USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania: The German influence in its settlement and development, Pat VII > Part 19
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167 JOHN FISKE'S Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. I., p. 177. 168 American Historical Review, II., p. 25. See also the Penny Cyclopedia, Vol. XXV., p. 138.
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jority of these reached Virginia. The latter colony re- ceived more Redemptioners than any of the other colonies during the seventeeth century, but in the eighteenth, Penn- sylvania was the more favored province.
There were still another class of servants who were sent to America who deserve to be mentioned in this connec- tion. They were prisoners of war, men who were cap- tured by Cromwell at Dunbar and Worcester. Some of
PASSENGER SHIP OF THE PERIOD-1750. From a Contemporary Drawing.
these were sent to Virginia. After the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, so many non-conformists were sold into servitude in Virginia as to lead to an insurrection in 1663,
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Redemptioners Sent to New Jersey.
followed by legislation designed to keep all convicts out of the colony. 169
Of the services rendered to the colony of Virginia by these indentured servants it has been said they were " the main pillar of the industrial fabric, and performed the most honorable work in establishing and sustaining it." 170
In Virginia, as in Pennsylvania, many of these Redemp- tioners rose to be persons of wealth and importance in the Commonwealth, and occasionally became members of the House of Burgesses. At the same time it deserves to be very distinctly stated that the general character of the Re- demptioners in Virginia was by no means equal to that of the Germans who came to Pennsylvania; nor was any- thing else to be expected considering the classes from whom so many sprung.
IN NEW JERSEY.
Mellick informs us that the laws of New Jersey were about like those of Pennsylvania in relation to the Re- demptioners. Contiguous as the two were, with only the Delaware river between, this was to be expected. In Section 5, of the Colonial Entry Book of that State, oc- curs the following :'
"The waies of obtayning these servants have beene usually by employing a sorte of men and women who make it theire profession to tempt or gaine poore or idle persons to goe to the Plantations and having persuaded or deceived them on Shipp board they receive a reward from the person who employed them."
169 FISKE'S Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. II., pp. 184-185.
170 BRUCE'S Economic History of Virginia, Vol. I., p. 609.
"Many of the early settlers of Virginia reached that colony as servants, doomed according to the severe laws of that age, to temporary bondage. Some of them, even, were convicts." (BANCROFT'S History of the United States, Vol. II., p. 191.)
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In New Jersey, under the laws, white servants could not be compelled to serve more than four years if sold or bound after attaining the age of seventeen years. Young chil- dren were held until they attained their majority. When the term of service expired the redemptioner received two suits of clothing, one falling axe, one good hoe and seven bushels of corn. The master was not allowed to inflict corporeal punishment upon his bond servant, but he could bring the case to the attention of a civil magistrate.
It is a noteworthy fact that the most popular novel pub- lished in the United States in the year 1899 has a Redemp- tioner for its hero, and for the most part the scene of the novel is laid in New Jersey. Another work of fiction, al- most equal to the previous one mentioned in popularity, deals with a Redemptioner hero in Virginia.171
The colony South Carolina also received some of this Redemptioner immigration, and pretty nearly the same
conditions and terms for taking them there, and holding them in bondage, prevailed as elsewhere.
Joshua Kocherthal in his little pamphlet, published in Frankfort in 1709, in which he strives to divert German emigration from Pennsylvania to South Carolina, says in his ninth chapter that " Special arrangements have to be made with the Captain for each half grown child. Per- · sons too poor to pay, sometimes find proprietors willing to advance the funds, in return for which they serve the latter for some time in Carolina. The period of service, in time
171 FORD'S Janice Meredith and JOHNSTON'S To Have and to Hold.
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of peace, is from two to three years, but when the fare is higher (he states it to be from five to six pounds sterling, but the cost of a convoy and other expenses, raise it to seven and eight pounds for every adult), the time is neces- sarily longer.",172 He adds in an appendix that " an im- migrant to Pennsylvania must have the ready money with which to prepay his passage, while for one going to Caro- lina, this is not necessary."
172 Full and Circumstantial Report Concerning the Renowned District of Carolina in British America, 1709.
See also DR. JACOBS' German Emigration to America, pp. 39-40.
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THE DE LA PLAINE HOUSE, GERMANTOWN.
CHAPTER X.
ARGUMENT ATTEMPTING TO SHOW THE REDEMPTIONER SYSTEM WAS BY NO MEANS AN UNMIXED EVIL .- THAT MUCH. GOOD CAME OUT OF IT .- THAT IN MOST RESPECTS IT WAS PREFERABLE TO THE UNENDING ROUND OF TOIL THAT HAD TO BE ENCOUNTERED IN THE FATHERLAND.
"O, Rivers, with your beauty time-defying, Flowing along our peaceful shores to-day, Be glad you fostered them-the heroes lying Deep in the silent clay.
"Be jubilant ye Hill-tops old and hoary- Proud that their feet have trod your rocky ways ; Rejoice, ye Vales, for they have brought you glory And ever during praise."
NE hundred and fifty years are but a short period in the history of the human race. ADEST FRANKLIN ARMS. In the early ages of the world that number of years would come and go and at their close men thought and did and felt about as at their beginning. Habits and morals were not as now, things that change almost as regularly and frequently
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This Traffic a Custom of the Age. 293
as the earth's revolutions around the sun. But times have undergone a wonderful transformation during the past cen- tury and a-half. So far away is 1730 in its customs and manner of thought, that we hardly realize that it was the time in which our great-grandfathers lived, and yet in some things we seem as far removed from those days as we are from the biblical patriarchs who lived and died upon the Judean hills, thousands of years ago.
This man-traffic, which I have attempted to describe in these pages, did not at that time create the general ab- horrence with which we now regard it. It was a matter of every-day business in every community. It had the
SPECIMEN OF EPHRATA DISPLAY TYPE, MADE AND USED AT THAT PLACE PRIOR TO 1748.
endorsement, so far as we may judge from the records and the spirit of that time, of the majority of the com- munity. It was recognized as a legitimate business by
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the laws of the land. It was in full accord with the com- mon life of the people. Even Sauer, Mittelberger, Muhlenberg and the other worthies of that period who have been referred to and liberally quoted, did not arraign the system itself, but the numberless and almost nameless abuses it called forth. It was the injustice, the hardships, the rascality, misrepresentations, methods of transporta- tion, the crowded condition of the ships, the hunger and starvation, the sufferings, the general horrors by which it was accompanied, that called forth their protests. Never, since men have gone down to the sea in ships, have such sufferings and iniquities been known. Only men dead to all the better instincts of our human nature could have been guilty of the barbarities practiced upon these inno- cent, helpless victims of man's inhumanity to man.
Even as I read them to-day, I cannot understand why these men did not arise in their might and their wrath, smite their oppressors, and cast them into the sea, even as their own dead were thrown into the kindly waters, un- knelled, uncoffined and unknown. They were many and their oppressors few; smarting under the deceptions and wrongs practiced upon them, their forbearance seems al- most inexplicable. Here, too, the spirit of the age played its part. It was an age of loyalty to lord and master. To them the doctrine of jure divino was not a mere abstrac- tion. It was one of the overmastering principles of their lives. They were respecters of authority, and to an ex- tent that for half a century and more led to their disadvan- tage. For once the divine precept of obedience to author- ity worked to their undoing.
We fail to understand how these poor people should have consented to all this unutterable injustice and wrong-doing for several generations. If the immigrant of 1728 was
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The Father of His Country.
unaware of what was in store for him, the same cannot be . said of those who came in 1750 and thereafter. The At-
Sancafter : Gebrudt ben francis Bailen).
Ess Lantes Barer.
1779.
ASafebington.
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FAC-SIMILE OF COVER ON BAILEY'S GERMAN ALMANAC. 173
173 The above cut is a fac-simile of the cover on an almanac-Der Gantz Neue Berbesserte Nord-Americanische Calender. Auf das 1779ste Jahr u. f. w. Berfertigt von David Rittenhaus,-published at Lancaster, Pa., by Francis
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lantic was wide, but not so wide that letters could not reach the relatives and friends who were still in the old home. We know many of them wrote and told the horrors that had been encountered. It is true, as is elsewhere recounted, that the Newlanders even stole the letters from America, when they could, to prevent the dismal tales they told from becoming known to those for whom they were intended ; but that, doubtless, was an infrequent occurrence, and pos- sible only on favorable occasions. Why then did these people persist in coming, five and six thousand yearly, for lengthy periods? The question is difficult to answer, per- haps, and yet I venture upon an explanation.
Why do thousands of gold-seekers and other adventurers brave ali the hardships of Alaskan winters to find fortunes in the Klondike? Everybody knows that not one in a score of them is successful, and yet the hegira thitherward is as active to-day as when that wealth-fever first set the gold- seekers in motion. We hear and know some are success- ful. The rest hope they may be. All who came to Amer- ica did not score failures. Not all were penniless and needy. Those who were able to make a fair start were successful far beyond anything they could ever have at- tained in their old homes. The virgin lands were rich almost beyond description. In that the booklets of Penn, Pastorius, Thomas and others did not exaggerate. The sit- uation in this particular was not overdrawn, and the lands were cheap. It is true there was hard labor and plenty of it before the settler. But he was a German, strong of will
. Bailey. It possesses especial historical interest from the fact that the winged allegorical figure of Fame, seen in the upper part, holds in one of her hands a medallion portrait of Washington, while in the other she has a horn, from which a blast is blown with the legend Des Landes Vater. This is the first recorded instance where the designation of "Father of his Country" was given to Washington.
THE PENNSYLVANIA-GERMAN . SOCIETY.
PENNSYLVANIA-GERMAN FARM LIFE. A COMMUNITY CIDER-PRESS.
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Plenty in the New Home.
and limb, inured to toil and not afraid to labor every day in the year except Sundays, if the situation required such service. The seasons were on his side and he saw houses and lands, such as he never dreamed of owning, belong- ing to him, yielding him an abundant support and provid- ing an inheritance for those whom he should leave behind him.
Another important condition of life came to the front with these people, to which most of them perhaps had been strangers in the old home. It was the question of food. Not only did the soil yield its abundant harvests, but the fields and the woods made no mean additions to their larder. Game of many kinds was at their command. Fur and feather and fin may almost be said to have been as much the product of their farms as wheat and corn and potatoes. Meat could be on their tables daily if they so desired. Mittelberger is very explicit on this point. He says : " Provisions are cheap in Pennsylvania. The people live well, especially on all sorts of grain, which thrives very well, because the soil is wild and fat. They have good cattle, fast horses and many bees. The sheep which are larger than the German ones, have generally two lambs a year. Hogs and poultry, especially turkeys are raised by almost everybody. Every evening many a tree is so full of chickens that the boughs bend beneath them. Even in the humblest and poorest houses in this country there is no meal without meat, and no one eats the bread without the butter or cheese, although the bread is as good as with us. On account of the extensive stock raising, meat is very cheap : one can buy the best beef for three kreuzers a pound." 174 He tells of poultry and eggs, fish, turtles, venison, wild pigeons, and other foods; not
174 MITTELBERGER'S Reise nach Pennsylvanian im Jahr 1754, pp. 64-65.
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to mention nuts, grapes and other fruits that were to be had in every woods for the gathering.
All these things were well known in the Fatherland. Every letter spoke of them. Such flattering tales had their effect. They came for the most part to men and women whose lines in life were hard and drawn. The struggle for existence there was all those words imply. Nowhere in Europe was it harder. It was a from-hand- to-mouth life. The food was often scant, and not of the best at that. As these letters and the various descriptions of Penn's wonderful land which were everywhere distrib- uted by the Newlanders were read around the fireside dur- ing the bleak winters, and the ever-present scant larder forced itself upon the mind, there could be but one result.
The overmastering instinct of the race to better its con- dition came upon them. There are many causes that lead men to seek new homes, in distant lands, but there is one that overtops all the rest. It is the desire to better their worldly condition, the hope of material advancement, in short, it is better bread and more of it that lies at the source of nearly all the migrations of the human family. The love of gain, the desire for property and the accumulation of wealth was the great underlying principle of all coloni- zation on the American continent. It was this all-power- ful motive that crowded out all else, and led these people to brave all dangers, known and unknown, to reach this western Eden. So long as distress and danger and diffi- culties are in the dim distance, we fail to give them due consideration. It is only when they become a present reality, a source of trial and sorrow, that we realize the true condition of things.
These people were ready to encounter the obstacles they knew were to be met. Perhaps they underestimated their
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Only Denunciations for the Traffic.
importance and character .. That was something which could not be guarded against. At all events, their fears were cast behind them and that hope which springs eternal in the human breast held sway, and spurred them to take the leap in the dark which many lived to regret, and which thousands regretted while dying. No sadder tale can ever be told. It has become an imperishable page in the his- tory of the Germans of Pennsylvania ; one that the historian
reluctantly deals with, so full of sorrow and heart- break is it.
So abominable and in- human were the dealings of the Newlanders, ship- masters, ship-owners and most of the commission merchants with these help- less immigrants, and so sad and sorrowful the fate of many of them, that the wrath of the reader is also BARBER'S BASIN, IN USE 150 YEARS AGO. aroused and the denunci- ation has become universal. The same incidents are told by them all, and the worst are of course chosen for expo- sure ; the same tale of starvation and pestilence and death is rehearsed so that we almost insensibly reach the conclu- sion that from the beginning until the end, there was one long, continuous cloud over the horizon of these people, un- relieved by a single rift and un-illumined by a single ray.
undjom
Almost every writer whom I have consulted has written only in terms of unqualified condemnation of the evils that arose out of the system of bonded servants. There is however one noteworthy exception.
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Elder Johannes Naas, who, next to Alexander Mack, was the most celebrated and influential member of the Taufer or Brethren church in Germany, came to this country in 1733. Shortly after his arrival he wrote a long letter to his son, Jacob Wilhelm Naas, who was living in Switzerland at the time, in which all the incidents and circumstances of his voyage are minutely detailed. The letter is well worth reading by every one who has an interest in the events I have been trying to depict. Want of space prevents its appearance here in its entirety. The concluding portion bears directly on the case of the Redemptioners, and con- trary to the customary practice, the writer regards that question favorably, rather than otherwise, for which reason I quote that part of his letter.
ELDER NAAS' LETTER.
" Now that we have safely arrived in this land and have been met by our own people in great love and friendship all the rest has been forgotten (the mishaps and hardships of the voyage) in a moment, so to speak, for the sake of the great joy we had in one another. This hardship has lasted about nineteen weeks; then it was over, wherefore be all the glory to the Highest : Amen, yea ; Amen !
" For it does not rue us to have come here, and I wish with all my heart that you and your children could be with us ; however, it cannot be and I must not urge you as the journey is so troublesome for people who are not able to patiently submit to everything, but often in the best there are restless minds, but if I could with the good will of God do for you children all, I assure you that I would not hesi- tate to take the trip once more upon me for your sake; not because one gets one's living in this land in idleness ! Oh! no; this country requires diligent people, in what-
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FAC-SIMILE OF EARLIEST ENTRIES IN TRAPPE CHURCH RECORDS, MARCH 8, 1729.
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ever trade they may be-but then they can make a good living. There are, however, many people here, who are not particularly successful ; as it seems that if some people were in Paradise it would go badly with them. Some are to be blamed for it themselves ; for when they come to this country and see the beautiful plantations ; the number of fine cattle ; and abundance in everything ; and, knowing that they only just have come here too, then they want to have it like that at once, and will not listen to any advice but take large tracts of land with debts, borrow cattle and so forth. These must toil miserably until they get indepen- dent. Well, what shall I say, so it is in the world, where always one is better off than the other. If a person wants to be contented here, with food and shelter, he can under the blessing of God and with diligent hands get plenty of it. Our people are well off; but some have more abun- dance than others, yet nobody is in want. What I heard concerning the people who do not have the money for the passage, surprised me greatly, how it goes with the young, strong people and artisans, how quickly all were gone, bricklayers, carpenters, and whatever trades they might have. Also old people who have grown children and who understand nothing but farm labor, then the child takes two freights (fare for two) upon itself, its own and that of the father or of the mother four years, and during that time it has all the clothing that is needed and in the end an en- tirely new outfit from head to foot, a horse or cow with a calf. Small children often pay one freight and a half until they are twenty-one years old. The people are obliged to have them taught writing and reading, and in the end to give them new clothes and present them with a horse or cow.
"There are few houses to be found in city or country
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Two Sides to Every Narrative.
where the people are at all well off, that do not have one or two such children in them. The matter is made legal at the city hall with great earnestness. There parents and children often will be separated 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 hours (in distance), and for many young people it is very good that they cannot pay their own freight. These will sooner be provided for than those who have paid theirs and they can have their bread with others and soon learn the ways of the country.
" I will make an end of this and wish patience to whom- soever reads this. God be with you all. Amen.175 " Johannes Naas."
This is an extreme view, and not wholly a just one. The facts as they stand recorded in the works of historians and the letters of private individuals are true, and they must always be accepted as such. At the same time it must be admitted they present us with but one side of the story. Is there no other side to their picture? There are, admittedly, two sides to every narrative? Is this one of the German immigration and the indenturing of many in- dividuals as servants for a term of years an exception? It would, indeed, be an anomalous case if it were so. But it is not. Men like Christoph Saur and Pastor Muhlenberg and Gottlieb Mittelberger embarked in this cause to right a great existing wrong, one that was daily occurring before their own eyes, and with which they were almost hourly made acquainted. It was a crime almost without a parallel in its atrocity, practiced against their countrymen and it may be, their own kith and kin. They were tireless in their efforts
175 The complete letter from which the above extract is taken may be found in Dr. M. G. BRUMBAUGH'S recently published History of the German Bap- tist Brethren, pp. 108-123-a valuable addition to the early religious history of Pennsylvania.
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to strike it down. They left no stone unturned, nothing undone that would do away with this crime against hu- manity. They showed it up at its worst to arouse the better part of our human nature against the evil, believing, and most truly, that in this way it could most quickly be driven out of existence. If they saw a brighter side to the question it was not for them to reveal it. It was the wrong against which their blows were directed. The better and brighter side needed no defense and, therefore, none was made for it.
ONE OF THE DANGERS ENCOUNTERED BY THE EARLY SETTLERS.
And there was a brighter side just as certainly as there was a dark one. That must, indeed, be an evil's crown of evil that is wholly and unspeakably bad and totally without redeeming features.
Let us, for a while, turn this gloomy picture to the wall and see whether we can discover something better on the other side. Let us bear in mind, in the first place, that while many plunged heedlessly into the pitfalls laid by the soulless soul-brokers, there were-must have been-thou-
No Expectations in the Fatherland. 305
sands of others who were not ignorant of what a servant for a term of years meant. Why did these eager thou- sands hurry from their homes in the Fatherland to such a fate here? We know full well how it was with a majority of them there. Born in poverty, unable to rise above the station of hewers of wood and drawers of water, they were doomed to lives of unceasing toil, with the hope of better- ing their condition as remote as the distant and unheeding stars. What had even the fertile valleys of the Rhine to offer these men? Nothing, and well they knew it. Surely things could not be worse for them in America, and in this we must all agree.
It was a voluntary action on their part. They knew the consequences of their step. They were aware that a ship- owner would not carry them three thousand miles across the broad ocean and feed them on the way for nothing, merely out of charity. Men do not give valuable things to every comer for nothing. They knew this indebtedness must be repaid when they reached this country by some one for they could not do it themselves. But whoever as- sumed the temporary burden, they knew that in the end their own strong arms must make payment. It cannot be doubted the trials of the voyage were more severe than was anticipated. For that, perhaps, they were not prepared. A healthy young man who may never have known a day's sickness in his life, little thinks the plague will smite him on ship-board; and it was the foul diseases disseminated by personal contact that more than decimated so many hope- ful ship companies that sailed out of Rotterdam. It will hardly be contended that the men coming to Pennsylvania under such conditions looked forward to anything but a life of work until time wiped out the score that had been marked up against them.
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