most of them because of the hard conditions of life they were compelled to face from youth to old age. Political changes were of frequent occurrence and each one was generally accompanied by fresh exactions on the part of the new ruler. After the demands of the tax gatherer had been met, about the only things that were left were visions of fresh exactions and possible starvation. Such people were excusable for contracting terms of temporary servitude in a distant land to encountering an unending repetition of their former intolerable state. Their action was at least voluntary.
But the other class was a widely different one. : They did not come to America because of any special desire on their part to do so. On the contrary they would doubtless have preferred to remain in the land of their birth had they had a voice or a choice in the matter. They were crim- inals and felons, the scum of the population, which the mother country dumped upon her new Province in order to rid herself of the most objectionable portion of her crim- inal classes. The very jails were emptied of their in-
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mates and the latter sent to her colonies, North and South. This action was naturally resented by the honest and in- dustrious colonists of Pennsylvania, and as early as 1722 the Provincial Assembly attempted to prevent the coming of these people by imposing a tax upon every criminal landed in the Province, and in addition made the ship- owner responsible for the future good conduct of his pas- sengers. But nothing could keep them out and the early criminal record of Pennsylvania is no doubt largely made up from this class of her population. It is probably owing to the dual classes of these indentured servants or redemp- tioners, that much of the obloquy, which some persons, ignorant of the circumstances, have visited upon this class of our colonists, is owing. Ignorance has been the prolific mother of many of the silly and untruthful accusations that have from time to time been trumped up against the German colonists of Pennsylvania.
They differed wholly from the Germans who came to better their condition and frequently against the protests of the potentates under whose rule they were living. They were, indeed, the very flower of the German peasantry, and Europe boasted of no better citizens. They were men of robust frame, hardy consti- tution, inured to toil and accustomed to earn their liv- ing with their hands-Men PIONEER'S CABIN. who trod the soil of the New World as if it was their right- ful inheritance, and able to help themselves. They fought the battle of civilization in the depths and solitudes of the
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The Victims of Sharpers Continually.
wilderness. There they established the equality of man in place of hereditary privileges. They were born com- monwealth-builders, and their handiwork in Pennsylvania is one of the marvels of modern colonization.
Under conditions of discouragement, deceit and con- tumely, of wrong and robbery that almost exceed the limits of human belief, these poor people continued to come over to the land of promise. The story of their treatment on shipboard equals all the horrors of the " middle passage " during the African slave traffic, while here, land sharks in the shape of the commission merchant and money broker, stood ready upon their arrival to complete the work of spoliation and plunder. It was little that many of these forlorn sons of toil had. In their wooden chests heir- looms that were sometimes generations old were gathered, and the few remaining household treasures they had been able to save out of the wreck of their fortunes, small though the latter were. These at once attracted the cu- pidity of the thieves who lay in waiting for their prey. Thousands of them found themselves possessed only of their lives and their strong arms when they stepped on the Philadelphia wharfs, wherewith to begin anew the battle of life, the struggle for existence. But handicapped as they were, they faced adverse fate with stout hearts and fulfilled their contracts with their purchasers and masters as faithfully as if their efforts were directed to keep alive their own hearth-fires or to support their wives and chil- dren.
To all the foregoing, separately and collectively, must be added the sufferings and numerous deaths from small- pox, dysentery, poor nutrition, and worst of all the fatal ship-fever, resulting from the contaminated water and other causes. The literature of that time, the few news-
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papers, the letters of those who made the voyage and were not only witnesses but actual sufferers, and the books and pamphlets that were written and printed, bear ample testimony to the horrible scenes and sufferings that only too often came upon the overcrowded immigrant ships. It is not a pleasant duty to enter into some of the details that have come down to us. The pen assumes the disagree- able task only because the truth and the requirements of history demand it. It is only another, although perhaps the most sorrowful, of all the episodes that attended the colonization of Pennsylvania. It may perhaps be truth- fully said that in the first instance the practice had its origin in laudable and benevolent motives. Those who lent it their assistance in the beginning, at that time hardly conceived the extent the hegira was to assume or the depth of the misery it was to entail. Fraud and deception had their origin in opportunity ; some men are quick to spring from good to evil when it pays, and the occasion offers itself. So I apprehend it was in this case.
I have tried to collect and arrange the evidence still ob- tainable and present it in these pages as best I could. Every writer of our local or general history has dealt with the question in a summary way, rather than otherwise. The story is broken into many fragments, and these are scattered through hundreds of volumes, without anything approaching completeness or regularity of detail in any. In the fullness of time, no doubt, some one with love and leisure for the work will address himself to the task and write the story of the REDEMPTIONERS with the philosophic spirit and the amplitude it deserves. Meanwhile the fol- lowing chapters are offered as a substitute until something better comes along.
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CHAPTER II.
BOND SERVANTS A UNIVERSAL CUSTOM OF THE TIMES .- BROUGHT FROM GREAT BRITAIN AND TAKEN TO ALL THE MIDDLE COLONIES .- SYNOPSIS OF THE COLONIAL LEGIS- LATION ON INDENTURED SERVANTS.
"Such were to take these lands by toil To till these generous breadths and fair, Turning this Pennsylvania soil To fruitful gardens everywhere."
"Kommt zu uns frei von Groll und Trug Und est das Freundschafts mohl, Wir haben hier der Hütten g'nug Und Länder ohne Zahl."
HERE was not a little rivalry among the vari- M ous English colonies planted PENN . PR along the Atlantic seaboard of America, in their race for wealth, progress and com- AONHS mercial supremacy. Into that competition, Pennsyl- VSTICE vania, although the young- MERCY GOVE AN est of all the English set- tlements, entered with as much ambition and ardor as the people to the north and south of her. Penn was a Quaker, and a man of sincere (149)
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convictions and unquestioned piety, but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that he united a very liberal share of worldly shrewdness with his colonization schemes. In fact, the competition in material progress and advance- ment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was quite as sharp between what are to-day called the Thir- teen Colonies as it is to-day. The older settlements had the advantage of age and experience, and this naturally compelled the newer ones to redouble their efforts to over- take them in the race for advancement and to surpass them if possible.
In some particulars they endeavored to work out their destinies along similar lines. They copied from each other when they thought such imitations would prove advan- tageous-not blindly, but always with an eye to the main chance. When Lord Baltimore found that his older neigh- bor Virginia was increasing her population and her wealth by the extensive importation of male and female servants from the mother country under indentures that meant years of servitude, and under conditions not wholly dissimilar to her negro slave traffic, he at once availed himself of the Virginia idea, and ship-loads of these people came from Ireland, Scotland and even England herself.
It can hardly be questioned that the authorities in Penn- sylvania took the same view of the case, and early in the history of the Province introduced, or at least connived at the system. At all events the fact remains that. Penn's government had hardly got under way, before indentured servants became a feature in the civil life of the community. Here, as elsewhere, labor was scarce, and here, perhaps more than anywhere else, extra labor was required to cut down the forests, clear the land and keep abreast of the march of civilization that was moving forward on all sides of the new settlement.
Legislation Concerning Indentured Servants. 151
All this is to be inferred from the number of these sold and purchased servants that were brought into Pennsyl- vania, and from the legislation that was enacted in conse- quence. That legislation grew out of the necessities of the traffic in these people and consequently reflects its succes- sive stages. It must be borne in mind, however, that while it had even in its earlier stages all the characteristics that marked it during its most flourishing period, from 1730 to 1770, it had not the same name. The men and women who were sent over here from Ireland and Scot- land, or who came voluntarily under contracts to render personal service for their passage money, board and any other expenses that might be incurred, were always called " servants " or "indentured servants" by the laws of the Province. The word " redemptioner " belongs to a later period and was of more recent coinage, and this fact must not be lost sight of, although in reality there was no ma- terial difference recognized either by statutory enactments or by custom, between the two. The word " redemp- tioner " does not occur in the Pennsylvania Statutes at Large.
" We may with propriety," says Gordon, " notice here another class of the people who were not freemen. Many . valuable individuals were imported into the province as servants, who in consideration of the payment of their pas- ages and other stipulations, contracted to serve for a defi- nite period. This class was a favorite of the law. Pro- vision was made by the laws agreed on in England for recording the names, times and wages of servants ; mas- ters were allowed to take up lands for their use, and the servants themselves, after the expiration of their service, were permitted to become land-holders on easy terms ; they were provided with sufficient clothing and implements of
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labor ; they could not be sold out of the Province without their consent, and, in case of marriage, husband and wife could not be parted. On the other hand, due care was taken to preserve the rights of the master. Many of the German and Irish settlers were of this class, from whom have sprung so.ne of the most reputable and wealthy in- habitants of the Province." 87
In speaking of servants about the year 1740, Watson says : " The other kind were those who were free after a time. Many came from England, Germany and other countries who could not pay their passage, who were sold on their arrival for so many years, at about three to four pounds Pennsylvania currency per annum, as would pay their passage : generally fourteen pounds for four years' service would cover their passage money. Those who were too old to serve would sell their children in the same way. Some would sell themselves to get a knowledge of the country before starting in the world. The purchaser could resell them for the unexpired time. The purchaser also had to give them a suit of clothes at the expiration of the time." 88
I propose to offer a brief résumé of the various legisla- tive enactments bearing on this class of immigrants to show the status held by them, and also the precautions that were from time to time taken by the law-making power for their protection.
While the condition of this large class was in innumer- able cases to be commiserated, the fact nevertheless re- mains that the Legislature threw over them the ægis of its protection, and in so far as it could, tried to deal fairly with them. Their rights were as scrupulously guarded as
87 GORDON'S History of Pennsylvania, pp. 555-556.
83 WATSON'S Annals of Philadelphia, Vol. III., p. 469.
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those of their masters. It deserves also to be remembered that no fault was found with the system of buying these servants and holding them to their service until their obli- gations were discharged. That was a recognized custom of the period, already in existence both north and south of Pennsylvania, and universally acquiesced in. Nobody thought it wrong. People entered into these obligations of their own free will. There was no compulsion. The great wrongs grew out of the practices under which it was carried on. As these developed and were brought to the attention of the Legislature, numerous laws were passed to better guard the rights of the deceived and defrauded im- migrants. But the laws could not reach the infamous Newlander beyond the sea, and he took good care to keep the broad Atlantic between himself and his outraged vic- tims.
The Provincial Government did not do all perhaps it should or even might have done looking to the protection of these people. It is important that we keep before us a clear idea of the spirit of those days. It was very dif- erent from what we find to-day. Public sentiment leaned towards severity rather than towards charity. The laws dealt more severely with crime, and were often pushed to the verge of inhumanity. Take for example, the laws against creditors. In 1705 the first insolvent law in the Province was passed, and it has justly been said that it " was formulated in sterner justice than is consistent with human frailty." When the property of a debtor was in- sufficient to discharge his debts, the law compelled him to make good the deficiency by personal servitude in case his creditors demanded it, and there were always those who did. Single men not more than fifty-three years old could be sold for a period of not more than seven years,
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Quarrel Between the Governor and Assembly. 155
but married men under forty-six could be held for a period not exceeding five years. A milder law was enacted to supersede the above one in 1730, but so many creditors abused its provisions, that satisfaction by servitude was engrafted upon it in a supplemental clause. 89
There were, too, often quarrels and bickerings between the Governors and the members of the Assembly. The one tried to thwart the wishes and will of the other. When, for example, the Legislature in 1755 drew up a bill on this very subject of the better protection of German immi- grants, especially to prevent the breaking open of their chests and the theft of their goods, Governor Thomas cut out this very matter and returned the rest with his ap- proval. There seems to have been a reason for his action, and the Assembly in a sharp reply told him, in so many words, that some of his own political household were regularly engaged in these robberies, and that was no doubt why he refused to do this act of simple justice. No doubt they knew what they were talking about.
Many of the English and Welsh settlers who came to Pennsylvania within twenty years after it was founded brought indentured servants with them. To hold such people was evidently an old English custom, and at the very outset of his proprietary career, provision was made by Penn for the welfare of these people on regaining their freedom. No sooner had Penn obtained the royal charter to his province than he issued a long and tedious docu- ment for the enlightenment of "those of our own and other nations that are inclined to transport themselves or families beyond the seas." On July 11, 1682, while still in England he issued a series of " conditions or conces- sions," running to twenty separate paragraphs or articles,
19 GORDON'S History of Pennsylvania, pp. 218-219.
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for the government of the relations between himself and his province and those who should purchase lands from him and settle here. The seventh of these conditions reads as follows : "That for every Fifty acres that shall be al- lotted to a servants, at the end of his service, his Quitrent shall be two shillings per annum, and the master or owner of the servant, when he shall take up the other Fifty acres, his Quit-rent shall be Four shillings by the year, or if the master of the servant (by reason in the Indentures he is so obliged to do) allot to the Servant Fifty acres in his own division, the said master shall have on demand allotted him from the Governor, the One hundred acres, at the chief rent of six shillings per annum." 90
"The more wealthy of the Scotch emigrants (to New Jersey) were noted for the accompaniment of a numerous retinue of servants and dependents, and, in some instances they incurred the expense of transporting whole families of poor laborers whom they established on their lands for a term of years, and endowed with a competent stock, re- ceiving in return one half of the agricultural produce." 91
From the first, large numbers of these servants came to Pennsylvania. Claypole says, writing on Oct. 1, 1682, " above fifty servants belonging to the Society are going away in a great ship for Pennsylvania." 92
The foregoing establishes the existence of this species of servitude before the founding of Pennsylvania. It also shows that in order to give these people a fair start in life the terms on which they could secure lands from the Pro- prietary were more favorable than those accorded to their masters themselves.
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