USA > South Carolina > History of the German settlements and of the Lutheran church in North and South Carolina : from the earliest period of the colonization of the Dutch, German, and Swiss settlers to the close of the first half of the present century > Part 11
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German denominations of North Carolina have lost but very little by the proselyting encroach- ments of other denominations, compared with the German settlements of almost every other State in the Union.
This is doubtless owing to various circum- stances : firstly, they were more strongly attached to their own peculiar faith; secondly, they remained more closely together in their own settlements, and when they did colonize, it was generally done in such a manner as to have a number of German families locate in the same new settlement; thirdly, they were more regularly supplied with the means of grace in their own churches, although there were some exceptions to this condition of things in certain localities ; fourthly, the German colonies were established in North Carolina at a later date, when the parent Churches in Europe had become fully awakened to the importance of taking care of their interests in America.
Section 2. Trials and Difficulties of the Early Settlers.
The trials of strangers in a strange land under the most favorable circumstances, when the neces- saries and comforts of life are at their command, are sufficiently numerous and hard in themselves ; the feeling of loneliness, the separation from af- fectionate relatives and friends, the sighings ("Ach und Weh") produced by home-sickness, especially such as the Swiss emigrant must have felt, when
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he contrasted the grandeur of the Alpine scenery in his native land with his surroundings in the Carolinas, located, as he was, upon the level and sandy plains, which extend there along the At- lantic coast. In the same manner, doubtless, were also the German Palatines affected, although war had driven them from their peaceful homes, when they remembered the beautiful banks along the Rhine and its vine-clad hills, which they had left behind them-never to behold again ; all of which tended to make the heart sink within them in mental anguish and despondency. Wise indeed, as well as kind, was the divine injunction given to the children of Israel, Deut. 10:19: "Love ye, therefore, the stranger : for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
Yet how much greater must have been the anguish and suffering of the early colonists, who either willingly or necessarily abandoned home without the most distant prospect of return, to dwell in a land that could give them no shelter, until the log-cabin was erected by their own in- dustry, and no necessary supplies of life, until they could cultivate these themselves; and all that they possessed to sustain life was often nothing more than what they brought with them from the vessel that conveyed them to America. The first English colony, located on Roanoke Island in North Carolina, actually perished from want, and was swept away entirely; not a soul was left to tell the tale of its woes and sufferings, of which Dr. Hawks speaks: "It was subjected to the hor-
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rors of famine; time and experience would prob- ably have corrected the other evils we have named, but for starvation there was no remedy; and so, after the toil and suffering of years, the expendi- ture of much precious treasure, and the loss of still more precious life, the waves of Albemarle rolled, as of old, their ripples up the deserted island beach, and the only voice heard was that of the fitful winds, as they sighed through the forests of Roanoke, and broke upon the stillness of nature's rough repose. The white man was there no longer."
And then came also the exposure to all kinds of weather and the inhospitality of climate, to which the early settlers were as yet unaccustomed, which, with the ignorance in regard to the pecu- liarities of the new country, often locating them- selves near streams of water, the malaria of which superinduced sickness, frequently brought the strongest constitutioned person to an early grave; whilst others were so enfeebled by sickness, that all their native strength and energy, brought with them from the Fatherland, was necessarily pros- trated. It was some time before they became ac- quainted with the peculiarities of the country and climate, and discovered the healthy localities, where they would be free from the attacks of malignant fevers, and their physical constitution would adapt itself to the climate of their new homes.
But the greatest hardship of the early settlers was the occasional outbreak of hostility from the
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Indians; this was a never-failing cause of appre- hension and alarm. Whilst the Indians remained near them, they never felt themselves perfectly safe; war often broke out upon them quite un- awares; the strong man, the helpless woman and the innocent child were not unfrequently mur- dered in cold blood. In this manner did many of the poor Palatines and Swiss, in and around Newberne, lose their lives during the Tuscarora and Core Indian war, as already related in chapter i, section 7, of this history, containing an extract from Dr. Hawks' History of North Carolina. Whenever the early colonists were pursuing their daily avocations, at home or in the field, at church or elsewhere, the trusty rifle had always to accom- pany them, so that they might be prepared for any sudden attack.
The sparseness of population was another great inconvenience to the early settlers, both in the matter of defence against the hostile attacks of the Indians, as well as in the procuring of most of the necessary articles of husbandry and do- mestic life. There were but few mechanics and still fewer trading-places, where the supplies of commerce could be obtained, so that nearly all the settlers were obliged to live and labor without those things which are now regarded as neces- saries of life. This, of course, compelled each family to manufacture their own articles of cloth- ing and implements of husbandry; the loom, the anvil, the tannery and the shoe-shop became nec- essary adjuncts to almost every household, whilst
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all the inmates of the family had to content them- selves to live and be clad in the most primitive style; useful industry became every member of society at that time, and the hum of the spinning- wheel resounded in almost every dwelling.
Section 3. Character, Occupation and Condition of the German Settlers in the Carolinas.
Wherever the Germans have located themselves, they have usually manifested certain traits of char- acter, which are upon the whole very commend- able. Whilst they are generally retiring and peaceful in their intercourse with man, opposed to riot and contention, and will patiently suffer wrong for a long time, they are nevertheless un- willing to submit to oppression when persistently brought to bear down upon them; they may be led, their minds are open to conviction, but they cannot be driven, and will determinately resist all attempts to deprive them of their inalienable rights.
The Germans are the most industrious settlers that have ever come to America; they are willing to endure any amount of toil to secure a perma- nent home, or an establishment over which they may have entire control; they never shrink from labor that promises to be remunerative; every- thing around them must be well and profitably arranged, hence their farms usually present the appearance of order, thrift and comfort; all work must be well done, ere it can be made satisfactory
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to them. Besides, they also love home and it's comforts, and are usually slow to leave the place which they have once secured as their own; there are plantations and farms at the present day in possession among the German descendants in both the Carolinas, that have never passed out of the family, being still held by virtue of the original grant or deed made in colonial times. They generally persevere in all their undertakings, even when the immediate prospects are not encour- aging, and manage all their affairs with the strict- est economy, often carrying their frugality to such an extreme as to become a fault, when such frugality is no longer needed. Honesty and up- rightness are also marked characteristics of the Germans; they shrink from debt, and are un- happy as long as all their liabilities are not can- celled, and when once a promise has been made by them, it can generally be relied on, for their word is usually as good as their bond; there are, of course, exceptions to this general trait of char- acter, yet not so many as materially to impair the confidence which is usually reposed in the Ger- mans and their immediate descendants every- where. They are slow in making changes, and often tenaciously adhere for a long time to the practices and conduct of their forefathers; this has been frequently attributed to them as a fault, inasmuch as they appear so unwilling to make progress and keep pace with modern advance- ment; yet whilst this may be true, it can also be said that they do not advance so readily in the
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vices, immoralities and fraudulent dealings of our progressive age.
The Germans appear to have been specially fitted in all their characteristics to make the wilds of America to blossom and bloom as the rose; their patient toil, together with their excellent and economical management, has made the soil of this country to produce abundantly, thereby enhanc- ing its material prosperity.
The early German colonists were slow in aban- doning their native language, especially where they lived in settlements of their own, and did not come much in contact with other people, as was the case in agricultural districts ; this was one of the causes of their having retained their peculiar traits of character for so long a time, having had its influence also upon their educational, religious, social and moral condition. They established parochial schools in all their settlements, wherever it could possibly be done, and a teacher could be secured, an arrangement to which they had al- ways been accustomed in their Fatherland, in which the catechism was taught, as well as the other branches of rudimental knowledge; neither was the Bible excluded from the school, and gene- rally constituted the text-book in the reading classes ; by this means a vast amount of religious intelligence was diffused among the German set- tlers and their descendants.
Their divine service was conducted for a long period of time in the German language, and when, at length, it did become absolutely necessary to
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introduce the English language occasionally in their churches, because some of their descendants and some English settlers among them could not understand the German very well, the minister or pastor in charge, who conscientiously favored or proposed this new arrangement, often met with a storm of opposition that generally impaired his usefulness, and obliged him to seek for another field of labor. His successor, however, then found the way prepared before him, and could officiate in English without much opposition, the storm having spent itself upon the pastor who first pro- posed the change. This same German character- istic, namely, opposition to all innovations, or firm adherence to the ways of their forefathers, had another deleterious effect : it sometimes became necessary to have a church located in town, in order to preserve its prosperity, when a number of the members had removed there, and the town became the central point of the congregation, then animosities would sometimes arise, which either defeated the proposed measure, or necessitated the removal of the pastor. The long use of the German language, whilst it exerted a deleterious influence upon the Church in retarding its prog- ress, in many instances also preserved it from the encroachments of error and the inroads of prose- lytism, especially in the rural districts; whilst in cities and towns it had the opposite effect, and caused numbers of the German descendants to connect themselves with other denominations, who
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would gladly have remained in the church of their fathers.
Many of the Germans in the Province of South Carolina were brought there with the design of establishing the production of silk and the culti- vation of the grape-vine, with which the Swiss and Palatines were well acquainted, as it was thought that the soil and climate were admirably adapted thereto; but it did not promise much suc- cess, owing chiefly to the little demand for those articles of luxury at the time, and the more profit- able employment of labor in other and more nec- essary articles ; besides, the cost of producing silk and wine was greater than in Europe. Wine could be made, as the grape-vine bears plenti- fully, but the wine produced in South Carolina cannot be long preserved in so warm a climate without admixture of other ingredients, especially in the lowlands, where the first German settlers were located. Planting, farming and the useful arts constituted the principal employment of the Germans and their descendants in the Carolinas : merchandizing, especially in towns and cities, eventually claimed their attention also, but only to a limited extent. Their mode of living, their industrious habits, and their simplicity of manners, to all of which they had been accustomed in their Fatherland, were well adapted to the condition of the country in its early period of colonization, of which Captain John Smith, though Governor of another Province, the Virginia Colony of James- town, very appropriately remarks: "When you
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send again, I entreat you, rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons and diggers up of trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand such as we have; for except we be able to lodge them and feed them, the most will consume with want of ยท necessaries before they can be made good for any thing." (Smith's History of Virginia, vol. i, p. 202.)
The purity of morals of the early German set- tlers likewise contrasts very favorably with some of the English colonists, who came to Carolina to seek a change of fortune, and of whom Rev. Dr. Hawks writes : "The outcasts of London prisons and the sweepings of London kennels, then, as now, doubtless could furnish their quota to every shipload of adventurers. The dissipated scions of respectable families were gladly sent off, lest they should finally tarnish ancestral honors by a felon's fate at home: the inmates of the vile slums and alleys of the metropolis were but too glad to escape the grasp of violated law; to leave a coun- try where they had nothing to gain and every- thing to lose, because they had reached an infamy and attained to a notoriety in guilt, which left them no further hope of committing crime with impunity. In short, we may not doubt, that some . of the earliest colonists belonged to that class which the poet has described as ' the cankers of a long peace, and a calm world.'" (Hawks' History of North Carolina, vol. i, p. 253.)
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Section 4. Great want of the Means of Grace among the early German colonists in the Carolinas.
"The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few," has been the cry for more than eighteen centuries, and the want of ministers of the gospel is continued to be felt up to the present time, but at no time and among no people to a more alarni- ing extent than among the early German settlers in the Carolinas. The Dutch colony on James Island, South Carolina, the Swiss and Palatine settlers in Newberne, North Carolina, the German and Swiss colonists in Purysburg, South Carolina, never did have a minister of the gospel of their own faith among them, and were consequently lost entirely to the Church of their fathers; whilst all the other German settlements in these two Provinces suffered more or less, and some for a long time, for the want of the regular adminis- tration of the means of grace; and when German ministers did eventually come to labor among their brethren of the same faith with themselves, the enemy had already sown his tares among the wheat, which caused great spiritual degeneracy. From A.D. 1674 to 1737, that is to say, from the settlement of the Dutch colonists to the arrival of the first German minister in Orangeburg, South Carolina, embracing a period of sixty-three years, during which time a number of important German settlements had been made, not a single minister of the gospel of their own faith labored among these settlers in that entire territory; and after
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that time their pastors were so few in number that comparatively little good could be effected.
In some localities temporary houses of worship were erected, and grants of land were secured for that purpose; or in the absence of these, school- houses and barns were used for divine service, generally conducted by some pious layman or the school-teacher, who read a sermon or devotional essay from such books as constituted the library of the early settlers. Great desire was at first awakened to enjoy the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, which want was occasionally supplied by very unworthy men, who were generally denominated "straggling preachers," of whom Dr. E. W. Caruthers, in his " Life of Rev. David Caldwell, D.D.," speaks as follows: "Hardly any of these (preachers) were calculated to advance the interests of vital piety, or to elevate the character of the people. Some of them had no kind of authority to preach, and no claims on the confidence of the churches on the score of piety ; but came out here, either from the Northern States or from Germany, pretending to be preachers ; exercised an assumed authority, and acted as self-constituted pastors of the churches, or went from place to place, imposing on the peo- ple who knew no better, or were glad to meet with any one who came to them as a minister of Christ."
The effect of such great want of the means of grace, or the improper administration of them, can be readily imagined; it occasioned at first
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much sorrow and regret among the better class of settlers, who became greatly dissatisfied with their new homes on account of this deficiency; and, as in Saxe-Gotha, South Carolina, gave intimation that they would likewise remove from their present location to the Province of Pennsylvania, where they could enjoy these spiritual advantages, as many had heretofore done. In Purysburg, Charleston and elsewhere, a number of German settlers did leave for this very reason, and located themselves among the Salzburgers of Ebenezer, Georgia, who were supplied with two efficient and pious pastors, the Revs. Bolzius and Gronau. Others again grew cold and indifferent to their spiritual interests and welfare, whilst not a few abandoned themselves to the dictates of their own corrupt natures, and fell from that grace and those pious principles of which they were once possessed ; permitting their children to grow up without a proper knowledge of God, of their duty, and of the way of salvation.
In one locality a singular heresy made its ap- pearance among a number of settlers, which ter- minated in a very tragical affair, as found related in the succeeding section, and may readily be un- derstood as a very natural consequence of the want of the means of grace administered in the regularly- appointed and divinely-ordered way.
In Charleston, South Carolina, the German set- tlers fared somewhat better; it being the centre of commerce in that Province, and having more in- tercourse with the European world, ministers of
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the gospel, who first landed there on their way to their respective fields of labor in other parts of America, occasionally supplied the German citizens there with the preaching of the gospel and the ad- ministration of the holy sacraments; Rev. Bolzius visited them in 1734, and accomplished much good in preaching and administering the communion to them for the first time; Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg, who had been sent by the Mission Society of Halle to labor in Pennsylvania, landed in Charleston, September 21, 1742, and whilst tarrying there he preached the gospel and catechized the children ; Revs. Rabenhorst and Gerock, the one on his way to Ebenezer, Georgia, and the other destined for Pennsylvania, likewise visited the German citizens of Charleston, and labored a short time for their spiritual welfare, A.D. 1753; in this manner was the flame of true religion preserved from becoming entirely extinguished among them, until they se- cured the services of a regular pastor in 1755. But in the rural districts of South Carolina, the spiritual condition of the German settlers was most deplorable, inasmuch as, previous to the year 1737, not a single German pastor labored among them.
The Lutherans in Saxe-Gotha Township, num- bering two hundred and eighty souls, wrote to the Ebenezer pastors, in 1750, for a minister of their own faith; but their urgent plea was not regarded, which greatly discouraged them. Need any one be astonished at the legitimate effects of so deplor- able a want of the means of grace as was witnessed
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at that time in the Province of South Carolina. The settlements of Germans from Pennsylvania in the interior of North Carolina were not com- menced until about this time, therefore they do not now claim our attention; but the Newberne colony of Swiss and Germans in 1710, as has been stated before, was entirely neglected, and became, as a necessary consequence, also entirely lost to the Church of their fathers.
Section 5. An Account of the Weber ( Weaver) Heresy.
In Saxe-Gotha Township, Lexington County, South Carolina, and "in the neighborhood of what is now called Younginer's Ferry," there originated a sect among the Swiss and German settlers, who were called Weberites. Their heresy was of so revolting a nature, that it would be de- sirable to pass it by in silence, if it could be done without doing injustice to a faithful and correct narration of historical facts.
Rev. Dr. Hazelius gives us a brief sketch of the doings of these Weberites in his American Lu- theran Church, p. 103; and the Rev. Dr. Muhlen- berg has also furnished us a more extended ac- count of them in his journal, translated and pub- lished in vol. i of the Evangelical Review, dating their transactions as having occurred in the year 1760; nevertheless, the origin of this sect must have taken place some time before, as that is the date of the culmination of their heresy into the crime, which brought their leader to suffer the just penalty of the law.
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Dr. Muhlenberg's account is as follows : " Mr. Strobel, the son-in-law of Rev. Mr. Martin, a wealthy tanner, sent for me in a chaise, to convey me out of town to dine with him. He told me, among other things, a remarkable history of an abominable sect, which had arisen among the Germans in South Carolina, A.D. 1760-1, and had some similarity with Knipperdolling and Jan Van Leiden. They committed murders, on which ac- count one of them, named Jacob Weber, who called himself a god, and slew a person, was hanged. Their founder is said to have been Peter Schmidt. The sect originated at Saluda Fork, about one hundred miles from Charleston (125 or 130 miles).
"Jacob Weber was a Swiss. He first became an exhorter, then he advanced himself still farther, but before his end he came to his senses, and saw his error.
"The people in the country, in general, grew up without schools and instruction. Occasionally a self-taught (auto-didacter) minister may labor for awhile amongst them, yet it continues only a short time. The people are wild, and continue to grow wilder, for what does it profit them to hear a sermon every four, six, or twelve weeks, if in early youth the foundation of Divine Truth had not been laid ? The aforesaid sect had so far ob- tained the supremacy that several families united with it for fear of their lives; numbers of both sexes went about uncovered and naked, and prac- ticed the most abominable wantonness. One of
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them pretended to be God the Father, another the Son, and a third the Holy Spirit; and the pre- tended Father, having quarrelled with the Son, repudiated the pretended Son, chained him in the forest, declared him to be Satan, and finally gath- ered his gang, who beat and trampled on the poor man until he died; he is reported also to have killed the pretended Holy Ghost in bed. A report of these circumstances having reached the au- thorities in Charleston, the militia were ordered to arrest the pretended deity, when he was tried, con- demned, and executed upon the gallows.
"The English inhabitants scoffed about it, and said the Germans had nothing to fear, their Devil having been killed, and their God having been hanged. Such are the fruits of not inculcating the doctrine of Divine Truth early in youth, and of leaving man to himself. Rom. 1: 21-32. This sect spread from South to North Carolina, thence to Maryland and Virginia, among the German and English population, and has likewise left some seed of this heresy in Charleston. Upon this gross Satanic tragedy a more subtle temptation followed. Quakers, Anabaptists, &c., spread themselves in the country regions around, and appear to be better suited to the circumstances of the land at this time.
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