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JOHANNES STARTS FOR AMERICA.

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Here in Bendorf, in the early part of the eighteenth century, lived a sturdy burgher-a tanner and a freeholder of good repute-Johannes Moelich, who was born on the twenty-sixth of February, 1702. His family comprised four children, equally divided as to sex, and his wife Maria Catherina, a rotund German matron who prided herself upon being the daughter of Gottfried Kirberger, the burgomaster of Bendorf. Having been born on the sixth of January, 1698, she was nearly four years the senior of her husband, to whom she had been married on the first of November, 1723. As she is familiarly known in family annals as Mariah Katrina, by this name she will in future be designated on these pages. The children were: Ehrenreich (Aaron), born the twelfth of October, 1725; Veronica Gerdrutta (Fanny), born on the twenty-first of November, 1727; Andreas (Andrew), born on the twelfth of December, 1729; and Marie Cathrine, born on the sixth of December, 1733.

*

One morning, while the year 1735 was yet young, Johannes gathered together his family, his household goods and effects, including considerable furniture, and taking with him his youngest brother Gottfried (Godfrey), departed through the Bach-gate of the town wall to the bank of the river. Here he embarked on one of the clumsy barges of that day and floated away, borne up by Father Rhine, to Rotterdam, where he took ship and sailed for America. This emigrant was the son of Johann Wilhelm and Anna Katherine Moelich, who came to Bendorf in 1688 from Winningen, a town on the Moselle, four miles west of Coblentz. They had many relatives and friends in both places, and we can well fancy that the departure of Johannes and his family was an important event for these communities. It would be interesting to learn just what cause led to his emigration. It could not have been poverty, as was the case with many of the thousands of his countrymen who had preceded him across the water, for we know that he owned property in Bendorf and had ready money for investment in the new country. Perhaps he appreciated the responsibility of his little family, and hesitated to bring up his children under a government that had already brought much misery and distress on its subjects.

* For description of Winningen and Bendorf see introduction to genealogy in appendix, p. 628.

He had already established relations beyound the sea, his younger brother Johann Peter having landed at Philadelphia in 1728, from the ship Mortonhouse. Doubtless he had received letters from this brother, and from friends among the many emigrants who had found an asylum in America, drawing an enticing picture of the liberal government of William Penn, which had secured to them in the fruitful valleys of Pennsylvania peaceful retreats where they no longer feared religious persecution or political oppression. Between the beginning of the century and the time of Johannes' emigration some seventy thousand Germans had turned their backs on the mother country and sought homes in foreign lands.

The old world and its people, two hundred years ago, were well tired of each other. So some one tells us, and the student of early emigration to the American colonies soon discovers abundant evidence verifying this statement. He finds that in the latter part of the seventeenth and early in the eighteenth centuries a countless host of dissatisfied and oppressed Europeans, turning their faces from the east, embarked on the frail vessels of that period. For weary weeks they rolled and staggered over the briny troughs of an almost unknown sea, whose western waves broke on the shores of a vast continent that beckoned them thitherward as a haven of security and peace; a new world whose hospitable harbors, in the faith of these migrators, seemingly offered promises of an asylum free from political oppressions, and a retreat full of that repose which they knew from bitter experiences would be denied them in their own countries.

The birth of society is no older than is the love of man for the land of his nativity. All ordinary rules and principles governing the actions of men seem contradicted by emigration from an old to a new country, whereby men voluntarily combat the dangers and difficulties of savage nature in a wilderness beyond the seas, after abandoning the graves of their ancestors, the friends of a life-time, and the hearth-stones around which have centred all the affections and sympathetic experiences of their own families and those of their progenitors. Yet, at the time of which we write, notwithstanding the prevalence of this universal and world-wide sentiment, it was powerless to stem the great tidal wave of humanity that rolled irresistibly America-ward. Ship

WHY GERMANS LEFT FATHERLAND.

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after ship, their decks crowded with Scotch refugees, dropped anchor off Perth Amboy, enriching, as Grahame writes, East Jersey society "by valuable accessions of virtue that had been refined by adversity, and piety that was invigorated by persecution." Quakers and Dissenters from Old England landed in Pennsylvania, and Puritans from that same little island joined their brethren in Massachusetts, augmenting that sturdy stock who were laying the foundations of the future American nation. The forests, which had for centuries fringed both banks of the Delaware, were felled by the brawny arms of fair-haired Swedes. Huguenots, among them the best blood of France, as well as her most skilled artisans, swelled the population of New York and the more southern provinces, while rotund Hollanders, smoking long Delft pipes, still sailed their high-pooped shallops up Hudson's river, settling on its shores, and penetrating to the little Dutch settlement which has since grown to be the capital of a great State. Though home-seekers, these latter had not left Holland from religious or political motives.

But nowhere on the continent of Europe did this spirit of unrest hover with greater persistency than over the beautiful valleys of the Rhine and its tributaries. The cycle of the eighteenth century had not rolled away many of its years before thousands of Germans had turned their backs on all they would naturally hold most dear and sought homes in foreign lands. Expatriation is a severe ordeal even when the native shores of the exile are stertile and barren of fruitfulness; how much more severe must be this experience to one who, by unjust laws and an unrighteous government, is forced to sever the invisible links of affection that bind him to a land of pleasant abundance, and a home seated amid environments of picturesqueness and beauty.

The Teuton is by nature stable; his affections intuitively take deep root in the soil of his native land, and no one holds in greater reverence the sacred names of home and fatherland. How, then, do we account for this great exodus from Germany, especially from those fair regions bordering the valleys of the Rhine, the Moselle, the Nahr and the sinuous Neckar? If his native hills, rivers and homesteads are so dear, how is it that at the present day we find the German to be in the greatest number of all the foreign population in far-away America? To

properly answer this question it will be necessary to consider the political aspect of Germany at the time referred to, and to take a hurried retrospective glance at the history and condition of the common people for several anterior decades.

One does not delve very deep in Continental annals of the eighteenth century without discovering that at this time the condition of Germany was most deplorable. Many of the innumerable kingdoms, duchies, principalities, independent towns and free cities that were strewed disconnectedly over the land between the Rhine and the Danube had rulers who claimed an almost absolute sway over their hapless subjects. They often demanded their lives, their fortunes, their services; the latter not called upon always for the benefit and protection of their own country or community, but to be bartered for gold to other governments. Successive furious wars had raged with but short intermission for several generations. And the end was not yet; the map of Europe was to undergo many changes, and the destiny of all Germany was to be determined. The great Frederick was yet to mould his small kingdom into the powerful nation of Prussia. Even when that work was accomplished, and fifty years after that illustrious king had returned from the Seven Years' War, the German people gathered themselves together for the greatest struggle they had yet attempted; but it was with happier hearts and a more abounding faith that they entered into this contest, for they felt the glow of a national patriotism, and each blow struck was for a common cause and fatherland. The sun of peace, prosperity and greatness, as has been well said, did not rise on Germany till the year 1813, which saw the end of the prolonged struggle that may be considered to have commenced with the Thirty Years' War.

But we must go back of the year 1700 to look for the original cause of German emigration. In the early part of the seventeenth century the peasants, burghers and the great middleclass of Germany were well to do. The prosperity was occasioned by the long continued peace, giving to the people the opportunity of cultivating their fields and promoting agriculture, the foundation of opulence in all countries. Some historians consider that garden and field cultivation in 1618 were superior to that of two hundred years later, arguing that the present cen

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR OVERWHELMS GERMANY. 29

tury has only seen Germany brought back agriculturally to where it was those long years ago. Tillage, of course, produced much less variety, many of the grains and vegetables of the present century being then unknown. Flax was a staple, and much money was made from the cultivation of anise and saffron. Everywhere were vineyards, and in the fields were to be seen hops, wheat, horsebeans, turnips, teazel and rape. The houses were much inferior to those of to-day, but they were not deficient in interior comforts. Many a German matron of the present time exhibits with pride the curiously carved chairs and cupboards, ornamented spinning wheels, and treasures of earthernware and drinking vessels that, having escaped the vicissitudes of the years gone by, have been handed down to her as precious heirlooms of those ancient days.

Yes, it was a happy time for the common people of Germany. The scars of war were healed. Of course they had their burdens. The nobles were oppressive. There was the door tax, the window-tax, and other heavy impositions, and much that was earned must go to support the comforts and luxuries of the castles and manorial houses. But as the people knew nothing of true liberty they were satisfied and happy in following their peaceful avocations. They gave no thought to war, or to the fact that the politics of Germany was a bubbling cauldron of conflicting interests, on the verge of boiling over, and little they recked of the horrors in store for them in the near future. What did they know of the bloody horoscope that was being cast by the disputes of the house of Hapsburg and the German rulers, or of the princes that were unfurling the banners of the two hostile religious parties? In Catholic communities the inhabitants were well content with their parish priests, and in the Protestant towns and hamlets the faithful pastors filled all the needs of the people. In the village Gasthaus, in the evenings, there may have been talk of fighting and suffering in Bohemia ; but it mattered little to the villagers, as they drank their beer and smoked their porcelain pipes, except as furnishing subject for chat and wonder. As the months and years rolled on, rumors grew more rife, and localities named grew much nearer; by 1623 it was in Thuringia that conflicts were reported; by the next year there was no longer any doubt that Middle Ger

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