22. Palatinates in Quassaic, East and West Camp.--Wearying of the
afflictions which the Thirty Years' War, the persecutions of Louis XIV,
and Elector John Wilhelm, who was a tool of the Jesuits, had brought
upon them, hosts of Palatinates came to America in quest of liberty and
happiness. The cruelties and barbarities which the French king, the
French officers, and the French soldiers perpetrated against innocent
men, women, and children are described by Macaulay as follows: "The
French commander announced to near half a million of human beings that
he granted them three days of grace. Soon the roads and fields, which
then lay deep in snow, were blackened by innumerable multitudes of men,
women, and children flying from their homes. Many died of cold and
hunger; but enough survived to fill the streets of all the cities of
Europe with lean and squalid beggars, who had once been thriving farmers
and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the work of destruction began. The flames
went up from every marketplace, every hamlet, every parish church, every
country seat, within the devoted provinces. The fields where the corn
had been sown were plowed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of
a harvest was left on the fertile plains where had once been
Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on the
slopes of the sunny hills round what had once been Heidelberg." (Wolf,
_Lutherans in America_, 175.) Great numbers of emigrants from Hesse,
Baden, and Wuerttemberg whose fate had been similar to that of the
Palatinates, joined them. Permission to settle in the New World was
sought from the authorities in London, where in 1709, according to
various authorities, from ten to twenty thousand Palatines, as they were
all designated, were assembled, waiting for an opportunity to emigrate.
Joshua Kocherthal, Lutheran pastor at Landau in Bavaria, was the leader
of the emigrants from the Palatinate. In 1704 he went to London to make
the necessary arrangements. Two years later he published a booklet on
the proposed emigration. In 1708 he sailed for the New World with the
first fifty-three souls, landing in New York at the close of December,
1708, or the beginning of January, 1709, after a long and stormy voyage
lasting about four months. It was the first German Lutheran congregation
in the State of New York. After spending the winter in the city, they
settled on the right bank of the Hudson, near the mouth of the Quassaic,
where Newburgh is now located. Every person received a grant of fifty
acres and the congregation five hundred acres of church land, which,
however, the British Governor in 1750 awarded to the Episcopalians. In
July, 1709, Kocherthal, entrusting his congregation to the care of
Falckner, whose acquaintance he had made during the winter in New York,
returned to London to obtain, through a personal interview with the
Queen, grants of money which were needed to supply the utterly
destitute colonists with the necessary means of subsistence until the
land was made arable. He returned in June, 1710, with a multitude of
emigrants in eleven ships. But, while 3,000 had sailed from London,
only 2,200 were destined to reach their homes in the New World, 800
having died while en route and in quarantine on Governor's Island. A
tract of land comprising 40 acres for each person was assigned to them
at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, about 100 miles north of New
York. They settled on both sides of the Hudson, naming their settlements
East and West Camp, respectively.
23. Hewing Their Way to the Mohawk Valley.--The immigrants had been
promised prosperity; but the English officials were actuated by selfish
motives and shamefully exploited the colonists. They were ordered to
engage in the production of tar and pitch, and were treated as slaves
and Redemptioners, _i.e._, emigrants, shamefully defrauded by "the
Newlanders (Neulaender)," as Muhlenberg designated the conscienceless
Dutch agents who decoyed Germans from their homes and in America sold
them into slavery, at least temporarily. The contract for provisioning
the Palatinate colonists was let to Livingston, a cruel and greedy Scot,
from whom (Governor Hunter had purchased the land on which the
Palatinates were settled. Livingston now sought to enrich himself by
reducing both the quantity and quality of the food furnished to the
colonists. Hunger was common among the settlers, becoming especially
acute in winter, as they had not been given sufficient time to plant
crops for themselves. Dissatisfaction spread throughout the ranks of the
Palatinates, and when the Governor refused to heed their appeal for
relief, fifty families left the settlement and hewed their way through
the primeval forest to the Mohawk Valley, where they obtained fertile
lands from the Indians and founded the Schoharie congregation in the
winter of 1712/13. The governor declared the fugitives rebels; but still
more followed in March, making their way through three feet of snow. The
Lutherans of Schoharie were the first white people to live at peace with
the Indians. In order to obtain a clear title to the lands in the
Schoharie Valley, which the governor refused to grant them, John Conrad
Weiser was sent to England. On his way he was plundered by pirates; in
England he was thrown into a sponging house on account of debts. After
regaining his liberty, he was compelled to return to Schoharie broken in
health and without accomplishing his purpose. The result was that 33
families left Schoharie and settled in Tulpehocken, Pa., in 1723. Among
those who remained in West Camp was Pastor Kocherthal. He continued
faithfully to serve his congregations, including Schoharie, until his
end, December 27, 1719. He lies buried in West Camp. A weather-beaten
stone slab marks his resting-place. The inscription calls him "The
Joshua and pure Lutheran pastor of the High Germans in America on the
east and west bank of the Hudson." In the original the epitaph reads
complete as follows: "Wisse Wandersman Unter diesem Steine ruht nebst
seiner Sibylla Charlotte Ein rechter Wandersmann Der Hoch-Teutschen in
America ihr Josua Und derselben an Der ost und west seite Der Hudson
Rivier rein lutherischer Prediger Seine erste ankunft war mit L'd
Lovelace 1707/8 den 1. Januar Seine sweite mit Col. Hunter 1710 d. 14
Juny Seine Englandische reise unterbrach Seine Seelen Himmlische reise
an St. Johannis Tage 1719 Begherstu mehr zu wissen So unter Suche in
Welanchtons vaterland Wer war de Kocherthal Wer Harschias Wer
Winchonbach B. Berkenmayer S Heurtein L Brevort MDCCXLII." (111.) The
successors of Kocherthal were: Justus Falckner, until 1723; Daniel
Falckner, the brother of Justus, who had served several German
congregations along the Raritan, till 1725; Berkenmeyer; and from 1743
to 1788 Peter N. Sommer, who preached in thirteen other settlements and
baptized 84 Indians. He died October 27, 1795. Sommer's aversion to the
Halle pastors probably was the reason why he took no part in the
organization of the New York Ministerium at Albany in 1786.