The Beginnings of the German Element in York County
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/beginningsofgermOOwent York Junior /TV ¥. mm-^'.mg^mt This booK was presented by . • Francis Farquhar '^ .A o o S-5 o Eh w o < » i> —ego c ® 0) ID 2; CO 3 PS So S3 w iO m XTbe Begfnninos of tbe (German Blement in l^ork (Tountie penns^Ivanfa BY ABDEL ROSS WENTZ, B.D., Ph.D. Professor of History in Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg, and Curator of the Historical Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States of America ^3(o LANCASTER, PA. 1916 REPRINTED FROM VOLUME XXIV OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE PENNSYLVANIA-GERMAN SOCIETY Copyrighted, 1916 By the PENNSYLVANIA-GERMAN SOCIETY PRESS OF THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY LANCAUTEK, PA. 151 This Volume is Gratefully Inscribed to the Memory of PHILIP H. GLATFELTER FOREWORD. ^i^Blj^HE sources usually determine the stream. The beginnings of a movement generally contain a m I All prophecy of its later development. For that ^^^^F reason it has been thought worth while to make a study of the origin of the present Ger- man element in York County. The position of Pennsyl- vania in the affairs of the nation and the position of York County in the affairs of the state, make it profitable to investigate the earliest beginnings of the strongest ele- ment in the county. The study has been fruitful for it has dealt with virgin soil. It has not been possible in a single monograph like this to trace the history of these settlements beyond their very beginnings. Nor has the attempt been made to follow out all possible lines of investigation, such as the economic, the sociological, the political, the industrial, the religious, and the linguistic. To set forth the full history of the Ger- mans in the county will require a series of volumes. The present treatise is merely a study preliminary to such a full presentation of their history. It has been regarded as suiScient to show in this treatise how those German settle- ments took their beginnings, and to set forth such char- acteristics of the original settlers and such features of the original settlements as will enable the reader to understand 6 German Element in York County, Pa. the relation of this element to the subsequent history of the county, to the general movement of Germans in this coun- try, to the colonial history of the state of Pennsylvania, and to the general course of events in our national history. Our study therefore has barely covered two decades and has in no case carried us beyond the middle of the eight- eenth century. But this brief span of years lies in the most important because the most formative period of our history. The York County with which we deal is the county as bounded on the map of today. Other geographical ex- pressions also are used with their present-day signijficance. An effort has been made to weave the body of the text into the form of a continuous narrative and so far as pos- sible to relegate to the footnotes all references to sources, all allusions merely incidental, and all details not directly relevant. Specific acknowledgment of all sources is made at the places where they are used and these are also col- lated in the Bibliography (Appendix D). The Blunston letters that are quoted or referred to are always found in the " Miscellaneous Manuscripts of York and Cumber- land Counties, 1738-1806" (see Bibliography) unless otherwise indicated. Gettysburg, Pa., April 30, 19 14. CONTENTS. Foreword 5,6 Table of Contents 7 Chapter I.—The First White Men in the County . 9-20 Chapter II.—The First Settlers 21-36 Chapter III.—The First Settlement 37-68 Chapter IV. — Other Early Settlements 69-95 Chapter V.—^Whence the Germans Came and Why . 96-123 Chapter VI.—Outstanding Characteristics 124-147 Chapter VII.—^The Limestone Soil 148-174 Chapter VIII.—Their Place in Pennsylvania History . 175-185 Chapter IX.—Their Place in General American His- tory 186-196 Appendix A.—Letter of Samuel Blunston 197-202 Appendix B.—Signers of Letter to Maryland 203, 204 Appendix C.—Inventory of Jacob Welshover's Estate . 205-207 Appendix D.—Bibliography 208-217 CHAPTER I. The First White Men in the County. ^^JJ^^'ONG before the white man began to make per- ^ll manent settlements in what is now York ^B j County, its valleys were trodden by the pil- ^0^m grim, the explorer, and the trader. Already in the first decade of the eighteenth century settlements had begun in Lancaster County just east of the Susquehanna River. At the same time or shortly before that settlements began to spring up on the Monocacy in Maryland and in the Shenandoah Valley of western Vir- ginia. The settlers in these regions were for the most part Germans who had left their homes chiefly on account of religious persecutions. That there were German settle- ments in Virginia some years before the end of the seven- teenth century is shown by an old French map^ of 1687 which marks the location of a German settlement at the headwaters of the Rappahannock River. This is also con- firmed by an English map of about the same time which has the words " Teutsche Staat " on the upper Rappahan- nock, and on the upper James River points out " Meister 1 Now in the collection of Dr. Julius F. Sachse of Philadelphia. See letter of Sachse, Feb. 10, 1907, to Wayland in Wayland's "German Ele- ment in the Shenandoah Valley," p. 10. 9 10 German Element in York County, Pa. Krugs plantasie." Furthermore in 1699 Daniel Falckner, one of the pietists on the WIssahickon Creek, was sent to Germany as representative of the pietistic fraternity. One of the expressed objects of this trip to the Fatherland was to solicit aid and additional recruits so that the perfect number of forty could be kept intact and so that the fra- ternity could extend their usefulness In educating their neglected countrymen in Pennsylvania and Virginia.^ It was only natural that these German pioneers In the different colonies should early seek to communicate with one another. And so as a matter of fact they did. The common bonds of nationality and of religious Interest soon operated to bring about Intercourse and conference between the German sectarians of eastern Pennsylvania and those of Maryland and Virginia on the south. Letters were written and journeys were made. The journal of John Kelplus^ shows that on October 10, 1704, that philosoph- ical mystic wrote from the banks of the WIssahickon In Pennsylvania a twenty-two page German letter to Maria Ehzabeth Gerber,* a disciple of his in Virginia. But the religious enthusiasm of the sectarians was not satisfied with the Interchange of letters. Visits were made for the purpose of exhorting and strengthening the brethren In the faith. Long preaching journeys were undertaken. The manu- script of Reverend Petrus Schaffer (written to Reverend August Hermann Francke) now in the archives at Halle shows that before the end of the seventeenth century, about the time that Falckner went to Germany, both Petrus 2 Sachse, " Curieuse Nachricht," p. 371; also Sachse, " German Pietists of Pennsylvania," i^g^i-iyoS, p. 96 f. 3 Journal now in the possession of Mr. Charles J. Wistar of German- town, Philadelphia. * There were Gerbers also in Lancaster County; see Rupp's "History of Lancaster County," p. 189. First JVhite Men in the County. ii Schaffer and Heinrich Bernhard Koster travelled from Pennsylvania to Virginia on such a mission.^ After Ger- man settlements had been made in the Carolinas in 1710^ the preaching and teaching trips of the Pennsylvania Ger- man sectarians extended beyond Virginia to what is now North Carolina, Thus in 1722 Michael Wohlfarth, a pietist from Germantown, journeyed on foot from Phila- delphia by way of Conrad Beissel's hut on the Miihlbach and through the Valley of Virginia to preach a revival among the Germans in North Carolina/ Now the route of these religious enthusiasts on their journeys from north to south was a well-marked one. It was the great natural avenue formed by the valley between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains. This is the highway that from time immemorial had been used by the Indians in their wanderings from north to south or vice versa. It included the series of fertile valleys now known as the Cumberland, the Shenandoah, and the Vir- ginia Valleys. The first white men to set foot upon these regions were the German pietists of Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia. Before the close of the seventeenth century the German settlers, pilgrims, and explorers had begun to pass up and down over this great natural highway with its fer- tile soil and its well-watered bottoms and long before the middle of the eighteenth century the Germans were buying lands in the Shenandoah Valley and settling there as though it had been one of the outlying districts of the city of Phila- delphia. 5 Sachse, "German Pietists of Pennsylvania," i'694-i7o8, p. 289; also " Curieuse Nachricht," p. 37, footnote. 6 At Newbern, North Carolina, see Bernheim, " German Settlements and the " Lutheran Church in the Carolinas," p. 67 ff. ; also Williamson's His- tory of North Carolina." "^ " Sachse, German Sectarians of Pennsylvania," 1708^-1742, p. 80. 12 German Element in York County, Pa. York County is not a part of this great highway but for the pilgrims coming from Lancaster County and the coun- ties east and northeast of Lancaster, York County is the gateway to the Cumberland and the Shenandoah Valleys.