THE GERMANS IN COLONIAL TIMES BY LUCY FORNEY BITTINGER AUTHOR OF " MEMORIALS OF THE REV. J. B. BITTINGER" and of " THE FORNEY FAMILY OF HANOVER, PA." PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY I g o I 85901 Library of Conpreas Two Copies Receivco DEC 8 1900 C\ Copyright entry • SECOND COPY Oe(lv«red to ORDER DIVISION DE C g 2 1 9 QQ Copyright, 1900 BY J. B. LiPPiNCOTT Company ELECTROTVPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A. ,'c'- FOREWORD Singularly little is known of the magnitude of the German emigration to America in colonial times. The very fact of such a movement is commonly unknown to the American at the present day ; and even the de- scendants of these Teutonic pioneers are often ignorant or — more inexcusably — ashamed of their progenitors, and have sought by anglicizing their names and lightly passing over the fact of their descent from " Dutchmen" to conceal the wide and deep traces which this move- ment has left on American life. Yet this Volkerwan- derung (for it merits the name) brought to our shores in the century before the Revolution one hundred and fifty thousand people, one-half of the population of the great province of Pennsylvania, besides large settlements in the provinces of New York, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, not to mention the small and ill- fated colonies of Law on the Mississippi and those in the State of Maine. Nor is their history lacking in interest, containing as it does the peaceful picture which Whittier has immortalized in his "Pennsylvania Pilgrim ;" the self-sacrifice of the Moravian missionaries among the Indians ; the dramatic fire of Muhlenberg throwing off his pastor's gown for a Continental uniform and calling to his flock that "the time to fight had come ;" and the tragic resolution with which the embattled farmers of Oriskany held back, with the sacrifice of their own lives, 5' Foreword the English rifle and Indian scalping-knife from their Mohawk Valle}' homes. Or we may turn to the quaint Rosicrucians, the hermits of the Wissahickon, or the cloisters of Ephrata for a life almost unknown among the more practical English colonists. If we would sup full of the horrors of war, pestilence and famine, or religious persecution with stake and fire and noisome prison, with midnight flight for conscience' sake, we can find these told in simple pathos in the stories of the Palatines of the Rhine, the Mennonites of Switzerland, the INIoravians, or the tiny sect of the Schwenkfelders. If we would meet with good men or great, we may see here the gentle Pastorius, first pro- testant against American slavery, or Conrad Weiser, whose adventurous life was largely filled with embassies to might}' Indian chiefs and nations, whom he held back from war from the white men's frontier, or, last but not least, William Penn, whose might}' figure dominates the histoiy as its counterfeit presentment does the city he has builded beside the Delaware. And indeed " time would fail us to tell" of the many people and incidents, interesting, pathetic, humorous, or containing in them the germs of our present American development, which fill the annals of those " Pennsylvania Germans" and their kin in many States, whom the New England histo- rian, Parkman, slurred over with the description, " dull and ignorant boors, which character their descendants for the most part retain." How many even of these same descendants know tliat to this people belong, by ancestn,' more or less remote, some of the first scientific men of America, such as the Muhlenbergs, Melsheimer, the ** father of 6 Foreword American entomology," Leidy, and Gross, the great sur- geon ; Herkimer, the hero of Oriskany ; " Moll Pitcher," the heroine of Monmouth ; Post, the Indian missionary, to whom Parkman liimself pays a noble tribute ; Hecke- welder, the Moravian lexicographer of the speech of the Delawares ; Armistead, the defender of Fort McHenry in the war of 1812, whose flag, "still there," inspired the "Star-Spangled Banner;" Barbara Frietchie ; and General Custer? Surely this people merit that some slight account be drawn from the mostly unknown books and documents where they have for years re- posed, known only to antiquarians and often veiled from English readers by the German language in which many of the best and most valuable are written, and be given to the English-speaking world of America. Such is the purpose of the present work. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Conditions in Germany which led to emigration ii II PENN'S visit to GERMANY 22 III Germantown 26 IV The labadists in Maryland 36 V The woman in the wilderness 42 VI German valley, new jerskv 52 VII Kociierthal's colony 58 VIII The great exodus or the i-alatinks 61 IX Pequae and the mennonites 93 X The dunkers and ephrata 98 XI The schwenkfelder and Christopher dock ... 105 XII The progress of settlement in the valley of VIRGINIA AND IN MARYLAND II4 XIII The GERMANS IN south CAROLINA 121 XIV German colonization in new England 130 XV The salzburgers in Georgia and the Pennsylvania GERMANS IN NORTH CAROLINA 142 XVI The German press 152 XVII The Moravians 168 XVIII Conrad weiser and the frontier wars 184 XIX The "royal American" recument 206 XX The redemptioners 215 XXI The Germans as pioneers 230 XXII The Germans in the revolution 235 XXIII "The rear-guard of the revolution" 277 THE GERMANS IN COLONIAL TIMES CHAPTER I CONDITIONS IN GERMANY WHICH LED TO EMIGRATION The large emigration of Germans to America and es- pecially to Pennsylvania in colonial times seems on first examination a mysterious phenomenon. The Germans were aliens in language among the mainly English-speak- ing colonists ; were obliged to undertake a long and toilsome journey before reaching the ocean over which they must sail for weeks and months, amidst the greatest hardships and dangers, before they could even attain to their desired haven ; their own government, so soon as the size of the movement attracted attention, did all in its power to restrain it, and the PLnglish provincial author- ities received the foreigners by no means with open arms ; yet the cry was still "They come." The well-known energy, resolution, and fondness for emigration charac- terizing the Germans of earlier times — the merchants of the Hansa, whose flag was on every sea and whose warehouses and trading-posts dotted every land and^ strand — had been crushed out of the seventeenth- century Germans by the fearful peine forte et dure of the Thirty Years' War.'' So the Americans who saw The Germans in Colonial Times this tide of strangers rising on their shore were natu- rally surprised, and the few of their descendants who know the proportions of the early German emigration to America are still astonished at it. But a slight knowledge of the condition of Germany at the time that the emigration took its rise and for some genera- tions previous will explain it. This movement had a twofold cause : first in point of time as of importance, a religious motive ; and secondly, a social or material one. That the religious was pre- dominant may be seen by the character of the emigra- tion, which at first and for two generations consisted entirely of the sectaries who were persecuted in Germ.any by state and church. And it may also be proved by the rise and course of the emigration which was begun and fostered by such men as Penn the Quaker and his Mennonite and Pietist friends and religious acquaint- ances. The Rhine country, from which such an overwhelming proportion of the colonial German emigrants came that it may be almost exclusively considered, was the home of Mysticism and Pietism, two most elastic designations, which include phenomena as various as the wild and immoral fanaticism of the prophets of Miinster and the peaceful purity of Tersteegen and his little circle of pious friends. Mysticism had had its home on the Rhine ever since " Master Eckart" taught a strange mystical pantheism among the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and Tauler and the author of the "Theologia Germanica" preached a self-surrender as complete as that which Loyola exacted from his " Company of Jesus." This mysticism flowered later into the practical endeavors of 12 Conditions in Germany which led to Emigration Gerhard Groot and the " Brethren of the Common Life" to instruct youth in their schools, and one of their scholars was th.it Thomas of Kempen who wrote the "Imitation of Christ," still beloved among us. The final result of this movement was the Reformation. But the Reformation did not go far enough to satisfy many of the pious souls looking for more or different light than Luther and Zwingli found to break forth from God's word. Nor did it content the longings of many among the Swiss compatriots of Zwingli who felt the danger of his union between church and state or the coldness of his somewhat rationalistic views of the sacraments. So among the many scattered circles who fed their spirits upon the mystical writings of Boehme, Tauler, and Swedenborg, or the hidden people who proudly retained in secret the pure, early Christianity of the Waldenses, lived, amid continual suspicion and persecution, the beliefs which crystallized here and there into "the Sects." These flourished mainly among the lower classes, those who had wished during the Refor- mation to abolish nobles and kings along with priest- hood, and these social and socialistic views naturally made them obnoxious to the authorities. "The perse- cuted Sects" they were designated, and persecuted they were indeed : unto death by fire and sword and drowning in earlier times ; then, as civilization advanced, through imprisonment, harassments by the authorities, and forcible conversions ; and, finally, by all sorts of worrying attacks, such as spared life and limb but left little else. No wonder that "as soon as an asylum was provided them, they flocked to it, one little company after another of the sectarians braving the dangers of 13 The Germans in Colonial Times the long, trying voyage and the hardships of the un- known wilderness to find the precious jewel of religious freedom. In the midst of the religious intolerance and persecu- tions of the century after the Reformation fell upon Germany the unimaginable and indescribable horrors of the Thirty Years' War. It is difficult to call up to one's mind what this event was. Many portions of Germany became uninhabited wildernesses ; many of the miserable people became in the extremity of their distress robbers, murderers, and even cannibals. The free peasants were degraded to serfs, the rich and energetic burghers became narrow-minded shopkeepers, the noblemen servile cour- tiers, the princes shameless oppressors. Of the rich, blooming land, full of trade and learning and refinement, was left a wrecked country, the sites of burnt villages overgrown by the forests, tiny towns amid the ruin of their former greatness, and a handful of broken-spirited people creeping fearfully about the work of earning a bare existence. It was a full generation after the war before the exhausted and demoralized nation could stir itself to an interest in those spiritual things which were seemingly all that were left to it. From desolation and barbarism, persecution and op- pression on earth, the Germans looked to heaven. The churches, — and by this I mean the three "tolerated confessions" (Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic), — at least the Protestant churches, had fallen into a state of formalism and indifference to religious things, while retaining a vivid and often virulent interest in orthodoxy and the stiffest scholastic theology. The use of the sacraments had become in many places a magical cere- 14 Contlirions in Germany which led to Emigration mony. The youth were not instructed, the openly scan- dalous in Hfe neither admonished nor excluded from the church. Men with none of that preparation of heart which our forefathers quaintly called " experimental re- ligion" were ordained and ministered to congregations, famished for plain teaching of duty, scholastic treatises, or furious polemics against the sins of sectarianism, the dangers of good works, and the wickedness of prayer- meetings. It is not strange that many simpl^e and godly people went off into the extravagances of the various mystical coteries where the Bible was at least studied, and, after a most singular fashion, expounded. The Rhine country was full of little circles of devout, if ig- norant, people, who listened to some self-constituted minister, — perhaps a pious and sensible mystic like Tcrsteegen, perhaps a wild dreamer like the " Inspired Saddler" Rock, a learned lady like Eleanora von Merlau, or an immoral fanatic such as Eva von Buttlar. But, fortunately for these ofttimes deluded good peo- ple, there arose the movement called or nicknamed Pietism, given a direction by the devout, learned, and lovable Spener, whose principle was " that Christianity was first of all life, and that the strongest proof of the truth of its doctrine was to be found in the religious experience of the believing." It embraced among its leaders — along with the fanatical cranks who are the curse of any movement which stirs men's enthusiasm — men like Gottfried Arnold, the church historian, the equally learned Professor Thomasius, the noble and benevolent Francke, the founder of the Orphan House of Halle, and his son, the benefactor and guide of the neglected Lutherans of Pennsylvania. The Pietists 15 The Germans in Colonial Times struggled not only against the dry and dead theology of the time, but for the purity and simplicity of the Ger- man language against the barbarous scholastic German of the time. The whole Pictistic movement was earnestly directed to the betterment of mankind, materially as well as spiritually. It found its field, in contradistinction to the mysticism of the "plain people," among the upper and cultivated classes, and many names of those rich and noble and mighty according to this world adorn its roll. The Pietists stood like the Deists for freedom of thought in religious matters and against the mental oppression which everywhere existed ; both appealed to the New Testament from the decisions of councils which in every case the authorities desired to maintain. The Collegia or conventicles of the Pietists were nothing but simple assemblies as harmless as a Methodist class- meeting, where the members appealed to the Scriptures in the original from the pedantic systems of the theo- logians. This new school was strong and pure so long as it preached free investigation, liberty of thought and conscience, and rectitude of life. The leaders were noble men and did a noble work, and not the least of their services to humanity was the part which they took in the colonization of the New World, where freedom of conscience existed. It is to the Pietists and their un- known and often unacknowledged brethren, the mystical and persecuted sectaries, that we owe the inception of the early colonial emigration of Germans to Pennsyl- vania. The second cause of the colonial German emigration was the social and political condition of Germany, and this may be summed up as deterioration in ever}^ way. i6 Conditions in Germany which led to Emigration The Rhineland recovered more rapidly from the ravages of the Thirty Years' War than other parts of Germany, but misgovernment and reHgious intolerance were more severely felt there than in other sections of the country. To the reader of its depressing history it finally becomes a wonder, not that so many of its inhabitants emigrated, but that any one had the courage and the truly German perseverance to remain behind in the miserable land. The rulers sought only their own advantage and pleasure, the prosperity of their subjects was not at all in their thoughts. Wars were almost unceasing : French devas- tations and "reunions" along the Rhine, wars with the Swedes and Turks, the two dynastic wars named of the Spanish and Austrian successions, the Seven Years' War, and unceasing feuds among the little principalities. "The peasant did not conceive of a time in which there was not war." They must have prayed with a special feeling the pathetic petition of the litany : " Give peace in our time, O Lord : because there is none other that fighteth for us but only Thou, O God." All Southwest Germany was as full of misgovernment as of sectarian- ism, " filled with tiny principalities, old religious founda- tions, — secularized or still remaining, — free cities of the moribund empire and even free villages ; counts, princes, and lords of all kinds, who caricatured Louis XIV. some- times by dozens to the square mile and kept the fruitful land in an artificial condition of perpetual exhaustion." This unhappy section of Germany included first in an unfortunate pre-eminence the Rheinpfalz or Rhenish Palatinate ; Swabia, Wiirtemberg, Silesia, and the many little principalities between Bavaria and Austria. The Rhenish Palatinate was a model of these badly ruled 2 17 The Germans in Colonial Times and plundered principalities, and so many of its inhab- itants fled that in America all German immigrants were called Palatines, and we even encounter in colonial records that nondescript "A Palatine from Holsteyn." When, after the Thirty Years' War, the elector Karl Lud- wig returned to his desolated dominions, he found but a fiftieth part of the inhabitants remaining, and all his efforts (for he was a good ruler taught in the hard school of personal adversity) to restore prosperity were frus- trated by the continual wars of his time. In 1668 was war with the neighboring Duke of Lorraine ; in 1673 the invasions of the Most Christian King, Louis XIV., began without declaration of war or any excuse save that he desired a desert made to protect his frontier. In the intervals of peace were carried on the shameless reunions by which territory was taken for France on the flimsiest pretexts of law. During the various campaigns, Mannheim and Heidelberg were burnt ; two separate efforts, four years apart, were necessary to destroy the strong and beautiful castle, to-day " majestic though in ruin ;" at Speyer the graves of the old Kaisers were broken open and their dust scattered by the French soldiers. Worms was burnt "on Whit-Tuesday," the French military bands playing dance-music while the city and its old cathedral were reduced to ashes. From this destruction Worms and Speyer have never recovered, and traces of the work of Louis's robber bands are still apparent ; all the villages and towns between Heilbronn and the Lower Rhine are new, with no remains left of their historic past. To these outward afflictions of the Palatinate was now added religious intolerance. The succeeding elector, Jo- 18 Conditions in Germany which led to Emigration hann Wilhelm, was a Catholic, and endeavored by taking advantage of the differences between the Lutherans and the Reformed to make the whole land of his own faith. Under his orders children were taken from their parents to be brought up Catholics. In some cases his Prot- estant subjects were driven away, sometimes their churches taken from them by force, or they were forci- bly converted under pain of fines impossible to pay. In some places they were hunted into church by soldiers and the host crammed into their mouths. The Hugue- nots and Waldenses who had been invited by Karl Lud- wig to take asylum in the Palatinate after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes were turned out and went with other Palatines to America. The Reformed were made incapable of holding civil office, the stipends were with- drawn from preachers and teachers, and, following the illustrious example of Louis XIV., they were subjected to the dragonnade. But the Protestants stood firm and almost none became Catholics. The elector meanwhile lived away from his country and spent his subjects' money gayly in private theatricals, buildings, and art collections. His successor, Karl Philip, was one of the worst rulers that the Palatinate ever had, though he showed some little consideration for his subjects ; some of the feudal services were remitted in 1735 in order that the peasants might till their fields, but the despairing people refused to accept this, because they knew that all their crops would be taken from them by the invading French. The elector received an indemnity from the invaders, but retained it in his own pocket. The court was incon- ceivably costly — the master of horse, for instance, had 19 The Germans in Colonial Times one hundred and eighty persons under his orders alone, while other officials whose titles and rank are alike un- translatable and incomprehensible to us had as many or more. There were mounted life-guards, falconers, court musicians, and court architects besides. It might have been supposed that this was the high- water mark of extravagance, but Karl Theodor, whose long reign filled out the eighteenth century, was the w^orst of all under whom the miserable Palatinate suffered. The elector was shamelessly in the pay of France, and under the influence of the Jesuits, like most of the Simmern branch of the Palatinate house ; bribery Avas open in the government ; in the court, avarice, extravagance, and immorality. He forbade his loving subjects to leave his well-governed land, where he destroyed the peasants' crops and fields with his magnificent hunts. His court far exceeded in expense and extravagance that of his predecessor. This magnificent court, with innumerable fine rooms, stables with hundreds of horses, gardens, and orangeries, was the resort of countless adventurers who were fed by scores at the monarch's table. Meanwhile, every nineteenth inhabitant was a beggar ; and the result of the census was concealed, for it showed a progressive diminution of population. Wiirtemberg, which, next to the Palatinate, sent most emigrants to America, offers a replica of these condi- tions. In Wiirtemberg the French robbers came twice, in 1688 and 1693 ; the Spanish Succession War brought desolation to the country and a three days' plundering to the city of Stuttgart ; but from the beginning of the eighteenth century to its end Wiirtemberg had the ad- vantage over its neighboring country, that no foreign Conditions in Germany which led to Emigration army entered it. Its dukes for a hundred years, how- ever, were merely bad imitations of a wretched model in their endeavors to equal the oppressions, extravagance, and wickedness of the French sovereigns. Karl Eugen of Wiirtemberg, whose treatment of Schiller and the poet Schubart has made him notorious, had two thou- sand courtiers, the finest ballet and opera out of Paris, increased the taxes of his subjects threefold, and drove them by thousands to America. In Baden reigned another imitator of Le Grand Monarque, Karl Wilhelm, the builder of Karlsruhe ; his people emigrated to New York and also to Pennsylvania in goodly numbers. Truly an unpleasant and disheartening picture to contemplate, — these gilded princelings, these crushed people solacing themselves in their misery with wild re- ligious dreams or subdued into the dumb non-resistance of sheep. One wonders that so feeble a folk ever had the spirit to leave their homes, embittered as their ex- istence there was, to go across the sea to the New World. This portrayal of the social conditions of Germany has brought us rather in advance chronologically of our subject, for the first emigration of Germans to America in 1683 was influenced by purely religious motives and not at all by any social conditions. Many causes, as is usual in any large movement, combined to influence this : mysticism with a Rosicrucian coloring. Pietism and the unfavorable aspect towards it of German church life, the Mennonite movement, and last, but not least, the per- sonal influence and presence of a man great enough to lead events, — William Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania. CHAPTER II PENN's visit to GERMANY Penn made, it is probable, three visits to Germany and Holland. The first, to Labadie, had probably no influence on subsequent emigration ; the second, in 1674, to Embden and Crefeld, led only to the writing of sev- eral religious pamphlets; but the last, in 1677, more extensive in its scope, set in motion the tiny rivulet of sectarian emigration, which grew presently to a mighty river. The journal of this religious visit was subsequently published, but we take from it only notices of those por- tions of the journey which influenced subsequent emi- gration. The Mennonites in Holland and Germany offered prepared ground for Quaker missionaiy endeav- ors ; the two sects held many principles in common, as the wrongfulness of war, of judicial oaths, of a paid min- istry, of ornament in dress, and of infant baptism. Pearly Quaker missionaries had set up meetings at Krisheim and Crefeld. The Pietists also sympathized with many of the Quaker views, in particular that of the Inner Light ; but Spener, the leader of these believers in Frank- fort, avoided a meeting with Penn. The Philadelphian societies, of English origin, were tolerably numerous both in Holland and Germany ; the Labadists and the mystics generally also formed strategic points, of which Penn, like the able man he was, took advantage. At Frankfort he became much interested in the young 22 Penn's Visit to Germany and nobly born mystic, Fraiilein von Merlau, who, after her marriage to the learned Chiliast professor, Petersen, wrote apocalyptic books " hard to be under- stood." Penn made from Frankfort a short visit to Worms and Krisheim ; at the latter place he edified the plain folk of the village in a barn ; the magistrate of the little town hid behind a door to spy upon the conventi- cle, but afterwards reported that " he heard nothing but what was good, and as to heresy he had not discovered any." After Penn returned to England and obtained the grant of his province, four years later, he thought of the distressed " Friends" of Germany, and wrote to Benja- min Furly to recommend him Pennsylvania as an asylum for all oppressed sects. A number of pamphlets were prepared, setting forth the advantages of the new prov- ince beyond the seas : such as "Some Account of the Pro\'ince of Pennsylvania," which was translated into German under the title " Eine Nachricht wegen der Landschaft Pennsilvania in America" and went through several editions, also Dutch and French translations. The "Frame of Government" of the new province was also published, as was a little tract giving " Information and direction to such persons as are inclined to America," which was translated into German and Dutch. "A Brief Account of the Province of Pennsylvania" was immediately translated by Furly into Dutch, French, and German. There soon began a flood of books, broadsides, and pamphlets, some setting forth the ad- vantages of the Quaker province, others attacking or defending the Quakers or their doctrine. But enough had been disseminated to show what a haven of refug-e The Germans in Colonial Times had been opened for the troubled sectaries of the Rhine- land, and into it flocked all manner of persecuted, plundered, and down-trodden people. Furly established two companies, one (not formally associated) at Crefeld, the other, the Frankfort Company, at that city on the Main. Of this Eleanora von Merlau and her husband, Dr. Petersen, were among the original stockholders, as also the merchant, Van de Walle, at whose house Peqn held his first meeting in Frankfort. None of the Frankfort Company ever came to America ; but the weavers of Crefeld and the simple Mennonites of Krisheim did emigrate and were the pioneers of the immense emigration of later time. Dr. Seidensticker, the first and fullest investigator of the German roots of the emigration, says, "To complete the proof that the project of buying land and founding a settlement in Pennsylvania originated in the very cir- cles that had been in contact with Penn, we have the statement of Pastorius, contained in an autobiographical memoir, to this effect ; ' Upon my return to Frankfort in 1682, I was glad to enjoy the company of my former acquaintances and Christian friends assembled together in a house called the Saalhof, viz. : Dr. Spener . . . Jacobus von de Walle . . . Eleanora von Merlau . . . etc., who sometimes made mention of William Penn, of Pennsylvania, and showed me letters from Benjamin Furley, also printed relations concerning said province [probably the "Account"] ; finally the whole secret could not be withheld from me that they had purchased twenty-five thousand acres of land in this remote part of the world. Some of them entirely resolved to transport themselves, families and all. This begat such a desire 24 Penn's Visit to Germany in my soul to continue in their society and with them to lead a quiet, godly, and honest life in a howling wilder- ness, that by several letters I requested my father's con- sent, besides two hundred and fifty reichsthalers ; where- upon I went to Krisheim and immediately prepared for the journey.' " So at last we are face to face with a body of sectaries who really intend to emigrate, and with the man who is to be their leader. The era of journeying, of preparation, of pamphleteering, is passed, and that of action, of emigration, of pioneering, has begun. The German emigration to America has been com- pared to a mighty river ; the simile is a good one. And as a river is made up of the waters of many streams and these in turn flow from numberless tiny springs rising in obscure places, so many things and people little accounted of by the great world went to feed the tide. The cen- tury-long suffering of Mennonite in Switzerland and Protestant in the Palatinate ; Penn's apostolic journey- ings along the Rhine from one little group of " Friends" or Mystics or Pietists to another ; Furly's industrious pamphlet-writing ; the mystical dreamings of " the fair von Merlau" and her Pietist friends of the Saalhof con- cerning the possibility of better serving God in the vir- gin wilderness of Pennsylvania, which fired the noble, simple, courageous heart of Pastorius ; all went to prepare the way — may we not reverently say ? — for Him who led His humble people by a way they knew not, through the sea to a promised land of peace and free- dom and brotherly love. 25 CHAPTER III GERMANTOWN As we enter upon the histor>^ of the settlement of Germans in the New World, we feel that nothing in that history, no homeh^ trait nor trifling detail, can be unin- teresting. It has the freshness and importance that inhere in all beginnings. Yet the story is largely but "the short and simple annals of the poor." The colonists were Mennonites, weavers from Crefeld on the Rhine. They belonged to that persecuted sect of "defenceless Christians," as they often entitled them- selves, who trace their spiritual descent back to the pure doctrines of the early Waldenses. But it is likely that they represent onh* one of the streams of tendency of Reformation or indeed pre-Reformation times ; one which arose among the common people and represented obscurely, and sometimes faultily, their blind and pas- sionate desire for a pure, simple church in which all be- lievers should be equal, in which no importance should be attached to forms and ceremonies, in which tliere should be no strife between brethren, neither wars nor judicial oaths ; and an equal desire for such a reform in the state as should make their burdens and oppressions a little lighter and by which the state should not persecute any man for doing or believing what he thought to be right. These Swiss and German peasants of the time of Columbus were inarticulately desiring what the great Italian statesman of our own day phrased in his im- 26 Germantown mortal watchword of " a free church in a free state." But the idea was too great and free for the time. The unlearned men who taught it and tried to practise it, though they sometimes enjoyed the leadership of men like Felix Mantz, learned and wise and good, yet fell for the most part under the guidance of leaders so mad- dened by their wrongs that they could but strike blindly at the whole existing order of things or who reacted from churchly formalism into a fanatical freedom which broke all laws, human and divine. The excesses of the Peas- ants' War turned Luther's mighty influence against them. John of Leyden and the other mad "prophets" of Miinster gave the Anabaptists a name and a fame which centuries of pious and peaceful life could not clear. But in this lowest point of the life of the sect — if a body so formless and heterogeneous could be called a sect — there arose their Luther, their Calvin : Menno Simon, from whom they take their present name. He was a Frieslander, formerly a Catholic priest, converted by witnessing the martj^dom of an Anabaptist ; and his first writing was a protest against the party of violence in the Anabaptist body. He succeeded in discrediting this party, and henceforth the Mennonites were men of peace. But church and state, alike exasperated against them, gave them no rest. Their martyr-roll is a long and piteous one. For three centuries they found no tolera- tion save in Holland, where William of Orange pro- tected them. In Germany and Switzerland their prop- evtyr was confiscated, they were exiled, imprisoned, burnt, broken on the wheel, drowned, according to the 27 The Germans in Colonial Times disposition of the reigning princes or existing govern- ments. So it is not strange that the httle band of Men- nonite weavers had the courage to leave their Crefeld homes and try the new place of refuge, even beyond seas, which was opened to them by their friend, Penn. They had little to lose and might gain much. Certainly in looking into the history of the tiny com- pany who first dared the dangers of the ocean and the wilderness for freedom of worship, we must recognize, as they would most gratefully have done, the good hand of their God upon them ; and not the least of their blessings was the character of their leader, Pastorius. He was an educated man, as to religious opinion a Pietist ; he had travelled and studied widely for those days. His family were people of position in the Father- land ; he had many wealthy and learned friends there, and his noble character, his learning and culture, made many more in "the forest court of William Penn." He was a bit of a pedant, it is true. The construction of his Rusca Apium, which ' ' with bees began And through the gamut of creation ran — " a compendium in all the many languages he knew, of all human knowledge, was the occupation of years, but it was the harmless diversion of a scholar almost alone in the wilderness, and we do not know that he neglected his colony or his school for the entrancing amusement of writing it. He went delightedly to an exile in the strange New World from all that makes life precious to the cultivated and refined, and for the rest of his earthly pilgrimage he led and cared for and instructed wisely and patiently the simple weavers of Crefeld who 28 Germantown formed his colony, condescending to men of low estate, although enjoying to the full the society of cultivated people such as the President of the Provincial Council, Thomas Lloyd, or Lloyd's greater master, William Penn. Pastorius's arrival preceded that of his colonists by six weeks. His first impressions of the City of Brotherly Love were not very favorable ; a few huts, " the rest woods and thickets in which I several times lost myself," so he describes it. His earliest residencie there was a cave or rather such a "dug-out" as is still the primitive shelter on our Western frontier. It was the 6th of October, 1683, when the first Ger- man colonists landed in Pennsylvania from the ship "Concord" — auspicious name ! They had had a pros- perous voyage. "The blessing of the Lord did attend us," writes an English fellow-traveller, "so that we had a very comfortable passage and had our health all the way." There were thirteen families of emigrants, but the number of people is uncertain ; " 33 freights," they are counted, but as a child was called a half-freight, we cannot know of just how many men, women, and chil- dren the party consisted. They proceeded immediately to settle themselves. On the 12th of October a warrant was issued to Pastorius for six thousand acres of land " on behalf of the German and Dutch purchasers ;" on the 24th it was surveyed and divided into lots, and the next day the Germans met in the " cave" of Pastorius to draw lots for the choice of location. And it was then, at the beginning of the records of this pioneer settlement of Germans in America, that Pastorius, seeing as in a vision the long train of Teutonic emigrants which should follow the little " Concord" and 29 The Germans in Colonial Times her "33 freights" across the seas, greeted them in the stately Latin which Whittier has translated into English rhythm of touching beauty : " Hail to posterity ! Hail, future men of Germanopolis ! Let the young generations yet to be Look kindly upon this. Think how your fathers left their native land, — Dear German-land ! O sacred hearths and homes !- And, where the wild beast roams, In patience planned New forest-homes beyond the mighty sea, There undisturbed and free To live as brothers of one family. What pains and cares befell, What trials and what fears, Remember, and wherein we have done well Follow our footsteps, men of coming years ! Where we have failed to do Aright, or wisely live. Be warned by us, the better way pursue. And, knowing we were human, even as you. Pity us and forgive ! Farewell, Posterity ! Farewell, dear Germany ! Forevermore, farewell !" The colonists of Germantown built small huts, dug cellars, and passed the winter in much discomfort. " It could not be described," wrote Pastorius, "nor would it be believed by coming generations in what want and need and with what Christian contentment and persistent industry this German township started." But by the next year one of the settlers could write his brother, "I have been busy and made a brave dwelling-house and under it a cellar fit to live in and have so much grain such as Germantown Indian Corn and Buckwheat that this winter I shall be better off than what I was last year." Each summer brought them new accessions of pros- perity and of fellow-countrymen to swell their numbers. Among the men of the "Concord" or those who after- wards cast in their lots with them, were Jacob Telner, a merchant, one of the original purchasers of land while yet in Crefeld, the leader, next to Pastorius, of the little community ; Willem Rittinghuys, who built the first paper-mill in the colonies, but is more widely known as the progenitor of David Rittenhouse, self-taught genius, surveyor, orrery-maker, philosopher, astronomer, and patriot ; Reynier Jansen, an early Pennsylvanian printer and a very bad one ; and the two Op Den Graeffs, men of mark in the little community of their day, but known now because their names with those of Gerrit Hendricks and " Francis Daniell Pastorius" are signed to that sim- ple petition against slavery which the Germantown Friends sent to "the monthly meeting held at Richard Worrell's" in i688. Let us hear a few of its simple words : "Is there an> that would be done or handled at this manner? viz. to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life ? How fearfull and fainthearted are many at sea when they see a strange vessel being afraid it should be a Turck and they should be tacken and sold for Slaves in Turckey. Now what is this better done than Turcks doe ? yea, rather is it worse for them which say they are Christians. . . . Now tho' they be black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves as it is to have other white men. . . . To bring men hither or to robb or sell them against their will, we stand The Germans in Colonial Times against . . . Pray, what thiiii; in the world can be done worse toward us than if men should robb or steal us away and sell us for slaves to strange countries, sepa- rating husband from their wife and children. Being now this is not done at that manner we will be done at, there- for we contradict and are against this traffic of men- body." It was promptly decided "not to be proper for this meeting to give a positive judgement in the case."' and stifled into silence. Yet, as Pennypacker sa}-s, "A little rill there started which further on be- came an immense torrent, and whenever hereafter men trace the causes which led to Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Appomattox, they will begin with the tender consciences of the linen-weavers and husbandmen o{ German- to\\m." There are few incidents to record in the life of the colony. In 1691 the town was incorporated, but no one wished to hold office and the government perished through lack of political ambition in its intended burghers. A few years after there tarried briefl)- at Germantown the strange community of " The Woman in the Wilderness." In the same }-ear there was anotlier arrival which awakened pit}- rather than curiosity, and yet it was the end of a strange stor\' which came before their eyes. Twenty years previous to the landing of Penn, the Mennonites of Amsterdam had endeavored to plant a colon}- in the New Netherlands under the leadership of one Comelis Plockho}- : but the English fell upon the settlement of "■' defenceless Christians" and destroyed it, as their governor proudh* boasted, *' even to a naile." The waters of oblivion closed over the luckless colony. Germantown Thirty years after there came to Germantown a blind old man led by his aged wife. The pity of the benevo- lent Mennonites was excited for him, the more that he was a brother in the faith. They built him a little house and gave him a tiny garden for so long as he and his wife should live ; they planted a tree in front of it, under which he might sit to feel and hear the peaceful happi- ness about him. Rittinghuys and another were appointed to take up for the poor old people " a free-will offering." This blind old wanderer was the leader of that hapless colony, Cornelis Plockhoy. The little community grew and prospered ; they had a paper-mill ; they made " very fine German Linen such no Person of Quality need be ashamed to wear ;" they built a prison and a church, and a school-house in which Pastorius "kept school." In 1702 they colonized, when Matthias Van Bebber chose to take up his land "on the Skippack" and established there what was often called Van Bebberstown, to the great confusion of later his- torians. Another fertile source of perplexity and mis- take was the Dutch custom of adding the father's name instead of the surname, so that Dirck Op Den Graeff appears as Dirck Isaacs, and Matthias Jacobs is really Matthias Van Bebber. At the opening of the new century the Germantown colonists passed through a period of great alarm, lest their little properties, which they had won from the wil- derness twenty years before, should be taken from them. The Frankfort Company, perhaps dissatisfied with Pasto- rius's stewardship or yielding to his request to be relieved from the burden of the business, appointed new agents, — Daniel Falkner, Kelpius the hermit, and a certain Jawert. 3 33 The Germans in Colonial Times Falkner seems to have been the only one who acted. He sold a large tract of the Montgomery County land to an unprincipled speculator, Sprogel, who attempted also to eject many of the Germantown colonists. They hurried in their extremity to Pastorius, who was able, by following the advice given him by his friend James Logan, to save the Germantown people's land ; but the twenty thousand acres in Montgomery County, much the larger portion of their original possessions, were lost to the Frankfort Company, though German colonists settled upon it and peopled " Falkner's Swamp," New Hanover, and Potts- town with the Teutonic stock. Pastorius's life was now drawing to a close. It had been a busy one ; as school-teacher, land-agent, member of the Provincial Assembly, justice of the peace, notary, and, in short, guide, philosopher, and friend to the whole little community, his hands and heart and head must have been filled. His later years were embittered by the quarrels and accusations of those who supplanted him in the agency for the Frankfort Company, He complains : " Nun in meinen alten Jahren Muss ich noch viel Leids erfahren, Und in meinen schwachsten Tagen Die allerschwersten Lasten tragen." And later: " Main Gott und Heiland, welcher hat, Mich an bisher erhalten, Wird hoffentlich mit seiner Gnad Auch ob der Meinen walten. ' ' It was for these, his two sons, and only children, that he wrote the great MS. folio, the compend of 34 Germantown knowledge and good advice, which is still possessed by his descendants. The very day of his death is unknown, though it took place probably in the last weeks of the year 17 19. Of this Moses of the German exodus must be said, as of him of old, " no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." But though he lies in an unmarked and unknown grave, he is not without a monument in the esteem and affectionate reverence with which all who have studied the history of the early German emigration to America have contemplated this figure which William Penn, his friend, fitly characterized as "sober, upright, wise and pious — a man everywhere esteemed and of unspotted name !" 35 CHAPTER IV THE LABADISTS IN MARYLAND Another body of emigrants who came over about the same time as the Germantown colonists merit at least mention, for although emigrating from Friesland, their leader Sluyter was a German from Wesel, and there were among the sect, if not among the colonists, many Ger- mans. They came, like the Crefelders, from the border land between the " High and Low Dutch," as the two peoples were called by our forefathers ; they represented the sectarian tendencies of the time in Europe, and they came here seeking, like the Mennonites of Pastorius' col- ony, " freedom to worship God ;" but they were different people from the simple and sensible weavers of Crefeld, and they had leaders very different from Menno and Pastorius. The sect of Labadists, as they were commonly called, took its name and rise from the fervent preaching of Jean de la Badie, a Frenchman of noble birth, son of the Governor of Guyenne ; a pupil of the Jesuits, who, seeing his superior talents, persuaded him to enter their order, much against the wishes of his family. He be- came what in our day would have been called a popular revivalist, a preacher of rare eloquence and marvellous power over his hearers. The study of the "Institutes" o{ his fellow-countryman Calvin taught him that he had more in common with the Reformed than the Roman Church, and he left the Catholic communion. In the 36 The Labadists in Maryland Reformed Church he evidenced his singular power over men's minds by gathering about him a company of be- lievers, noblemen and gentlewomen, many learned and of wide reputation and spotless character. Of these were Yvon, his successor, the nobleman Du Lignon, and the most learned woman of her time, Anna von Schurmann, as well as the three ladies van Sommelsdyk, sisters of the Governor of Surinam, in whose ancestral castle of Wiewaert in Friesland the wandering sect found its last and longest home. The doctrines which he taught resembled those of many mystics of the times — such as the insistence that the church should consist exclusively of those who could convince Labadie of their personal regeneration ; the baptism of adult believers only ; the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in all believers, so that the gifts of prophecy were still continued to the church (an article held vehe- mently by the so-called " Inspiriten"' of Germany); to- gether with some beliefs peculiar to Labadie, such as the duty of holding all possessions in common and the holi- ness of marriage between believers, their children being born sinless, but the invalidity of a marriage between a " believer" — in this case a Labadist — and one outside the church. The founder frequently separated husband and wife when not convinced of the regeneration of either party, and it may readily be seen that interference in domestic concerns of such delicacy would result in hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness on the part of the outside world, together with many accusations which seem to have been ignorant or wicked slanders. But with all its extravagance and Labadie' s lack of "common discretion," the influence of his preaching of 37 The Germans In Colonial Times personal righteousness still blesses the Reformed church on both sides of the sea, as does that of the Pietist Spener, the Lutheran. William Penn says that the Labadists were " a plain, serious people and came near to Friends as to silence in meeting, women speaking, preaching by the Spirit, and plainness in garb and furniture." Whether Penn's visits had that influence in directing the Labadists towards the New World which we know they had upon the emigrants to Germantown does not appear. Probably they rather sought an asylum in some Dutch colony, being mainly of that race ; for their first attempt was in the direction of Surinam, where, as I have said, the brother of their patroness was the governor ; but this tropical country proved most ill adapted to their purpose ; the deadly climate and the rampant vegetation conquered the pious laborers, and the assassination of Governor van Sommelsdyk, with the seizure and plun- dering by pirates of the second shipload of colonists, forced them to abandon the enterprise. Accordingly, they sent two of their number, Sluyter and Bankers, to spy out the land in the New World. The journal of these forerunners was preserved by some strange chance out of the general wreck of the Laba- dist community in Holland, and finally coming into the hands of an American antiquary was published, and affords us a detailed picture of the colonies as they ap- peared to rather prejudiced and splenetic travellers of the time. Sluyter and Bankers came over under assumed names, and seemed to have been in considerable fear lest their connection with the " Bush people" (as the Laba- dists were called in Wiewaert) should be discovered. 38 The Labadists in Maryland They explored the shores of the Delaware and the Chesapeake, and finally selected a tract called Bohemia Manor, on Chesapeake Bay, at the junction of the Bo- hemia and Elk Rivers. A patent for this land, expressed with the convenient indefiniteness of those early grants, had been issued to Augustine Heerman, a Bohemian by birth, a surveyor by profession, and a man of position and distinction in the colony of New York. His eldest son, Ephraim, had been converted by the Labadists, who met him on a journey from New York to New Castle to bring home his young bride, and he had promised them part of the manor which his father intended to leave to him, making him lord of the manor, for the aged surveyor in his old age and feebleness was pathetically anxious to found a family and to perpetuate his name in the new country. Ephraim Heerman, however, promised that the tract should never be given to any but his new religious friends with his consent, and so provided the two investi- gators returned to Holland and brought over a little colony of about one hundred persons, landing in New York July 27, 1683. They found on their arrival that old Augustine Heer- man by no means assented to the project of his eldest son and heir to dower these strange religionists with part of the manor which he had hoped to make hereditary in his family. It was only after legal proceedings that Heerman was forced to execute the deed which gave the Labadists nearly four thousand acres of land, afterwards known as the " Labadie Tract" Sluyter took the position of head of the community, which was regarded as a daughter church of the sect at 39 The Germans in Colonial Times Wiewaert. AH credentials of persons desiring to join the community must be passed upon in Holland. Sluyter's wife assumed the place of abbess, having oversight of the women in the settlement. Their rule was reported to be strict, if not tyrannical and arbitrary ; they separated husband and wife, mother and child, as- signed the refined and educated of the community to any, even the most menial, tasks, and exacted much sim- plicity of living from the members of the sect, but were said to have accumulated considerable property themselves, and to be notoriously cruel to the slaves whom they held. Sluyter was once ordered back to Holland by the head of the church there, but replied that it was evident to him that it was not the will of God that he should obey the summons, and remained in Bohemia Manor. They made some converts from among the colonists, but their most notable one, Ephraim Heerman, had a short and tragic history. His old father, incensed at his con- duct and his desertion of his young and lovely wife to unite himself with the Labadists, pronounced upon him the curse that he should not survive two years after join- ing his new-found friends. Ephraim left the community after a brief residence with them, and returned to his wife, but in less than the prescribed two years fell ill and died a raving maniac. Two descriptions of the little sect have been preserved, one by Dittlebach, a temporary adherent, who soon left them and naturally paints everything as to the hardships of the life and the tyranny of Sluyter in the darkest colors ; another by a Quaker preacher, Samuel Bownas, who visited the community about twenty years after their 40 The Labadists in Maryland foandation and saw but the outside of the hfe which he portrays as a quiet, industrious, and reHgious one. The Labadists as a sect were not of long continuance, either in their Friesland home or in the Maryland one. After the death of the last of the van Sommelsdyk ladies, there were no more Labadists left to shelter in the old castle of Wiewaert. In America Sluyter died in 1722, leaving his property to his nephews and his son-in-law, for the sect abandoned the principle of community of goods about fifteen years after coming to Maryland. What finally became of the "daughter church" of Bohemia Manor we cannot tell. We know that when Sluyter died there were several of " his brethren and sisters in Christ Jesus" still expecting, in the so-called "Great House" of the community, that final consum- mation of all things which Jean de la Badie had announced as imminent seventy years before. In an old map published at the end of the eighteenth century there is marked a tree notable by its size or position as the " Labadie poplar." This seems all that then re- mained to mark the fact that at Bohemia Manor there had once labored and prayed and waited the followers of the eloquent "prophet of Bordeaux," Jean de la Badie, 41 CHAPTER V THE WOMAN IN THE WILDERNESS About ten years after the Labadists had settled on their tract at Bohemia Manor, another band of strange mystics arrived at Bohemia Landing, and, kneehng to thank God for having carried them " as on eagle's wings such an immense distance through all the gates of death," they set out on their way towards Philadelphia, the Mecca of many such pious pilgrims in those days. There were forty of them, — men, women, and children, — the number of perfection in the Rosicrucian philosophy ; and a mixture of this strange mystification from the Kabala, with Jakob Boehme's visions of the Morning Redness, the Philadelphian doctrines of Jane Leade, and the first ascetic enthusiasm of the most mystical of the earlier Pietists, made up the composite creed which they had come into the American wilderness to propagate and to practise. The little community, which came later to be nick- named "Das Weib in der Wiiste," or "The Woman in the Wilderness," from an allusion to Rev. XII : 14, was the result of the strange Chiliasm and the prophecies of a Lutheran pastor of Wiirtemberg, Zimmermann, who had reached the conclusion, from the study of Boehme's writings, that the Lutheran church was the Babylon de- nounced in the Apocalypse, and having published these views extensively under various pseudonyms, was, not unnaturally, deposed from the Lutheran ministry and 42 The Woman in the Wilderness expelled from the country by the government, the head of church as well as state. Zimmermann retaliated by informing his ruler that the cruel invasion of Wiirtem- berg by the French was a punishment sent by heaven upon the wicked country which had cast him out. After a sojourn in Hamburg among the " host of mystics, mil- lenarians, and dreamers with which the tolerant city was blessed," he led the little congregation which he had gathered towards Pennsylvania, doubtless influenced, like Pastorius, by a desire to live a purer life in the wilderness far from European vanities. But the Moses of this new exodus, like him of old, died in sight of his promised land. On the eve of their sailing from Rotterdam, Zimmermann passed away ; his widow and children, helped by "good hearts," went on with the little band to Pennsylvania. The headship of the community passed to Magister Johann Kelpius, a man alike of learning, lovely charac- ter, and the strangest mystical views. He was the son of a pastor in Siebenbiirgen, and had been a student, and an especial favorite, of the learned Dr. Fabricius at the University of Altorf Where and through whom he became attached to the peculiar mystical and separa- tistic doctrines which he afterwards professed and prac- tised in the wilds of Pennsylvania, we cannot tell. Boehme attracted him as he did others of the Pietists and mystics. Dr. Petersen, who, with his wife, was a member of the Frankfort Company, seems to have indoctrinated Kelpius with his own belief that the end of all things, and their restoration to the perfection of Paradise, was at hand ; and the delusion of Rosicru- cianism, fostered, as it seems, by the pious fraud of a 43 The Germans in Colonial Times Lutheran clergyman of pietistic Wiirtemberg, possessed Kelpius and his communit}' of forty in the fullest measure. We may find in Kelpius's diary of their voyage what it was in those days to lea\e "dear Germany," as Pas- torius touchingly calls it, to find rest for one's conscience in the New World. The pilgrims went to London, stayed there six months, received both spiritual and financial help from the Philadclphian Societ}^ and other devout people of their way of thinking, and then took passage in the ship "Sarah Maria," whose prosaic name they wondrously allegorized. After narrowly escaping ship- wreck on the Goodwin Sands, they arrived at Deal, where ensued another tedious waiting, this time for a convoy, since the war between the European powers and Louis XIV. made the seas unsafe. No convo}- came, so they went to Plymouth, hoping there to find protection for their voyage. None being obtainable, they made an arrangement to be escorted " 200 Holland Miles" on their route by some war-ships which were on their way to Spain. When they and their little consort had been left to their own devices, three French vessels attacked them. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross would not take up carnal weapons, but fortunately there were other passengers not so conscientious, and the ships were beaten off — one even taken as a prize. So they went on their wa\-, not further molested, to the "Capes of Delaware," which they sighted on the day of a solar eclipse, and finally, on the 24th of June, 1694, they safely arrived at Philadelphia. This was St John's Day, a date peculiarly sacred to the Rosicrucians, and there is a strange tradition that after nightfall the 44 The Woman in the Wilderness forty faithful went to " Fair Mount"' and heaped together wood and pine boughs to make the Baal-firc, which yet blazes on Irish headlands and in German villages. The brands of " St. John's fire" scattered, and their cere- monies over, the pilgrims returned to the little city, and the next morning took their way to Germantown, the head-quarters of all newly arrived Germans, But they remained here only a few months. It was never their intention to settle among other men, how- ever kindly they were welcomed, but to live a hermit life somewhere in the wilderness, supporting themselves by their labor while they watched the signs of the times, and " expected that blessed hope, the bright appearing of the Lord." A friend in Philadelphia — probably Thomas Fairman, surveyor of the province — gave them a tract of woodland on " the Ridge," near the lovely Wissahickon. In this Waldcinsamkeit they built them- selves a log-house forty feet square, its sides true to the cardinal points, and containing one large room for meet- ing, having an iron cross fixed against its wall. Besides this room were cells for the brethren, and a school-room for the children whom they gathered and instructed. Upon the top of the building was an observatory, whence some of the brethren kept watch all night for the signs in heaven and the coming of the Bride- groom. Surmounting the log-house was the Rosicrucian symbol, the cross within the wheel of eternity ; this was so placed that the rising sun should flood it with rosy light, the " morning redness" which the shoemaker of Gorlitz had seen in his vision, the herald of the end of this world. Kelpius himself built a little cave near by, and there in a tiny room he lived out his short life, expectant of the 45 The Germans in Colonial Times final consummation of all things, A dark, cool spring, still called the Hermit's Spring, and the beautiful dell in which religious meetings were held in the open air, remain to testify of the Hermits of the Wissahickon. The hermit life was not passed in useless contempla- tion. The people of the neighboring Germantown loved and revered these gentle enthusiasts, sympathized with their millenarian ideas to some extent, gladly sent their children to be instructed free of charge by these learned men, or thronged the services conducted after the Lutheran forms by the Falkner brothers or Koster in the hermitage or the near-by city. The mystics also possessed some medical skill ; particularly were they be- lieved to have a magical knowledge of the properties of herbs, to be able to use the divining-rod for the discov- ery of springs and precious metals, to cast horoscopes, and to prepare amulets, which, hung about the neck, were of marvellous efficacy in sickness. More useful and less recondite crafts were followed by the Brethren of the Rosy Cross. When Jansen brought his press into the province and perpetrated those misprinted incunabula which were among the first fruits of the Pennsylvania press, the hermits gave him much-needed help as compositors and correctors ; and Johann Selig, one of their leaders, practised for Jansen and for others his craft as a bookbinder. They held public religious services daily, to which all were wel- comed, and tried to bring about a union of sects in the province where, contrary to Whittier's line, " the many- crecded men" dwelt often the reverse of peacefully. They investigated the Indian beliefs and religious or mystical practices. Kelpius kept up an extensive theo- 46 The Woman in the Wilderness logical correspondence with friends of his own way of thinking both in Europe and the colonies, and seems to have been a sort of general religious adviser. The Seventh-Day Baptists of New England sent an embassy to consult him ; a good woman in Virginia wrote to know his opinion of the Quaker beliefs and practices. Kelpius also composed hymns, which those persevering persons who have read them pronounce stiff, unpoetic, verbose paraphrases of the Song of Solomon ; besides religious letters, in which "the universal restitution," the millennium, the "Metempsosis," the "Heavenly Sophia," and other wonders figure to the confusion of the modern student, who would rather learn something of the daily life and actions of the pure, noble, gentle dreamer, — " maddest of good men," as even the congenial Hermit of Amesbury was forced to call him. The magical practices of the community must not con- demn them with the modern reader when we remember that the saintly Tersteegen had to warn his followers against the time-wasting search for the elixir, that medi- cines given by his holy hand were thought to have a supernatural efficacy, and that Sir Isaac Newton copied out long extracts from Boehme for his own use. The mystics of the Wissahickon were neither in advance of their time nor behind it. This quaint, ascetic, mystical life in the American wilderness lasted with little change until the death of Kelpius in 1708. The life in this case, though at first it strengthened his health, later proved prejudicial. A succession of heavy colds gave rise to consumption. When he was very feeble, a good tailor in Germantown, Christian Warmer by name, took him to his own house 47 The Germans in Colonial Times to nurse him, and there he wrote, '* at Christian Warmer's house, very weak, in a small bed not unlike a coffin," one of his last hymns : ' ' Therefore kiss or correct, come to me or go, Give presents or take them ; bring joy or bring woe. If I can have Thee, Thy will may be so !" When Kelpius felt his death approaching, he at first prayed to be exempted from the fate of " the children of Adam ;" but feeling that his prayer was not to be answered, he directed his famulus or attendant, Daniel Geissler, to take a casket which he gave him and throw it into the Schuylkill. Daniel was unwilling to destroy something which was of unknown value, so he hid it on the bank and returned to his master, who immediately told him that he had hidden the casket. The famulus, terrified by this supernatural knowledge, went back and did as he was told. But when the casket touched the water it exploded, peals of thunder and lightning welcomed it, and the mysterious Arcanum disappeared forever from human eyes. Daniel told this, a genera- tion afterwards, to the patriarch Muhlenberg. So a noble, if deluded, dreamer passed from earth to where his strange visions are lost in sight. With him passed the flourishing period of the Hermitage upon the Ridge. He was buried at sunset ; his brethren stood about the grave in a circle, chanting the De Profundis, until the sun touched the rim of the horizon ; then Selig gave a signal, the coffin was lowered into the grave, and, at the same moment, a white dove was set free and winged its way towards heaven, an emblem of the ascent of the mas- ter's soul, while the remaining brethren, lifting their hands, cried thrice, " God grant him a blessed resurrection !" 48 The Woman in the Wilderness The society made an attempt to continue its hfe after the loss of Kelpius ; but it was in vain. Selig, the especial friend of the dead master, and the one most resembling him in his sweet and lovable disposition, was chosen head of the community ; but he soon renounced the office, feeling unfit for it, and took up the life of a hermit, dwelling alone in his little cell, supporting him- self by cultivating a small herb-garden and by occasion- ally working at his trade of bookbinding. Koster, another early member of the community, quarrelled with them, set up a rival hermitage, called the Irenia or House of Peace, engaged in religious controversies with Pastorius, and has the distinction of having produced the first Latin work written in Pennsylvania, — a rhapsodical religious production with a tremendous title, — which he was obliged to have printed in Europe, as no one here could read the proof He returned to Germany after a few years' sojourn here, and died there, a very old man. The two Falkner brothers became ordained clergymen of the Lutheran Church, ministering to the wants of the scattered Lutherans of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and died useful and beloved. Geissler, the attendant of Kelpius, went with Dr. Witt to Germantown, where the latter (who was, by the way, of English birth, the only exception in the German community) practised medicine, and was believed to have knowledge not only of the innocent "white magic," but also of the black art. He was a botanical friend of Bartram's, and supplied the latter with rare specimens. In his later years, Bartram mentions a visit from him to his gardens, when "the poor old man" was grown so blind that he could not distinguish a leaf from a flower. 4 49 The Germans in Colonial Times The last of the Hermits of the Ridge was Conrad Matthai, a Swiss, who succeeded to the headship of the community after Selig's withdrawal to his hermitage. He, with the few brethren who were left, — each in his own cell, for community life had now been aban- doned, — formed a sort of nucleus around which gathered various mystical religionists ; thus, he was the counsellor of the Eckerlins, who were afterwards so prominent in the Ephrata community. Zinzendorf visited him, and Matthai joined with him in signing the call for a meeting which was to unite all the Christian sects of Pennsylvania in a new Philadelphian brotherhood, like that of which the London friends of the hermits had had visions more than fifty years before ; but it was destined to no more success than the dream of Jane Leade. When at last " Father Conrad" became old and helpless, a Moravian brother was sent to minister to him. The teacher of the Moravian school in Germantown took the children to sing hymns in their childish voices to the dying man, — an act which gave him great pleasure. When the old mystic felt that his last hour was near, he sent for the children, asked them to sing for him a favor- ite Moravian hymn describing the joy of the released soul when it flies away from this earthly tabernacle, then turned to the east whence he had hoped through his long life to see his Saviour come, " When in glory eastward burning Our redemption draweth near, And we see the sign in heaven Of our Judge and Saviour dear. ' ' He prayed fervently, then turning to the awe-struck children, he blessed them after the manner of the mystic 50 The Woman in the Wilderness brotherhood. Two days afterwards he died. He was buried by his own request near his master Kelpius's grave. The old disciple had asked in his humility to be interred at his master's feet, as he felt himself unworthy to lie by his side. Some of the brethren of Ephrata were present, as well as the last survivor of the com- munity, Dr. Witt, and the services were conducted after the Moravian order : a biographical sketch of the de- ceased was read, and the body was laid in the grave during the singing of the hymn familiar to us through Wesley's translation : "Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress." When, in 1765, Dr. Witt died, old and blind, in the house of his kind friends the Wiisters, the last survivor of the brotherhood passed from earth. Their relics are scattered abroad ; their Latin books, their chief wealth, have, some of them, been preserved in the library of Christ Church, Philadelphia ; the domain where they lived and watched for the "Aurora" — the new heavens and the new earth — is partly covered by a gentleman's country-seat, partly taken into Fairmount Park. As to Kelpius and Selig and the humble disciple, Matthai, no man knoweth of their sepulchre, only the God whom they so devotedly if mistakenly served, who will raise them up at the last day. We echo the prayer of the burial ritual of the brotherhood, which the white dove bore upward on its wings from the grave of Kelpius, — "God