in the Confederate army the most distinguished was General Jeb
Stuart’s chief of staff, Heros von Borcke, a brilliant cavalry
leader. Prussian officer. Came to America 1862 to offer his services
to the Confederacy and was immediately assigned to duty with the
great Confederate cavalry chief, Gen. Stuart, and became his right
hand. Was seriously wounded at Middleburg and for months his life
hung by a thread; was rendered unfit for service and in the winter
of 1864 was sent to England on a secret mission by the Confederate
government, but peace interrupted his activity. Was highly popular
in the army and received more recognition than any German officer
on the Northern side; his visit to the South twenty years after the
close of the war was turned into a public ovation. His sword hangs
in the Capitol at Richmond.--John A. Wagener, brigadier general and
later mayor of Charleston, S. C. Born in Bremerhaven 1824. Defended
Fort Walker, which he had built. Two of his sons, one aged 15,
here served under their father. Half of the garrison was killed or
wounded. It was Wagener who surrendered Charleston to his countryman,
General Schimmelpfennig.--Gust. Adolf Schwarmann; Colonel in Gen.
Wise’s Legion.--J. Scheibert; major in the Prussian Engineer Corps;
came over as an observer but became an officer in Stuart’s Cavalry.
Wrote a military book on the war, published in Germany. Gen. Lee
told him on the battlefield of Chancellorsville: “Give me Prussian
discipline and Prussian formation for my troops and you would see
quite different results.”--Gustav Schleicher, born in Darmstadt.
Well-known Congressman from Texas, after the war; commemorated in a
memorial speech by President Garfield; chiefly active in devising
fortifications.--Baron von Massow (see under “M.”).--Schele de
Ver, Maximillian; born in Pommerania; Prussian reserve officer;
professor at the Virginia State University, Richmond; Colonel of
a Confederate regiment and emissary to Germany to espouse the
Confederate cause.--R. M. Streibling; battery chief in Longstreet’s
Corps; former Brunswick artillery officer.--August Reichard;
former Hanoverian officer, tried to form a unit of German militia
companies and after many disappointments succeeded in organizing
a German battalion consisting of Steuben Guards, Capt. Kehrwald;
Turner Guards, Capt. Baehncke; Reichard Sharpshooters, Capt. Muller;
Florence Guards, Capt. Brummerstadt. The battalion with four Irish
companies was merged into the 20th Louisiana with Reichard as Colonel
and served with distinction in many battles, the regiment suffered
frightful losses at Shiloh.--Karl F. Henningsen, in 1860, appointed
advisor to Governor Wise of Virginia; born in Hanover; fought in
the Carlist army in Spain at 17, then in Russia, participated in
the Hungarian revolution and became leader of a filibuster party
in Nicaragua.--August Buechel, Confederate brigadier general,
former officer at Hesse-Darmstadt, killed in the battle of Pleasant
Hill, La., struck by seven bullets; also served in the Mexican
war.--W. K. Bachmann, Captain, Charleston German artillery; rendered
distinguished service.
=Germantown Settlement.=--On March 4, 1681, a royal charter was
issued to William Penn for the province of Pennsylvania, and on March
10, 1682, Penn conveyed to Jacob Telner, of Crefeld, Germany, doing
business as a merchant in Amsterdam; Jan Streypers, a merchant of
Kaldkirchen, a village in the vicinity of Holland, and Dirck Sipmann,
of Crefeld, each 5,000 acres of land, to be laid out in Pennsylvania.
On June 11, 1683, Penn conveyed to Gavert Remke, Lenard Arets and
Jacob Isaac Van Bebber, a baker, all of Crefeld, 1,000 acres of
land each, and they, together with Telner, Streypers and Sipmann,
constituted the original Crefeld purchasers.
The present generation is indebted to former Governor Samuel Whitaker
Pennypacker, LL.D., of Pennsylvania, at one time presiding judge of
the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, and senior vice president of
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, for important information
on the settlement of Germantown, and directly to his book, “The
Settlement of Germantown, Pa., and the Beginning of German Emigration
to North America,” a valuable historical compilation, now out of
print. “The settlement of Germantown, in 1683,” he writes, “was
the initial step in the great movement of people from the regions
bordering on the historic and beautiful Rhine, extending from its
source in the mountains of Switzerland to its mouth in the lowlands
of Holland, which has done so much to give Pennsylvania her rapid
growth as a colony, her almost unexampled prosperity, and her
foremost rank in the development of the institutions of the country.”
From the pages of his book we learn that the “Concord,” which bore
the Germantown settlers to our shores, was a vessel of 500 tons,
William Jeffries, master. She sailed July 24, 1683, from Gravesend,
with the following passengers and their families:
Lenard Arets, Abraham Op den Graeff, Dirck Op den Graeff, Hermann Op
den Graeff, William Streypers, Thonas Kunders, Reynier Tyson, Jan
Seimens, Jan Lensen, Peter Keurlis, Johannes Bleikers, Jan Lucken and
Abraham Tunes, all Low Germans. The date of her arrival was October
6, 1683.
The three Op den Graeffs were brothers. Herman was a son-in-law of
Van Bebber; they were accompanied by their sister Margaretha, and
their mother, and they were cousins of Jan and William Streypers,
who were also brothers. The wives of Thonas Kunders and Lenard Arets
were sisters of the Streypers, and the wife of Jan was the sister
of Reynier Tyson (Theissen). Peter Keurlis was also a relative, and
the location of the signatures of Jan Lucken and Abraham Tunes on
the certificate of the marriage of the son of Thonas Kunders with
a daughter of William Streypers in 1700 indicates that they, too,
were connected with the group by family ties. “It is now ascertained
definitely,” writes Governor Pennypacker, “that eleven of these
thirteen emigrants were from Crefeld, and the presumption that their
two companions, Jan Lucken and Abraham Tunes, came from the same
city is consequently strong. This presumption is increased by the
indication of relationship and the fact that the wife of Jan Seimens
was Mercken Williamsen Lucken.”
Pastorius had sailed six weeks earlier and had arrived in
Philadelphia August 20, 1683. Governor Pennypacker has traced with
remarkable minuteness the movements of the first concrete German
settlement, and his invaluable work should not be allowed to slumber
in a few surviving copies, now selling as high as $50 as literary
curiosities, on the shelves of a few large libraries, but should
be reprinted and made accessible to a larger reading public. The
influence of this settlement in later generations is discussed
elsewhere. (See under “Pastorius.”) The history of the “Concord” is
given in Seidensticker’s “Bilder aus der Deutsch-Pennsylvanischen
Geschichte” and valuable information is contained in “The German
Element in the United States,” by Albert B. Faust, (Houghton Mifflin
Company), who has done more than any other American author to gather
the scattered records of German immigration, culture and influence
and to present them within the convenient compass of two volumes.
Illustration: THONAS KUNDERS’ HOUSE,
5109 Main Street, Germantown, Pa.
Thonas Kunders’ house, 5109 Main street, Germantown, is the only
house of the original settlers that can be accurately located. Thonas
Kunders was a dyer by trade. His death occurred in the fall of 1729.
He was the ancestor of the Conard and Conrad families. Among his
descendants is included Sir Samuel Cunard, founder of the Cunard
line of steamships. Here the first meeting of the Society of Friends
in Germantown was held, and it was from the members of this little
meeting that a public protest against slavery was issued early in
1688. Following is a summary of Germantown events:
1683--August 16--Pastorius reaches Philadelphia.
1683--October 6--Thirteen families from Crefeld reach
Philadelphia and settle Germantown.
1688--First protest against slavery issued here.
1690--First paper mill in America established here.
1705--First portrait in oil painted in America, made in
Germantown by Dr. Christopher Witt.
1708--First Mennonite meeting house in America built in
Germantown.
1719--February 17--Death of Pastorius.
1732--April 8--David Rittenhouse born at Germantown.
1743--First Bible in America in a foreign tongue printed in
Germantown by Christopher Sauer.
1760--Germantown Academy founded.
1764--Sauer begins publication of first religious magazine in
America.
1770--First American book on pedagogy published.
1772-73--First type ever cast in America made in Germantown.
--(“Guidebook to Historic Germantown.”)
=Why Germany Strengthened Her Army, Told by Asquith.=--(From a London
dispatch by Marconi wireless to the New York “Times” under date of
January 1, 1914): “The ‘Daily Chronicle’ this morning publishes the
conversation with the Chancellor’s consent.... Another reason which
the Chancellor (Asquith) gave was that the continental nations were
directing their energies more and more to strengthening their land
forces. =‘The German army,’ he said, ‘was vital to the very life
and independence of the nation itself, surrounded as Germany was
by nations each of which possessed armies almost as powerful as
her own.... Hence Germany was spending huge sums of money on the
expansion of her military resources.’=”
=Hagner, Peter.=--First to hold the position of Third Auditor of
the U. S. Treasury upon the creation of that office in 1817 under
President Monroe. Served the government 57 years and died at
Washington, July 16, 1849, aged seventy-seven. Born in Philadelphia,
October 1, 1772.
=Hartford Convention, The.=--In no section of the country was
there louder acclaim of President Wilson’s public insinuations of
disloyalty against German Americans than in New England. The Boston
papers particularly distinguished themselves in applauding this
unwarranted sentiment. And it came with particularly bad grace from
this section, which long antedated the South in measures designed
to embarrass and disrupt the Union. During the War of 1812 the New
England banks sought to cripple the federal government in securing
the necessary money to prosecute the war against England, and late
in 1814 the legislature of Massachusetts called a convention of the
New England states to meet at Hartford in December of that year. The
sessions were secret and while the discussion was never published
they were commonly held to be treasonable and intended to destroy
the Union. The Convention recognized the principle of secession by
proclaiming that “a severence of the Union by one or more states,
against the will of the rest and especially in the time of war,
can be justified only by absolute necessity.” The Convention made
demands, the apparent intention of which was “to force these demands
upon an unwilling administration while it was hampered by a foreign
war, or in case of refusal to make such refusal a pretext for
dismembering the Union.... An additional object of the Convention
was to hamper and cripple the administration to the last degree,
and at a moment when the country was overrun by a foreign foe, to
overthrow the party in power, or to break up the Union. The men of
this Convention were among the leading Federalists of the country,
and with all their good qualities it is evident that their patriotism
was shallow.” (“History of the United States” by Henry William Elson,
Ph. D., Litt. D., The MacMillan Company, p. 446-447.) The work of the
Convention came to naught. Peace put a stop to its intended mischief.
=Hempel.=--German American inventor of the much patented iron
“quoin,” used to lock type in the form, and in common use by printers.
=New York Herald Urges Hanging of German Americans.=--The New York
“Herald,” owned and directed by James Gordon Bennett, since deceased;
who for thirty-five years was a resident of Paris, in its issue
of July 12, 1915, advocated the lynching of German Americans by
referring to them as “Hessians” and adding: “A rope attached to the
nearest lamp post would soon bring to an end their career of crime.”
=Hereshoffs and Cramps.=--Who in the great yachting world of America
has not heard of the Hereshoffs, the famous builders of racing yachts
whose achievements won international fame for the United States? The
original Hereshoff, Karl Friedrich, was born in Minden, Germany, and
came to this country an accomplished engineer in 1800, establishing
himself at Providence, R. I., where he married the daughter of John
Brown, a shipbuilder. Their son and their grandsons took up naval
architecture, and their remarkable achievements culminated in the
fast racing yachts designed by John B., famous as the blind yacht
builder, whose vessels successfully defended the American Cup against
English contestants in several great international trials. The
Cramps, great American ship builders, are also of German descent.
Johann Georg Krampf, the founder, was a native of Baden, who came
to the U. S. in the middle of the 17th century, and members of the
family established what is now one of the greatest shipbuilding firms
in the world.
=Herkimer, General Nicholas.=--Won the battle of Oriskany, which
many regard as the decisive battle of the Revolution. Was the eldest
son of Johann Jost Herkimer (or Herchheimer), a native of the German
Palatinate, and one of the original patentees of what is now part
of Herkimer County, N. Y. Was commissioned a lieutenant in the
Schenectady militia, January 5, 1758, and commanded Fort Herkimer
that year when the French and Indians attacked the German Flats.
Appointed colonel of the first battalion of militia in Tryon County
in 1775, and represented his district in the County Committee of
Safety, of which he was chairman. Was commissioned brigadier general
Sept. 5, 1776, by the Convention of the State of New York, and August
6, 1777, commanded the American forces at the battle of Oriskany,
where he received a mortal wound but directed the battle from under
a tree until its successful conclusion, dying ten days later at his
home, the present town of Danube, N. Y.
Congress testified its appreciation of his service by twice passing
resolutions requesting New York to erect a monument at the expense
of the United States. A statue of the famous German American has
finally been erected at Herkimer, N. Y., through the liberality
of former U. S. Senator Warner Miller. The battle of Oriskany was
fought by the Mohawk Valley Germans without assistance, other reports
notwithstanding. A part of the American troops under Herkimer refused
to co-operate and left the Germans to the number of only 800 to
engage the enemy alone.
Quoting an American writer: “The battle of Oriskany was one of the
most important battles of the Revolution, and General Washington said
it was ‘the first ray of sunshine.’ The British forces, under Col.
St. Leger, had landed at Oswego, coming from Canada, under orders to
march through the Mohawk Valley to Albany, there to join Burgoyne,
who was coming down from Canada with a large army, by way of Lake
Champlain. These two forces were to meet at Albany and then go down
the Hudson River, thus dividing the forces of the Americans. If
this plan had succeeded doubtless the Revolution would have failed.
However, the defeat of St. Leger at Oriskany sent his army back to
Canada, and the defeat of Burgoyne later at Saratoga ended the entire
movement and led to the final victory at Yorktown.”
H. W. Elson, in his “History of the United States of America,” says,
“Oriskany was without exception the bloodiest single conflict in the
war of the Revolution.... Nothing more horrible than the carnage of
that battle has ever occurred in the history of warfare.”
Illustration: GENERAL HERKIMER
In the Magazine of American History for August, 1884, was printed
an exhaustive article, “The Story of a Monument,” dealing largely
with General Herkimer, the Battle of Oriskany, the character of its
hero and the details of his personality and his surroundings. The
author, S. W. D. North, quotes ex-Governor Dorsheimer as declaring
at the Centennial Celebration: “Oriskany was a German fight. The
words of warning and encouragement, the exclamations of praise and
of pain, the shouts of battle and of victory, and the command which
the wounded Herkimer spoke and the prayers of the dying, were in
the German language.” The author holds, however, that even then the
admixture of races had played pranks with the German names, until
today the descendants of many of the participants in that “German
fight” would not know the names of their ancestors if spelled on
the roster as they were spelled correctly at the time Oriskany was
fought. The problem was further complicated by the fact, says North,
that the original Palatinates and their descendants who comprised the
bulk of the yeomanry of the Mohawk Valley in the Revolution, were not
an educated people. General Herkimer would be called an ignorant man
these days. One of the most curious of the few existing specimens of
his manuscript is preserved by the Oneida Historical Society, and
throws a strange light on the mixed jargon in which even the hero of
Oriskany issued his military orders and incidentally proves that the
present spelling of his name was not his own way:
“Ser you will order your bodellyen do merchs immeedeetleh
do fordedward weid for das brofiesen and amonieschen fied
for on betell. Dis yu will dis ben your berrell--from frind.
NICOLAS HERCHHEIMER.
“To Cornell pieder bellinger
“ad de flets
“Ochdober 18, 1776”
Rendered into English, the order reads as follows:
“Sir: You will order your battalion to march immediately to
Fort Edward with four days’ provisions and ammunition fit
for one battle. This you will disobey (at) your peril.
From (your) Friend,
NICOLAS HERCHHEIMER.
“To Colonel Peter Bellinger, at the Flats.
“October 18, 1776.”
The Herkimer homestead is still preserved, and has now become an
institution under the care of the State of New York. Agitation to
bring this about was initiated by the German American Alliance, which
raised the money to make the homestead a national memorial. The
legislature granted a charter placing it under the care of the German
American Alliance and the Daughters of the American Revolution, who
for years co-operated peacefully in the loving task entrusted to
them. Late in December, 1919, the last German American connected with
the committee was forced out as a result of the desire to obliterate
every reminder of the share of the German element in the memorial.
(See “Palatine Declaration of Independence” elsewhere.)
=The Hessians.=--The bitter partisan feeling during the war has led
to a widespread misrepresentation of the share which the Germans took
in the Revolutionary War. The employment by England of some thousands
of mercenaries recruited in Anspach and Hessia against the American
colonies has been extended to include all Germany, regardless of the
fact that there was no more ardent supporter of the cause of the
colonists in Europe than the King of Prussia. The Hessians were sold
to Great Britain at so much per head by their ruler. Their traffic
was scathingly denounced by Frederick and the infamous transaction
severely condemned by Schiller in his play, “Cabal and Love.”
Hessia represented to the rest of Germany, at that time composed
of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and other States, about what
Delaware represents to the whole of the United States. To blame
all Germany for the misconduct of an unconscionable princeling
is the extreme of injustice. Counting the German regiments under
Rochambeau, nominally designated as Frenchmen, and the large number
of German settlers in the ranks of Washington’s army under Herkimer,
Muhlenberg, Steuben, Woedtke, Pulaski, etc., the Hessian-Anspach
contingent was more than offset by the Germans fighting for the cause
of American independence.
Thousands of Hessians were induced by their German countrymen to come
over and enlist under the banner of the colonists. Pulaski’s flying
squadron was recruited from these deserters. Some of the best troops
in Washington’s immediate surrounding were former Hessians, and a
Hessian deserter became one of Washington’s most trusted messengers
in matters of war.
At the end of the war the country was full of Hessians. Many settled
in Lebanon, Lancaster and Reading, Pa., and about 1,600 settled four
miles from Winchester, Va., in 1781. Some of the sterling troops
which made up Jackson’s Stonewall brigade in the Civil War were made
up of the descendants of the Germans, many of them Hessians, who
settled in the Shenandoah Valley.
If the Hessians, fighting reluctantly for a cause in which they
had no heart, must be condemned by public sentiment, what shall be
said of the native Americans, the Tory element, 26,000 of whom fled
to Canada, while thousands of others fought in the English ranks
against their own kin? Among the troops surrendered at Yorktown under
Lord Cornwallis and General O’Hara, we find enumerated a body of
South Carolina militiamen called “Volunteers,” “the Royal American
Rangers,” etc., not counting the American deserters who had joined
Cornwallis during the siege. (See “Frederick the Great and the
American Colonies.”)
=Hillegas, Michael.=--First Treasurer of the United States, appointed
July 29, 1776; son of German parents; born in Philadelphia, where
his father was a well-to-do merchant. Served till Sept. 2, 1789.
Hillegas with several other patriotic citizens came to the aid of the
government in the Spring of 1780 with his private means to relieve
the distress of Washington’s soldiers, and in 1781 became one of
the founders of the Bank of North America, which afforded liberal
support to the government during its financial difficulties. When a
man named Philip Ginter submitted to him a piece of coal which he had
found on Mauch-Chunk Hill, Hillegas pronounced it genuine coal, and
with several others founded the Lehigh Coal Mining Co. and acquired
10,000 acres of coal land from the State of Pennsylvania. Died in
Philadelphia, Sept. 29, 1804.
=House, Col. E. M.=--It is claimed that the part played by Col. E. M.
House in the diplomatic history of the war has been correctly gauged
by but few persons, and these attribute to him the exercise of a
greater influence in shaping the program of the Wilson administration
than any one else, not excepting the President. Some have sought to
trace an intimate connection between the policies that invested the
Chief Executive with more power than any president before him with an
anonymous novel, “Philip Dru, Administrator,” generally attributed to
Colonel House, in which a comprehensive program is laid down for the
government of the United States by Dru after finishing a successful
war.
It is undeniable that a more than casual analogy may be found between
the lines of policy defined in the novel and those seemingly followed
by the administration down to the Versailles conference.
“Philip Dru” is the story of an American Cromwell, who prevented an
alliance between England and Germany and made one between England and
the United States. In the novel Dru wages a successful civil war and
sets himself up as the administrator of the country, establishing
a dictatorship, remodels our system of government, conquers and
incorporates Mexico, remodels our relations with Canada, establishes
a close bond with England, wipes out all memories of the Civil War by
having Grant and Lee clasp hands on the same pediment, elects his own
president and assigns to each of the powers its allotted space in the
universe, after which he disappears like the good fairy of the books.
A passage from the novel affords fair insight into its philosophy.
On page 156 the author makes Dru say: “For a long time I have known
that this hour would come, and there would be those of you who stand
affrighted at the momentous change from constitutional government
to despotism, no matter how pure and exalted you might believe my
intentions to be. But in the long watches of the night I conceived a
plan of government which, =by the grace of God=, I hope to be able to
give to the American people. My life is consecrated to our cause and,
hateful as the thought of assuming supreme power, I can see no other
way clearly, and I would be recreant to my trust if I faltered in my
duty.”
The book thus takes on a strange prophetic character, considering
that it was published in 1912, two years before the outbreak of the
war, as though the writer had laid down a great plan of action which
he was in the process of carrying out when the elections of 1918
raised an unexpected obstacle to its further execution.