Week 25: Groups - Palatine Germans - Schaffer, Seibel, Beringer, Stahl

Week 25: Groups - Palantine Germans -  Schaffer, Seibel, Beringer, Stahl

Let me begin my story by describing my ethnicity: 39% Scotland, 35% England and Northwestern Europe, 17% Ireland, 7% Sweden, and 2% Germanic Europe. I believe I have, at long last, discovered the origins of my 2% Germanic Europe.

 A recent (though not fully proven) connection in my family tree has led me to discover a fascinating group: the Palatine Germans.

According to records, in the summer of 1710, a group numbering 2,227 souls arrived in New York harbor on ten British ships and after several months of quarantine on Nutten Island (present day Governors Island), they were shipped north and located in five villages on either side of the Hudson. The villages on the west side were designated as West Camp, and those upon the east, as East Camp. A census of the villages taken in 1711 showed 583 persons on the west side and 1193 on the east side. This group of immigrants had lost at least 600 of their original members since leaving England due to disease, age and other infirmities. The total number of families was 185 in West Camp and 342 in East Camp. Pastors from both Lutheran and Reformed churches quickly began to serve the camps and created extensive records of these early settlers and their lives long before the State of New York was established or kept records.

The Palatine German connection for me is part of my maternal grandmother Elizabeth Cook’s ancestral line. It begins with four of my 7^th great grandparents living in three different principalities of the Holy Roman Empire (all recognized as being in Germany today). They migrated north along the Rhine River to England in 1709 expecting free transportation to the North American British colonies but wound up signing contracts of indentured servitude to get there. Here are my first German ancestors to get to America.

1.       1.  Justus Heinrich Schaffer was born in Waldeck, Ansbach, Bavaria, in 1674. He married Susannah Anne Seibel in West Camp, New York (Saugerties today) on September 5^th, 1710. As a side note, I was stationed with my family in Ansbach, Germany in 1975-76, while assigned to the 1^st Armored Division. Today it is a beautiful area with many small towns and prosperous farms.

2.       2.  Susannah Anne Seibel was born in Henweiler, Rhineland-Pfalz, in 1680. She and Justus Heinrich Schaffer had seven children in 16 years. Their oldest daughter, Anna Elizabeth, was born on the ship transporting them from England to New York. Their oldest son, Johann Heinrich Schaffer, became my 6^th great grandfather.

3.       3.  Conradus Beringer was born in Dreidorf, Lahn-Dill-Kreis Hessen, in 1685. He married Anna Elisabetha Stahl in Rhinebeck, New York on October 4^th, 1710.

4.       4.  Anna Elisabetha Stahl was born in the same town as her husband, Dreidorf, Lahn-Dill-Kreis Hessen, in 1691. She and Conradus Beringer had nine children in 15 years. Their oldest daughter, Maria Elizabetha Beringer, became my 6^th great grandmother.

 

Two of my 6^th great grandparents were born within a year or two after their parent’s (above) arrival in West Camp/East Camp in 1710 on the Hudson River in the Province of New York.

1.     1.  Johann Heinrich Schaffer was born in West Camp on January 27, 1712. He married Maria Elisabetha in Dutchess County, New York circa 1734.

2.     2.  Maria Elisabetha Beringer was born in Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, New York on December 30, 1711. She and Johann Heinrich had nine children in 11 years. Their 5^th child, Anna Maria, became my 5^th great grandmother.

 

Two of my 5^th great grandparents were both born in the Province of New York but in two different worlds even though their locations were only 100 miles apart. One, a small town in the rural Hudson Valley and the second, New York City.

1.     1.  Mathias Hyer was born in New York City in 1740. He married Anna Maria Schaffer on February 2, 1760 in New York City.

2.     2.  Anna Maria Schaffer was born in Rhinebeck, probably in 1740, a few months before her christening on January 4^th, 1741. She and Mathias had four children in 12 years.

The marriage of Anna Maria Schaffer to Mathias Hyer, above, appears to have wedded my maternal grandmother’s ancestral Hyer line with Anna Maria’s Palatine German line. One of their four sons, my 4^th great grandfather Daniel Hyer (1775-), married Catherine Bokee (1780-) circa 1797. Their oldest daughter, my 3^rd great grandmother Maria Hyer (1798-1861) and her husband Alexander Tulloch are the oldest ancestors in my maternal grandmother’s tree that I am sure about. I have more research to do regarding Mathias Hyer, and Daniel Hyer to finish proving my family’s Palatine German connection. Thanks to researching for this blog entry, I now know where to focus my future research to ensure my German heritage.

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The Palatine Germans, as a group, have a fascinating back-story. First, this group represents the largest single ethnic group of immigrants to arrive in the British Colonies prior to the Revolutionary War (1776-1783). Secondly, they were from numerous principalities and duchies of the Middle Rhine River Valley in what today is Germany. For simplicity sake, they were collectively referred to as being from the Palatinate. When they first left their homes for England, there were both Protestant and Catholic farm families displaced by French invasions and famine during more than 100 years of continuous warfare. Queen Anne and her British government sympathized with “The Poor Palatines” and offered to help them by granting them citizenship in the newly organized United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Queen Anne of Great Britain

To the Queen‘s and Parliament’s surprise, some 13,500 Palatine Germans arrived in England between May and November 1709. They were housed in tents to the southwest of London and completely overwhelmed their host’s ability to rapidly resettle them.

 

Tent camps of Palatines southwest of London, 1709

To relieve the squalid conditions in the tent camps, some 3,500 immigrants were resettled on unclaimed lands in England and Ireland, but these settlements quickly failed because the Palatines desperately wanted to leave Europe and immigrate to North America for better land and a fresh start. Three thousand five hundred Catholic Palatines were returned to the Middle Rhine lands where they came from because the British Parliament was only willing to finance and resettle Protestant Palatines to strengthen their political positions abroad.

Finally, in April of 1710, Parliament agreed to send 2,800 Palatines to the Province of New York on ten British ships in exchange for their indenture to pay for their passage by producing naval stores (hemp, tar, and pitch) during the 4-7 year period of their indenture.

The indenture agreements fell completely apart by September of 1712 because the Palatines, as farmers, were unsuited for the work, and both the climate and the white pine trees of New York were incompatible with the production of naval stores. The yellow pines of the Carolinas and Georgia were the only type of pine trees suitable for producing the pine-resin products needed to waterproof Britain’s wooden sailing ships. To make a long story short, British Royal Governor Robert Hunter of New York ran out of money to pay for their subsistence and abandoned the Palatines, setting them free to go their own way. Over the next five to ten years, the majority of Palatine families left the work camps and migrated south to New York City, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and west along three river valleys of the Province of New York, the Hudson, the Schoharie, and the Mohawk.

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As you look at the sketch map below, published by renown Palatine Genealogist, Henry Z. Jones, in his two volume work, Palatine Families of New York, each black dot represents a settlement location for Palatine German immigrants after their abandonment by New York Royal Governor Hunter in 1712. According to my research, my ancestors didn’t go far, landing only a few miles south of East Camp (today known as Germantown) in Rhinebeck, New York. My wife and I laugh and say my family’s motto must have been, “If you have everything you need, why move?”