1709

Winter

By November 1, it was already so cold that firewood would not burn in the open air and the freezing wind howled through the trees. Things happened that nobody had ever seen before. The Rhine River froze, the Rhone River froze, the seacoast froze, and heavy carts could be pulled across the ice. Livestock stood frozen in their stalls and in the open fields. Legends say that spit froze from the mouth to the ground, and birds froze in mid-flight and fell to the ground.

The unrelenting cold and howling wind lasted until mid January- and then the snow fell. The snow kept falling until mid February. The winter that had been cruel beyond anyone’s belief pursued its relentless assault until April, when the extent of the crop damage became fully evident.

Vinedressers and husbandmen had what was left of a life taken away from them by God.

Migratio Palatinorum

Historians say that the Palatines didn’t migrate for religious reasons. I think that is true. When things get bad, it’s bad- whether or not somebody is walking the walk, talking the talk, going to church, or milking a cow. After all, people have to eat. Oppressed and suffering people just want a better life. Yes, I think that it is true - the Palatines did not migrate for religious reasons… they migrated because of GOD and his overall purpose for mankind in the fullness of time. Think about it. It happens whether we believe it or not. We will see it again. The historic response of mankind to calamity is very interesting.

The Kocherthal pamphlet had become so popular that it was reprinted four times- three appendixes were added in the fourth edition. In addition, other pamphlets were circulating the frozen countryside as too. There was a pamphlet called English America by Richard Bloom, and there were pamphlets about Pennsylvania by Daniel Pastorius and Daniel Falkner.

And, the Palatines remembered Joshua Kocherthal and must have often wondered how the Landauers were doing wherever they had ended up settling.

It just so happened that they ended up on the Hudson River in New York at the mouth of the Quassaik Creek and founded Newburgh on the Hudson; and the period that was beginning at Newburgh would end at Newburgh with George Washington. The new British governor of New York accompanied the group. His name was Governor Lovelace and he genuinely liked Joshua Kocherthal and saw to it that all of their needs were met during his administration. They were provided subsistence, fifty acres apiece; two hundred acres for a church, and Joshua Kocherthal and his family got two hundred fifty acres. Things were going well… then Governor Lovelace caught a cold and died, and it was only May.

Now, Joshua learned something about New Yorkers. They did not share the same compassion for Joshua and the Landauers that Queen Anne did. Moreover, it wasn’t long before the group’s provisions were running out and they were going broke. Therefore, with no cooperation from New Yorkers, Joshua went back to London alone - to plead his case to Queen Anne.

He was in for a big surprise when he got there.

In the spring of 1709, hundreds of Palatines had begun an exodus down the Rhein River on their way to America. Hundreds then turned into thousands; and, Queen Anne of England was sympathetic to their cause.

The family of Johannes Christmann, like the others, sold their property if they had any, some got permits, some didn’t. They gathered together with friends and neighbors and walked down to the Rhein River on the muddy roads as the frost thawed. Some had bony, half-starved horses, cows, or oxen pulling their high-wheeled carts. They carried only what they needed, blankets, cooking utensils, food, water, and a little money if they had any. When they got to the river they journeyed by boat and went through no less than 36 toll stations as they sailed down the Rhein valley of frost killed vineyards and ruined castles. Fellow countrymen provided food, water, and shelter for them along the way.

And the migration was not just limited to the Palatinate. They came from everywhere.

They were all called Palatines.

A very important family to the Christmann’s throughout this story left their home in Gross Aspach in the Backnang Basin near Stuttgart. John Conrad Weiser had been a baker. He was one of only six representatives in the baker’s guild of 400. He had also been a corporal in the Blue Dragoons. He was cranky, he was a prick, and he was a leader. The Weisers lived near the former heart of Alamannic territory in Wurtemberg during the Roman times. The Klopferbach drains the basin into the Murr, and the Weisers would have boated down the Neckar into the Rhein at Mannheim. There was a big star-shaped festung, or fortress where the two rivers meet. The Jacob Schnell family came from Mannheim. They were another important family to the Christmanns later on. My mother is a descendant of the Schnells. My wife was born in Mannheim. Some circle, huh?

So many people had already left the Palatinate by April that the Elector started to fear depopulation. In May, he ordered two boatloads of people seized and thrown into prison. But no matter what the Elector did he couldn’t stop the initial overwhelming flow of people who were leaving. It must have really irked him.

The trip to Rotterdam took about six weeks.

And when thousands of Palatines began arriving in Rotterdam, the city officials didn’t know what to do with them all. The Palatines lived in shacks covered by reeds, and tents, and they slept in the open air. Inns and barns were full of people, and they drained Rotterdam’s welfare fund. The list-makers got busy, and the Christmann family waited to board a ship.

In early June, Johannes Christmann’s family boarded Capt. John Howlentzen’s ship. They were in the 4th party that embarked between June 10 and 19 listed as:

Krisman, Hans & vrow, 4ch.

The ships transporting the Palatines to London were sailed to Holland with British troops for the war with France. It must have been quite a sight. The Christman family boarded with 50 other families, about 275 people, as the British troops marched off to war.

After boarding, they waited in the steerage deck before sailing. Some waited a week. It was a foretaste of things to come. By May, two German Lutheran pastors had already reported in London:

“That your lordships may be pleased to order, that they may not be overcrowded in the ships in the voyage to the plantations they having been in great misery and that several children died in their passage from Holland for want of room.”

London

When the Palatines got to London, they soon discovered that the British authorities were not prepared to deal with the large numbers either. The government only had 1,600 tents set up in Blackheath, Camberwell, and Greenwich, and by June 10, the Palatine numbers had swelled to 4,774 and were still growing. London was not a mega-city in those days, and the large numbers of Germans wandering around did not go unnoticed - nor were they particularly welcome. The Christmann family is found on the 4th list of Poor Palatines on June 16. They arrived at St. Catherine’s and Deftford on June 11 listed as:

Christman, John, Husbandman & Vinedresser, age 41, sons 7-5,
daughters 9-2, Mennonite

The two Lutheran ministers reported on May 9:

“… The Palatines were in dire straits. A number of them were ill for want of necessary sustenance. Many were almost naked. They were “pakt up in such great numbers, we have found very often 10 to 30 men and women together with their children in one room.”

From July through December, the Palatines had to be taken care of by the British government while it tried to figure out what to do with them. Roughly 13,000 finally made the pilgrimage. And another problem began as well that became very political. Because they received subsistence from the government, the poor people of London began to resent them figuring that they deserved the welfare more than the foreigners did.

On several occasions, mobs of London’s poor attacked the Germans, and the upper class of London began to fear an outbreak of disease because of the Palatine’s living conditions and large numbers. British authorities scrambled to stop the flow of Palatines and soon the sympathetic ear that had been for them turned against them. In the summer, the government restricted the conditions of acceptance and sent the Catholics back to Germany. It paid off. The new rules slowed the flow to a trickle.

And the very interesting sorting process continued and lasted for exactly 68 years.

Queen Anne played an important role in the Palatine’s story. The reason why she liked the Palatines began with the Glorious Revolution. In 1679, James II ascended to the throne and he was a Roman Catholic. This did not go over well with the Protestant House of Commons who did not want England’s power to be controlled by the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope. So they secretly invited William of Orange, Europe’s leading Protestant statesman in the Netherlands, to bring a liberation army to England. He brought 15,000 troops. After he landed, most of the English nobility declared for William, and James II fled to France. Williams’s wife was Mary. Mary was James II’s daughter. When William died, Mary’s sister Anne succeeded to the throne, and she continued the Protestant policies of William. She also married Prince George of Denmark who was a Lutheran of German stock. When he died, Queen Anne inherited as benefactress his oppressed co-religionists, namely… the Palatines.

The impatient hoards of Palatines expected to go to America right away and wondered what was going on. Where was William Penn? Where was Joshua Kocherthal?

Well, William Penn went to prison for nine months in 1708 and he was heavily in debt. His province was under mortgage to friends who came to his aid. He didn’t really care about the Palatines. Joshua Kocherthal was on his way back to London as you recall, and when he got back, he couldn’t believe it. He felt totally responsible, and it changed the rest of his life. In London, he could do nothing but give them support, speak on their behalf, and comfort them in their growing angst about what was to come. The Palatines fate seemed to be in the hands of the British government… or was it?

The Government Settlement Schemes

The British government argued loudly behind closed doors. They debated many different plans for the next several months. They looked everywhere for answers. They debated about sending the Palatines to Barbados, Jamaica, the Canary Islands, the West Indies, and South America. Then on July 7, the Council of Ireland proposed to the Queen that the Palatines be sent there. They jumped at the idea.

In August, 3,073 Palatines, in 821 families, were on the way to Ireland against their will… and many of them went right back to England a couple of months later to the raised eyebrows and open mouths of the commissioners. The government got the first big bad taste about how much it was going to cost to get rid of the Palatines.

In September, Queen Anne appointed Colonel Robert Hunter as the new governor of New York. He just happened to have a plan to settle 3,000 of the Palatines in New York and solve a nagging problem that the British navy had at the same time. What could be better than that? His plan was to have the Palatines manufacture naval stores- tar, rosin, masts, rope, and other supplies, from large pine forests in New York.

Wood ships needed to float, and Sweden held a monopoly on naval stores at profiteering prices. The idea for England to manufacture its own naval stores had been pondered by the British government since the 1690’s, when their agents looked at both New York and New England as possibilities. So Governor Hunter’s plan was nothing new, he was more an opportunist trying to advance his career, and it worked. The government decided they could kill two birds with one stone.

By November, the Board of Trade disregarded New England as a location accepting Governor Hunter’s proposal to manufacture naval stores in New York. The new governor was ecstatic. However, fearing that the Palatines might leave the project for places like Pennsylvania, or Carolina, after they got to America, he proposed that they agree to sign contracts as Indentured Servants.

The idea was that the Palatines would pay back to the British government all costs of transportation and provisions for as long as it took - in labor - by producing naval stores. After they fulfilled their commitment to the contract, the Palatines would receive 40 acres of land for each family. The problem was in the term all costs, that never ended; and no price was ever established for the value of labor. It was not designed to make good neighbors.

Nevertheless, Governor Hunter’s plans were pursued with lightning speed before the Tory party found a way to block it. The Tories did not like the plan, and they did not like the Palatines. Simply put, the Tories were on the side of London’s poor people politically, like America’s Democrats that try to gain political advantage by playing with peoples predjudice for votes. But Governor Hunter was very optimistic about the proposal he gave to the board of Trade on November 30. The ministry worked out other problems the first week of December, and by the 17th Governor Hunter made arrangements with the treasurer for money, ships were hired; and, on December 21st, a contract was written for the Palatines to sign. It was translated and read out loud to them by Jean Cast. He was a German from Strasbourg working for the governor.

The Contract

Whereas, wee the underwritten Persons Natives of the Lower Palatinate of the Rhine, have been subsisted, maintained and supported ever since our Arrival in this Kingdom by the great and Christian Charity of Her Majesty the Queen, and of many of her good subjects; and Whereas her Majesty has been graciously pleased to order and advance a Loan for us, & on our behalf of several very considerable sums towards the transporting maintaining & settling of us and our respective Families in Her Majesty’s Province of New York in America, and towards the Imploying of us upon lands, for that intent and purpose, to be allotted to us, in the production and Manufacture of all manner of Naval Stores, to the evident benefit and Advantage of us and of our respective Families, and Whereas her Majesty has been likewise graciously pleased to give her Royal Orders to the Hon Collonel Robert Hunter, who has now Her Majesty’s Commission to be Captain General and Governor in Chief of the said Province, and to all Governors of the said Province for the time being, that as soon as we shall have made good and repaid to Her Majesty, her Heirs or successors, out of the Produce of our labours in the Manufactures we ire to be Employed in, the full sum or sums of mony in which we already are, or shall become, indebted to Her Majesty, by the produce of our labour in the Manufacture of all manner of Naval Stores on the lands to that end to be allotted to us, that then he the said Colonel ,Robert Hunter, or the Governor or Governors of the said Province for the time being shall give and grant to us and our Heires for Ever, to our own use and Benefit, the said Lands so allotted as aforesaid, to the proportion or amount of Forty Acres to each Person, free from all Taxes, Quit Rents, or other manner of services for seven years, from the date of such Grant, and afterwards subjected only to such Reservations as are accustomed and in use in that Her Majesty’s said Province.

NOW KNOW ALL MEN by these Presents that we the said underwritten Persons in a grateful sense just Regard and due consideration of the Premises, do hereby severally for ourselves, our Heirs, Executors and Administrators, covenant, promise and grant to and with the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, her heirs and Successors, that We with our respective Families will settle ourselves in such place or places as shall be allotted to us in the Province of New York on the Continent of America, and abide and continue Resident upon Lands so to be allotted to us as aforesaid, in such Bodyes or Societys as shall be thought usefull or Necessary either for carrying on the Manufacture of things proper for Navall Stores or for the Defence of us and the rest of her Majesty’s Subjects against the French or any other of her Majesty’s Enemies, and that We will not upon any Account, or in any manner of Pretence, quit or desert the said Province, without leave from the Governor of the said Province ,first had and obteyned for so doing, but that we will, to our utmost power employ and occupy our selves and our respective families in the producing and Manufacturing of all manner of Naval Stores upon the Lands so to be allotted us, or on such other Lands as shall be thought more proper for that purpose and not concern ourselves in working up or making things belonging to the Woolen Manufacture, but behave ourselves in all things as becomes dutifull and loyafl subjects, and gratefull and faithfull Servants to Her Majesty, Her Heires and Successors, paying all due Obedience to the said Honourable Colonel Robert Hunter or to the Governor or Governors of the said Province for the time being, and to all Magistrates and other officers who shall from time to time be legally appointed and set over us; and towards Repayment of Her Majesty, her heirs and Successors, all such sums of money, as she or they shall at any time disbursefor our support and maintenance till we can reap the Benefit of the Produce of our labours, We shall permit and suffer all Naval Stores by us Manufactured to be put into Her Majesty’s Store houses which shall be for this purpose provided, under the Care of a Commissary, who is to keep a faithful Account of the Goods which shall be so Delivered, and We shall allow out of the neat Produce thereof so much to be paid Her Majesty, her heires and Successors as upon a fair account shall appear to have been Disbursed for Subsistence of us, or providing Necessaries for our families. In Witness, &e Source:
Documents Relating to History of New York State, V. 5 pp. 121-122.

Meanwhile, another plan for Palatine settlement was also drawn up and arrangements were made to send about 650 Palatines to New Bern, North Carolina.

About 1,000 Palatines died in London while they waited in the camps. The misery was just beginning and certainly did not seem like prayers were being answered.

Governor Hunter was from Scotland and he was a colonel under the Duke of Marlborough. He had been poor, but he was very ambitious and he married a wealthy woman. He also holds a peculiar distinction. He is the author of the oldest surviving American play. It is called Androborus. He wrote it in 1714 as a cartoonish attack on his political enemies. Intended for public reading, Androborus established a tradition of political satire in American drama. We will soon see why he wrote it.

The Voyage

It was just after Christmas in 1709 when Johannes Christmann and his family boarded a cold and creaking ship on the Thames River. They were herded down into the steerage deck. It was a compartment that was only five feet high, and they huddled together with hundreds of others. It stunk, it was dark, it was cold, people were coughing, it was dirty, they were hungry, there were rats and fleas, and the adults tried to hide their fear while trying to comfort the children. They had just entered into a nightmare that would last for six months.

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