Chapter XIII: Life in Pennsylvania in the Early Days

Poverty of early Settlers.--Lack of Houses to live in.--Some
made their Homes in Caves at First.--Food was Plentiful.--Game
was Abundant.--Lack of Roads.--Country a dense Forest.--Only
Indian Trails to get from one Place to Another.--Early Roads
Projected.--Wild Animals numerous and Destructive.--Early
Iron making.--The Crime of Horse Stealing.--Health of new
Settlers.--Courts and Penalties.--Early Laws.

As has already been learned, German emigration into Pennsylvania began with Penn’s first visit to his province, but the great tide of emigration did not set in, until the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Penn was an early reformer in England, with notions of his own concerning both spiritual, and secular matters, which were considered at that time as heretical, visionary, and impractical. In his new province in America, he was not hampered with any of the traditions of European governments, with their arbitrary rule, religious persecution, and political oppression. He was free on this side of the Atlantic, to give a practical turn to his schemes of an ideal government which should be a religious and temporal paradise.

His notions of government involved entirely new ideas, and were not at all consonant with the times in which he lived. He did not believe in much governmental restraint, but believed that a people were best governed who felt the restraints of government the least. On this basis he undertook to lay the foundation of civil government for his province.

People who beheld the elements with which he would have to contend, despaired of his success in forming a government of law and order, with the material at hand. As in all new countries there were among the people whom he found here, the idle, the vicious, and the depraved, to say nothing of the incongruous elements, of people of different nationality, language, customs and manners. His task must have seemed a formidable one; but he succeeded as the framers of no government ever succeeded before him, nor since.

The German emigrants on their coming here found a beneficient government on their arrival, and they were rid of the fearful persecution from which they had been made the sufferers in their native land, yet they had an appalling task before them, in making for themselves homes in the forest wilderness, to which they had come. But they were free men for the first time in their lives. The wrongs of their cruel oppressors no longer beset them by day, nor haunted their dreams by night. Most of the emigrants were very poor and had to make their new start in life, with nothing but stout hearts and willing hands. Many on their arrival at Philadelphia had not the means to procure shelter and it could not be procured very often at any price, so that not a few made their temporary homes in caves along the shores of the Delaware river, which had been previously occupied by native Indians. It is said that the first white child born of English parents at Philadelphia, was born in one of those caves. John Key, who became an honored citizen, and who lived a long life of usefulness, had such a humble birthplace in 1682. He died in Chester county in 1767.

It was not long however before the early arrivals were provided with more substantial dwellings, for in less than two years after Penn had laid out his ideal city, it contained 300 houses built of wood; affording a fair degree of comfort.

After that more substantial buildings began to be erected of brick brought from England, some of which still remain standing, well preserved to testify to the thrift and enterprise of the settlers two centuries ago.

The mode of living at first corresponded with the early means of shelter, and pretty much all except the few rich, shared the same conditions. After the newcomer had succeeded so far as to be able to live under the roof of his own modest log cabin, he had made an enviable start, and soon forgot his earlier privations, while the recollections of his wretched condition in his native land, made him happy and contented in his new home. After he succeeded to a log cabin, a horse, cow, plow, axe, saw, and a table of rough hewn timber, a bedstead and bench in keeping, he regarded himself on the high road to fortune, and was happy in the contrast between his condition in his new home, and his former home in the desolate Palatinate. With the few primitive household goods, clothing aptly corresponded. Woolen fabrics were unknown. The clothing of the new settlers consisted of home-made cloth, woven from tow, made from flax grown on the virgin soil. Their apparel was neither rich nor gaudy, and did not admit of much change of dress, which was chiefly confined to a shirt, trousers, and coat. In warm weather the shirt and trousers sufficed; in cold weather an additional top coat was worn for protection. Shoes were made to last a long time, and were only worn when absolutely necessary. Cobblers traveled through the country, among the settlers and mended their shoes; in that way procuring a livelihood.

The foregoing observations apply only to the rural population in the early days. In Philadelphia the residents fared better. That city soon developed into a prosperous commercial town, and it remained for many years the chief mart in Pennsylvania, to which settlers came to trade from all parts of the province.

Most of the early settlers in Pennsylvania took to farming on their arrival as soon as they were able to do so, because they were trained to that occupation at home, and it also brought them the quickest return, and surest employment.

But to make farms in those days was no easy task. It was necessary first to subdue the wilderness, which was an unbroken forest everywhere. There were no roads, and to travel from one part of the country to another was a difficult undertaking. The Indian trails furnished the only means to get through the forest, which in many places was practically impenetrable. There were innumerable streams to be crossed, without bridges. The building of roads of course received early attention, but its progress must necessarily have been slow, owing to the nature of the country through which they had to be built, and the making of them did not keep pace with the constantly increasing population.

In 1686, four years after Philadelphia was founded, a road to Trenton was projected. This was done no doubt to bring the settlements already existing in southern parts of New Jersey in easy communication with Philadelphia. In 1729 a road was laid out to Lancaster; by that time many thousands of settlers had located between the latter place and Philadelphia, with no direct means of communication. Before that time people traveling between those two places had to go in a round about way, by Chester; and the projected road to Lancaster was not built until 1733. A road from Philadelphia to Upper Milford township in what is now Lehigh county, was built about the same time. From that time on, many roads were projected and built throughout eastern Pennsylvania.

Before the building of roads was begun the farmers had no need for wagons, so that horses were made the chief vehicles for the purposes of transportation, while the shoulders of the stalwart farmers were made to perform similar service. Road building through the dense forest was not easy. Large trees had to be felled, and the roadway cleared of stumps and brush. After roads were thus opened, many farmers at first improvised wagons, by making wheels out of the butt ends of large trees. Untanned hides furnished materials for harness. Settlers during the early years of their coming here lived far apart, so that they could not be of much service to each other, and when winter came on, all communication between them practically ended, until the following spring.

The early settlers surely found no earthly paradise when they first came here, and their descendants who to-day occupy the rich and highly cultivated farms which their ancestors hewed out of the primeval forest, cannot realize the poverty and privations of the first comers to Penn’s El Dorado; yet they were content, because they were no longer the victims of a ferocious soldiery, whose crimes made their lives intolerable in the land of their birth.

The great discomforts and privations of the earliest settlers were of not long duration. It did not take those that came first long to get a fair start, and they soon acquired an abundance of the most urgent necessities, which they were ever ready to share with their newly arrived countrymen. There does not seem to have been at any time any great scarcity of food, for it seems that the streams and forests supplied that in abundance. Penn on the occasion of his first visit to his province, wrote to a friend in England: “Of food there is an abundance, and of the best quality.” One newly arrived emigrant wrote: “Wild pigeons come in clouds, and frequently fly so low as to enable one to knock them down with a stick. Wild turkeys are so large and fat; some of them weigh 46 pounds. Some that weigh as much as 30 pounds are sold for a shilling. A deer can be bought for two shillings and six pence. The streams are full of fish, and so they are in New Jersey. The Indians often bring in seven or eight deer at a time; of geese, ducks, wild swan, and pheasants there are plenty.”

In 1750 the farmers complained to the government, that the bounty offered for the destruction of squirrels, was an injury to them, because laborers, instead of helping in harvest, would go squirrel hunting, because they could make better wages thereby, than by working in harvest.

According to an act of the Colonial Assembly, the government paid a bounty for each dozen crows, blackbirds, and squirrels, one shilling and six pence. Even at that price those destructive creatures did not seem to diminish, so that in 1754 an appeal was made to the Assembly to compel every settler to destroy a certain number of them, for which he was to receive certain compensation, and in case anyone failed to destroy his share, he was to forfeit a _pro rata_ penalty. It was hoped by such means, to save the farmers’ corn after it was planted and came up, which the crows, blackbirds, and squirrels destroyed. Deer were also so numerous as to become very destructive of the grain after it came up in the fall. Foxes and muskrats were also very destructive of poultry, and wolves were very numerous and would sometimes destroy entire flocks of sheep. The farmers were never without their guns; it was customary for them to carry them wherever they went. These animals had their homes in the dense forests which were inaccessible on account of the lack of roads. Farmers frequently lost their horses if allowed to stray away in the endless wood. The dense forests made horse-stealing an easy occupation for the lawless, and it constituted one of the chief crimes of the early days of the settlement of the province, as the forests made a convenient hiding place for them with their prey. During a period of three years after Northampton County was organized, nine horse thieves were tried and punished in that county, while a great many more escaped arrest. The punishment prescribed at that time for horse-stealing, was public whipping, which did not have the effect to deter the lawless from committing that sort of crime. The field of operation of the horse-thieves was so large and their chances of escape so great, that they carried on their occupation with little hindrance. The extent of the evil was so great, that the citizens petitioned the Assembly to create the death penalty for the crime of horse-stealing.

The horse-thieves seem to have had a monopoly of crime. For a new country there was none of that lawlessness which has characterized the new frontier settlements of our western domain. The “tough citizen” of our western frontier had not then yet been developed. He seems to have made his appearance later, and is especially, an American product, unique in his character, without a rival, or counterpart in any other part of the world, outside of the United States.

After agriculture had made a fair start other industries began to attract the attention of the more wide-awake settlers, who had cast their lot with the future of Penn’s province. As early as 1696, only 14 years after Penn laid out his ideal city on the Delaware, the question of making iron began to be discussed, and in 1726 a German by the name of Kurtz gave the matter a practical turn, by the erection of a furnace.

A firm named Grubb Bros., also built a furnace and iron-works about the same time in Lancaster County. By the time of the middle of the eighteenth century, the province of Pennsylvania had made much progress in agriculture and the industrial arts, and its boundless resources and great hidden wealth, began to attract great attention, when many persons of wealth in England and Germany, were attracted hither, who began the development of the iron, and other resources, and establish various industrial enterprises, to meet the growing needs of the province.

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In those early days, the traffic in spirituous liquors as a beverage was already a perplexing question. The manufacture of the product became a profitable industry soon after the settlement of the province, and the early settlers were not exempt, from the craving for some artificial stimulant, which has been implanted in mankind ever since Noah planted a vineyard among the hills of Ararat, and became “drunken” on the fruits thereof. The excessive use then, as it always has been, brought along with it its attendant evils. In 1721 a convention of leading citizens was held at Philadelphia, to consider the question, of restraining the traffic in strong drink, and to encourage the use of light beer instead, as being less injurious. It would seem from this proposition, that the German citizens sought to introduce, and enforce the custom of beer drinking which then prevailed in their native land and which still continues, instead of the use of spirituous liquors as a beverage, which are vastly more injurious. In South Germany at this day, the people confine themselves almost exclusively to light wines and beer, with the result that an intoxicated person is scarcely ever seen in that part of Germany.

In 1733 the owners of certain iron works petitioned the Legislature, to enact a law prohibiting the traffic in strong drink in the neighborhood where their works were operated, as it was injurious to the management of their industries; but asked that the sale of beer and cider be permitted.

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Unlike most new countries the province of Pennsylvania was singularly exempt from many of those diseases with which new countries have to contend, and outside of the few small towns which existed in the early days there were no doctors, and the obstinate Quakers did not seem to think that there was any need for them, and did not encourage their coming. They seemed to have had nearly or quite as much aversion to doctors as they had to lawyers. One Quaker wrote in 1690 concerning the needs of the colony: “Of lawyers and doctors I will make no mention as the country is very peaceable and healthy.” This complacent Quaker probably changed his mind about doctors, when later malignant fevers, and the smallpox broke out among the settlers, which resulted in very many deaths. In later years Philadelphia had a visitation from the yellow fever which carried its citizens off by hundreds. As late as the middle of the last century, Philadelphia did not have a single paved street, and until 1793 the water for culinary, and other household purposes was obtained from wells which could not be saved from becoming polluted, by surface drainage. After Philadelphia had been scourged by the yellow fever well water fell into disfavor, and the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers were drawn upon for water.

COURTS AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.

During the early years after the founding of the province, there were no courts. The Quakers who were then in control discouraged them, as they also did lawyers, and all litigation. One of the first laws passed by the Colonial Assembly, was one to prevent litigation. It was not until 1701 that courts were considered necessary. In that year a Court House was built at Philadelphia, which answered for the whole province. The justices appointed to preside over the courts, were empowered to make final settlement of all disputes.

The business of the courts in those days, was conducted with great formality and solemnity. The judges wore three-cornered hats, and when they returned from court to their homes, the constables with the emblems of their office led the way. The judges on the bench wore a grave and serious aspect. The common folks in attendance were inspired with great awe. It is needless to say that things in this respect have changed since then. In those days judges were the appendages of royalty, while in these later days, the people make and unmake them at their pleasure.

The penalties inflicted on offenders against the law were peculiar, and in many cases revolting; savoring more as viewed at this day, of primitive savagery, than that of a criminal code of a civilized people. Malefactors for certain offences were branded in the hands with red hot irons; others had their ears cut off, or were nailed fast by their ears to the whipping post; or sentenced to a certain number of lashes, while others for more trivial offences were made to stand in the pillory for a specified time. The pillory was usually erected in the market place, and the sentence usually carried out on market days. Watson in his “Annals” says that upon such occasions the price of eggs usually advanced for obvious reasons. The penalties here enumerated were dealt out to persons found guilty of crime, without regard to rank, station or sex.

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In Christoph Sauer’s newspaper of date of March 16, 1775, an amusing incident is related, as having occurred at Easton. A man was sentenced to receive a certain number of lashes, for having stolen an axe. The sheriff, who was not inclined to inflict the punishment, offered four dollars to any one who would perform the duty for him. No one came forward to perform the job, when the culprit’s wife came along, and undertook to perform the task. She laid on the number of lashes decreed, with all her might, after which she added one more, remarking at the same time that the last one was for the occasion when her husband boxed her ears. She was paid her four dollars by the sheriff, and the law was vindicated. Sometimes a malefactor’s entire property was forfeited; sometimes only a fine was imposed, and if the condemned was unable to pay it, he was put up at public auction, and sold to the highest bidder to serve a certain length of time, which was governed by the price bidden. This latter feature of the law remained in force until 1786, while the whipping post was not abolished until 1790.

EARLY LEGISLATION.

The first Colonial Assembly of Pennsylvania met at Philadelphia January 10, 1683, and was of course dominated by Penn, and his co-religionists. Some queer laws were proposed, and some of them were enacted, and put in force. One legislator wanted a law passed to encourage matrimony; another sought to make it unlawful for any one to wear more than two kinds of clothing. One kind was prescribed for summer, and another kind for winter.

It was made unlawful for any one to introduce, or frequent “stage plays,” and the penalty was fixed at ten days’ imprisonment at hard labor in the house of correction, or forfeit twenty shillings. It was also made unlawful for any one to play cards for amusement, under a penalty of five shillings, or in default of payment, imprisonment in the house of correction, at labor five days.

The price of ale and beer at a public house, was fixed at two pennies a Winchester quart.

A law was passed, changing the names of the days of the week, “according to Scripture,” making them first, second, third, etc., instead of the “heathen names,” Monday, Tuesday, etc. The names of the months were similarly changed.

Any one convicted of lying in conversation, was to suffer a penalty of half a crown for each offense, or in default of payment suffer three days imprisonment at hard labor. If such a law were in force in these days the revenues therefrom would soon create a surplus, and the government would not be embarrassed by a deficit.

Any one found guilty of speaking derogatorily of the sentence, or judgment of any court, or of speaking disrespectfully of a judge, was to be fined at the discretion of the court.

Any one found guilty of stealing hogs a third time was to receive thirty lashes, and be banished from the province.

It was made the duty of parents to have their children taught to read and write, by the time they were twelve years of age; then taught some useful trade, for neglect of which, the parents were fined five pounds for every child so neglected.

UNJUST CRITICISM OF PENNSYLVANIA GERMANS.

The Pennsylvania Germans have often been made to suffer by calumnious reports concerning them, by reason of the prejudice, and oftener perhaps of the ignorance of a certain class of writers for the press. A number of years ago, an editorial appeared in the Public Ledger, defending them against the aspersions and mendacious misrepresentations of a Yankee scribbler for a newspaper who said: “The immigrants came over here with their priests, a fragment of the middle ages, uneducated and uncultivated. What is the consequence? We see before us the petrifaction of a social and mental condition which has long since disappeared from Germany. We behold a picture of the dark ages.”

It is remarkable that such dense ignorance should have existed anywhere, even among only half educated people, at any time within the present century concerning a people, who have always occupied an honorable and conspicuous place in the history of their state and country; who to-day number not less than a million and a half of people, many of whom are filling some of the highest stations in every walk of life. All that is necessary to put to shame such base libellers as the foregoing is to point to the long line of Pennsylvania’s German Governors, and to the men of the same blood in our halls of legislation, on the bench, at the bar, in the pulpit, among the men eminent in the sciences, among the educators, business men and financiers, not only in Pennsylvania, but wherever the Pennsylvania Germans and their descendants have spread.

The following extract from the editorial of the Ledger is just as timely now as when first written, in case there are still any people as ignorant and misinformed, as the one who wrote the foregoing libel:

“No one familiar with the German farmers of Pennsylvania need be
told that this is a stupid and ignorant libel. Its author has either
never traveled through our state, or has maliciously misrepresented
what he saw. So far from our German farmers being on a level with
the serfs of one hundred and fifty years ago, they are vastly in
advance of cotemporary German and French farmers, or even of English
farmers of similar means. On this point we need go no further for
authority than to Mr. Munch, the fellow laborer with Mr. Herder in
the late campaign, who though hostile in politics to our German
farmers in general, was forced, during his tour through Pennsylvania,
to admit their sterling worth. Mr. Munch is an experienced and
practical agriculturist, and not merely a speculative man of letters,
so that his judgment on such a question is worth that of a score
of visionary, ill-informed, prejudiced, disappointed demagogues or
partisan editors. After eulogizing the picturesque natural features
of the landscape of our German counties, praising the excellent taste
which has preserved the woods on the hill sides, and extolling the
appearance of the farms, this gentleman adds significantly that he
found the people of a genial, solid and respectable stamp, enviably
circumstanced in comparison with the European farmer, and very far
superior in intelligence and morals. It is time that the truth
should be spoken, and justice done to our German population. We are
willing to go as far as any one in testifying to the value of books,
newspapers and schools; we are willing to admit that our German
farmers, as a class, have cared less for these things than they
ought; but we are not silly enough to say that a man is necessarily a
bad farmer, a disorderly citizen, or a profligate husband because he
does not speak English, is not crammed with book-learning, or does
not take in a half a dozen journals. Our German farmers prove the
reverse. Whether a denizen of a state be valuable to it on account
of what he annually adds to the realized wealth of the community, or
for his faithful obedience to the laws, or for his sacredness with
which he preserves the family compact, our German farmers certainly
merit as much as any other class for the practice of either of these
virtues, or indeed for the harmonious exercise of them all. Even
their intelligence is underrated. As Mr. Munch of Misso, has said,
they are a ‘genial, solid and respectable stamp;’ there is no false
mental glitter about them; in a word, they are rather men of sound
judgment, than brilliant rhetoricians, or one-sided ideologists. All
persons who have had transactions with our German farmers, love to
respect the excellent sense they display in the ordinary concerns of
life. * * * *

In many particulars, German farmers surpass even the people of New
England, who of late have put in a claim, it would seem to be the
_ne plus ultra_ in all things. The German farmers understand, or if
they do not understand they observe the laws of health, better than
even the rural people of Massachusetts; and the result is that they
are really the finest race of men, physically, to be found in the
United States. In certain favorable localities of Kentucky, or on the
frontier, where from being a dominant caste, or from the immediate
vicinity of the unpeopled wilderness, the inhabitants live a half
nomad life, there are as fine, perhaps finer specimens of men to be
seen; but there is nowhere in America, an agricultural population,
the members of which personally till the soil, that has such thews
and sinews, such a healthy development, or such generally prolonged
life, as our much abused “Pennsylvania Dutchmen.” To be plain, if
some of our crotchetty, one-idead dyspeptic, thin cadaverous, New
England brethren would emigrate to our German counties; follow for a
generation or two, the open air life of our German farmers; and last
of all marry into our vigorous anti-hypochondrical German families,
they would soon cease to die by scores of consumption, to complain
that there were no longer any healthy women left, and to amuse
sensible people with such silly vagaries of Pantheism, or a thousand
and one intellectual vagaries which are born of their abnormal
physical conditions.”

In these somewhat desultory and digressive pages, the author sought to tell the “Story of the Pennsylvania Germans,” but he realizes that the task has been but imperfectly performed. If however he has succeeded in encouraging some one else with the energy and inclination to undertake the task on a more extended scale, he will be amply paid for all the time and labor which this volume has cost him. The story of the Pennsylvania Germans has never been told, and is only partially chronicled in these pages. It still remains for some faithful chronicler to give them their proper place in the history of their State, and of the nation, in behalf of which they rendered invaluable services at the birth of the Republic.