German Palatines

Political controversy

Queen Anne of Great Britain

During the reign of Queen Anne (1702–1714), political polarization increased. Immigration and asylum had long been debated, from coffee-houses to the floor of Parliament, and the Poor Palatines were inevitably brought into the political crossfire.^[6]

For the Whigs, who controlled Parliament, these immigrants provided an opportunity to increase Britain’s workforce. Only two months before the German influx, Parliament had enacted the Foreign Protestants Naturalization Act 1708, whereby foreign Protestants could pay a small fee to become naturalized. The rationale was the belief that an increased population created more wealth, and that Britain’s prosperity could increase with the accommodation of certain foreigners. Britain had already benefited from French Huguenot refugees, as well as the Dutch (or “Flemish”) exiles, who helped revolutionize the English textile industry.^[7] Similarly, in an effort to increase the sympathy and support for these expatriates, many Whig tracts and pamphlets described the Palatines as “refugees of conscience” and victims of Catholic oppression and intolerance. Louis XIV of France had become infamous for the persecution of Protestants within his realm. The invasion and destruction of the Rhineland region by his forces was considered by many in Britain as a sign that the Palatines were likewise objects of his religious tyranny. With royal support, the Whigs formulated a charity brief to raise money for the “Poor Distressed Palatines”, who had grown too numerous to be supported by the Crown alone.^[8]

The Tories and members of the High Church Party (those who sought greater religious uniformity), were dismayed by the numbers of Poor Palatines amassing in the fields of Southeast London. Long-standing opponents of naturalization, the Tories condemned the Whig assertions that the immigrants would be beneficial to the economy, as they were already an acute financial burden. Similarly, many who worried for the security of the Church of England were concerned about the religious affiliations of these German families, especially after it was revealed that many (perhaps more than 2,000) were Catholic.^[9] Although the majority of the Catholic Germans were immediately sent back across the English Channel, many English thought their presence disproved the religious refugee status of the Poor Palatines.

The author Daniel Defoe was a major spokesman, who attacked the critics of the government’s policy. Defoe’s Review, a tri-weekly journal dealing usually with economic matters, was for two months dedicated to denouncing opponents’ claims that the Palatines were disease-ridden, Catholic bandits who had arrived in England “to eat the Bread out of the Mouths of our People.”^[10] In addition to dispelling rumors and propounding the benefits of an increased population, Defoe advanced his own ideas on how the Poor Palatines should be “disposed”.

Dispersal

Not long after the Palatines' arrival, the Board of Trade was charged with finding a means for their dispersal. Contrary to the immigrants, who wanted to be transported to the colonies, most schemes involved settling them within the British Isles, either on uninhabited lands in England or in Ireland (where they could bolster the numbers of the Protestant minority). Most officials involved were reluctant to send the Germans to the colonies due to the cost, and to the belief that they would be more beneficial if kept in Britain. Since the majority of the Poor Palatines were husbandmen, vinedressers and laborers, it was widely felt that they would be better suited in agricultural areas. There were some attempts to disperse them in neighboring towns and cities.^[11] Ultimately, large-scale settlement plans came to nothing, and the government sent Palatines piecemeal to various regions in England and Ireland. These attempts mostly failed, and many of the Palatines returned from Ireland to London within a few months, in far worse condition than when they had left.^[12]

The commissioners finally acquiesced and sent numerous families to New York to produce naval stores. The Germans transported to New York in the summer of 1710 totaled about 2800 people in ten ships, the largest group of immigrants to enter the colony before the American Revolution. Because of their refugee status and weakened condition, as well as shipboard diseases, they had a high rate of fatality. Another 300-some Palatines made it to the Carolinas. Despite the failure of the Naval Stores effort and the unfulfilled promises of land to the Palatines, they had reached the New World and were determined to stay. Their descendants are scattered across the United States and Canada.

The experience with the Poor Palatines discredited the Whig philosophy of naturalization, and figured in political debates as an example of the pernicious effects of offering asylum to refugees. Once the Tories returned to power, they retracted the Act of Naturalization, which they claimed had lured the Palatines to England (though few had in fact become naturalized).^[13] Later attempts to reinstate an Act for Naturalization would suffer from the tarnished legacy of Britain’s first attempt to support mass immigration of foreign-born peoples.

Migration to New York

Germans had trickled into North American colonies since their earliest days. The first mass migration, however, began in 1708. Queen Anne's government had sympathy for the Protestant Germans and had invited them to go to the colonies and work in trade for passage. Official correspondence in British records shows a combined total of 13,146 refugees traveled down the Rhine and or from Amsterdam to England in the summer of 1709.^[16] More than 3500 of these were returned from England either because they were Roman Catholic or at their own request.^[17] Henry Jones, quotes an entry in a churchbook by the Pastor of Dreieichenhain that states a total of 15,313 Germans left their villages in 1709 “for the so-called New America and, of course, Carolina.” ^[18] The flood of immigration overwhelmed English resources. It resulted in major disruptions, overcrowding, famine, disease and the death of a thousand or more Palatines. It appeared the entire Palatinate would be emptied before a halt could be called to emigration.^[19] Many reasons have been given to explain why so many families left their homes for an unknown land. Knittle summarizes them: “(1) war devastation, (2) heavy taxation, (3) an extraordinarily severe winter, (4) religious quarrels, but not persecutions, (5) land hunger on the part of the elderly and desire for adventure on the part of the young, (6) liberal advertising by colonial proprietors, and finally (7) the benevolent and active cooperation of the British government.” ^[20]

No doubt the biggest impetus was the harsh, cold winter that preceded their departure. Birds froze in mid-air, casks of wine, livestock, whole vineyards were destroyed by the unremitting cold.^[21] With what little was left of their possessions, the refugees made their way on boats down the Rhine to Amsterdam, where they remained until the English government decided what to do about them. Ships were finally dispatched for them across the English Channel, and the Palatines arrived in London, where they waited longer while the British government considered its options. So many arrived that the government created a winter camp for them outside the city walls. A few were settled in England, a few more may have been sent to Jamaica and Nassau, but the greatest numbers were sent to Ireland, Carolina and especially, New York in the summer of 1710. They were obligated to work off their passage.

The Reverend Joshua Kocherthal paved the way in 1709, with a small group of fifty who settled in Newburgh, New York, on the banks of the Hudson River. “In the summer of 1710, a colony numbering 2,227 arrived in New York and were [later] located in five villages on either side of the Hudson, those upon the east side being designated as East Camp, and those upon the west, as West Camp.” ^[22] A census of these villages on May 1, 1711 showed 1194 on the east side and 583 on the west side. The total number of families was 342 and 185, respectively.^[23] About 350 Palatines had remained in New York City, and some settled in New Jersey. Others travelled down the Susquehanna, settling in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The locations of the Jersey communities correlate with the foundation of the oldest Lutheran Churches in that state, i.e., the first called Zion at New Germantown (now Oldwick), Hunterdon County, New Jersey, the so-called 'Straw Church' now called St.James at Phillipsburg, Sussex now Warren County, New Jersey and St. Paul's at Pluckamin, Bedminster Township, Somerset County, New Jersey. And Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Robert Livingston the Elder (December 13, 1654 – October 1, 1728) was a New York colonial official and first lord of Livingston Manor.

Servitude

Settlement by Palatines on the east side (East Camp) of the Hudson River was accomplished as a result of Governor Hunter's negotiations with Robert Livingston, who owned Livingston Manor in what is now Columbia County, New York. (This was not the town now known as Livingston Manor on the west side of the Hudson River). Livingston was anxious to have his lands developed. The Livingstons benefited for many years from the revenues they received as a result of this business venture. West Camp, on the other hand, was located on land the Crown had recently "repossessed" as an "extravagant grant." Pastors from both Lutheran and Reformed churches quickly began to serve the camps and created extensive records of these early settlers long before the state of New York was established or kept records.

The British Crown believed that the Palatines could work and be “useful to this kingdom, particularly in the production of naval stores, and as a frontier against the French and their Indians.” ^[24] Naval stores which the British needed were hemp, tar and pitch, poor choices for the climate and the variety of pine trees in New York State. On September 6, 1712, work was halted. “The last day of the government subsistence for most of the Palatines was September 12th.” ^[25] “Within the next five years, many Palatines moved elsewhere. Several went to Pennsylvania, others to New Jersey, settling at Oldwick or Hackensack, still others pushed a few miles south to Rhinebeck, New York, and some returned to New York City, while quite a few established themselves on Livingston Manor [where they had originally been settled]. Some forty or fifty families went to Schoharie between September 12th and October 31, 1712." ^[26] In the winter of 1712-13, six Palatines approached the Mohawk clan mothers to ask for permission to settle in the Schoharie river valley, which was a tributary of the Mohawk river.^[27] The clan mothers, moved by the story of their misery and suffering, granted the Palatines permission to settle,and in the spring of 1713 about 150 Palatine families moved into the Schoharie.^[28]

Resettlement

A report in 1718 placed 224 families of 1,021 persons along the Hudson River while 170 families of 580 persons were in Schoharie.^[29] In 1723, under Governor Burnet, 100 heads of families from the work camps were settled on 100 acres (0.40 km²) each in the Burnetsfield Patent midway in the Mohawk River Valley, just west of Little Falls. They were the first Europeans to be allowed to buy land that far west in the valley. In the winter of 1712-13, six Palatine leaders met a council of the clan mothers of the Haudenosaunee League (known as the Iroquois to the Europeans) and asked for permission to settle on their land.^[27] The Palatines did not understand that the Haudenosaunee were a matriarchal society ruled over by the clan mothers who headed the 9 clans that made up the Five Nations, and were surprised to be meeting a council of clan mothers instead of the male sachems they had expected.

After hearing Palatine stories of poverty and suffering, the clan mothers granted permission for the Palatines to come.^[27] The clan mothers also had ulterior motives. The 17th century had seen the Haudenosaunee take massive population losses as European diseases to which they had no immunity had greatly reduced their numbers; the Haudenosaunee had spent much of the 17th century engaged in wars with the French and other Indigenous nations; and finally in the 1670s-80s French Jesuit missionaries had converted thousands to Catholicism and then persuaded the converts to settle outside of Montreal.^[30] Historians call the Haudenosaunee who moved to New France the Canadian Iroquois, while those who remained behind are described as the League Iroquois. At the beginning of the 17th century, there were about 2,000 Haudenosaunee living in the Mohawk River Valley and by the beginning of the 18th century, the population was down to about 600 people, placing them in a weak position to resist land grabs by British settlers.^[30] The governors of New York had showed a tendency to grant Haudenosaunee land to British settlers without permission, and from the viewpoint of the clan mothers, having the poor Palatines lease their land was a preemptive way of blocking the governors from granting their land to land-hungry immigrants from the British isles.^[30] In their turn, the British authorities believed that the Palatines would serve as a protective barrier, providing a reliable militia who would stop French and Indigenous raiders coming down from New France (modern Canada).^[31] The Palatine communities gradually extended along both sides of the Mohawk River to Canojoharie. Their legacy was reflected in place names, such as German Flatts and Palatine Bridge, and the few colonial-era churches and other buildings that survived the Revolution. They taught their children German and used the language in churches for nearly 100 years. Many Palatines married only within the German community until the 19th century.

The Palatines settled on the frontiers of New York province in Kanienkeh ("the land of the flint"), the homeland of the Five Nations of the Iroquois League (becoming the Six Nations when the Tuscarora joined the League in 1722) in what is now upstate New York, and formed a very close relationship with the Iroquois. The American historian David Preston described the lives of the Palatine community as being "interwoven" with the Iroquois community.^[32] One Palatine leader declared about the relationship of his community with the Haudenosaueeee that: "We intend to live our lifetime together as brothers".^[32] The Haudenosauee taught the Palatines about the best places to gather wild edible nuts together with roots and berries, and how to grow the "Three Sisters", as the Iroquois called their staple foods of beans, squash and corn.^[30] One Palatine leader, Johann Conrad Weiser, had his son raised by a Mohawk family to order to provide the Palatines with both an interpreter and a friend who might bridge the gap between the two communities, which were so different.^[30] The Palatines came from the patriarchal society of Europe whereas the Haudenosaunee had a matriarchal society, where the clan mothers were the leaders who selected the sachems and the chiefs. The Haudenosaunee means "the People of the Longhouse" while Iroquois is a derogatory Basque-Algonquin word for them meaning the "killer people" that is considered offensive by the Haudenosaunee.

The Haudenosaunee admired the work ethic of the Palatines, and often rented their land to the hard-working immigrants.^[30] In their turn, the Palatines taught Haudenosaunee women how to use iron plows and hoes to farm the land together with how to grow oats and wheat.^[30] For the Haudenosaunee, farming was woman's work as it was sole responsibility of Haudenosaunee women to plant, grow and harvest the crops, and they considered the Palatine men to be unmanly because they worked the fields. Additionally, the Palatines brought sheep, cows, and pigs to Kanienkeh.^[30] With increased agricultural production and money coming in as rent, the Haudenosaunee began to sell the surplus food to merchants in Albany.^[30] Many clan mothers and chiefs, who had grown wealthy enough to live at about the same standard of living as a middle-class family in Europe, abandoned their traditional log houses for European style houses.^[30]

In 1756, one Palatine farmer brought 38,000 beads of black wampum during a trip to Schenectady, which was enough to make dozens upon dozens of wampum belts, which were commonly presented to Indigenous leaders as gifts when being introduced.^[32] Preston noted that the purchasing of so much wampum reflected the very close relations the Palatines had with the Iroquois.^[32] The Palatines used their metal-working skills to repair weapons that belonged to the Iroquois, built mills that ground corn for the Iroquois to sell to merchants in New York and New France, and their churches were used for Christian Iroquois weddings and baptisms.^[33] There were also a number of intermarriages between the two communities.^[33] Dockstader, a surname common in some of the rural areas of south-western Germany is also a common Iroquois surname.^[33]

Preston wrote that the popular stereotype of United States frontier relations between white settler colonists and Native Americans as being from two racial worlds that hardly interacted did not apply to the Palatine-Iroquois relationship, writing that the Palatines lived between Iroquois settlements in Kanienkeh, and the two peoples "...communicated, drank, worked, worshipped and traded together, negotiated over land use and borders, and conducted their diplomacy separate from the colonial governments".^[34] Some Palatines learned to perform the Haudenosaunee Condolence Ceremony, where condolences were offered to those whose friends and family had died, which was the most important of all Iroquois rituals.^[30] The Canadian historian James Paxton wrote the Palatines and Haudenosaunee "...visited each other's homes, conducted small-scale trade and socialized in taverns and trading posts".^[30] Unlike the frontier in Pennsylvania and in the Ohio river valley, where white settlers and the Indians had bloodstained relations, leading to hundreds of murders, relations between whites and Indians in Kanienkeh were friendly; between 1756-1774 only 5 whites were killed by the Haudenosaunee while 6 Haudenosaunee were killed by the British Army or settlers.^[35] The New York frontier had no equivalent to the Paxton Boys, a vigilante group of Scots-Irish settlers on the Pennsylvania frontier who waged a near-genocidal campaign against the Susquehannock Indians in 1763-64, and the news of the killing perpetuated by the Paxton Boys was received with horror by both whites and Indians on the New York frontier.^[35]

However, the Iroquois had initially allowed the Palatines to settle in Kanienkeh out of sympathy for their poverty, and expected them to ultimately contribute for being allowed to live on the land when they become wealthier. In a letter to Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent of Northern Indian Affairs, in 1756, Oneida sachems and clan mothers complained that they had allowed the Palatines to settle in Kanienkeh out of "compassion to their poverty and expected when they could afford it that they would pay us for their land", going on to write now that the Palatines had "grown rich they not only refuse to pay us for our land, but impose on us in everything we have to do with them".^[33] Likewise, many Iroquois sachems and clan mothers complained that their young people were too fond of drinking the beer brewed by the Palatines, charging that alcohol was a destructive force in their community.^[36]

Despite the intentions of the British, the Palatines showed little inclination to fight for the British Crown, and during the Seven Years' War, tried to maintain neutrality. After the Battle of Fort Bull and the Fall of Fort Oswego to the French, German Flatts and Fort Herkimer become the northern frontier of the British Empire in North America, causing the British Army to rush regiments to the frontier.^[37] One Palatine, Hans Josef Herkimer, complained about the British troops in his vicinity in a letter written in broken English to the authorities: "Tieranniece [tyranny] over me they think proper...Not only Infesting my House and taking my rooms at their pleashure [pleasure] but takes what they think Nesserarie [necessary] of my Effects".^[37]

The Palatines sent messages via the Oneida to Quebec City to tell the governor-general of New France, the Marquis de Vaudreuil of their wish to be neutral while at the same time traded with the French via Indian middlemen.^[38] An Oneida Indian passed on a message to Vaudreuil in Quebec City, saying: "We inform you of a message given to us by a Nation that is neither English, nor French nor Indian and inhabitants the lands around us...That Nation has proposed to annex us to itself in order to afford each other mutual help and protection against the English".^[31] Vaundreuil in reply stated "I think I know that nation. There is reason to believe they are the Palatines".^[31] Another letter sent by the Palatines to Vaudreuil in late 1756 declared that they :"looked upon themselves in danger as well as the Six Nations, they are determined to live and die by them & therefore begged the protection of the French".^[38]

Vaudreuil informed the Palatines that neutrality was not an option and they could either submit to the King of France or face war.^[38] The Palatines tried to stall, causing Vaudreuil to warn them that this "trick will avail nothing; for whenever I think proper, I shall dispatch my warriors to Corlac [the French name for New York]".^[31] At one point, the Oneida sent a message to Vaudreuil asking that "not to due [do] them [the Palatines] any hurt as they were no more white people but Oneidas and that their blood was mixed with the Indians".^[33] Preston wrote that the letter may have been exaggerating somewhat, but interracial and intercultural sexual relations are known to have occurred on the frontier.^[33]

On 10 November 1757, the Oneida sachem Canaghquiesa warned the Palatines that a force of French and Indigenous combatants were on their way to attack, telling them that their women and children should head for the nearest fort, but Canaghquiesa noted that they "laughed at me and slapping their hands on their Buttucks [buttocks] said they did not value the Enemy".^[39] On 12 November 1757, a raiding party of about 200 Mississauga and Canadian Iroquois warriors together with 65 Troupes de la Marine and Canadien militiamen fell on the settlement of German Flatts at about 3:00 am, burning the town down to the ground, killing about 40 Palatines while taking 150 back to New France.^[40] One Palatine leader, Johan Jost Petri, writing from his prison in Montreal, complained about how "our people have been taken by the Indians and the French (but for the most part by our own Indians) and by our own fault".^[41] Afterwards, a group of Oneida and Tuscaroras came to the ruins of the German Flatts to offer food and shelter for the survivors and to bury the dead.^[34] In a letter to Johnson, Canaghquiesa wrote "we have condoled with our Brethren the Germans on the loss of their Friends who have been lately killed and taken by the Enemy...that Ceremony was over three days ago".^[34]

Legacy

Because of the concentration of Palatine refugees in New York, the term "Palatine" became associated with German. "Until the American War of Independence 'Palatine' henceforth was used indiscriminately for all 'emigrants of German tongue.'" ^[42]