THE SETTLEMENT OF
GERMANTOWN and the Beginning of German Emigration to North America,
the Hon. Samuel W Pennypacker, William J Campbell, Philadelphia,
1899.
ON KRIEGSHEIM
(Page 14, FOOTNOTE #29): "William
Ames, an accession to Quakerism from the Baptists, was the first
to go to Holland and Germany, and it was he who first made the
converts in Amsterdam and Kriegsheim."
(Page 15ff): "William Sewel, the
historian, was a Mennonite, and it certainly was no accident that
the first two Quaker histories were written in Holland. It was
among the Mennonites they made their converts. In fact, transition
between the two sects both ways was easy. Quakers became members
of the Mennonite Church at Crefeld and at Haarlem, and in the
reply which Peter Henrichs and Jacob Claus, of Amsterdam, made
in 1679 to a pamphlet by Heinrich Kassel, a Mennonite preacher
in Kriegsheim, they quote him as saying 'that the so-called Quakers,
especially here in the Palatinate, have fallen off and gone out
from the Mennonites. (34)
These were the people who, some as Mennonites,
and others, perhaps as recently converted Quakers, after being
unresistingly driven up and down the Rhine for a century and a
half, were ready to come to the wilds of America. Of the six original
purchasers Jacob Telner and Jacob Isaacs Van Bebber are known
to have been members of the Mennonite Church; Govert Remke (36)
January 14, 1686, sold his land to Dirck Sipman, and had little
to do with the emigration; Sipman selected as his attorneys here
at various times Herman Op den Graeff, Hendrick Sellen, and Van
Bebber, all of whom were Mennonites …"
(Footnote 34) "This valuable pamphlet
is in the library of A. H. Cassel."
(Footnote 36) "Johann Remke was
the Mennonite preacher at Crefeld."
Page 51 begins a biography of Francis
Daniel Pastorius from which I have excerpted as pertains to Kriegsheim:
(Page 54) "On the 24th of April,
1679, he made a journey to Frankfurt on the Mayn and there had
a private school of law for some students and practiced a little.
The opportunity arose to visit Worms, Mannheim and Speyer."
(Page 56, and some time after November,
1682) "He presented his books to his brother, John Samuel,
and after many letters obtained the consent of his father, together
with two hundred rix dollars, and thereupon went to Kriegsheim,
where he saw Peter Schumacher, Gerhard Hendricks, and Arnold Kassel,
and made ready for the long journey."
(Later on the same page, the year would
be 1683): On the 11th of April he went down the Rhine to Urdingen
and from there on foot to Crefeld, where he spoke with Thones
Kunders and his wife, and with Dirck, Hermann, and Abraham Op
den Graeff and many others, who six weeks later followed him.
On the 16th of April he came to Rotterdam and stopped with his
friend Mariette Vettekuke, and saw there Benjamin Furly, Peter
Hendricks, Jacob Telner and others. On the 4th of May he sailed
from Rotterdam …"
(Page 57) "When Germantown was
laid out he [Pastorius] opened what is called the "Germantown Grund and Lager-Buch," containing the record of the conveyances of
lands …"
Comment: Hans Peter Umstatt's page is
empty. See "Grund- und Lagerbuch."
(Page 111) "In addition to the
emigration from Crefeld, and the association at Frankfort, there
was a third impulse which was of moment in the settlement of Germantown.
On the upper Rhine, two hour's journey from Worms, one of the
most interesting and historic cities of Germany, the scene in
our race legends of the events of the Nibelungenlied, later the
home of Charlemagne, and hallowed as the place where Luther uttered
the memorable words, "So hilf mich Gott, hier stehe ich.
Ich can nicht anders," lies the rural village of Kriegsheim.
It is situated in the midst of the beautiful and fertile Palatinate
and is forever identified in its traditions, religion and people,
with our Pennsylvania life. When I was there, in 1890, it had
a population of perhaps two or three hundred people who lived
upon one street."
Comments: Kriegsheim is "on the
way" from Worms to Flomborn. Translation of Luther's statement:
"So help me God, here I stand. I can not (do) otherwise."
(Page 112) "The meetings established
were visited by preachers sent out by Fox, among others by William
Ames, who spoke Dutch and German. In 1657 Ames and George Rolfe
went to Kriegsheim and succeeded in making some converts among
the Mennonites living there. It was the farthest outpost of Quakerism
in Germany and was cherished by them with the most careful zeal.
The conversion of seven or eight families was the reward of their
indefatigable energy and effort." This success alarmed the
clergy and incited the rabble "disposed to do evil, to abuse
those persons by scoffing, cursing, reviling, throwing stones
and dirt at them, and breaking their windows." The magistrates
directed that any one who should entertain Ames or Rolfe should
be fined forty rix dollars. In 1658, for refusing to bear arms,
the goods of John Hendricks to the value of fourteen rix dollars
were seized and he was put in prison. In 1660, for the same reason,
his goods valued at about four and-half rix dollars were seized.
In 1663 the authorities took from him two cows, from the widow
of John Johnson a cow, from George Shoemaker bedding worth seven
rix dollars, from Peter Shoemaker goods worth two guilders. In
1664 George Shoemaker lost pewter and brass worth three and a-half
guilders, Peter Shoemaker three sheets worth three guilders, and
John Hendricks three sheets worth three guilders. In 1666, John
Shoemaker, Peter Shoemaker and John Hendricks each lost a cow."
(73)
(Footnote 73) "Besse's Sufferings
of the Quakers. Vol II, p. 450."
(Page 114ff) "Stephen Crisp says
in July, 1669, 'But the Lord preserved me and brought me on the
14th day of that month to Griesheim near Worms, where I had found divers (sic) who
had received the Everlasting Truth and had stood in a testimony
for God about ten years, in great sufferings and tribulations,
who received me as a servant of God; and my testimony was as a
seed upon the tender grass unto them. I had five good meetings
among them and divers (sic) heard the truth and several were reached
and convinced and Friends established in the faith.' Just at this
time they were in sore trouble because of the fact that the Prince
of the land, or Pfalzgraf, had imposed an unusual fine of four
or six rix dollars upon every family for attending meetings, and
upon failure to pay, goods of three times the value were taken.
Crisp went to Heidelberg to see the Prince and warned him of the
danger of persecution. The prince received him graciously, discoursed
with him about general topics, and promised him that the fines
should be remitted, which was accomplished."
Comment: Griesheim is another early
spelling of Kriegsheim.
(Page 116) "On the 22nd of August,
1677, William Penn left Frankfort on his way to Kriegsheim. The
magistrate of the village, upon the instigation of the clergyman,
attempted to prevent him from preaching, but with the friends
there and a "coachful from Worms," he had a quiet and
comfortable meeting. From there he walked to Mannheim, in an effort
to see the Prince concerning the oppressions of the Quakers, which
had been renewed. Failing to find him he wrote to him a vigorous
letter upon the subject. On the 26th Penn walked out from Worms,
six English miles, and held a meeting, lasting five hours, in
the course of which 'The Lord's power was sweetly opened to many
of the inhabitants.' He describes them as 'Poor hearts; a little
handful surrounded with great and mighty countries of darkness.'
The meeting was held in a barn. The magistrate listened from behind
the door and subsequently reported that he had discovered no heresies
and had heard nothing that was not good. On the 27th, after two
more meetings, Penn, accompanied by several grateful attendants,
returned to Worms.
"The climax of the story of the
Quaker meeting at Kriegsheim is given by Croese. He says that
having nothing of their own to lose, and hearing of the great
plenty in America, and hoping to gain a livelihood by their handiwork,
they in the very year that preceded the war with the French 'wherein
all that fruitful and delicious country was wasted with fire and
sword' forsook the cottages which could scarcely be kept standing
with props and stakes, and entered into a voluntary and perpetual
banishment to Pennsylvania, where they lived in the greatest freedom
and with sufficient prosperity.
"Jacob Schumacher, the servant
who accompanied Pastorius, may have been one of the family at
Kriegsheim but up to the present time no evidence of the fact
has been discovered. It is not improbable.
"October 12, 1685, having crossed
the sea in the "Francis and Dorothy" there arrived in
Germantown Peter Schumacher ….Gerhard Hendricks …. and
his servant Heinrich Frey, the last named from Altheim, in Alsace.
Peter Schumacher, an early Quaker convert from the Mennonites
is the first person definitely ascertained to have come from Kriegsheim."
Fortunately we know under what auspices he arrived. By an agreement
with Dirck Sipman, of Crefeld, dated August 16th, 1685, he was
to proceed with the first good wind to Pennsylvania, and there
receive two hundred acres from Herman Op den Graeff, on which
he should erect a dwelling, and for which he should pay a rent
of two rix dollars a year. "Gerhard Hendricks also had bought
two hundred acres from Sipman. He came from Kriegsheim …
(Page 119) On the 20th of March, 1686,
Johannes Kassel, a weaver, and another convert from the Mennonites
….came to Germantown from Kriegsheim, having purchased land
from members of the Frankfort Company. In the vessel with Kassel
was a widow, Sarah Shoemaker, from the Palatinate, and doubtless
from Kriegsheim … and that there was a Dutch settlement in
the neighborhood of Kriegsheim is certain. At Flomborn, a few
miles distant, is a spring which the people of the vicinity still
call the "Hollander's Spring."
(Page 120) "The Kassels brought
over with them many of the manuscripts of one of their family,
Ylles Kassel, a Mennonite preacher at Kriegsheim, who was born
before 1618, and died after 1681, and some of these papers are
still preserved."
(Page 122) "On the road leading
from Worms out through Kriegsheim, but perhaps five miles further
from the city, is the village of Flomborn. Thither, about twenty
years before the period we are considering, a Dutch family named
Pannebecker, whose arms, three tiles gules on a shield argent,
were cut in glass in the church window at Gorcum in Holland, came
to escape the wars still raging in the Netherlands. There March 21, 1674, was born Hendrick Pannebecker.
He came as a young man to Germantown, where, in 1699, he married
Eve, the daughter of Hans Peter Umstat."
(Page 124) A more accurate survey, December
29th, 1687, determined the quantity of land in Germantown to be
five thousand seven hundred acres, and for this a patent was issued.
It was divided into four villages: Germantown with two thousand
seven hundred and fifty acres, Crisheim (Kriegsheim) with eight
hundred and and eighty-four acres, Sommerhausen with nine hundred
acres, and Crefeld with one thousand one hundred and sixty-six
acres, and thus were the familiar places along the Rhine commemorated
in the new land.
Comment: Hans Peter Umstat is never
mentioned in conjunction with Kriegsheim, only as Eve's father.
I find it interesting that SWP is very clear on Hendrick Pannebecker's
place of birth (which I don't believe has ever been proven) and
never connects him with Krefeld. There are very few Flomborn records
from that early in existence.
ON HANS PETER UMSTAT
and JOHANNES
(page iii) PREFACE
"As it seemed to be a duty which could not be avoided, I
have written the following history of the settlement of one of
the most interesting of the American burghs. A descendant of Hendrick
Pannebecker, Abraham Op den Graeff, Paul Kuster, Cornelius Tyson,
Peter Conrad, Hendrick Sellen, HANS PETER UMSTAT and probably
of William Rittenhouse, all of them among the early residents
of Germantown, for thirty years I have been gradually gathering
the original materials from over the world."
(Page 122) "On the road leading
from Worms out through Kriegsheim, but perhaps five miles further
from the city, is the village of FLOMBORN. Thither, about twenty
years before the period we are considering, a Dutch family named
Pannebecker, whose arms, three tiles gules on a shield argent,
were cut in glass in the church window at Gorcum in Holland, came
to escape the wars still raging in the Netherlands. There March
21, 1674, was born Hendrick Pannebecker. He came as a young man
to Germantown, where, in 1699, he married Eve, the daughter of
HANS PETER UMSTAT."
(Page 128) "October 12, 1685, there
arrived in the ship "Francis and Dorothy" Heinrich Buchholz
and his wife Mary, and HANS PETER
UMSTAT, FROM CREFELD, with his wife
Barbara, his son, John, and his daughters, Anna Margaretta and
Eve. Umstat was the son of Nicholas
Umstat, who died AT CREFELD at four o'clock in the morning
of October 4, 1682. He had bought two hundred acres from Dirck
Sipman, which were laid out in Germantown toward Plymouth, and
there he spent the remainder of his days. Among the possessions
he brought across the seas with him was a Bible, printed at Nuremberg
in 1568, which had belonged to his father, Nicholas, at least
since 1652, and which I inherited through his daughter Eve. In
it, in addition to the family entries, are among others the following:
'In the year 1658 the cold was so great that even the Rhine was
frozen up. On the 21st of January so great a snow fell that it
continued for four days. There was no snow so great within the
memory of man,' and 'December 16, 1680, the Comer Star with a
long tail was seen for the first time.' The comet which so impressed
him is the one that appeared in the time of Caesar, and with a
period of about five hundred years, is the most imposing of those
known to astronomers. In 1685 came also Heivert Papen and about
the same time Klas Jansen."
Comments: See Hans
Peter Passport and Rotterdam
Deed. It is unlikely that Hans Peter
came from Krefeld. See Nicholas
Original Documents. Nicholas died at
8 o'clock in the morning, not 4 o'clock, and Krefeld is NOT mentioned
in the Bible notation.
(Page 141) "In 1702 began the settlement
on the Skippack. This first outgrowth of Germantown also had its
origin at Crefeld, and the history of the Crefeld purchase would
not be complete without some reference to it. As we have seen,
of the one thousand acres bought by Govert Remke, one hundred
and sixty-one acres were laid out in Germantown. The balance he
sold in 1686 to Dirck Sipman. Of Sipman's own purchase of five
thousand acres, five hundred and eighty-eight acres were laid
out at Germantown, and all that remained of the six thousand acres
he sold in 1698 to Matthias Van Bebber. who, getting in addition
five hundred acres and four hundred and fifteen acres by purchase,
had the whole tract of six thousand one hundred and sixty-six
acres located by patent, February 22, 1702, on the Skippack. It
was in the present Perkiomen County, and adjoined Edward Lane
and William Harmer, near what is now the village of Evansburg.
(107) For the next half century, at least, it was known as Bebbber's
Township, or Bebber's Town, and the name being often met with
in the Germantown records has been a source of apparently hopeless
confusion to our local historians. Van Bebber immediately began
to colonize it, most of the settlers being Mennonites. Among these
settlers were Hendrick Pannebecker, Johannes Kuster, JOHANNES
UMSTAT, Klas Jansen and Jan Krey in 1702;
John Jacobs, in 1704; John Newberry, Thomas Wiseman, Edward Beer,
Gerhard and Hermann In de Hoffen, Dirck and William Renberg, in
1706; William and Cornelius Dewees, Hermanus Kuster, Christopher
Zimmerman, Johannes Scholl, and Daniel Desmond, in 1708; Jacob,
Johannes, and Martin Kolb, Mennonite weavers from Wolfsheim, in
the Palatinate, and Andrew Strayer, in 1709; Solomon Dubois, from
Ulster County, New York, in 1716; Paul Fried, in 1727, and in
the last year the unsold balance of the tract passed into the
hands of Pannebecker. Van Bebber gave one hundred acres for a
Mennonite church, which was built about 1725, the trustees being
Hendrick Sellen, Hermanus Kuster, Klas Jansen, Martin Kolb, Henry
Kolb, Jacob Kolb, and Michael Ziegler."
(Footnote 107) "Exempt. Record,
Vol I, p 470"
(Page 157) "The incorporation of
Germantown rendered necessary the opening of a court. In its records
may be traced the little bickerings and contentions which mark
the darker parts of the characters of these goodly people. Its
proceedings* conducted with their simple and primitive ideas of
judicature, written in their quaint language, are both instructive
and entertaining, since they show what manner of men these were,
whose worst faults appear to have consisted of the neglect of
fences and the occasional use of uncomplimentary adjectives. From
among them is extracted whatever, during the course of about thirteen
years, relates to the Op den Graeffs.
(Page 158) "James de la Plaine,
Coroner, brought into this court the names of the jury which he
summoned the 24th day of 4th month, 1701, viz: Thomas Williams,
foreman; Peter Kuerlis, Herman op den Graeff, Reiner Peters, Peter
Shoemaker, Reiner Tyson, Peter Brown, JOHN
UMSTAT, Thomas Potts, Reiner Hermans,
Dirk Johnson, Hermann Tunes. Their verdict was as followeth: We,
the jury, find that through carelessness the cart and the lime
killed the man; the wheel wounded his back and head, and it killed
him."
Comment: John Umstat is most probably
Johannes, son of Hans Peter. It is doubtful that it was Hans Peter
himself on the 1701 jury, although Hans is a nickname for Johannes,
and Hans Peter's formal name may in fact have been Johannes Peter,
so it is not impossible. Son Johannes would have been about 28
years old in 1701 and it is he who is regularly shown as John
in various records, whereas his father's name is shown as Hans
Peter on land and naturalization records, etc. The 1702 reference
would definitely be Johannes, as it is he who went to (Van) Bebber's
Township. Probably
the earliest that Johannes could have been in (Van) Bebber's Township
is 1702. It's unlikely that by 5 Nov 1701 there would have been
a house built or for him to have made an official residence there.
Therefore, he would still have been officially a Germantown resident
and subject to jury duty.
ON KREFELD