Proceedings and Addresses at York, Pa., October 14, 1910 / A Unique Manuscript by Rev. Peter Miller (Brother Jabez) together with Beissel's 99 Mystical Proverbs / The Wayside Inns on the Lancaster Roadside, between Philadelphia and Lancaster / Guide to th

468 Pages·1912·26.04 MB·German

by  Peter Miller, Julius Friedrich Sachse, Augustus Schultze

/yi?// ca.1' /' dnS
y
®¥
tttitBijIttanta^Ip^rman
$S>mitin.
PROCEEDINGS AND ADDRESSES
AT
YORK, OCTOBER
PA., 14, 1910
Vol. XXI.
(rt/
VH.i
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY
v.Zt
1912
EDITION 600 COPIES
Ipublicatfon Committee
JULIUS F. SACHSE, LITT.D.
DANIEL W. NEAD, M.D.
E. B. BUCKENHAM, M.D.
J.
Copyrighted 1912
BY
The Pennsylvania-German Society
Pressof
The NewEra printing Company
Lancaster, Pa.
1427084
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents 3
Officers of the Society 4
Minutes of the Meeting at York 5
Address of John E. Roller, Esq 6
Report of the Secretary 23
Report of the Treasurer 27
Electionof Officers 27
New President's Address 35
Toasts 37
Obituaries 61
fl>Cttn0?lVattia: The German Influence in its Settle-
ment and Development
:
A
UniqueManuscript by Rev. Peter Miller (Brother Jabez)
together with Beissel's 99 Mystical Proverbs.
Part XXIII. The Wayside InnsontheLancaster Roadside,
between Philadelphia and Lancaster, by Julius Fried-
rich Sachse.
Guide to the Old Moravian Cemetery of Bethlehem, Pa.,
1742-1910, by Augustus Schultze.
\
111
:
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
FOR
1910-1911.
President:
Prof. Henry E. Jacobs, D.D., S.T.D., LL.D.
Vice-Presidents
:
Robert C. Bair, Esq.
B. F. Fackenthal, Esq.
Secretary:
Prof. George Taylor Ettinger, Ph.D.
Treasurer
:
Julius F. Sachse, Litt. D.
Executive Committee
Terms Expire 1911.
Naaman H. Keyser, D.D.S.
William K. T. Sahm, M.D.
Term Expires 1912.
Abraham S. Schropp.
Terms Expire 1913.
Rev. Theodore E. Schmauk, D.D., LL.D.
Rev. Nathan C. Schaeffer, Ph.D., D.D., LL.D.
Terms Expire 1914.
Rev. L. Kryder Evans, D.D.
J. E. Burnett Buckenham, M.D.
Terms Expire 1915.
Daniel W. Nead, M.D.
Hon. Maurice C. Eby.
REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
Pennsylvania-German Society
AT ITS
TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING
Held at York, Pa.
On Thursday, October 14, 1910
^"HE
Executive Committee of the Society held its
regular quarterly meeting in the parlor of the
Colonial Hotel, York, Pa., at seven o'clock, on Thursday
evening, October 13, 1910, for the transaction of business.
Morning Session.
The twentieth annual meeting of the Pennsylvania-
German Society was held in the Parish House of Christ
Lutheran Church, York, Pa., Friday, October 14, 1910.
The Local Committee, of which Robert C. Bair, Esq.,
one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society, was the Chair-
6 The Pennsylvania-German Society.
man, had made such excellent arrangements that the large
gathering of members and their friends at once felt thor-
oughly at home.
The meeting was called to order at 10.30 a.m., by the
President of the Society, John E. Roller, Esq., of Har-
risonburg, Virginia, after which the Divine Blessing was
asked by the Reverend G. W. Enders, D.D., pastor of
Christ Lutheran Church, York, Pa.
Dr. E. T. Jeffers then extended a most cordial welcome
to the members of the Society on behalf of the city of
York and its people. On account of the lateness of the
hour the response of Dr. Theodore E. Schmauk on the
subject "The Twentieth Anniversary of our Society" was
postponed until the dinner in the evening.
Address of John E. Roller, Esq., of Harrisonburg,
Virginia, as President of the Pennsylvania-
German Society.
In the very latest issue of the North Carolina Booklet,
a little magazine published by the North Carolina Society
of the Daughters of the Revolution, a reference is made
to the German settlement in Orange County, of that State,
which may be read as illustrative of the character of the
German settlement throughout the South.
"The German Settlement, or Dutch, as it was uni-
versally called by others of the County, was not large and
it was segregated by its language and by the habits of the
people themselves. They took little or no interest in
public affairs, and had their own churches and their own
preachers, who preached to them in the German language."
These settlers, says the historian, came from Lancaster,
Chester, York, and Bucks and Berks counties, Pennsyl-
President's Annual Address. 7
vania, and while the migration began as early as 1745 it
was at its flood tide from 1750 to 1775. Some of these
settlers were careful enough to bring with them certificates
of character, from their friends and neighbors, and one of
these certificates, which is still preserved by a family in the
South as a precious heirloom, is from "their friends and
neighbors, inhabitants of the townships of Heidelberg and
places adjacent, in the county of Berks, in the Province
of Pennsylvania," to the effect that "they are of a sober,
honest, peaceable, and good behavior, and are about to
depart, in the good esteem of the neighborhood."
It is stated, also that the chief cause of this migration to
the South was the French and Indian War from—1750 to
about 1755, the date of Braddock's defeat, which on ac-
count—of the activity of the Northern and Western In-
dians had vastly increased the migration from Pennsyl-
vania and from the Valley of Virginia.
It is said, also, that there was a severe winter in 1750-
51, and that a ki—lling frost which had come unexpectedly,
at an early date it may—be possible that some of you
antiquarians remember it had also helped to induce or
had determined some of these immigrants to go south-
ward.
The fact that this quiet settlement, "segregated" as the
writer says it was, by reason of its godliness, and faithful
observance of the duties, which they owed to their church
and their God, exerted a profound influence upon its
neighbors and associates is found in the further statement
that "These newcomers found the inhabitants about their
colony grossly ignorant of the essentials of the Christian
religion. They knew something of the form of godliness
but nothing of its power: they thought that religion con-
sisted only in the practice of its outward forms." So that
8 The Pennsylvania-German Society.
we find that even the early Baptists of that region adopted
a rite of "christening," or "devoting" their children as
they called it, which was thus performed: "As soon as cir-
cumstances would permit, after the birth of the child, the
mother carried it to the meeting, when the minister, either
took it in his arms, or laid his hands on it, thanked God
for His mercy, and invoked a blessing on the child, and at
the same time, it received its name. This rite, which by
many was satirically called a • dry christening,' prevailed
not only in the Sandy Creek Association, but in other parts
of the South."
— —
But returning to our subject the fact remains, also,
that until the treaty of Fort Stanwix, and that of Gren-
ville, coming after the power of the Northern and Western
Indians had been broken, at the battle of Fallen Timbers,
by the force under "Mad" Anthony Wayne, and had
made the country beyond the Appalachian Mountains safe
for settlement, the tide of immigration of the German
element, as well as of the Scotch Irish, was Southward,
even to a point as distant as Pensacola, on the Gulf.
It is true that many Germans had preceded these
settlers in Virginia and the other States southward.
There were Germans at Jamestown in 1607, and while
that gascon and braggart, Captain John Smith denounces
them as " the damned Dutch," and proceeded to kill them
all off, in his "True Relation" as he called it, yet the fact
remains that one of that element had sufficient influence
with the Virginia company of London to secure Smith's
recall never to return to Virginia, and that the very men
whom he says "perished miserably" because of their
alleged affront to his dignity, were still alive and well,
when the new Council came in. That these men were
no mere artisans and laborers without education, save
President's Annual Address. 9
enough to "make potash," and "grow tobacco," as they
were known to be skilled to do, is proven by the fact that
one of them was learned enough to write a letter in Latin
describing the affairs of the Colony to John Pory, the
Secretary of the Company, and afterwa—rds, speaker of the
First House of Burgesses of Virginia the first popular
representative assembly that ever sat in America.
But the language which Smith applied to the Germans
of the Jamestown Colony is quite mild when compared
with the language which the English Secretary applied to
the French glass makers of the Colony of whom
he said, " a more damned crew, hell has never vomited."
A
noted colony of Germans had preceded the settlers
from Pennsylvania, even in North Carolina. The story
of the colony of de Graffenried and Michel, at Newberne,
between the Trent and the Neuse, on the coast of Carolina,
is one of deep interest. The destruction of the colony by
the Tuscaroras, and the capture and carrying away of the
two great leaders of the colony, is one of the romantic
stories of American history. How de Graffenried made
his escape from the Indians by claiming that he was the
" King of the Palatines," and by securing the interference
of Governor Spotswood of Virginia, who announced to the
Indians that he would slay men, women and children,
without mercy and without regard to number, if harm
should come to their captives, is a truthful romance of
great interest.
The only point at which it touches the immigration of
the German—s from Pennsylvania southward is in fact that
Spotswood having found that some of the settlers at
Newberne were—soldiers who had fought under his com*
mand in Europe had declared himself to be their staunch
friend and ally, and proceeded very generously to invite
io The Pennsylvania-German Society.
them to Virginia. But he says, also, that "upon their
arriving here, just at a time when the Tuscarora Indians
had departed from the treaty they had made, I did both in
compassion for those poor strangers, and in regard to the
safety of the country, place them together upon a piece of
land several miles outside of all of the other inhabitants,"
where he built them a fort and expected them to serve
as a protection to the rest of the colony.
It is not within the scope of my address here to-day
to do more than to refer to the knightly John Lederer, the
first white man who ever looked upon the beautiful valley
of the Shenandoah, west of the Great Mountains. The
credit of his advance cannot be taken from him, nor from
the people of his blood, by the splendor and glory of the
march of Spotswood and his knightly cavalcade of " the
Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe " to the same region,
a half a century later.
It is a painful thing to tell that this "modest and in-
genious hero " and "pretty scholar," instead of receiving
applause and a generous welcome upon his return, was met
with affronts and reproaches, and it is even said that " the
malice of the people improved to such a general animosity
that he was not safe in Virginia from the outrage of the
people, drawn into the persuasion that the public levy of
that year went all to the expense of his vagaries." Forced
by " this storm " he left the state never to return.
It would be an interesting thing indeed, if it could be
positively determined and known, as to who were the first,
of that great and shining host, to begin this movement
from Pennsylvania into Virginia, and through the Caro-
linas, following the great and beautiful valleys of the
mountainous region, to the southward.
Was it Maria Elizabeth Gerber, to whom Kelpius, in