USA > Pennsylvania > York County > The Beginnings of the German Element in York County, Pennsylvania > Part 9
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15 Christopher Saur, the celebrated Pennsylvania German printer and publisher, himself a Dunkard, says in his "Pennsylvania Berichte" of October 16, 1754:
Pennsylvania ist ein solches Land, von desgleichen man in der gantzen Welt nicht höret oder lieset; viele tausend Menschen aus Europa sind mit verlangen hierher gekommen, bloss um der gütigen Regierung und Gewis- sensfreyheit wegen. Diese edle Freyheit ist wie ein Lockvogel oder Lock- speisse, welche den Menschen erst nach Pennsylvanien bringt und wann der gute Platz nach und nach enge wird, so ziehen die Menschen auch von hier in die angrenzende englische Collonien und werden also die eng- lischen Collonien um Pennsylvanien willen mit vielen Einwohnern aus Deutschland besetzt zum Nutzen der Krone." Quoted in Seidensticker, " Geschichte der Deutschen Gesellschaft," p. 12.
16 Once the stream of German immigration had begun to flow strongly into Pennsylvania this fact itself served as an argument to attract others to this province. Thus in 1711 Moritz Wilhelm Hoen published the advice of the German pastor in London, Anton Wilhelm Böhme, under the title, " Das verlangte nicht erlangte Kanaan by der lustgräbern, etc." in which it is said: Im Gegentheil ist by Pennsylvanien zu mercken dass daselbst mehr Teutsche Colonien sich gesetzt haben als in einem einigen andern Theil der Englischen Plantationen in America; welche die jenigen zu- mercken haben die etwa von Lands-Leuten einige Hülfe und Hand-Reich- ung bey ihrer ersten Ankunft erwarten möchten."
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Whence the Germans Came and Why.
important single racial element within the borders of the state.
Coming into the province through the port of Phila- delphia these immigrants only gradually made their way into the interior. Step by step they spread out in all direc- tions from the city of Philadelphia. Germantown, the pioneer of all German settlements in America, now the twenty-second ward in the city of Philadelphia, remained predominantly a German city for more than a hundred years after its settlement and was chiefly prominent during the eighteenth century as the base for distribution of Ger- man immigration to the interior counties in southeastern Pennsylvania. The steady expansion of the German col- ony westward and southward in the eighteenth century is as interesting as the movements of their Alemannic ances- tors in the fourth century and would be a fruitful theme for study. At the very beginning of the century we see the hardy German pioneers move out from Germantown and enter the unbroken wilderness, clearing the lands and turning the primeval forest into grain-covered fields. First they were content to remain in the vicinity of Philadelphia, in the counties of Montgomery, Lancaster, and Berks. Then as the population increased they made their way further and further to the west. As good lands became scarcer they crossed the Susquehanna and founded the counties of York, Adams, and Cumberland. Then they pushed northward into Dauphin, Lebanon, Lehigh, North- ampton, and Monroe Counties. Towards the middle of the century Pennsylvania herself became a center of dis- tribution of German immigration, which spread out from the Quaker commonwealth to all points south and west. As early as 1732 promising settlements had been made by
8
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German Element in York County, Pa.
Pennsylvania Germans in Western Maryland and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.17 Germans from Berks County had settled at various places in the central and western parts of North Carolina.18 When Ohio was thrown open to colonists after the successful issue of the French and Indian War, Germans from Pennsylvania were among the enterprising pioneers who settled there.19 Still later they were in the forefront of that vast move- ment which wave by wave swept over the broad expanse of the west and northwest and won it to the purposes of civilization. The settlement of York County, Pennsyl- vania, is therefore simply one small step in the Teutonic occupation of colonial Pennsylvania and the general west- ward expansion of American population before the Revo- lution. Its relation to subsequent American history can easily be seen when it is regarded as one of the very first steps preliminary to the " winning of the west," an achieve- ment in which the Pennsylvania Germans and the more recent German-Americans have always borne a highly im- portant part.
More specifically it may now be asked from what part or parts of Pennsylvania the Germans came who first set- tled York County. Few of them came to our county directly from the port of landing as untried European im- migrants. Most of them had reached America before the official lists of German arrivals began to be kept in 1727 and hence had some taste of American life before the val-
17 J. W. Wayland, "The German Element of the Shenandoah Valley " (1907), p. 33; Faust, Vol. I, pp. 188 ff.
18 Williamson, " History of North Carolina," Vol. II, p. 71; Bernheim, " German Settlements and the Lutheran Church in the Carolinas " (1872), pp. 150 f .; Faust, Vol. II, pp. 228 ff.
19 Vide, e. g., Roosevelt, "The Winning of the West," Vol. I, Chapter V, pp. 139 f. (Sagamore Edition).
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Whence the Germans Came and Why.
leys of York County were thrown open to settlers. Then in the late twenties and early thirties when proprietary re- strictions and Indian claims were lifted west of the Sus- quehanna, they were moved by various considerations to dispose of their former lands and improvements and to be- gin life a second time on American soil by taking up lands on the inviting stretches of the newly opened county. It was this class of people, with several years of pioneer ex- perience behind them, who constituted the great majority of the original German element in York County.
Some of the earliest settlers did, indeed, come directly from their landing-place and made our county their first American home, but such are comparatively rare instances. Of the known names of earliest settlers in the Kreutz Creek Valley and on Digges's Choice more than four fifths had arrived in this country before those settlements were begun and hence must have settled elsewhere before coming to York County. A search of the official lists20 of German immigrants reveals the fact that less than one fifth of those mentioned above (pp. 59 f, 64, 75 ff ) are to be found among the arrivals from 1727 to 1740. Nor does the identity of name always identify the person. Tobias Frey, Philip Ziegler, Nicholas Bucher, Nicholas Perie, Michael Miller, Caspar Spangler, and John Leh- mann arrived in 1727. Peter Mittelkauf, Frederick Leader and John Morningstar arrived in 1728.21 Jacob
20 Division of Public Records, Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg. Vide Rupp's " Thirty Thousand Names."
21 Peter Mittelkauf is known to have settled first in Montgomery County, as did also Michael Will (Wüll) who arrived in 1732. Vide supra, p. 76. Johannes Morgenstern's name occurs as late as June, 1734, on the baptismal register of Pastor Stoever's Record for the Lutheran Church of the Trappe in Montgomery County. Vide "Proceedings of the Pennsylvania German Society," Vol. VI, pp. 178, 179 and 180.
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German Element in York County; Pa.
Krebell and Christian Croll arrived in 1729. John Counts and Henry Smith arrived in 1730. All of these had ar- rived before the German migration across the Susquehanna had begun. Hence they must first have settled elsewhere in Pennsylvania. But Jacob Welshover, Henry Bann and Martin Schultz arrived in 173 1 and may have gone directly to York County. Likewise the following: Martin Weigle, Martin Bower, Adam Miller (arrived 1732), Hans Stein- man (1733), Ulrich Whistler (1733), Jacob Huntzecker (1733), Michael Spangler (1737), Martin Buyers (1738), and William Oler (1737). Matthias Ulrich arrived in 1738 but from his deposition of August 29, 1746, it is evident that he did not settle on Digges's Choice until 1742, just before making his visit to Germany.22 Peter Ensminger arrived in Philadelphia in 1733 but first settled in Lancaster County where he was naturalized in 1734 or 1735.23 It is clear, therefore, that at all times the great mass of the immigrants into our county used some other part of Pennsylvania as a stepping-stone.24
Some few may have come from Maryland but the num- ber of those who came from that direction could not at any time have been very considerable. It is known, for example, that in 1765 Richard MacAllister sold several of his town lots to "George Naes, tanner, of Baltimore town, in the province of Maryland," and that after that the Nace family resided in Hanover. 25 The road on the
22 Archives, I: 700.
23 Rupp's " Thirty Thousand Names," p. 436.
24 In the statement of the Germans of August 13, 1736, they say: "being many of us then newly arrived in America," Col. Rec., IV: 64. But in the light of the above facts this expression cannot be taken to preclude several years residence in this country. It simply serves to explain their lack of acquaintance with political conditions (" altogether strangers to the bound- aries ") and accounts for their susceptibility to "plausible pretences."
25 Lucy Forney Bittinger's "The Forney Family, 1690-1893," P. 59.
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Whence the Germans Came and Why.
line of the present Hanover and Baltimore turnpike had been laid out by order of the Baltimore County Court as early as 1736.26 This highway early established direct communication between Baltimore and the Conewago set- tlements. But there is no evidence to indicate that such transfers of German residence from Baltimore to York County took place earlier than that of George Naes in 1765 or that they were at all frequent even at so late a date as 1765. The same is true of the Germans in the Kreutz Creek Settlement. The Germans whom Cressap placed on the improvements of those whom he succeeded in expelling from the west side of the Susquehanna had not been brought from Maryland. They were in all probability impecunious Pennsylvania German squatters from York or Lancaster County whom Cressap and his agents had seduced by fair promises. For in all the nego- tiations concerning the border difficulties between the provinces the distinction is sharply drawn between "the Marylanders " and "the Germans." The Maryland authorities assume that the Germans before settling west of the Susquehanna had been within the proper bounds of Pennsylvania, they protest against the action of the Penn- sylvania authorities in securing the sworn allegiance of the Germans to the province of Pennsylvania immediately upon their arrival at Philadelphia, and they never claim, as they certainly would have done if there had been the least semblance of support for the claim, that the Ger- mans had come from Maryland before taking up lands on the controverted territory. Everywhere the assumption
26 According to a statement in a petition of the Conewago citizens of 1766 asking that the northern ten miles of the road be viewed and recorded in Pennsylvania. This petition is quoted in Gibson's "History of York County," p. 322.
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German Element in York County, Pa.
is that the Germans in that settlement had come from Pennsylvania.27
It would seem that as a class the settlers on the Codorus and about the future site of York had less American ex- perience when they came to our county than those in the other German settlements. They had come more directly from the Fatherland. An unusual proportion of those gathered together by Pastor Stoever in 1733 had arrived in America after September, 1727. At least two thirds of the original members of that congregation were recent arrivals (5 of them had arrived in 1727, I in 1729, 5 in 1731, and 6 in 1732) while in the other settlements, as we have seen, less than one fifth of the whole number had come after 1727. And this settlement continued to draw more extensively from the newest arrivals than the other settlements. For of the 100 names of males entered in Stoever's baptismal register before 1741 at least 49 had come to America since September, 1727 (5 in 1727, I in 1728, 1 in 1730, 10 in 1731, 23 in 1732, 6 in 1733, 2 in 1734, and I in 1737). It is safe to conclude, there- fore, that as a class the German settlers in the central part of the county had not tarried so long after landing in America before they came hither. But even they did not, except in a very few instances, come to York County directly from the port of landing. When the town of York was founded the earliest lot-owners came from among the Germans already living in the county.28 In the course of its growth and until it became a county-seat the town
27 Colonial Records, IV: 132 and 142.
28 Among the names of the first applicants for lots (p. 90 f) those of Baltzer Spangler, Michael Swope, Christian Croll, George Swope, Jacob Grebell, and Henry Hendricks are familiar to us as the names of early residents in the Kreutz Creek Valley.
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Whence the Germans Came and Why.
continued to draw its citizens from the outlying districts of the county and from Lancaster County. After the progress of the earliest settlements was well under way and after the border difficulties were adjusted it occurred more frequently than earlier that Germans settled in York County immediately upon their landing on our shores. We have one striking instance of this in the case of Lorentz Schmal. He arrived in Philadelphia on September 2, 1743, and went at once to take up a farm at what is now Maish's Mills, six miles southeast of York, where he be- came the progenitor of the numerous and influential Smalls of the county.29 But up to the middle of the century when Yorktown began to attract attention, this class of settlers directly from the Fatherland formed no considerable part of the community.
The great majority of the German settlers in York County came from the fertile lands of Lancaster County just across the Susquehanna. This was the chief source of recruits and reinforcements for the York County settle- ments but it was not the only source. Some of them came, as we have seen, from Philadelphia and Philadelphia County. Such was the case with Adam Forney, the con- spicuous pioneer among the Germans on Digges's Choice, who had been living in Philadelphia County fully ten years before he removed to the southwestern part of York County.30 Such also was the case with George Albright and his son Anthony, who had settled in Philadelphia upon their arrival from the Palatinate and had remained there some eight years or more before taking up lands in the valley of the Codorus near the newly founded town of
29 " Genealogical Records of George Small, etc.," p. 4.
30 Vide supra, p. 73.
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German Element in York County, Pa.
York.31 Some of the immigrants into York County came from the banks of the Schuylkill in Montgomery County. Such was the case with Andrew Schreiber, also one of the earliest settlers on Digges's Choice, who had been settled at Goshenhoppen near the Trappe for nearly thirteen years before he took up his abode near Christ Church. His brother Ludwig, their stepbrother David Young, Peter Mittelkauf, and Michael Will also came from Mont- gomery County.32 The Tulpehocken settlements in Berks and Lebanon Counties also made their contribution to the valleys of the Codorus and the Conewago.
But while these counties along the course of the Schuyl- kill sent of their valued citizens to strengthen the settle- ments of York County, yet their combined total output to that county was not nearly so great as that of the single county of Lancaster on the Susquehanna. As the eastern counties furnished the first settlers for Digges's Choice and the Conewago, so Lancaster County furnished the first settlers for the Kreutz Creek and Codorus Valleys. And the indications are that throughout the first three decades of the history of these settlements the greater number of the Germans on the Conewago in the south- western part of the county came from the more remote regions of the Tulpehocken, the Schuylkill, and the Perki- omen, while the vast mass of those in the valley of the Kreutz Creek came from the nearby lands of the Cones- toga and the Pequea.33
When the German settlements in York County began Lancaster County was already well settled. Hundreds of
31 " Genealogical Records of George Small, Philip Albright, Johann Daniel Dünckel, etc.," pp. 99 f.
32 Vide supra, pp. 75.
33 Of many of these it is definitely stated that they formerly resided in Lancaster County.
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Whence the Germans Came and Why.
Swiss Mennonites had settled in the western part of the county in 1710 and for several decades thereafter their brethren in the faith, both in Switzerland and along the Rhine, made Lancaster County their objective when they decided to forsake their European homes. Then people of other religious persuasions who were persecuted on ac- count of their faith, Lutherans and Reformeds, joined the stream to Lancaster County. Its picturesque seclusion made it appeal also to that class of religionists who were given to extreme pietism and a semi-weird mysticism. The reputation of its fertile soil made it specially attractive to people who must needs devote themselves to agriculture.34 All of these factors helped to swell the procession of Ger- mans from the port of Philadelphia to the fertile soil of Lancaster County. Thus in course of time this county came to be known as the chief gathering-place of Ger- mans in the province, the location of "the great body " of them, and hence most of the newcomers in those early dec- ades began their experience in America by "repairing to the great body of their countrymen settled in the county of Lancaster on the east side of the Susquehanna."35 The York County Germans were simply doing what "many others had done before " them when they set out for Lan- caster County immediately upon their arrival in America. What the causes were that led the German people to
34 George Ford's MSS., quoted in Rupp's "History of Lancaster County," p. 115, says: "Their success, the glowing, yet by no means exaggerated accounts given by them, of the scenery of the country, the fertility of the soil they cultivated, the abundance of game with which the forest teemed, the quantity and delicacy of the fish which the rivers yielded; but above all, the kind and amicable relationship they cultivated and maintained with their Indian neighbors, all conspired to make them the objects of attention, and afterwards one of the prominent points whither immigra- tion tended in an increasing and continued stream."
35 See the statement of the Germans quoted above pp. 97 f.
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German Element in York County, Pa.
cross the Susquehanna River into the bounds of York County they themselves imply in their statement that "they found the lands there [i. e., east of the River] generally taken up and possessed and therefore . .. went over the River." It was not because of political oppression or un- satisfactory religious conditions such as had moved them to leave the Palatinate. It was not because of dire eco- nomic necessity, such as had impelled the Germans of New York to leave the Mohawk Valley and settle in the Leba- non Valley, Pennsylvania. It was not race prejudice such as helped to determine the movements of the early Scotch- Irish in America. It was not the love of adventure, such as operated in the settlement of Ohio. Nor was it the desire for great financial gain through speculation in lands, such as contributed to the German settlement of the Shen- andoah Valley of Virginia. But it was simply the next and most natural step in the expansion of the population in the search of the most comfortable means of subsistence and the most convenient soil upon which to invest their meager savings and fix their humble dwellings. The continuous stream of German farmers into the territory just east of the Susquehanna had occupied the best and most conven- ient farming districts there and in the third decade of the century many of those who had settled there found them- selves crowded and so sold their lands and improvements to their neighbors or to newcomers and moved on to where lands were more plentiful and convenient. 36 It was a short step across the Susquehanna.37 The soil promised
36 " Dahero gehen sie immer weiter fort in das wilde Gebüsche. Solche die ... aus Noth weiter fortgehen müssen in die noch ungebauten Einöden, schreiben bisweilen die beweglichsten Briefe, sie erzählen wie gut sie es gehabt." H. M. Muhlenberg in his Hallesche Nachrichten, I: 342.
37 As the Susquehanna could not be forded, ferries were established at
2
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Whence the Germans Came and Why.
well. Fathers saw better prospects there for securing lands for their growing sons. They had spent several years in the New World and had become accustomed to the pioneer life. The period of stress in their history was passed and they were now in a better position to en- dure the struggle with the untamed forests than they would have been immediately after their arrival in the country. And above all the persuasions and inducements held out to them by the proprietary agents who wished to preempt the soil west of the river under Pennsylvania authority, helped to encourage them in their expansion and furnished the immediate occasion for it.
Such was the combination of immediate causes that brought the Germans to the Kreutz Creek Settlement. And very similar must have been the motives of those who settled Digges's Choice. There is evidence that these settlers in the southwestern part of the county also had gathered somewhat of possessions in the way of farming imple- ments and equipment before emigrating from their former abodes, so that they too had some experience and were not the raw and unprepared victims of pioneer conditions. It is worthy of note also that in the case of these settlers on Digges's Choice we must count as a contributory cause, in addition to the causes mentioned above, the personal work of John Digges through his soliciting agents.
an early date. The earliest and most important of these was John Wright's Ferry, chartered in 1730. It crossed the river at the point where the road from Lancaster and the Monocacy Road afterwards met the river. Wright's Ferry was established to meet the needs of intending settlers in York County. But once established it also helped to give direction to subsequent immigration into those parts by providing the only convenient crossing-place. For more than a century it was part of the great highway from Philadelphia to the West. In 1814 it was converted into the Colum- bia bridge.
CHAPTER VI.
OUTSTANDING CHARACTERISTICS.
ROM the foregoing account of the steps in the movements of the Germans from the time they left their native land until they reached York County, it must be evident that the original element in our county had two out- standing characteristics, namely, that by occupation they were almost exclusively farmers, and that in character they were hardy, aggressive and self-reliant. Both of these characteristics serve to indicate the distinctive relation of the German element in York County to the general move- ment of Germans in this country and help to determine their distinctive contribution to American civilization.
The resoluteness and independence of spirit which char- acterized the York County Germans from the very begin- ning distinguishes them from most of the other German settlements in America at the time of their beginnings. For as a rule the German pioneers in this country had fled from their homes and had reached our shores under cir- cumstances that left them broken in spirit, practically desti- tute of means, satisfied with a mere livelihood, and not at all disposed to resist the injustice of the authorities or the
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Outstanding Characteristics. 125
impositions of their neighbors. Neither their class nor their condition permitted them to make any immediate contribution to the stream of American civilization.
The very earliest settlement, that of Germantown, had, it is true, manifested a high degree of aggressiveness and self-confidence and had attracted the respectful attention of all the other colonists. But that was due not only to the more favorable conditions under which these settlers had emigrated but also to the fact that the members of this closed German community on the banks of the Delaware enjoyed the personal acquaintance and the special favor of the great founder of Pennsylvania, who was their brother in the faith and who had been their companion in persecu- tion. Moreover, for a whole generation this settlement had the great benefit of the leadership of the learned and distinguished Pastorius. For these reasons the inhabitants of Germantown were able to begin at once and to maintain throughout a flourishing German civilization and at the same time compel the esteem and respect of their English- speaking neighbors.
But quite different was the experience of the other Ger- man settlements in America. The thousands of Palatines who came to New York in 1710 were not the bold, self- reliant souls who go forth in search of religious freedom, else their history in New York might have been very dif- ferent from what it was. Rather were they the pitiable victims of economic bankruptcy, fleeing from their homes in search of the necessaries of life. They were willing and able to work and some years later, when they could make the opportunity, they proved themselves to be really expert farmers. But when they first arrived in this coun- try, through no fault of their own they were placed. in
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