German Ancestry.—English Ancestry.—The Pennsylvania
Germans.—The Quakers.—How his Forefathers came to America.—The
Effect of Intermixture of Races.—The Hereditary Traits seen in
his Books.
The ancestry of Bayard Taylor were connected with some of the best
blood of England and Germany. His grandmothers were both German, and
his grandfathers both English. The German line comes from that body
of emigrants, consisting of large numbers from Weimar, Jena, Cassel,
Göttingen, Hanover, and perhaps Gotha, who sailed from Bremen and Hamburg
between 1730 and 1745. The continued quarrels among the dukes and princes
of Germany,—the wars in progress and impending, wherein the peace of the
people was incessantly disturbed,—caused a universal uneasiness among
the people of those small nations. They never were quite sure of a day’s
rest. If they sowed unmolested, there was a grave doubt whether some
complication with France, England, or Poland might not bring foreign
invaders or allies to destroy or devour the crops. The wars were so
incessant, and the quarrels among the petty lords so frequent, that the
people became disheartened. They were weary of building for others
to destroy, and of rearing sons to be sacrificed to some individual’s
ambition. All those German provinces, or duchies, had to accommodate
themselves to the religion of their princes, and, at times, the winds
that played about the hills of the Black Forest were far less uncertain.
To the fathers of these emigrants, who sought America as a haven of
religious and political rest, George Fox and his Quaker disciples had
taught the doctrines of “The Holy Spirit,” and, under various guises, the
tenets of that belief still survived in the German heart.
Those Germans who settled in the counties of Pennsylvania, lying to
the south and south-west of Philadelphia, came to this country during
the disturbances in the Fatherland, caused by Augustus, Maria Theresa,
Frederick, and the scores of other princes who were in power, or seeking
to secure it, in the numerous states and free cities of Germany. It is
no light excuse, no desire for mere wealth, no hasty search for the
fountains of youth, that causes the solid, earnest, patriotic people of
Saxony, Baden, or Bavaria to leave forever the home of their nativity.
It is a little curious to see how these races, which so cordially and
hospitably received the Quaker missionaries from England, should at
last unite with them in the settlement of the New World, and, by their
intermarriage, produce such offshoots of the united stock as Bayard
Taylor and his cotemporaries.
The Quaker ancestry of the poet,—the Taylors and the Ways,—run back
through a long line of industrious men and women, more or less known
in Central Pennsylvania, to the colony which William Penn sent over
from England to cultivate the great land-grant, which King Charles II.,
of England, gave him, in consideration of his father’s services as
admiral in the British navy. They, too, were driven from their homes by
the incessant turmoil either of wars or religious persecutions. Their
preachers had again and again been imprisoned, while some had died the
death of martyrs. Even Penn himself was often in chains and in prison,
for being a peaceable believer in the truth of the Quaker doctrines;
but so blameless were the lives of these people, and so forgiving their
Christian behavior, that the term “Quakers,” which was at first applied
to them in derision, became at last a title of respect and honor. “The
fear of the Lord did make us quake,” was a common expression with George
Fox, the founder of the sect, and the name “Quakers” originated in sneers
at that devout sentence.
It is easy to trace in the history of the State of Pennsylvania, the
influence of the Quaker spirit, and its impression upon the institutions
of the American nation is also strikingly apparent. But when one takes
up the life of one of their descendants, and studies his habits, his
style of thought, and his ideas of social and political institutions,
the hereditary Quaker element, in a modified form, is detected in every
motion and expression. It would seem as if any reader, to whom the author
is unknown, would detect at once, in any volume of Taylor’s poetry or
travels, the fact that he came from Quaker stock. As will be more clearly
shown in a subsequent chapter, the teachings of the Quakers, and their
manner of expression by gesture and phrase, have unconsciously and
charmingly crept into the bosom of his best works. It is a great boon to
be born of such a physical and mental combination as that of the German
soldiers, with all their coolness and bravery, and the even-tempered,
God-fearing Quakers, with all their grace and wisdom. Such intermixture
has given to our young nation much of its surprising enterprise and
originality, and must, at last, when consolidated into a compact people,
produce a nation and a race wholly unlike any other on the earth.
It is not known that any of Bayard Taylor’s ancestry were literary
men, or that any of them were endowed with special genius, beyond that
which was necessary to clear the forests, cultivate the soil, manage
manufacturing enterprises, and carry on small mercantile establishments.
Solid people, with wide common-sense, industrious hands and generous
hearts, they have modestly held their way, doing their simple duty, and,
Quaker-like, making no display.