USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania: The German influence in its settlement and development, Pat VII > Part 8
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The Pennsylvania-German Society.
importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon outnumber us, that all the advantages we will have, will in my opinion, be not able to preserve our language, and even our gov- ernment will become precarious." 65
The wisest mortals are sometimes short-sighted and Dr. Franklin must be allowed a place in that category. His letter is unsound throughout. First he calls them stupid and ignorant; later he admits they import many books. If so ignorant and stupid what did they want with so many books? If so steeped in mental darkness, how is it that there were more German newspapers printed in the Prov- ince at that very hour than in English? The generally shrewd philosopher, patriot and statesman involved him- self in contradictions such as not even the "stupid" Ger- mans would have done. I may even go further and say, . that at the time Dr. Franklin's letter was written there were many Germans in Pennsylvania incomparably su- perior to him in the learning of the schools. He does not appear to have thought of that. Perhaps he did not know it-could not comprehend it.
Well-nigh one hundred and fifty years have come and gone since his unjust tirade against the German colonists. Not one of the fears that seemed to have possessed his soul has been realized. It is true the Quaker no longer gov- erns the land. He went to the rear as the Germans came to the front and assumed control of the Government. They became the dominant race, and they are so to-day. They did no violence to the laws ; they upheld them and enforced them. They have made the State the grandest of all the forty-five. Dr. Franklin lived to see how idle his predic- tions were, and even he recanted.
65 SPARK'S Works of Franklin, Vol. VII., pp. 71-73.
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Falckner's Continuation of Gabriel Thomas.
CONTINUATIO Der Befchreibung der Sandfaafit PENSYLVANIÆ An denen End: Branten AMERICA. Uber porige Des herrn Daftorii Relationes. Sn fich haltend : Die Situation, und fruchtbarteit Des Erdbodene. Die Cobiffreiche und andere Fluffe. Die Anzahl Derer bighero gebauten Stadte. Die feltjame Creaturen an Ebieren / Bogeln und Fifoben. Die Mineralien und Ebelgefteine Deren eingebobrien mil den Boldfer Sprachen / Religion und Gebrauche. und Die erften Ebriftlichen WHanger und Unbauer Diefes Canbes. Befchrieben von GABRIEL THOMAS is. Jährigen Inmobner Diefes Landes. Welchem Tractåtlein noch bengefuget find : Des Ant. DANIEL FALCKNERS Burgers und Pilgrims in Penfylvania 193. Beantwortungen uff vorgelegte fragen von guten freunden.
Srandfurt und Leipzig, 34. finden ben Andreas Otto/ Buchhandlan
FALCKNER'S Continuation OF GABRIEL THOMAS' Account.
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There were a number of others whose views coincided with those of Franklin, at least in some particulars. On the other hand there were those who spoke and wrote as decidedly in their behalf. Among these was the historian Macaulay, who calls them " Honest, laborious men, who had once been thriving burghers of Mannheim and Heidel- berg, or who had cultivated the vine on the banks of the Neckar and Rhine. Their ingenuity and their diligence could not fail to enrich any land which should afford them an asylum."
Against the jaundiced views of Dr. Franklin I set those of a man of our own times, one who from his public position and his superior opportunities for forming correct views of the early German immigrants is eminently entitled to be heard on this question. I mean Dr. James P. Wicker- sham, for nearly fifteen years Superintendent of Public Instruction in Pennsylvania. Of Quaker descent, he was nevertheless broad-minded and liberal, and did not strive to close his eyes to the good qualities of the early Germans, with whose descendants he became so intimately connected and acquainted. He says : "Pennsylvania as a land of promise became known in Holland, Germany and Switzer- land. * *
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* But it was not long until numbers of the op- pressed inhabitants of nearly all parts of Germany and Switzerland, and especially of districts along the Rhine, began to seek homes, with wives, children and all they possessed, in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Among them were members of a dozen different religious denominations, large and small. They all came with the common object of bettering their condition in life, and securing homes in a country where they could enjoy unmolested the right to worship God as their consciences dictated. In Penn- sylvania, if nowhere else, they knew they would secure
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Their Love of Learning . Vindicated.
civil and religious liberty. Some of them were very poor, even coming without sufficient money to pay the expenses of their passage, but others were well to do, bought land, built houses, and soon by patient industry had about them the comforts to which they had been accustomed. The Ger- man immigrants were mostly farmers, but among them there was a smaller proportion of different kinds of me- chanics. They brought few books with them, but nearly every individual possessed a Bible and a Prayer or Hymn- book, and many had in addition a Catechism or a Confes- sion of Faith. These were the treasures that could not be left behind, and they are still preserved as heirlooms in hundreds of old German families.
" When they came in bodies, they were usually accom- panied by a clergyman or a schoolmaster, or both. They were not highly educated as a class, but among them were some good scholars, and few could be found who were not able to read. The impression has prevailed that they were grossly ignorant; it is unjust ; those who make the charge either do not take the pains to understand, or wish to misrepresent them. Their average intelligence compared favorably with that of contemporary American colonists of other nationalities. If they did not keep pace with others in subsequent years, their backwardness is easily accounted for by their living for the most part on farms, frequently many miles separated, and extending over large sections of country ; their division into many religious denominations, among which there was little unity ; their inability, scattered and broken as they were, to support ministers and schoolmasters, or even to secure the advantages of an organized community ; their use of a language which in a measure isolated them from the neighboring settlers, and shut them out from the social,
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political and business currents that gave life to the com- munities around them; their unacquaintance with the proper forms of local self-government, and the habit brought with them, in all public concerns, of deferring to some outside or higher authority ; and above all, per- haps, their quiet, confiding disposition, quite in contrast with the ways of some of the more aggressive, self-assert- ing classes of people with whom they were brought in competition. * *
"Although invited to settle in Pennsylvania, the Ger- mans, arriving in such large numbers and spreading over the country so rapidly, seem to have created a fear on the part of other settlers and of the provincial authorities that they would form an unruly element in society, and eventu- ally work the overthrow of the government, or assume possession of it, as their countrymen had done long before in England. Laws restraining their immigration were passed, and the alarm disturbed even such well-balanced minds as those of Logan and Franklin. It is almost need- . less to add now that such a fear was groundless and arose wholly out of the political and sectarian prejudices of the day. On the contrary, it is only just to say that to all that has gone to build up Pennsylvania, to enlarge her wealth, to develop her resources, to increase her prosperity, to educate her people, to give her good government from the first, the German element of the population has con- tributed its full share. Better citizens cannot be found in any nation on the face of the globe." 66
No truer tribute was ever paid the German immigrants than this one, before the Assembly on January 2, 1738, by Lieutenant-Governor George Thomas when urging the es-
66 JAMES PYLE WICKERSHAM, LL.D., A History of Education in Pennsyl- vania, pp. 122-124.
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Governor Thomas' Tribute.
tablishment of a hospital for sick arrivals : " This Province has been for some years the Asylum of the distressed Protestants of the Palatinate, and other parts of Germany, and I believe it may with truth be said that the present flourishing condition of it is in a great measure owing to the industry of these People; and should any discourage- ment divert them from coming hither, it may well be apprehended that the value of your Lands will fall, and your Advances to wealth be much slower; for it is not altogether the goodness of the Soil, but the Number and Industry of the People that make a flourishing Colony." 67
67 Colonial Records, Vol. IV., p. 315.
SPECIMEN OF EARLY PENNSYLVANIA POTTERY.
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CHAPTER XI.
THE GERMANS AS FARMERS .- ANSWER TO A RECENT HIS- TORIAN WHO ASSERTS THEY, ATRACE OF FARMERS, DID NOT TAKE THE SAME ENJOYMENT IN AGRICULTURAL PUR- SUITS AS THE SCOTCH-IRISH AND SOME OTHERS !!
"Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; How jocund did they drive their teams afield ! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke !"
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"Und der Vater mit frohem Blick, Von des Hauses weitschauendem Giebel Überzählet sein blühend Glück, Siehet der Pfosten ragende Bäume, Und der Scheunen gefüllte Räume, Und die Speicher, vom Segen gebogen Und des Kornes bewegte Wogen."
HIS chapter is supplemen- tary. It had no place in the original plan of the writer. It has been called forth by a brief sentence found in a recently published his- tory of Pennsylvania, and is the last written chapter of this book-written long after the rest. While not germane to the general title, it yet deserves a place here inasmuch as
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An Erroneous Statement.
it strikes at one of the innumerable errors and misrepre- sentations concerning the early German population of Pennsylvania which crowd the pages of some recent writers. These errors, I am persuaded, are more the re- sult of ignorance than of design, but they are errors never- theless, and should be killed at their birth. That is the only plan known to me to keep down the abundant crop of ignorance which springs up as often as writers draw on their imagination for their facts. It is rarely, however, that anything so gross as the blunder to which I shall refer appears in print, as genuine history.
I was much surprised to find in a recently issued history of Pennsylvania, the following surprising statement : " The Germans perhaps were less given to the enjoyment of agri- culture than the Scotch-Irish and other settlers, yet in their own way they enjoyed existence, etc." 68 By no conceivable possibility is such a statement likely to be accepted by any one who has actual knowledge of the German immigration into this or any other country in America. It shows such a superficial acquaintance with the subject discussed as to carry its own condemnation with it. Yet, lest future writers of our history be lured into making similar state- ments, I shall take it upon myself to adduce such proof in contradiction of the statement quoted, as will, I believe, set the question at rest effectually and permanently.
I think it will be conceded, as a general proposition, that men in all civilized countries follow those pursuits to which they are best adapted and most inclined, whether for profit or enjoyment. It is true that when Roman civilization first came into contact with the Germanic tribes, the latter were more given to war and the chase than to agriculture.
"ALBERT BOLLES, Ph. D., LL.D., Pennsylvania, Province and State, Vol. II., p. 161.
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But even then they grew corn and lived largely upon the products of the field. In time they became agriculturists and for hundreds of years parts of Germany have been among the best cultivated portions of Europe, even as they are to-day. In the seventeenth century, the Palatinate and the Rhine provinces generally were the garden of Europe. They hold the same rank at this very hour. Other pursuits were followed, it is true, but outside the cities the prevailing pursuit was agriculture. The German immigration to Pennsylvania was very largely from the Palatinate, not only in its early stages, but subsequently.
Lying before me are lists of those who reached London during the great German Exodus in 1709, on their way to America. One of these gives the pursuits of the 2,928 adult males; of that entire number 1,838 were farmers, while the remaining 1,073 were classified under 24 other distinct mechanical and other professions. Another list containing 1,593 had 1,083 farmers and 510 men trained to 26 other pursuits ; more than 67 per cent. of the entire number were farmers.
I think it is entirely within bounds to say that 75 per cent. of the German colonists in Pennsylvania were agri- culturists. The first thing they did was to take up land, generally in the legally prescribed way, but sometimes irregularly. Nine-tenths of them went into the country, that is beyond the immediate bounds of Philadelphia, and most of them took to farming. In fact there was nothing else for them to get at for many years. Even most of those who had mechanical trades were compelled to take to farming because there was not much of a demand for bakers, glass-blowers, millers, engravers, and some other classes of handicraftsmen.
Look at the counties settled principally by these people
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Germans Now Possess the Land.
-Lancaster, Berks, Lebanon, York, Lehigh and North- ampton. They comprise to-day the great agricultural re- gion of the Commonwealth, and the men who are doing the farming on their fertile acres are the lineal descendants three, four or five generations removed from the first farmer immigrants. It was in every instance the agriculturists that pushed and were pushed to the outskirts of civilization. Did they go there for the profit and enjoyment they had in farming or for the fun of the thing, as we are asked to in- fer? What is more, they were the best and most success- ful farmers Pennsylvania had during the eighteenth century, just as they are the best and most successful farmers in United States to-day, and yet we are deliberately and the gravely informed they did not enjoy agriculture as much as the Scotch-Irish and other settlers ! What is the record? Where are all the Scotch-Irish farmers to-day? Why are they not on the ancestral acres as the Germans are? Cum- berland county was settled mainly by Scotch-Irish. In Northampton county there were many Irish and Scotch- Irish. Three-fourths of all the land in both these agri- cultural counties are to-day tilled by Pennsylvania-Ger- mans. There are several townships in Lancaster county once largely occupied by Scotch-Irish of the best class. One can ride through them an entire day now without find- ing one farm tilled by an Ulster Irishman. Nine-tenths of the farmers in eastern Pennsylvania to-day are descend- ants of the men who, we are gravely informed, did not find the same enjoyment in agriculture as the Scotch-Irish, Welsh, English and others. If such an array of facts, susceptible of verification by any one who cares to make the test, is not deemed sufficient, I will produce further evidence from contemporary sources to fortify the position here taken.
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The most eminent medical man in Pennsylvania, if not in the United States during the last century, was Dr. Ben- jamin Rush. In the course of a very busy life he found time to write and publish a little volume dealing with the Germans of this State and especially with the German farmers.69 I will be pardoned if I quote numerous passages from this book, written by one who had a thorough per- sonal knowledge of all he tells us.
"The principal part of them were farmers. * * I shall begin this account of the German inhabitants of Pennsylvania by describing the manners of the German farmers. The Germans, taken as a body, especially as farmers, are not only industrious and frugal, but skillful cultivators of the earth. I shall enumerate a few partic- ulars in which they differ from most of the other farmers of Pennsylvania. In settling a tract of land, they always provide large and suitable accommodation for their horses and cattle, before they lay out much money in building a house for themselves. The first dwelling house upon this farm is small and built of logs. It generally lasts the lifetime of the first settler of a tract of land; and hence, they have a saying, that ' a son should always begin his improvements where his father left off,' that is by build- ing a large and convenient stone house.
"They always prefer good land, or that land on which there is a large quantity of meadow land. From an atten- tion to the cultivation of grass, they often double the value of an old farm in a few years, and grow rich on farms, on which their predecessors of whom they purchased them had nearly starved. They prefer purchasing farms with improvements to settling on a new tract of land.
6" BENJAMIN RUSH, M.D., An Account of the Manners of the German Inhabitants of Pennsylvania. Written in 1789.
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PENNSYLVANIA-GERMAN FARM LIFE. RAKING THE BAKE-OVEN.
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Customs of Early Immigrants.
" In clearing new land, they do not girdle or belt the trees simply, and leave them to perish in the ground, as is the custom of their English or Irish neighbors; but they generally cut them down and burn them. In destroying underwood and bushes, they generally grub them out of the ground, by which means a field is as fit for cultivation the second year after it is cleared as it is in twenty years afterwards. The advantages of this mode of clearing, consists in the immediate product of the field, and in the greater facility with which it is ploughed, harrowed and reaped. The expense of repairing a plow, which is often broken, is greater than the extraordinary expense of grub- bing the same field completely, in clearing.
" They feed their horses and cows well, of which they keep. only a small number, in such a manner that the former perform twice the labor of those horses, 'and the latter yield twice the quantity of milk of those cows, that are less plentifully fed. There is great economy in this practice, especially in a country where so much of the labor of the farmer is necessary to support his domestic animals. A German horse is known in every part of the State; indeed, the horse seems ' to feel with his lord, the pleasure and the pride' of his extraordinary size or fat.
" The fences of a German farm are generally high and well built, so that his fields seldom suffer from the inroads of his own or his neighbors' horses, cattle, hogs or sheep.
"The German farmers are great economists in their wood. Hence they burn it only in stoves, in which they consume but a fourth or fifth of what is commonly burnt in ordinary open fireplaces ; besides their horses are saved by means of this economy, from that immense labor of hauling wood in the middle of winter, which frequently unfits the horses of their (Scotch) neighbors for the toils of the en-
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suing spring. Their houses are, moreover, rendered so comfortable, at all times, by large close stoves, that twice the business is done by every branch of the family, in knitting, spinning and mending of farming utensils, that is done in houses where every member in the family crowds near a common fireplace, or shivers at a distance from it, with hands and fingers that move, by reason of the cold, with only half their usual quickness. They discover economy in the preservation and increase of their wood, in several other ways. They sometimes defend it, by high fences, from their cattle ; by which means the young forest trees are suffered to grow, to replace those that are cut down for the neces- sary use of the farm.
" They keep their horses and cattle as warm as possible, in winter, by which means they save a great deal of their hay and grain, for these ani- mals when cold, eat much more than when in a more comfortable situa- tion.
"The German farmers live frug- ally in their families, with respect to diet, furniture, and apparel. They sell their most profitable grain, which is wheat, and eat that which is less profitable, that is rye, or Indian corn. The profit to a farmer, from this sin- gle article of economy, is equal, in the course of a life-time, to the price of a farm for one of his children.
PRIMITIVE I ANTERN.
" The German farmers have large or profitable gardens near their houses. These contain little else but useful
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Industry of German Housewives.
vegetables. Pennsylvania is indebted to the Germans for the principal part of her knowledge in horticulture. There was a time when turnips and cabbage were the principal vegetables that were used in diet by the citizens of Phila- delphia. This will not surprise those persons who know that the first settlers in Pennsylvania left England while horticul- ture was in its infancy in that country. Since the settle- ment of a number of German gardens in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, the tables of all classes of citizens have been covered with a variety of vegetables in every season of the year, and to the use of these vegetables in diet may be ascribed the general exemption of the citizens of Phila- delphia from diseases of the skin.
" The Germans seldom hire men to work upon their farms. The feebleness of that authority which masters possess over their hired servants is such that their wages are seldom procured from their labor, except in harvest when they work in the presence of their masters.70 The wives and daughters of the German farmers frequently for- sake for a while their dairy and spinning wheel, and join their husbands and brothers in the labor of cutting down, collecting and bringing home the fruits of the fields and orchards. The work of the gardens is generally done by the women of the family.
" A large strong wagon, the ship of inland commerce, covered with linen cloth, is an essential part of the fur- niture of a German farm. In this wagon, drawn by four
70 I avail myself at this place of the liberty to state that one of the main reasons why the Scotch-Irish were not so successful as farmers as the Germans, was because their lands were mainly cultivated by negroes as in- dentured servants. They did not care for farm work, and the consequence was the farms did not care for them, and in the end they sold their improved lands to the Germans who under a better system had been successful in accumulat- ing the money to pay for them. They then went into politics and trade, where they succeeded better.
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or five horses of a peculiar breed they convey to market, over the roughest roads from 2,000 to 3,000 pounds weight of the produce of their farms. In the months of September and October, it is no uncommon thing, on the Lancaster and Reading roads, to meet in one day fifty or one hun- dred of these wagons, on their way to Philadelphia, most of which belong to German farmers.71
"The favorable influence of agriculture, as conducted by the Germans, in extending human happiness, is manifested by the joy they express upon the birth of a child. No dread of poverty, nor distrust of Providence, from an in- creasing family, depresses the spirit of these industrious and frugal people. Upon the birth of a son, they exult in the gift of a plowman or a waggoner ; and upon the birth of a daughter, they rejoice in the addition of another spin- ster or milk-maid to the family.
" The Germans set a great value upon patrimonial prop- erty. This useful principle in human nature prevents much folly and vice in young people. It moreover leads to lasting and extensive advantages, in the improvement of a farm; for what inducements can be stronger in a parent to plant an orchard, to preserve forest trees or to build a commodious house than the idea that they will all be possessed by a succession of generations who shall in- herit his blood and name.
" From the history that has been given of the German agriculture, it will hardly be necessary to add that a German farm may be distinguished from the farms of the
71 These were the famous Conestoga wagons and the equally famous Con- estoga horses, whose fame is as enduring as that of the Commonwealth itself. "Die entfernsten, besonders deutschen Landleute, kommen mit grossen, mit mancherlei Proviant beladenen bedeckten Wagen auf denen sie zugleich ihren eigenen Mundvorrath und Futter für ihre Pferde mitbringen, und darauf übernachten." SCHOEPF'S Reise durch Pennsylvanien, 1783, p. 165.
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