USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Germantown > The settlement of Germantown, Pennsylvania, and the beginning of German emigration to North America > Part 14
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If any colonists, after we have worked a year or two upon the common plantation, come to us as partners and desire a part not only in the cleared land, but also in the undivided cattle and all that is common, they must enter into an agreement with the society concerning it and pay for the privilege in money or wares. If they are people who have no money or goods to pay for the privilege, but are willing to work six hours a day for the society and in this way lighten our work some hours a day, they may do so in order that, instead of showing them a favor, our own plantations and opportunities may be improved.
122 A note of admiration cannot be withheld.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
And in case any persons dwelling here in the Fatherland shall desire for themselves, their descendants or heirs to become partners in our common plantation, after we have worked upon it two, three or four years, they may make an agreement before our departure with the society, and by placing a certain sum of money or merchandise in our company obtain such a privilege and receive their part of the divided cattle and all other profits which come out of the common work in the aforesaid years.
No lordship or servile slavery shall burden our com- pany. So shall each be held to use his diligence to work out a good example of progress. But if anyone, through unworthiness or unrighteousness, disobey the common laws and rules, and makes himself undesirable in the company, and after he has been reasoned with in a friendly way by the directors and others, he is headstrong and will not heed, he may be expelled and driven out by the votes of at least two-thirds, their opinions being written upon folded pieces of paper, but still not without giving him his part of the profit made in his time after his part of the ad- vanced money has been paid.
. The men may sell their share in the common plantation and in the undivided cattle and in everything which is coming to them from the society, or put others in their places who will bear their part of the common good. To perform the common work with the others is regarded as sufficient by the society.
If any one wishes to leave the society before the ad- vanced moneys are paid to the magistrates, in order to re- turn to the Fatherland, he is free at any time to do it, and to transport his family at the common expense, transfer- ring to the society his share in the undivided land, cattle and other things coming to him. He shall only take with
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What Settlers Wanted.
him his own private property, so that the remaining colon- ists may not be hindered from paying the money advanced by the magistrates of the city of Amsterdam.
If any one wishes to go over or to journey elsewhere at his own expense and at any time to withdraw from the so- ciety, he can do it upon first paying the moneys so far as it concerns him which he has received from the Lords by way of advancement, selling his share in the common land and everything that is in common, or if he chooses to re- main a partner by putting in his place a person acceptable to the society, as has been said upon helping the others to do the common work, if it be done, he may go and dwell in any place he thinks best. The reader will be pleased to remember that we desire no wild cursers, drunkards or other such strange people in our community, but only such as we know by experience or by recommendation to be reasonable unpartisan persons. Others whom we know not may work for us as day laborers until we find out they are suitable to come into the society, which consists, as has been said, not only of farmers, seafaring persons, and mas- ters of good arts and sciences, but also of all sorts of use- ful tradesmen, such as smiths, house carpenters, ship car- penters, brickmakers, masons, stonecutters, potters, tilers, dishmakers, woodsawyers, wagonmakers, chestmakers, turners, joiners, coopers, millwrights, millers, bakers, brewers, distillers, butchers, jarmakers, skindressers, leathermakers, shoemakers, glovemakers, saddlers, tail- ors, brushmakers, hatters, bleachers, painters, woolcomb- ers, threadtwisters, weavers, fullers, ropemakers, sieve- makers, sailmakers, netmakers, blockmakers, compass- makers, makers of sea instruments, refiners, braziers, pewterers, plumbers, tinmen, glassblowers, glassmakers, basketmakers, spectaclemakers, combmakers, soapboilers,
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The Settlement of Germantown.
saltboilers, glueboilers, oilmillers, needlemakers, pinmak- ers, cutters, sheathmakers, surgeons, druggists, etc.
All who intended to participate were to be ready to start not later than the middle of September, in 1662, and were to come to Brouwerstraet, in Amsterdam, the Boomgaert of New Netherland, between 8 and 9 o'clock in the morning, or to the Sea Dike, in the Golden Boot, in the evening be- tween 6 and 7 o'clock, so that the number of persons could be known and provisions for a year could be secured, wares and merchandise could be brought and agreements made. The book was illustrated with a picture of a boat. It was enlivened by a ringing poem upon New Nether- lands by Karel ver Loove at the beginning, and some verses at the end by Jacob Steendam, the poet of the North River, which have been somewhat roughly trans- lated as follows :
SPURRING VERSES.123
You poor, who know not how your living to obtain ; You affluent, who seek in mind to be content ;
Choose you New Netherland, which no one shall disdain ; Before your time and strength here fruitlessly are spent.
There have you other ends, your labor to incite ;
Your work will generous soils, with usury, requite.
New Netherland's the flow'r, the noblest of all lands ; With richest blessings crowned, where milk and honey flow ; Endowed; yea, filled up full, with what may thrive and grow. The air, the earth, the sea, each pregnant with its gift, The needy, without trouble, from distress to lift.
The birds obscure the sky, so numerous in their flight, The animals roam wild, and flatten down the ground. The fish swarm in the waters, and exclude the light,
123 From Henry C. Murphy's Jacob Steendam. The Hague, 1861.
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Spurring Verses.
The oysters there, than which no better can be found, Are piled up heap on heap, till islands they attain ; And vegetation clothes the forest, mead and plain.
You have a portion there which costs not pains or gold, But if you labor give, then shall you also share (With trust in Him who you from want does there uphold) A rich reward, in time, for all your toil and care. In cattle, grain and fruit, and every other thing ; Whereby you always have great cause His praise to sing. What see you in your houses, towns and Fatherland? Is God not over all? the heavens ever wide ? His blessings deck the earth-like bursting veins expand, In floods of treasure o'er, wherever you abide ; Which neither are to monarchies nor dukedoms bound, They are as well in one as other country found.
But there, a living view does always meet your eye Of Eden, and of the promised land of Jacob's seed ; Who would not, then, in such a formed community, Desire to be a freeman ; and the rights decreed, To each and every one, by Amstel's burgher Lords, T' enjoy? And treat with honor what their rule awards?
Communities the groundwork are of every state ; They first the hamlet, village and the city make ;
From whence proceeds the commonwealth; whose members great
Become, an interest in the common welfare take. 'Tis no Utopia; it rests on principles,
Which, for true liberty, prescribes you settled rules.
You will not aliens, in those far lands appear ; As formerly in Egypt, e'en was Israel, Nor have you slavery nor tyranny to fear, Since Joseph's eyes do see, and on the compass fall. The civic Fathers who on th'Y, perform their labors,
Are your protectors ; and your countrymen are neighbors.
-
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The Settlement of Germantown.
New Netherland's South River-second Amazon, For you a pleasure garden on its banks concedes. Choose you the Swanendael, where Osset had his throne, Or any other spot your avocation needs.
You have the choice of all; and you're left free to choose ; Keep the conditions well, and you have naught to lose.
Discard the base report, unworthy of your ear; 'Tis forged by ignorance and hate and jealous spite, By those who are its authors, to bedim this fair Bright morning sun before the laughing noonday light. An accident may hinder, but not change the plan,
Whose gloss, take that away, you then may fairly scan.
'Twas but an accident, which gives them stuff to slight That land, which, as I know, no proper rival has ; In order from your purpose they may you affright, Who there desire to live, before you thither pass. 'Tis groundless, ev'ry one may easily perceive, Who now neglects the chance, great treasures does he leave.
The plan met with the favor of the Burgomasters of Amsterdam, who entered into an agreement with Plock- hoy, June 6, 1662, that he should take twenty-five persons, described as Mennonites, with him to the South River, for each of whom they were to advance one hundred guilders. The colonists were further to be free from taxes or tenths for twenty years. They were to repay the sums advanced and to make arrangements for other settlers to follow.
In due time the same year they reached the Valley of the Swans and at last the great scheme of a community founded upon the idea of the brotherhood of man, its members living together in peace and sharing equitably the results of their mutual labors, hearing the Gospel without dogma or form read in a common meeting place for all sects, was put in operation. What would have been the result had they
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Burgomasters of Amsterdam.
Burgermeefteren ende Regeerders der Stad. Amftelredamme.
Lfo Wy altoos genegen blijven tot voort- fettinge van deler Stede Colonie inNieu- Nederland; SOO IS'T, dat Wy met ken- niffe ende goed-vinden van de Heeren xxxvj. Raden, gerefolveert hebben tor dien eynde met Pieter Cornelifz. Plock- hoy van 'Zierick-Zee op te rechten het na-volgende Accoort, namentlijek ;
Dat hy Pieter Cornelifz. Plockhoy aen-neemt fo dra moge- lijek aen Ons voor te ftellen vier-en-twintig Mannen, de welc- ke met hem makende een focietéyt van xxv. perfoneh, haer ful- len verbinden met de cerfte gelegentheyt van Schip of Schepen te vertrecken na de voorfz defer Stede Colonie, om haer in de felve metter woon neer te fetten, en met Land-bouwerye, Vis- fcherye, Hand wetcken en anders te generen , 't felve fo veel doenelijck beneerftigende ; niet alleen ten fijne dat fy uyt foda . nigen arbeyt bequamelijck fouden konnen leven,maeroock,op dat daer door voorraet yoor andere aen-komende Perfonen endeHuys-gefinnen foude mogen toe-bereyt worden
Des fal de voorfz fociereyt van xxv. Mans-perfoned Coffe van meer of minder getal, na datfe foude mogen komen fe fer: meerderen of verminderen) voor't gemeen ; mitigaders noch daer-en-boven ider Ik yan de felve Societeyt voor fig felfs in 't Parucdlier, van tijd tot tijd mogen uyt-kiefen, beflden ende aer hier hemen to veel Lands, niemand anders toe Komeride't fy [i] außen den de Haere-kil, "Jofelders, in't Diftrict van defe Colonie, waet; ne dit. A ij `het!
Bertemi sur
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The Settlement of Germantown.
been left undisturbed, we do not know. But the times were unpropitious and the misfortunes which ever attended the steps of Plockhoy pursued him in the distant land. The hand of fate fell heavily upon him and an evil day soon came. War broke out between England and Hol- land, the result of which was that the Dutch surrendered the New Netherlands and retained the island of Java and other East India islands, then regarded as much the more valuable possessions. In the course of this war, when Sir Robert Carr entered the South River, on behalf of the English in 1664, he sent a boat to the Hoorn Kill and de- molished the settlement and seized and carried off " what belonged to the Quaking Society of Plockhoy to a very naile." What became of the people has always been a mystery. History throws no light on the subject, and of contemporary documents there are none. In the year 1694 there came an old blind man and his wife to Germantown. His miserable condition awakened the tender sympathies of the Mennonites there. They gave him the citizenship free of charge. They set apart for him at the end street of the village by Peter Klever's corner a lot twelve rods long and one rod broad, whereon to build a little house and make a garden, which should be his as long as he and his wife should live. In front of it they planted a tree. Jan Doeden and William Rittenhouse were appointed to take up " a free will offering "" and to have the little house built. This is all we know, but it is surely a satisfaction to see this ray of sunlight thrown upon the brow of the hapless old man as he neared his grave. After thirty years of untracked wanderings upon these wild shores, friends had come across the sea to give a home at last to one whose whole life had been devoted to the welfare of his fellows. It was Peter Cornelius Plockhoy. What
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No Slavery.
recognition may be hereafter awarded to his career cannot be foretold. His efforts resulted in what the world calls failure, and for over two hundred years he has slept in the deepest obscurity, yet when we compare him with his con- temporaries, with the courtiers, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir William Berkeley, with Cotton Mather, inciting the magistrates to hang old women for imaginary crimes, and see him wrestling with Cromwell, not for his own gain, but for the help of the downtrodden and the poor, teach- ing the separation of church and state, protesting against injuring the minds of children by dogma, and with so clear a sense of justice that even the vicious, when driven from the community, were to receive their share of the posses- sions, we cannot help but recognize his merit and intelli- gence, and feel for him that sympathy that makes us all akin. When we find him, first of all the colonizers of America, so long ago as 1662, announcing the broad prin- ciple that " no lordship or servile slavery shall burden our company," he seems to grow into heroic proportions. Whatever else may happen, certain it is that the events of the life of one, whose book marks the very beginning of the literature and history of the ten millions of people who now live in the States along the Zuid Rivier, must always be of keen interest to them and their descendants. The copy of this book, from which an English translation has here been made, belonged in 1865 to Samuel L. M. Bar- low, of New York, and because of its great interest and excessive rarity the Knickerbocker Club undertook its re- production. The translator, however, met with such diffi- culty in the rendition of the black letter Dutch that it led to delay and the abandonment of the enterprise. 124
124 Growoll's American Book Clubs, p. 126.
CHAPTER X.
THE PIETISTS-HENRY BERNHARD KOSTER, JOHANNES KELPIUS, DANIEL FALKNER AND THE WOMAN IN THE WILDERNESS.
ERHARD CROESE, the historian of the Quakers, writing in 1696 of the followers of Spener and the believers in the mystical theology of Jacob Boehm, the inspired shoemaker of Gorlitz, says: " And there is no occasion here to relate how much vexation and trouble Arms used by the brother of Kelpius. their Ministers, and other good men, had in Holland, both from the old Weigelian family, and from this new brood of Teutonicks ; seeing this is so well known there and in every body's mouth ; But this is not to be past over so far as it has relation to the affairs of the Quakers. Among these few mystical men there was one John Jacob Zimmer- man, Pastor of the Lutheran Church in the Duchy of Wirtemburg, a Man skilled in Mathematicks, and, saving
212
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Johann Jacob Zimmermann.
what he had contracted of these erroneous opinions, had all other excellent endowments of mind, to which may be added the temperance of his Life, wherein he was inferior to none, and who was of considerable fame in the world ; Who when he saw there was nothing but great danger like to hang over himself and his Friends, he invites and stirs up through his own hope about sixteen or seventeen Families of these sort of Men, to prefer also an hope of better things, tho it were dubious before the present dan- ger, and forsaking their Country which they through the most precipitous and utmost danger, tho they suffered Death for the same, could not help and relieve as they supposed, and leaving their Inheritance which they could not carry along with them, to depart and betake themselves into other parts of the world, even to Pensilvania, the Quakers' Country, and there divide all the good and evil that befell them between themselves, and learn the Languages of that People, and Endeavour to inspire Faith and Piety into the same Inhabitants by their words and examples which they could not do to these Christians here. These agree to it, at least so far as to try and sound the way, and if things did not go ill, to fortify and fit themselves for the same. Zimmerman having yet 125 N. Koster for his Col- league, who was also a famous Man, and of such severe manners that few could equal him, writes to a certain Quaker in Holland who was a Man of no mean Learning, and very wealthy, very bountiful and liberal towards all the poor pious and good : That as he and his followers and his friends designed [they are the very words of the letter which is now in my custody] to depart from these Babilonish Coasts, to those American Plantations, being led thereunto by the guidance of the Divine Spirit, and
125 Henry Bernhard Koster.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
that seeing that all of them wanted worldly substance that they would not let them want Friends, but assist them herein that they might have a good ship well provided for them to carry them into those places, wherein they might mind this one thing, towit to show with unanimous consent, their Faith and Love in the Spirit, in converting of Peo- ple, but at the same time to sustain their bodies by their daily Labour. So great was the desire, inclination and affection of this Man towards them, that he forthwith promised them all manner of assistance, and performed it and fitted them with a ship for their purpose, and did out of that large Portion of Land he had in Pensilvania, assign unto them a matter of two thousand and four hundred acres forever of such Land as it was, but such as might be manured, imposing yearly to be paid a very Small mat- ter of rent upon every Acre, and gave freely of his own and what he got from his friends, as much as paid their charge and Passage, amounting to an hundred and thirty pounds sterling ; a very great gift, and so much the more strange, that that same Quaker should be so liberal, and yet would not have his name mentioned, or known in the matter. 126 But when these Men came into Holland they sailed from thence directly for Pensilvania. Zimmerman seasonably dies, but surely it was unseasonable for them, but yet not so, but that they all did cheerfully pursue their Voyage, and while I am writing hereof, I receive an ac- count, that they arrived at the place they aimed at, and they all lived in the same house, and had a publick Meet- ing, and that they took much pains, to teach the blind peo- ple to become like unto themselves, and to conform to their examples."127
126 After a lapse of two hundred years his name may be now mentioned. It was Benjamin Furly.
127 Croese, Vol. II., p. 262.
THE SETTLEMENT OF GERMANTOWN.
DEO
PATRIA
ET
M! Benjamin Jurly of Roterdam Merchant 1705
BOOK-PLATE OF BENJAMIN FURLY.
ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
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Voyage to America.
Johannes Kelpius opened his Latin journal with a quo- tation from Seneca "Unto whatever land I come, I come to my own. There is no banishment, every country is my country and every where there is good. If a man be wise he is a traveller, if a fool an exile." From it we learn that among these mystical Pietists were Kelpius from Denndorf in Transylvania, Henry Bernhard Koster of Blumenberg, Daniel Falkner of Saxony, Daniel Lutke, Johannes Seelig of Lemgo, Ludwig Bidermann of Anhalt, Henry Lorenz, whose little six-months-old son died and was buried at sea, George G. Lorenz and Peter Schaeffer, a Finlander.
Among the company, which consisted of about forty persons, were also the widow of Zimmermann and their children, Maria Margaretha, baptized Oct. 10, 1675, Philip Christian, baptized Feb. 18, 1678, Matthaius, baptized June 25, 1680, and Jacob Christoph, baptized May 14, 1683.128 They left Rotterdam in August of 1693 and re- mained in London for six months. In February they went down the Thames in a sloop to Gravesend and there embarked on a ship the " Sarah Maria" armed with four- teen cannon. On the 16th the ship ran aground, and when signals of distress brought no assistance, their pray- ers prevailed and a great wave lifted it off the bank in safety. On the 21st they arrived at Deal and there waited two weeks for a convoy. Four days they were in the channel in the midst of severe storms which made their ship dance about " like a little ball which most of us were not accustomed to." For five weeks they lay at Plymouth awaiting the convoy. For amusement they had discus- sions upon the Scriptures and prayer meetings, at which they sang hymns of praise and joy and played upon the
128 Sachse's Pietists.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
musical instruments they had brought with them. On the 18th of April they set sail. Though once the gale snapped two of the masts, there was no danger on the ocean be- cause the water was as deep below as the highest clouds were above the earth, and there was nothing for the ship to strike against. Fish of monstrous size spouted water " as fire engines do." One day they caught a big fish which the English called a shark. It had a way " of prowling after ships so as to snap up people." On the 10th of May they encountered a hostile French frigate of twenty-four guns and a merchant ship with six guns. The cannon opened fire and the Pietists " abstained of carnal weapons, and taking the shield of faith, sat down between desks behind boxes and cases, and prayed and in- voked the Lord everyone for himself." The result was that the Merciful Father caused the balls to " drop into the water in front of the ship," and after one of them had knocked a bottle out of the hand of the Captain's boy, and a Frenchman while aiming with a rifle at the Captain was killed, the Lord struck the enemy with fear and they fled. The battle lasted four hours and one hostile ship with twenty-four Frenchmen was captured. It contained sugar and cider, and an equal share of the " unjust mammon " was allowed to all. On the 14th of June they entered the Chesapeake Bay, and two days before had had their first glimpse of the American coast. There must have been some dissensions among them, probably over some prob- lem presented by the mysteries of Boehm which were not all "Morning Redness," because before they landed, Koster had excommunicated Falkner, together with a woman, Anna Maria Schuchart, who saw visions and had been left behind in Germany. They were pleased with America, because here one could be " peasant, scholar,
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The Woman in the Wilderness.
priest and nobleman all at the same time without interfer- ence." They landed at Bohemia Manor, arrived in Phil- adelphia June 23, 1694, and thence proceeded to German- town, where in the house of Jacob Isaacs Van Bebber, they held three meetings a week at which Koster spake publicly. He also spoke once a week in English in Phil- adelphia. In August, of 1694, a gentleman of Philadel- phia gave them one hundred and seventy-five acres of ground, three miles from Germantown, upon the ridge and on it they at once began to build a log house.129 It was a little block house of trees laid one upon another cleared out of the forest, and to save themselves from hunger they planted Turkish corn. They called themselves " The con- tented of the God-loving Soul "; but since they maintained that the sixth verse of the Twelfth Chapter of Revelations indicated, when properly interpreted, the near approach of the coming of Christ, the name given them by those who surrounded them was "The Society of the Woman in the Wilderness," and like such names as Quaker and Metho- dist, at first used in derision, it has clung to them. It was their purpose to refrain from marriage, "according to the better advice of Saint Paul," but ere long this rule was broken by Bidermann, who before August had been united with Maria Margaretha Zimmermann, and having sepa- rated from the community, had gone to live apart in Ger- mantown. Muhlenberg, who came to Pennsylvania a half century later, reports from tradition that they cared noth- ing for the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, re- garding the Holy writ as a dead letter in this respect, but that they busied themselves with the Theosophical Sophia and speculations and practical alchemy. They
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