USA > Pennsylvania > The making of Pennsylvania; an analysis of the elements of the population and the formative influences that created one of the greatest of the American states > Part 6
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The Tunkers, who were somewhat pietistic, came in large numbers, and are said to have been recruited very largely from the Reformed Church of Germany. They
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were somewhat like the Mennonites, but were peculiar in dress and manners. The word Tunker means a dipper, a baptizer by immersion. In Pennsylvania it has become corrupted into Dunker, Dunkard, and also into Tumpler, or Dumpler, referring to the motions of the baptized in the water. Like the Mennonites, they have the com- munion and the additional sacrament of washing each other's feet. They were very mystical, and have never made a statement of their doctrine, saying that the New Testament was enough. Many of them made a point of wearing long beards, coarse clothes, and walking with a solemn pace. Like the other German sects, they refused to take oaths or bear arms.
They first appeared in Germany at Schwartzenau, in 1708, and were driven by persecution to Crefeld and Holland. Between the years 1719 and 1729 the whole sect came over to America, most of them settling in Pennsylvania. Some of their leaders, like the leaders of the Mennonites, were men of education and intelligence. They grew and prospered as a religious body, and in 1850 are said to have numbered, in the United States, over two hundred thousand, with a thousand ministers.
Some of them separated and became the German Seventh-Day Baptists. This schism was accomplished by Conrad Beissel, a Pietist, who came to Pennsylvania in 1720. He preached to the Tunkers, and seems to have thought that they would be improved by a celibate and monastic life, and by observing the last, instead of the first, day of the week as the Sabbath. He adopted the life of a hermit, and in 1732 suddenly disappeared. He was soon found, however, still living as a hermit on the banks of Cocalico Creek, in Lancaster County, where
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The Making of Pennsylvania
he had a small farm and composed hymns. The Tunkers began to resort to him, and in a little while he had a monastic community of about three hundred strange, mystical, German souls, and afterwards one or two branch societies were established in other parts of Pennsylvania.
His settlement soon became known as the Monastery of Ephrata, and some of its curious buildings are still standing. There was a house for the brothers, a house for the sisters, a flour mill, paper mill, fulling mill, flax and oil press, a printing establishment, and a book bindery. Altogether they published about forty books, among them the Mennonite Martyr Book, some school books, and other volumes of a religious kind. Their books have been much admired for the excellence of the paper and printing, and they are valued by collectors. The sisters employed themselves in the ornamental writing of texts, and in copying hundreds of volumes of music, to which the monastery was deeply devoted. They had a school which is said to have achieved some reputation and attracted pupils from Philadelphia and Baltimore. The large room of this school and other parts of the monastery were used as a hospital for some of the Continental soldiers after the battle of the Brandy- wine.
In modern times attempts have been made to ignore the extraordinary eccentricities of these people, as well as of the other German sects, and modernize them. But the farther we go back to the contemporary accounts of them the more we discover of their strange habits. Gordon, who wrote previous to 1829, and had ample opportunity for obtaining his information from original sources, is a very safe authority.
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" They lived on vegetables solely, and slept on wooden benches, with blocks of wood for pillows, and attended worship four times in the twenty- four hours. This life macerated their bodies, and rendered their com- plexions pale and bloodless. Their dress consisted of a shirt, trowsers, and waistcoat, with a long white gown and cowl, of woollen in winter and linen in summer. The dress of the women differed from that of the men in petticoats only ; with the cowls of their gowns they covered their faces when going into public. When walking they all used a solemn, steady pace, keeping straight forward, with their eyes fixed to the ground, not turning to give an answer when asked a question. On their occasional visits to their friends at Germantown, forty or fifty, thus strangely accou- tred, with sandals on their feet, were seen following each other in Indian file.
" Their sensual affections, driven from their natural channel, were poured forth on this mystic union with the Redeemer. By the unmarried of both sexes he was considered as an object of more than spiritual love : he was the bride of one, and the bridegroom of the other; in their songs and hymns, as in those of the Moravians, he was sometimes addressed in the strong and frequently not most delicate language of passion." (Gordon's Penna. 575, 576.)
We have also the authority of Endress, who was himself a German, and studied the Ephrata people from personal observation.
" Some of their writers of spiritual songs possessed well-regulated minds and a portion of poetic spirit. The mysticism of these created an imaginary world, instead of that which they had abandoned, where they permitted their affections to roam unchecked. The figure or image dearest to passion was enthroned in their hearts; that was their God, their Lord, their Redeemer. But the effusions of others were a jargon of inconsistent connections : turtle doves and lambs in conjugal union ; cultivated fields, on which were sown pearls, and wine, and music ; burning hearts united in keeping silence and singing at the same time songs of joy." (Haz- ard's Register, vol. v., 334.)
The society at Ephrata does not seem to have begun to decay until after the Revolution, and even far down into the present century schools and an academy were
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The Making of Pennsylvania
still in existence. A Sunday-school is said to have been established at Ephrata in 1740, nearly half a century before anything of the sort was begun in England.
In colonial times they were regarded as a curious community of Protestant monks and nuns. Travellers often made the long journey from Philadelphia to see them, and from one of these visitors we have an inter- esting description :
" The performers sat with their heads inclined, their countenances solemn and dejected, their faces pale and emaciated from their manner of living, their clothing exceeding white and quite picturesque, and their music such as thrilled to the very soul. I almost began to think myself in the world of spirits, and that the objects before me were ethereal."
The desire for hermit life was by no means uncommon among those brooding, introspective Germans who came to Pennsylvania. Many of them retired to caves or soli- tary huts in the woods, and occasionally one is still to be found in remote parts of the State. In colonial times, and even in the early part of the present century, there seem to have been always a few of them in the neigh- borhood of Philadelphia. In the old records they are sometimes spoken of as Ridge Hermits, probably because many of them were settled at a place called the Ridge, near Germantown.
There was a whole sect devoted to this hermit life, and called the "Society of the Woman of the Wilderness," which arrived as early as 1694. They were probably the least numerous religious body that came from Ger- many, and they were apparently an order of Pietists. They settled among the dark, romantic ravines of the Wissahickon, now within the limits of Fairmount Park. After a time most of them returned to the world. But
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Kelpius, Seelig, Mathias, and a few others persevered to the end, and Whittier, in his Pennsylvania Pilgrim, has a short verse for Kelpius :
" Or painful Kelpius from his hermit den, By Wissahickon, maddest of good men, Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Petersen."
This Society of the Woman of the Wilderness is said to have been composed almost entirely of students, whose peculiar opinions had driven them from the Ger- man universities. Their learning, we are assured, was prodigious. Kelpius is said to have known Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and to have been able to write English with remarkable purity. They believed in the near approach of the Millennium, when the woman mentioned in the Book of Revelation should come up from the wilderness leaning on the arm of her beloved, and deliver the Church. They are said to have devoted themselves to the education of the poor. But at the same time they practised magic and astrology, and also ordinary fortune-telling.
These very learned Germans have been somewhat enlarged upon in recent years, and there has been a ten- dency to make extraordinary claims of merit for them. It has even been suggested that their wonderful knowl- edge and the sufferings they endured in the crowded immigrant ships entitled them to greater consideration than the Pilgrim Fathers and other English colonists. As has happened with almost every State and element of population in the Union, it has been at times hinted that perhaps these dreamers were the real creators of America, and that the peculiar features of our govern- ment and civilization must be traced to them.
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When the prodigies are investigated, however, and the character and extent of their knowledge disclosed by contemporaneous evidence, we find that the learning of these astrologers was not of the effective kind. Men like Seelig, Kelpius, and others were crammed full of all sorts of book-learning, with but little genius or ability in its use. The wonderful capacity of the German for absorbing information often produces queer characters, and Mr. Charles G. Leland, from his long familiarity with the German-American, has some apt remarks on this subject :
" America abounds with Germans who, having received in their youth a ' classical education,' have passed through varied adventures, and often present the most startling paradoxes of thought and personal appearance. I have seen a man bearing a keg, a porter, who could speak Latin fluently. I have been in a beer-shop kept by a man who was distinguished in the Frankfort Parliament. I have found a graduate of the University of Munich in a negro-minstrel troupe." (Leland's Hans Breitmann's Ballads, edition 1884, p. 5.)
The Tunkers, as they arrived, joined the Mennonites in Germantown, and the two sects built up what must have been a very pretty village, which straggled for several miles on both sides of a wide road, which is now the Main Street of Germantown. Peach-trees, bending under the weight of fruit, flourished along both sides of the road. The houses were of peculiar architecture, built usually of stone in the most substantial manner, with curious roofs and pent-eaves. Some of the houses were two stories high; others had only one story and an attic, with their gable ends towards the road. Behind them extended large gardens full of strange plants, many of them growing for the first time in American
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soil. Some of these houses and the remains of some of the gardens are still to be found, together with a few descendants of the Mennonites.
They appear to have been a rather well-to-do people, of a much higher class than the immigrants that fol- lowed them. Pastorius and his learned friends had collected them in Germany, obtained from Penn the grant of land on which they settled, and it was natural that a rather better sort of people should attach them- selves to leaders of such high character.
The village was at first unnamed, and called the German Town, which after a while was spelled as it now is. It was the first German settlement on American soil, and was incorporated in 1691 with a good array of Germans and Dutchmen for officers :
" Francis Daniel Pastorius, bailiff; Jacob Telner, Dirck Op den Graeff, and Thones Kunders, burgesses ; Abraham Op den Graeff, Jacob Isaacs Van Bebber, Johannes Kassel, Heivert Papen, Hermann Bom, and Dirck Van Kolk, committeemen."
These worthy burghers Whittier has described as associating in easy, friendly familiarity with Pastorius, discussing the strange mysteries of their religion, and leading lives of gentle simplicity among their gardens and farms:
" Or talking of old home scenes Op de Graaf Teased the low back-log with his shodden staff, Till the red embers broke into a laugh."
Citizenship under such pious rulers was not to be con- sidered a trifle, and immigrants were obliged to pay one pound sterling for the privilege. That there might be no mistake in their knowledge of the laws, the people were
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to be called together on the 19th of January in every year, and the laws and ordinances read aloud to them. The learned Pastorius contrived a seal for their little town, and, as most of them were weavers and had come from a country of vineyards, he made it consist of a clover-leaf on which were a vine, a stalk of flax, and a weaver's spool, with the words "Vinum, Linum, Tex- trinum."
It was difficult, however, to get these good people to carry on a government even under such an ingenious seal, and they finally lost their charter by failure to elect officers under it. Like the Quakers, they were, in theory, opposed to politics and all kinds of force, even the force of a sheriff in serving a writ or making an arrest. They were at first unwilling to proceed to force even against thieves and trespassers ; and until, like the Quakers, they had had a full taste of the sweets of power, resignations and refusals of office were some- what more numerous than they are now in German- town.
There was a curious character among them named Anthony Klincken who might very well have been men- tioned in Whittier's Pennsylvania Pilgrim. He seems to have been well-to-do, like many of the others, and de- voted himself almost entirely to hunting, for which the surrounding wilderness afforded abundant opportunity. But the best place for duck shooting, he always said, was the little spatterdock pond close to Philadelphia, where Fourth and Market Streets now intersect. He usually took his gun with him when he went to Phila- delphia in autumn and winter, and seldom failed to be rewarded at the pond. He imported a German yäger
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to assist him in his expeditions, and his home was always full of game carefully labelled with the date when it was killed.
The German village was a pleasant resort for the Philadelphians in summer, and they fled to it in great numbers after the Revolution during the epidemics of yellow fever. It was unlike Philadelphia, and remained thoroughly German until the beginning of the present century. It has continued to be a summer resort down into our own time; and many are still alive who remem- ber the last of its old German characteristics, which have now pretty much all disappeared.
The Tunkers and the Mennonites established schools, a printing-press, and a newspaper conducted by Christopher Sauer, a Tunker elder. The old German- town Academy, which still exists, was founded in part by their efforts. For fully a century Germantown was the head-quarters of the Pennsylvania Dutch and the German-Americans. Sauer's newspaper had a wide circulation among all the Germans from New York to Georgia, and for a time Sauer also published a maga- zine, probably the first one that appeared in America.
Like the little colony at Ephrata, the Germantown people sent out their books, almanacs, tracts, and maga- zines, all in German, and all devoted to holding together the Germans as a distinct race and keeping up their language, traditions, and customs. Sauer published the first German Bible that was printed in this country. He manufactured his type, paper, and ink, and bound his own books. He also sold medicines and practised as a doctor.
Like Franklin, he greatly increased his influence by
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an excellent almanac he sent out every year, and in that day almanacs had more influence with the masses than newspapers. He was the sort of character and possessed the sort of homely knowledge and skill that carried great weight among the sects, and Muhlenberg, who was the leader of the Lutherans, often complained of his power. His son, of the same name, continued his business, inherited a large part of his influence, and added two hundred books to the list of his father's publications.
Sauer had a quarrel with Beissel, the head of the Ephrata community, which is somewhat characteristic. In 1739, when Beissel had no printing-press, he got Sauer to print for him a book called "Weyrauchs Hügel," containing seven hundred and ninety-two pages of hymns. It was the first book printed by Sauer, and the first book printed in German type in America. It was dedicated, after the mystic manner of the Ephrata people, "To all solitary turtle-doves cooing in the wilderness as a spiritual harp-playing in the many tunes of divine visitation," and the thirty-seventh verse of the -
four hundredth hymn has been translated by Judge Pennypacker :
" Look, look, look, Look upon the man ; He is exalted by God; He is our Lord and Christ."
One of Sauer's printers told his master that in this verse Beissel intended to represent himself as a second Christ. Sauer immediately wrote to Beissel asking him if it was true, and Beissel in reply not improperly told him that he was a fool. Whereupon Sauer published a
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pamphlet against Beissel, in which he charged, among other things, that his name contained the number six hundred and sixty-six of the beast of the Apocalypse ; that he had received something from all the planets, -" from Mars his strength, from Venus his influence over women, and from Mercury his comedian tricks." By this mystic, astrologic quarrel Sauer lost for the future all the printing of the Ephrata community. The indignant Beissel set up a press of his own, and the only wonder is that the quarrel did not result in a new sect.
Many of the early Mennonites were from Holland, or from the parts of Germany adjacent to Holland, where the Dutch language was spoken. These could have been properly called Dutch; but the term Dutch gradually came to be applied to the whole German population, probably for the reason that their own name for themselves was Deutsch. In some parts of the United States, especially in Virginia, the country people, it is said, still use the word Dutch to describe anything that is foreign; and this use of the word is no doubt a survival from colonial times, when the only foreigners with whom the English colonists were at all familiar were Germans, calling themselves Deutsch.
Besides Holland many of the Pennsylvania Dutch came from the German side of Switzerland. But the great mass of them came from Germany proper,-from Alsace, Suabia, Saxony, and almost every principality and dukedom of that distracted empire, and most of them from those parts of it called the Palatinate. They were often spoken of as Palatines, and in the passenger lists of the emigrant ships were always described by that name down to the year 1740.
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The Lower and the Upper Palatinate were old fiefs or divisions of the German Empire which appeared upon the map of Europe for more than a hundred years. The word appears to be related to our English word palace. The master of the palace or royal household was often given the jurisdiction of cases which the king had a right to decide; and whenever the king wished to please a baron, or the holder of an important fief, he gave him the same jurisdiction as his own master of the palace and called him a count palatine. The word was often used to describe a petty prince in any country ; and we find the Episcopalians in Pennsylvania complaining, at one time, that William Penn boasted that he was the Palatine of Pennsylvania.
The Lower Palatinate lay upon the Rhine near the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and contained the ancient towns of Heidelberg and Mannheim. The upper Palatinate lay towards the southeast on the Danube, and its most important town was Amberg. Most of the Germans who came to Pennsylvania appear to have been from the Lower Palatinate on the Rhine, which suffered most from the persecution and invasion of the French.
The divided condition of Germany, split up into pala- tinates, provinces, and fiefs, from which it has been rescued by Bismarck and Von Moltke in our own time, was a grand opportunity to the French and Louis XIV. At the close of the seventeenth century, when the Quakers founded Pennsylvania, Louis laid claim to this fief or that province as suited him, invaded them with fire and sword, and offered them the choice of Romanism or persecution. The Palatinate was at different times ruled by a Lutheran, a Reformed-Church man, and a Catholic,
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and at each change the people had to conform or suffer. It was such troubles as these, long continued in Germany and Switzerland, that encouraged the sects as well as the Lutherans to come to Pennsylvania.
The movement of the sects was started by William Penn and the Quakers. Penn was half a Dutchman, his mother having been a native of Holland; and he made several preaching expeditions to that country, and also to Germany, where he found these people were almost in complete agreement with him. George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, had also been twice in Germany ; and a large part of the Mennonite immigra- tion was not only encouraged by the society of Quakers, but directly assisted by them with money.
For the first twenty years, from 1682 to 1702, the German immigration was comparatively slight; and Rupp says that in that time only about two hundred families arrived, who settled for the most part in Ger- mantown. As others arrived they passed out into the country beyond, and left Philadelphia and its environs in undisturbed possession of the Quakers.
In 1702 some of the Germantown Mennonites had begun to move out to Skippack, in Montgomery County. One of them, Matthias Van Bebber, a Hollander of some wealth, had bought six thousand acres of land in that neighborhood, and gave a hundred of it for a meeting- house. He was one of the immigrants whose families finally left Pennsylvania and went to the Bohemia Manor, near the Elk River, on the eastern shore of Maryland, a place much resorted to in colonial times, and almost as productive of well-known names as the Mayflower of old china. The Van Bebbers spread through Maryland and
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Virginia and became prominent in all walks of life. One of them became a famous Indian fighter on the frontier, and a place called Van Bebber's Rock on the Kanawha River marks the scene of one of his exploits.
Some others of the Pennsylvania Dutch also dis- persed themselves towards the South. Most of those that went in this direction passed out by way of Car- lisle and Gettysburg into the Shenandoah Valley, which they followed into Virginia, where their descendants are to be found to this day. It was to a Lutheran congre- gation of these people that General Muhlenberg was preaching at the outbreak of the Revolution when he decided to become a soldier. But many of those who went to the Shenandoah Valley were of the sects, and would take no part in war. Much difficulty was experi- enced with them in the Revolution, and again almost a hundred years afterwards in the Civil War.
The sects seem to have had no great desire to remain in Philadelphia, although it was ruled by their friends the Quakers. A few of the Lutheran and Reformed established themselves there, and Franklin tells us that signs in the streets were often in both German and English, and sometimes in German alone. The sects, with their strong love of country life, and the greater part of the Lutherans and Reformed, pressed far out into what was then the wilderness, and left the country for many miles round Philadelphia, except at German- town, almost entirely free from their influence.
They filled the Lehigh and Schuylkill Valleys and occupied a wide segment of a circle beginning at Easton, on the Delaware, passing westward towards the Susque- hanna, through the towns of Allentown, Reading, Leb-
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anon, and Lancaster, and thence down to the Cumberland Valley, on the Maryland border, where they had a natural outlet to Virginia and the South. The tier of counties north of this circle and along the borders of New York was comparatively free from them, and was taken by the settlers from Connecticut. In modern times, although the Germans have come no closer to Philadelphia, they have permeated, in greater or less degree, almost every other part of the State,-have even in some places dis- placed the Scotch-Irish, and passed westward across the Susquehanna.
The last important sect to arrive was the Schwenk- felders. About seventy families came a few years after the Tunkers, and arrived at Philadelphia in the ship "St. Andrew," September 22, 1734, a day they still celebrate with religious service and sermons, calling it Gedächtniss Tag. Other migrations of smaller numbers followed, and it has been said that no representatives of the sect were left in Europe.
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