USA > Pennsylvania > York County > The Beginnings of the German Element in York County, Pennsylvania > Part 7
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23 Archives, I: 724 f.
24 Archives, II: 28.
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Other Early Settlements.
acres. This plantation, including a mill and a blacksmith shop, lay entirely outside the limits of Digges's original survey but within the bounds of his resurvey. Accordingly Digges sought to force payment from Kitzmiller. This Kitzmiller resisted. On February 26, 1752, the sheriff of Baltimore County accompanied by several other persons, among them Henry and Dudley Digges, went to Kitzmil- ler's mill and placed Martin under arrest. Kitzmiller re- sisted arrest, his sons came to his rescue, and in the strug- gle a gun in the hands of Jacob Kitzmiller was discharged, killing Dugley Digges. The Marylanders then left the premises and Jacob Kitzmiller went to York and delivered himself into custody. John Digges represented that his son had been murdered and appealed to the Maryland authorities for justice. The president of the Maryland council at once laid claim to jurisdiction in the case and demanded that Kitzmiller be delivered to Maryland for trial. But the council of Pennsylvania established the fact that at the time of the royal order of 1738 Digges was not in possession of the land where the tragedy had taken place and that any possession that he may have acquired under Maryland authority subsequent to 1738 was in vio- lation of the royal order. The case therefore was ordered to be tried at York on October 30, 1752, and the province of Maryland was invited to submit at the trial whatever evidence they had to show that the place of shooting was in their jurisdiction. 25 But at the trial of the case before the court of Oyer and Terminer held by the supreme judges at York the jurisdiction over the disputed land was shown to belong to Pennsylvania. It also appeared from the evidence in the case that the shooting of Dudley Digges was in all probability an accident, and Jacob Kitzmiller
25 Colonial Record, V: 582-597; Archives, II: 70-83.
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German Element in York County, Pa.
and his father were acquitted.26 But this tragedy helped to sober the disputants somewhat and no further acts of such violence occurred, although the land disputes con- tinued to disturb the peace of the settlement for almost a decade.
Thus did the German pioneers in York County unwit- tingly become the means of resisting the encroachments of the Marylanders at both of their points of collision with the Pennsylvania authorities. But both in the eastern part of the county and in the southwestern part, they stood their ground for the most part quite loyally and with true German tenacity endured the hardships of improving their lands and maintaining their rights until at length the cum- bersome negotiations of the proprietaries determined the respective spheres of the two provinces and thus brought to the settlers the peace and prosperity in search of which they had left their native land. The running of the "Temporary Line of 1739" according to the royal order of King George II settled forever the difficulties in the Kreutz Creek Valley. Thomas Cressap, who had been captured and imprisoned in Philadelphia, was released and returned to Maryland.27 The Pennsylvanians who had been carried off from that region and imprisoned in Balti- more jail were also set free.28 The Kreutz Creek Settle- ment then began to grow rapidly.
But the German settlements on Digges's Choice were not freed from the disturbances of border difficulties for some years after the royal order had been issued. The vexed question of the exact bounds of Digges's grant under
26 From the full account of the trial which Richard Peters, secretary of the province, wrote to the Penns in England immediately after the trial. 27 Col. Rec., IV : 266.
28 For example, Nicholas Perie, Col. Rec., V: 225.
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Other Early Settlements.
his original survey and the further question concerning his right to lands north of the "temporary line " under a Maryland "resurvey" of 1745, continued to disturb the settlers in the southwestern part of the county and tended to discourage settlement there. The confusion continued, as we have seen, until 1752 when at the noted trial of Jacob Kitzmiller at York, in the presence of the attorney- generals of both provinces, the bounds of Digges's original survey were accurately determined and the principle was recognized that the lands north of the temporary line of 1739 which Digges had added to his original survey by his resurvey of 1745 were Pennsylvania property accord- ing to the royal order, and that therefore the Pennsylvania titles of the German residents on those lands were entirely valid. This decision, although it did not determine ulti- mately in what province those lands were, nevertheless served greatly to pacify the settlers in the southwestern part of the county and gave impetus to the influx of immi- grants into that fertile region. Finally with the amicable adjustment of the boundary question by the proprietors in England in 1763 and the completion of Mason and Dixon's line in 1767 all the inhabitants of this neighborhood of Hanover found themselves the unquestioned citizens of the province of Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile the two settlements whose beginnings we have described were gradually growing in numbers and extent. New accessions were being made in constantly increasing numbers. The Kreutz Creek Settlement nat- urally grew more rapidly than that on Digges's Choice. As new immigrants arrived in the valley they pushed farther and farther to the west and southwest, selecting always the choicest farming lands for their settlements. Thus the settlement expanded from the Kreutz Creek
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German Element in York County, Pa.
Valley into the Codorus Creek Valley and up this valley until it joined the German settlement at Hanover. So that in 1749 when York County was erected there was an almost continuous stretch of German plantations across the entire breadth of the county from the mouth of the Kreutz Creek in the east, across the very center of the county, to the banks of the Conewago in the southwest. This stretch of valley has been the home of the German element in the county ever since the planting of these earliest settlements. In 1740 the number of taxables in the county is said to have been over six hundred. More than three fourths of these were Germans, the rest being the English who had settled in the northern part of the county and the Scotch-Irish who had taken up their abode in the southeastern part. In 1749 the number of taxables reached almost fifteen hundred, the same proportion of Germans still obtaining.
But more than a decade before York County was sepa- rated from Lancaster County events had begun to shape themselves for the formation of a third German settle- ment in our county. Already in September, 1733, Rev. John Caspar Stoever, coming from Lancaster County, visited his German brethren west of the Susquehanna, gathered them together from the whole district of the Kreutz Creek and Codorus Creek Valleys, and organized them into " Die Evangelisch-Lutherische Gemeinde an der Kathores." The first Church Record of this congregation contains on its fly-leaf the names of twenty-four of these earliest Germans who contributed to the purchase of the book.29 Pastor Stoever baptized 191 persons and married 34 couples in this congregation before the close of his
29 Now in the possession of the Rev. Dr. G. W. Enders, the present pastor of the Church.
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Other Early Settlements.
pastorate at the end of 1743.30 His successor, Rev. David Candler, organized the Lutheran Church on Digges's Choice, "Die Evangelisch-Lutherische Kanawagische Ge- meinde," in April, 1743. These organizations were some of the guarantees of permanency and the harbingers of healthy growth of these settlements.
By the year 1739 the settlements immediately west of the Susquehanna had become so numerous and their Penn- sylvania citizenship so obvious that the Provincial As- sembly by special act added a new township to Lancaster County, the township of Hellam, which included most of what is now York County. In that same year a petition was presented to the Lancaster court by the inhabitants of Hellam Township praying for the opening of a public road between the Susquehanna and the Potomac. The petition was granted and of the six viewers appointed to locate this the first public road in the county at least four were Germans, namely, Michael Tanner, Christian Croll, Henry Hendricks and Woolrich Whisler. The road be- gan at a point between the lands of James Wright and Samuel Tayler on the west bank of the Susquehanna im- mediately opposite the plantations of John Wright31 and extended thence along the entire route of the German plantations through the Kreutz Creek and Codorus Creek Valleys, past Adam Forney's land (now Hanover) and Kitzmiller's Mill on the Conewago Creek, to the provin-
30 A history of this Church is to be found in the article by the Rev. Dr. B. M. Schmucker in the Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, 1888, pp. 473-529, " The Lutheran Church in York, Pa." A general history of the Lutherans on the Codorus and the Conewago is presented in Schmauk's "Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania," Vol. I, Chapter XIV, pp. 357-393.
31 To this point a road had been constructed from Lancaster in 1734.
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German Element in York County, Pa.
cial line.32 It was known as the Monocacy Road and covered a distance of 34 miles.
Thus the steps were taken in the German valley which were soon to lead to a county-seat for a new county and ultimately to give to Pennsylvania one of her most flour- ishing cities. For it was only two years after the ordain- ing of the Monocacy Road that a movement began which resulted in the establishing of a third German settlement in the county, destined in the course of time greatly to out- grow the other two and to play a significant role in national affairs. This was the town of York. In October, 1741, by order of the Penns, Thomas Cookson, Surveyor of Lancaster County, crossed the Susquehanna River and pro- ceeded "to survey and lay off in lots a tract of land on the Codorus where the Monocacy Road crosses the stream." This point is as far west of the Susquehanna as Lancaster is east of it. The prospective town on the Codorus re- ceived the name York, a neighboring city of Lancaster in England. The site selected for the new town lay on both sides of the creek but only the part east of the stream was laid off into lots. Applications for lots were then invited and in the month following the survey, November, 1741, twenty-three lots were reserved by intending citizens. Of these at least twenty-one were taken by Germans, George Swope purchasing four, George Hoke two, and the others each one as follows:
Jacob Welsh Baltzer Spangler Michael Swope Christian Croll
Michael Laub
Zachariah Shugart
Nicholas Stuck
Arnold Stuck
32 Vide Gibson's "History of York County," p. 322. Michael Tanner was also one of those appointed in 1766 to view the road southward from Hanover to the line between the provinces.
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Other Early Settlements.
Samuel Hoke
Matthais Onvensant
Hermanus Butt
Martin Eichelberger
Jacob Grebill
Henry Hendricks
Joseph Hinsman
and
Andrew Coaler
John Bishop.
All except the last two are certainly German. Hendricks is probably German, and John Bishop is very probably the Anglicized form of Johannes Bischof, who arrived at the port of Philadelphia October 27, 1739.
But an application for a lot did not in every case mean that residence in the new town was effected. A yearly quit-rent of seven shillings sterling was required by the proprietors for every lot that was taken up. James Logan, who was sent to regulate and supervise the affairs of the incipient town, imposed a condition upon the applicants by which each applicant was required within one year of the time of his application "to build upon his lot at his own private cost one substantial dwelling-house of the dimensions of sixteen feet square at least, with a good chimney of brick and stone, to be laid in or built with lime and sand"; otherwise his claim should be void. This was not an easy condition for the poor immigrants of that day to comply with. Few of the pioneer settlers had the means to build such houses, and of the few who had the means nearly all had gotten them through farming and this occupation they intended to continue now that they had crossed the Susquehanna. Consequently most of the newcomers to the county were not disposed to take up their residence in town but preferred to locate upon the fertile farms adjacent.33 Accordingly the town grew
33 George Swope and Baltzer Spangler afterwards kept public houses in the town. But Adam Miller was the first person to receive permission to keep a public house there. Vide Rupp's "History of Lancaster and York
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German Element in York County, Pa.
slowly at first. Two years after it had been laid out seventy lots had been applied for, but many of these had been forfeited because of the failure to build and only eleven houses had actually been built, although several more were in prospect, among them a Lutheran and a Re- formed house of worship.34 Practically no public im- provements had been made. In 1746 forty-four addi- tional lots were reserved and in October, 1749, when York became a county-seat, the town consisted of sixty- three dwelling houses and two churches. 35 During the next five years under the efficient supervision of George Stevenson the town began to thrive and by the end of 1754 contained 210 dwelling houses. In 1764 when the town of Hanover was laid out, York was already grow- ing rapidly. It was in the very center of a flourishing agricultural community and had attracted wide attention. Its population was predominantly German and it was to the thrifty German farms lying all about it that the town owed its growth and prosperity.36
The origin and the growth of this settlement at the
Counties," p. 574. In 1754 George Stevenson wrote from York: "The timber of the town land was all destroyed before I came here; the inhabi- tants ever since, have bought all their timber for building and firewood, very dear, of the adjacent farmers, which is discouraging to poor settlers, and few rich people settle here." See letter of October 26, quoted in Gibson, p. 516.
34 Vide letter of James Logan to Thomas Penn, August 30, 1743. Among the Official Penn Manuscripts.
35 A few persons had taken possession of lots and built homes on them without securing a legal title. The names of such town squatters are Jacob Billmeyer, Jacob Fakler, and Avit Shall. They were required to give up their possessions to the agent of the proprietaries in 1751. Rupp's " His- tory," p. 575.
36 Referring to the German citizens who constituted nearly the entire population of the town Thomas Penn wrote in 1765 of "the flourishing state to which the town hath arrived through their industry."
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Other Early Settlements.
intersection of the Codorus Creek and the Monocacy Road cannot be understood entirely apart from the settlers in the country round about. Eight or nine years before York had been laid out as a town a number of Germans had taken up their abodes on the inviting lands in that vicinity. They had not come from the same region as that from which the original settlers on the Kreutz Creek had come. And in their new homes in York County they were for the most part too far west to be affected by the border disturbances which embroiled the settlers in the Kreutz Creek Valley, although they had migrated into the county almost simultaneously with the settlers on the Kreutz Creek. Their plantations lay about the point where the Kreutz Creek Valley ceases and merges into the Codorus Creek Valley. From that point they stretched north and northeast along the course of the Codorus and some of them also stretched southwest along that creek.
Here these Germans had settled chiefly as squatters, undisturbed by the Indians and tacitly tolerated by the Pennsylvania authorities who knew that these settlers would secure warrants in the course of time. For a long time they constituted a group quite distinct from the set- tlers in the Kreutz Creek Valley farther east. 37 Many of them had arrived here as early as 1733 and it was from their number that Pastor Stoever, in September of that year, gathered the members for the first church organiza- tion west of the Susquehanna. The location of the mem- bers of this congregation gave the new organization its name, the "Church on the Codorus." And the list of the
37 The Lancaster County authorities knew that there were Germans settled at the west end of the Kreutz Creek Valley, for Blunston wrote on January 16, 1737: " Most of the Dutch not taken are come away that live towards this end of the valley."
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German Element in York County, Pa.
names of the individuals who helped to purchase the first record book for that Church doubtless embraces the names of most of the German settlers in that neighborhood in the fall of 1733. Of this list of twenty-four names only four (Christian Croll, Philip Ziegler, Jacob Ziegler, and Michael Walck) are familiar to us from our study of the names of settlers in the Kreutz Creek Valley. The others38 were beyond the reach of those disturbances. Some of these German settlers along the Codorus after- wards drifted into the town of York. But most of them remained upon their thriving plantations and constituted the base of supplies and the ground for the prosperity of the new town. These settlers and their plantations must therefore be regarded as an integral part of the third German settlement in the county.
These, then, were the earliest German settlements in York County. After five years of border difficulties in the Kreutz Creek Valley and two decades of turmoil over the boundaries of Digges's Choice, the development of these
38 These are as follows:
Martin Bauer
Christof Kraut
Heinrich Schultz
Johannes Bentz
Gottfried Mauch
Valentine Schultz
Joseph Beyer
Nicholas Koger
George Schwab
Paul Burkhardt
Jacob Scherer
George Ziegler
John Adam Diehl
Mathias Schmeiser
Heinrich Zanck
Carl Eisen
George Schmeiser
and
Baltzer Knetzer
George Zimmermann
One illegible.
A complete list of males to whom Pastor Stoever ministered during the ten years of his pastorate (1733-1743) as gathered from the entries in his record, includes exactly 100 names. Of these at least 14 are names that occur in the documents concerning the Kreutz Creek Settlement. This indicates that some of the settlers in that first settlement, probably those who were Lutherans, availed themselves of the ministrations of the pastor who served the settlement on the Codorus.
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Other Early Settlements.
German settlements, stretching from one end of the county to the other, went steadily and peacefully forward until the outbreak of the French and Indian War. They con- centrated, as we have seen, along the line of the Mon- ocacy Road and this in turn followed for the most part the ancient Indian trail which had marked the course for early German missionary and pilgrim.
Twenty Dollars. No,
This BILL entities
the Bearer to receive TWENTY SPANISH MILLED DOLLARS, or the Value thereof in Gold or Silver, according to a Rejo- Cution puffed d'y Son- grejs, at Yorktown, utf April, 1778.'
CHAPTER V.
WHENCE THE GERMANS CAME AND WHY.
OW that we have seen how the German ele- ment in York County had its beginning there, we cannot fail to be confronted by the larger and prior question as to the origin of these Germans before they settled on the banks of the Kreutz Creek, the Codorus and the Conewago. Why did they come to America? Where did they come from when they settled in York County? And how did they come to settle the particular parts of the county which they did and which their descendants have occupied to the present day ?
Of the reason why the Germans left their native homes and braved the discomforts and dangers of an ocean voy- age to take up their abodes upon the unsettled newlands of America we have a very clear intimation in a declara- tion wrung from them by their distresses in our county shortly after their settlement here. In the course of the proceedings concerning the "revolt of the Germans" in the Kreutz Creek Valley from Maryland authority and their return to Pennsylvania allegiance, the Germans had
96
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Whence the Germans Came and Why.
occasion to send an answer to the Governor of Maryland (1736). In this statement they take occasion to explain why they left Germany and how they came to locate in what is now York County. For they set forth
" that being greatly oppressed in their native country, principally on account of their religion, they resolved, as many others had done before, to fly from it. That hearing much of the justice and mild- ness of the government of Pennsylvania, they embarked in Holland for Philadelphia, where on their arrival they swore allegiance to King George and fidelity to the proprietors of Pennsylvania and their government. That repairing to the great body of their countrymen settled in the County of Lancaster, on the east side of Susquehannah they found the lands there generally taken up and possessed, and therefore some of them by licenses from the pro- prietors of Pennsylvania, went over that River and settled there under their authority, and others according to a common practice then obtaining sate down with a resolution to comply as others should with the terms of the government when called on, but they had not been long there until some pretending authority from the government of Maryland, insisted on it that that country was in that province, and partly by threats or actual force and partly by very large promises, they had been led to submit to the com- mands of that government." Then they recount the ill treatment they have received at the hands of the Marylanders. "This un- common and cruel usage" is only one of a number of arguments by which " we are persuaded in our own consciences we are clearly within the province of Pennsylvania." "We could not therefore but believe ourselves obliged in conscience in the honest discharge of the solemn engagements we had entered into at our first arrival in Pennsylvania, to return to our obedience to its proprietors as soon as we discovered we were truly seated within its limits." And in conclusion they appeal to the Governor's consideration against " the treating of a parcel of conscientious, industrious, and peaceable people, like rebels, for no other reason than . . . because we are
7
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German Element in York County, Pa.
convinced of the mistakes we had been lately led into by the false assertions of persons of no credit."1
From this writing it is clear that these Germans had left their native land for a threefold reason, partly because of political oppression and severe religious persecutions at home, partly because of the example of many who had preceded them, and partly because of the alluring accounts they had heard about Pennsylvania. They had gone first to Lancaster County because most of the Germans in Pennsylvania were located there. They had continued through Lancaster and across the river and into what is now York County and had settled there, most of them as squatters without licenses but intending to take out licenses in course of time. Here their ignorance of the language of the government and their lack of acquaintance with political intrigues made them the easy victims of evil schemes. Their own motives were peaceful but they were inveigled into procedures which involved them in strife and unrest. The stubborn dispute of the provincial govern- ments concerning the jurisdiction over the lands on which the Germans had settled entailed unhappy consequences for the newcomers and for a time threatened seriously to disturb the peace and permanence of their settlement.
Now the grounds of this religious persecution and the other kinds of oppression which these Germans had suf- fered in their native country and which they give as their reason for fleeing from Germany, are of no little impor- tance for our subject. They carry us across the ocean and back more than two centuries into the past but they help us to understand the character and class of the immigrants,
1 Archives, I: 492 f. This statement was signed by about sixty hands. Col. Rec., IV : 57.
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Whence the Germans Came and Why.
the circumstances under which they left their homes and came to the New World, and the distinctive characteristics which they manifested in their lives and habitations after they arrived in York County. For that reason we must pause to enumerate, in outline at least, the causes of the German immigration to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century.2
The chief causes are of two kinds. A long series of destructive wars, continued religious persecution, and re-
2 The sources of information concerning German immigration to Amer- ica are many and varied. A complete bibliography of works relating to Germans in the United States far exceeds 10,000 titles. The first volume of Professor A. B. Faust's "The German Element in the United States " (1909) gives a faithful summary of the history of German immigration into America. Chapters II-V deal in a general way with the immigra- tion into Pennsylvania. At the close of Volume II Professor Faust pre- sents a rather full bibliography compiled from European and American sources and containing nearly two thousand titles.
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