USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Germantown > The settlement of Germantown, Pennsylvania, and the beginning of German emigration to North America > Part 8
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LETTER OF JOHANN SAMUEL AND HEINRICH PASTORIUS.
On the 4th of March, 1699, Johann Samuel and Hein- rich Pastorius, the one nine and the other seven years of age, wrote this letter to their grandfather in Windsheim : " Dearly Beloved Grandfather :
To withstand thy overflowing love and inclination to us,
70 These letters from Bom and Telner in Dutch were printed in Rotter- dam in 1685. But one copy is known.
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Seeking a Pedigree.
our father says is as impossible as to swim against the stream which neither of us two is able to do. We give our heartfelt thanks for it, and as for the little picture you sent over to us we never saw anything like it before. There is an unknown bird in it whose tail is bigger than himself. It is like, we are told, those proud people from whose faults may God protect us. There is also a little boy in a red coat who fell from a globe of the world. Whether this was so slippery or whether the poor child did not know how to hold himself up we shall perhaps learn by experi- ence when we have grown older. The rhymes you wrote on the back of it pleased our parents very much and they wish that we shall never forget them especially the close of the verse.
Christum Jesum recht zu lieben Und in Guten uns zu üben.
We often wish that we were with thee or that thou lived here in our house in Germantown which has a beautiful front garden and at this time stands empty because we are in Philadelphia and must spend eight hours every day in school except the last day of the week when we can stay home in the afternoon. Since we cannot now have the hope that we will see our dear grandfather here with us we pray thee to give us some account of thy origin and our elders. So that if one of us should by God's will, go to Germany we can ask after our relations. Will thee also give our friendly greeting to our dear cousins and aunts and show them this so that they often write letters to us which after our father leaves the world will be very pleasant to us and we shall not fail through the help of other pious people to continue the correspondence.
Meanwhile we greet thee again most lovingly wishing from our hearts that you have every earthly and eternal
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The Settlement of Germantown.
good and remain through life under God's true protection, dear Grandfather,
Thy obedient grandchildren, Johann Samuel and Henricus Pastorius."
To this request for information concerning his ante- cedents the pleased grandfather replied, and thus happily through the inquiry of these boys was preserved much of the information we possess relating to the family.71
71 Pastorius Beschreibung, p. 101.
MER
Seal of William Penn.
MAVOS
CHAPTER V.
KRIEGSHEIM.
IN addition to the emi- gration from Crefeld, and the association at COD Frankfort, there was a third impulse which was of mo- ment in the settlement of Germantown. On the up- per Rhine, two hours' jour- ney from Worms, one of the Arms of the Palatinate. most interesting and his- toric cities of Germany, the scene in our race legends of the events of the Nibelungen- lied, later the home of Charlemagne, and hallowed as the place where Luther uttered the memorable words " So hilf mich Gott, hier stehe ich. Ich can nicht anders," lies the rural village of Kriegsheim. It is situated in the midst of the beautiful and fertile Palatinate and is forever identi- fied in its traditions, religion and people, with our Penn- sylvania life. When I was there, in 1890, it had a popu- lation of perhaps two or three hundred people who lived upon one street. About it were the remains of an an- cient wall, and within it was an old-time hostelry, in whose stable the village gauger watched over his hogs-
III
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The Settlement of Germantown.
heads of wine, the representatives of an important local in- dustry. In this obscure and distant village of simple Ger- man peasants we trace the ancestry of many of the ladies who now dance in the assemblies of Philadelphia, and many of the men who have been her mayors and judges and filled her most important municipal stations.
Quakerism obtained a foothold upon the continent in a most remarkable manner. Some of the followers of that then aggressive sect had been banished to the Island of Barbados, and had been put upon a British vessel to be transported. England and Holland were then at war and after the vessel had sailed out to sea it was cap- tured by a Dutch privateer, and the useless Quakers were put on shore on the coast of Holland. As we are prettily told by the chron- icler, " They acquiesced in their poverty," and though they had been in no repute Shoes of the Early Palatines. among their own people, either for riches or endow- ments, " they increased their small fortunes to a consider- able bulk," and like the trees and plants " the which the more they were shaken with the winds, the deeper and faster root they take," they propagated their doctrines in Holland and Germany. 72
The meetings established were visited by preachers sent out by Fox, among others by William Ames, who spoke Dutch and German. In 1657 Ames and George Rolfe
72 Gerhard Croese's History of the Quakers. Book 2, p. 15.
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Croese's History.
erhard Seroefens nafer- Siftorie / Mson Deren Mefprung/ biß auf jungfthin entftandene Trennung; Rarinnen vornemlich von ben hauptftiftern Diefer Gecte Derfelben Sehrfågen/und anderen ihres gleichen zu Diefer Beitaufe gebrachten Lehren/ ergeblet miro.
Berlin/ ben Johann Michacl Rubigern. 1696.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
went to Kriegsheim and succeeded in making some con- verts among the Mennonites living there. It was the farthest outpost of Quakerism in Germany and was cher- ished by them with the most careful zeal. The conversion of seven or eight families was the reward of their indefa- tigable energy and effort. This success alarmed the clergy and incited the rabble " disposed to do evil, to abuse those persons by scoffing, cursing, reviling, throw- ing stones and dirt at them, and breaking their windows." The magistrates directed that any one who should enter- tain Ames or Rolfe should be fined forty rix dollars. In 1658, for refusing to bear arms, the goods of John Hen- dricks to the value of fourteen rix dollars were seized and he was put in prison. In 1660, for the same reason, his goods valued at about four and-half rix dollars were seized. In 1663 the authorities took from him two cows, and from Hendricks Gerritz two cows, from the widow of John Johnson a cow, from George Shoemaker bedding worth seven rix dollars, from Peter Shoemaker goods worth two guilders. In 1664 George Shoemaker lost pewter and brass worth three and a-half guilders, Peter Shoemaker three sheets worth three guilders, and John Hendricks three sheets worth three guilders. In 1666, John Shoe- maker, Peter Shoemaker and John Hendricks each lost a cow.73 William Caton paid a visit to them in 1661, and on the 30th of Eleventh Month wrote from there a letter to friends in London in which he says, that the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist clergy regarded them " as the offensivest, the irregularest, and the perturbatiousest people that are of any sect." He helped them "to gather their grapes, it being the time of vintage."
Stephen Crisp says in July, 1669 : " But the Lord pre-
73 Besse's Sufferings of the Quakers. Vol. II., p. 450.
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Croese's History.
GERARDI CROESI HISTORIA QUAKERIANA, Sive De vulgò dictis QuAKERIS Ab ortu illorum ufque ad recens natum fchilma , LIBRI III. In quibus präfertim agitur de ipfo. rum præcipuis antecefforibus , & dogmatis ( ut & fimilibus placitis aliorum hoc rempore ) factifque ac calibus ., memorabilibu ..
FARBO
HSSÚRCOM
AMSTELODAMI, Apud HENRICUM & Viduam THEODORI BOOM. 1695.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
served me and brought me on the 14th day of that month to Griesham near Worms, where I had found divers who had received the Everlasting Truth and had stood in a testimony for God about ten years, in great sufferings and tribulations, who received me as a servant of God; and my testimony was as a seed upon the tender grass unto them. I had five good meetings among them and divers heard the truth and several were reached and convinced and Friends established in the faith." Just at this time they were in sore trouble because of the fact that the Prince of the land, or Pfaltzgraff, had imposed an unusual fine of four rix dollars upon every family for attending meetings, and upon failure to pay, goods of three times the value were taken. Crisp went to Heidelberg to see the Prince and warned him of the danger of persecution. The Prince received him graciously, discoursed with him about general topics, and promised him that the fines should be remitted, which was accomplished.74
On the 22d of August, 1677, William Penn left Frank- fort on his way to Kriegsheim. The magistrate of the village, upon the instigation of the clergyman, attempted to prevent him from preaching, but with the friends there and a " coachful from Worms," he had a quiet and com- fortable meeting. From there he walked to Mannheim, in an effort to see the Prince concerning the oppressions of the Quakers, which had been renewed. Failing to find him, he wrote to him a vigorous letter upon the subject. On the 26th Penn walked out from Worms, six English miles, and held a meeting, lasting five hours, in the course of which " The Lord's power was sweetly opened to many of the inhabitants." He describes them as " Poor hearts ; a little handful surrounded with great and mighty countries
74 Travels of Stephen Crisp, p. 29.
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Croese's History.
T H. E General Hiftory
OF THE QUAKERS:
CONTAINING TheLives, Tenents,Sufferings, Tryals, Speeches, and Letters Of all the moft
igo Eminent Quakers, Both Men and Women;
From the firft Rife of that SECT, down to this prefent Time.
Collected from Manufcripts, &c.
A Work never attempted before in English.
Being Written' Originally in Latin By GERARD CROESE.
To which is added, A LETTER writ by George Keith , and fent by him to the Author of this Book : Containing a Vindication of himfelf, and feveral Remarks on this Hiftory.
LONDON, Printed for John Dunton, at the Raum in Jemen-Street. 1696.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
of darkness." The meeting was held in a barn. The magistrate listened from behind the door and subsequently reported that he had discovered no heresies and had heard nothing that was not good. On the 27th, after two more meetings, Penn, accompanied by several grateful attend- ants, returned to Worms.
The climax of the story of the Quaker meeting at Kriegsheim is given by Croese. He says that having nothing of their own to lose, and hearing of the great plenty in America, and hoping to gain a livelihood by their handiwork, they in the very year that preceded the war with the French " wherein all that fruitful and de- licious country was wasted with fire and sword " forsook the cottages which could scarcely be kept standing with props and stakes, and entered into a voluntary and per- petual banishment to Pennsylvania, where they lived in the greatest freedom and with sufficient prosperity.
Jacob Schumacher, the servant who accompanied Pas- torius, may have been one of the family at Kriegsheim, but up to the present time no evidence of the fact has been discovered. It is not improbable.
Oct. 12, 1685, having crossed the sea in the " Francis and Dorothy " there arrived in Germantown Peter Schumacher with his son Peter, his daughters Mary, Frances and Gertrude, and his cousin Sarah; Gerhard Hendricks with his wife Mary, his daughter Sarah and his servant Heinrich Frey, the last named from Altheim, in Alsace. Peter Schu- macher, an early Quaker convert from the Mennonites is the first person definitely ascertained to have come from Kriegsheim. Fortunately we know under what auspices
119
Gerhard Hendricks Dewees.
he arrived. By an agreement with Dirck Sipman, of Cre- feld, dated August 16th, 1685, he was to proceed with the first good wind to Pennsylvania, and there receive two hun- dred acres from Hermann Op den Graeff, on which he should erect a dwelling, and for which he should pay a rent of two rix dollars a year.75 Gerhard Hendricks also had bought two hundred acres from Sipman.76 He came from Kriegsheim, and I am inclined to think that his identity may be merged in that of Gerhard Hendricks Dewees. If so, he was associated with the Op den Graeffs and Van Bebbers, and was a grandson of Adrian Hendricks Dewees, a Hol- lander, who seems to have lived in Amsterdam.77 This iden- tification, however, needs further investigation. Dewees bought land of Sipman, which his widow, Zytien, sold in 1701. The wife of Gerhard Hendricks in the court records is called Sytje. On the tax list of 1693 there is a Gerhard Hendricks, but no Dewees, though the latter at that time was the owner of land. Hendricks after the Dutch manner called one son William Gerrits and another Lambert Gerrits, and both men, if they were two, died about the same time. Much confusion has resulted from a want of familiarity on the part of local historians with the Dutch habit of omitting the final or local appellation. Thus the Van Bebbers are frequently referred to in contemporaneous records as Jacob Isaacs, Isaac Jacobs and Matthias Jacobs, the Op den Graeffs as Dirck Isaacs, Abraham Isaacs and Herman Isaacs ; and Van Burklow as Reynier Hermanns.
On the 20th of March, 1686, Johannes Kassel, a weaver, and another Quaker convert from the Mennonites, aged forty-seven years, with his children, Arnold, Peter, Eliza-
75 See his deed in Dutch in the Germantown book.
76 Deed book E 4, vol. 7, p. ISo.
77 Raths-Buch.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
beth, Mary and Sarah, came to Germantown from Kriegs- heim, having purchased land from members of the Frankfort Company. In the vessel with Kassel was a widow, Sarah Shoemaker, from the Palatinate, and doubtless from Kriegs- heim, with her children, George, Abraham, Barbara, Isaac,78 Susanna, Elizabeth and Benjamin. Among the Mennonite martyrs mentioned by Van Braght there are several bearing the name of Schoenmaker, and that there was a Dutch settlement in the neighborhood of Kriegsheim is certain. At Flomborn, a few miles distant, is a spring which the people of the vicinity still call the " Hollander's Spring."
I have a Dutch medical work published in 1622, which belonged to Johannes Kassel ; many Dutch books from the family are in the possession of that indefatigable antiquary, Abraham H. Cassel, and the deed of Peter Schumacher is in Dutch. The Kolbs, who came to Pennsylvania later, were grandsons of Peter Schumacher, and were all earnest Mennonites. The Kassels brought over with them many of the manuscripts of one of their family, Ylles Kassel, a Mennonite preacher at Kriegsheim, who was born before 1618, and died after 1681, and some of these papers are still preserved. The most interesting is a long poem in German rhyme, which describes vividly the condition of the country, and throws the strongest light upon the char- acter of the people and the causes of the emigration. The writer says that it was copied off with much pain and bodily suffering November 28, 1665. It begins :
"O Lord! To Thee the thoughts of all hearts are
78 He married Sarah, only daughter of Gerhard Hendricks. Their son Benjamin, and their grandson Samuel, were successively Mayors of Phil- adelphia, and a great-granddaughter was the wife of William Rawle. I am indebted for some of these facts to the kindness of W. Brooke Rawle, Esq.
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War in the Palatinate.
known. Into Thy hands I commend my body and soul. When Thou lookest upon me with Thy mercy all things are well with me. Thou hast stricken me with severe ill- ness, which is a rod for my correction. Give me patience and resignation. Forgive all my sins and wickedness. Let not Thy mercy forsake me. Lay not on me more than I can bear," and continues, "O, Lord God ! Protect me in this time of war and danger, that evil men may not do with me as they wish. Take me to a place where I may be concealed from them, free from such trials and cares. My wife and children too, that they may not come to shame at their hands. Let all my dear friends find mercy from Thee." After noting a successful flight to Worms, he goes on, "O dear God and Lord ! to Thee be all thanks, honor and praise for Thy mercy and pity, which Thou hast shown to me in this time. Thou hast protected me from evil men as from my heart I prayed Thee. Thou hast led me in the right way so that I came to a place where I was concealed from such sorrows and cares. Thou hast kept the way clear till I reached the city, while other people about were much robbed and plundered. I have found a place among people who show me much love and kind- ness. . . Gather us into Heaven of which I am un- worthy, but still I have a faith that God will not drive me into the Devil's kingdom with such a host as that which now in this land with murder and robbery destroys many people in many places, and never once thinks how it may stand before God. . . . Well it is known what misery, suffering, and danger are about in this land with robbing, plundering, murdering and burning. Many a man is brought into pain and need, and abused even unto death. Many a beautiful home is destroyed. The clothes are torn from the backs of many people. Cattle and herds are
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The Settlement of Germantown.
taken away. Much sorrow and complaint have been heard. The beehives are broken down, the wine spilled.' 79
On the road leading from Worms out through Kriegs- heim, but perhaps five miles further from the city, is the village of Flomborn. Thither, about twenty years before the period we are considering, a Dutch family named Pannebakker, whose arms, three tiles gules on a shield argent, were cut in glass in the church window at Gorcum in Holland, came to escape the wars still raging in the Netherlands. There March 21, 1674, was born Hendrick Pannebecker. He came as a young man to German- town, where, in 1699, he married Eve, the daughter of Hans Peter Umstat. He was a man of education, writing a dainty script and possessing a knowledge of the Dutch, German and English languages and of mathematics. He became the owner of four thousand and twelve acres of land in the province, and as a surveyor for the Penns, he ran the lines for their manors and laid out most of the old roads in Philadel- phia, now Mont- gomery County. He died suddenly
April 4, 1754. He founded here a large and influential family, which gave to the war of the rebellion two major generals, four colonels, an adjutant general, two surgeons, a lieutenant colonel, two assistant sur- geons, an adjutant, nine captains, seven lieutenants, a quartermaster, a hospital steward, five sergeants, nine corporals and one hundred privates, altogether one hun- dred and forty-five men, so far as known, the most exten- sive contribution of any single American family to that struggle.
79 These papers belong to A. H. Cassel, his descendant.
FLOMBORN.
JF.S.99
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www.
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THE SETTLEMENT OF GERMANTOWN.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GROWTH OF THE SETTLEMENT.
IT was the wish of the Germans, when they made their purchase from William Penn, that their lands should all be laid out in one tract and upon a navigable stream. When they arrived here they were Seall offered a location upon the Schuylkill, where are now profil German Town Pa Manayunk and Roxbor- ·1691 . ough. They objected to Note 80. the hills and asked for the ground to the eastward, where it was more level. The request was granted and on the 24th of October, 1683, Thomas Fairman measured off fourteen lots. The fol- lowing day the thirteen families selected by chance the places of their new homes, and at once began to dig the cellars and erect the huts in which, with some hardship, they spent the winter. Pastorius reported that the new
80 From Townsend Ward's Walk to Germantown, Penna. Magazine, Vol. V., upon what authority unknown.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
town of Germanopolis was located upon a rich black soil, well supplied with springs, that the main street was sixty feet wide, the cross street forty feet wide, and that each family had three acres of ground. It was covered with oak, chestnut and other nut trees, and there was a good meadow for the cows. Whichever way we turn, he wrote, "Itur in antiquam Sylvam," it is all overgrown with woods, and he often wished that he had a pair of strong Tyrolers to cut down the thick oak trees. On the 20th of February, 1684, the land was again surveyed by Fairman and a thousand acres which stretched to the Schuylkill were cut off. Since the contract was that their land was to be upon a ship-bearing stream, it looks as though some- body was taking an advantage of them. A more accurate survey, December 29th, 1687, determined the quantity of land in Germantown to be five thousand seven hundred acres, and for this a patent was issued. It was divided into four villages : Germantown with two thousand seven hundred and fifty acres, Crisheim (Kriegsheim) with eight hundred and eighty-four acres, Sommerhausen with nine hundred acres, and Crefeld with one thousand one hundred and sixty-six acres, and thus were the familiar places along the Rhine commemorated in the new land.
Other emigrants ere long began to appear in the little town. Cornelius Bom, a Dutch baker, whom Claypoole mentions in association with Telner and who bears the same name as a delegate from Schiedam to the Mennonite Convention at Dordrecht arrived in Philadelphia it may be with Pastorius. David Scherkes, perhaps from Muhlheim on the Ruhr, and Walter Seimens and Isaac Jacobs Van Bebber, both from Crefeld, were in Germantown Novem- ber 8th, 1684. Van Bebber was a son of Jacob Isaacs Van Bebber and was followed here a few years later, 1687, by his father, and brother Matthias. About the same time
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Jacob Telner.
Pastorius wrote that the floors were laid for sixty-four houses. Jacob Telner, the second of the original Crefeld purchasers to cross the Atlantic reached New York, after a tedious voyage of twelve weeks' duration, and from there he wrote, Dec. 12, 1684, to Jan Laurens, of Rotterdam. He seems to have been the central figure of the whole emigration. As a merchant in Amsterdam his business was extensive. He had transactions with the Quakers in London and friendly relations with some of the people in New York. One of the earliest to buy lands here, we find him meeting Pastorius immediately prior to the latter's de- parture, doubtless to give instructions, and later personally superintending the emigration of the Colonists. During his thirteen years' residence in Germantown his relations both in a business and social way with the principal men in Philadelphia were apparently close and intimate. Penn wrote to Logan in 1703, " I have been much pressed by Jacob Telner concerning Rebecca Shippen's business in the town,"81 and both Robert Turner and Samuel Carpenter acted as his attorneys. He and his daughter Susanna were present at the marriage of Francis Rawle and Martha Turner in 1689, and witnessed their certificate. The har- monious blending of the Mennonite and the Quaker is nowhere better shown than in the fact of his accompanying John Delavall on a preaching and proselyting tour to New England in 1692.82 He was the author of a " Treatise " in quarto mentioned by Pastorius, and extracts from his letters to Laurens were printed at Rotterdam in 1685.83 About 1692 he appears to have published a paper in the contro-
$1 Penn Logan Correspondence, Vol. I., p. 189.
82 Smith's History, Hazard's Register, Vol. VI., p. 309. Smith adopts him as a Friend, but in his own letter of 1709, written while he was living among the Quakers in England, he calls himself a Mennonite.
83 The Treatise is described by Pastorius in the enumeration of his library. MS. Hist. Society.
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The Settlement of Germantown.
versy with George Keith, charging the latter with " Im- pious blasphemy and denying the Lord that bought him."84
He was one of the first burgesses of Germantown, the most extensive landholder there, and promised to give ground enough for the erection of a market house, a promise which we will presume he fulfilled. In 1698 he went to London, where he was living as a merchant as late as 1712, and from there in 1709 he wrote to Rotterdam concerning the miseries of some emigrants, six of whom were Mennonites from the Palatinate, who had gone that far on their journey and were unable to proceed. "The English Friends who are called Quakers," he says, had given material assistance.85 Doubtless European research would throw much light on his career. He was baptized at the Mennonite Church in Amsterdam, March 29, 1665. His only child, Susanna, married Albertus Brandt, a mer- chant of Germantown and Philadelphia, and after the death of her first husband in 1701 she married David Wil- liams.86 After deducting the land laid out in Germantown, and the two thousand acres sold to the Op den Graeffs, the bulk of his five thousand acres was taken up on the Skippack, in a tract for many years known as "Telner's Township." 87
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