1

They applied at Hanover and not at Halle, because the American colonies were under the jurisdiction of the king of England, who was also the elector of Hanover. They succeeded in getting at least one minister, the Reverend Adolph Nussmann, and as their school-teacher, Gottfried Arndt. Both arrived safely in North Carolina in 1773, and more would probably have come had not the Revolu tionary War cut off all intercourse with Europe. Nussmann was the right man for the place. He served Organ Church (Salisbury, Rowan County), and St. John's in the present Cabarrus County, and made mission tours into Davidson, Guilford, Orange, Stokes, and Forsyth counties, "strengthening what remained." These tours tell us also where the German settlers were located. Schoolmaster Arndt was subsequently ordained and became an efficient helper. After the Revolution the Lutheran Church organization was strengthened and the number of settlers greatly increased.

The cause for the migration to North Carolina was mainly the difficulty of getting land in Pennsylvania. It could be bought from the Indians in small parcels only on the frontier, and these were quickly taken, while in the easterly sections no land could be got at all cheaply. Before the Revolution the settlers did not cross the Alleghany Mountains, but when seeking new land, they followed the mountain ranges to the south and west, keeping on their eastern slope. Speaking of the interior of North Carolina, Bernheim says: "Had a traveller from Pennsylvania visited, about forty or fifty years ago (1820-1830), portions of the present counties of Alamance, Guilford,

The names are spelled Nüszmann, and Arnd, in Hallesche Nachrichten (reprint), vol. i, p. 32.

2 Cf. also Williamson's History of North Carolina, vol. ii, p. 71.

Davidson, Rowan, Cabarrus, Stanly, Iredell, Catawba, Lincoln, and some others in the State of North Carolina, he might have believed himself to have unexpectedly come upon some part of the old Keystone State." Pennsylvania German was still spoken about 1820-30.1

An interesting chapter in the history of the German settlements in North Carolina is that of the Moravian foundations in Forsyth and Stokes counties. In 1751 the Moravians purchased one hundred thousand acres of land in North Carolina from Lord Granville, president of the Privy Council of the government of Great Britain. Bishop Spangenberg was commissioned to locate and survey the land, and accordingly he journeyed with some friends, during the month of August, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Edenton, North Carolina. He first visited the head-waters of the Catawba, New, and Yadkin rivers, but after many hardships, decided to locate farther eastward, in Forsyth County, to the east of the Yadkin River. The deed was made out for 98,985 acres, signed and sealed August 7, 1753, and the land received the name "The Wachovia Tract," in honor of one of the titles of Count Zinzendorf, who was lord of the Wachau Valley in Austria. In the autumn of 1753, twelve single brethren with a wagon and six horses, some cattle and necessary household utensils for husbandry, made the long journey from Bethlehem through the Shenandoah Valley to North Carolina. Seven new colonists arrived in 1754. They

1 Many of the family names found in Montgomery, Berks, Lehigh, and Northampton counties, Pennsylvania, are also found in the North Carolina counties, e. g., Klein (Cline), Trexler, Schlough, Seitz (Sides), Reinhardt, Bibers (Beaver), Kohlman (Coleman), Derr (Dry), Berger (Barrier), Behringer (Barringer), etc. Schwartzwälder (Blackwelder), a family of seven sons, had four of them (two killed) in the battle of Camden, South Carolina. Bernheim, p. 247, etc. 148 ff.

2 Their journey is described in a diary kept in the Archives of the Mora

founded the town of Bethabara (the house of passage) which was to be a temporary abode until the central settlement should have been built. Bishop David Nitschman visited them in 1755 and consecrated the first meetinghouse. In 1758 the Cherokee and Catawba Indians, who went to war against the Indians on the Ohio, marched through Bethabara in large companies, often several hundred. The Cherokee Indians seem to have been pleased with the treatment received, for they described Bethabara to their nation as "the Dutch Fort, where there are good people and much bread."

In 1759 the town of Bethany was laid out, three miles to the north of Bethabara, which in 1765 contained eighty-eight inhabitants, while Bethany had ten less. In 1766 the beginning was made in the building of Salem, the principal settlement of the "Unitas Fratrum" in North Carolina, five miles southward from Bethabara. Ten new colonists came over direct from Germany by way of London and Charleston, a sign of growing prominence. As at Herrnhut, Niesky, and Bethlehem, separate buildings were erected for men and women. Intermarriage was not permitted until some years after. Two other settlements followed in the Wachovia tract, one, Friesburg, in 1769-70, receiving a considerable number of settlers from Germany and Maine. The other, the Hope settlement, was founded in 1772 by colonists from Frederick, Maryland. During the Revolutionary War the Moravians vian Congregation at Salem, North Carolina, translated in the Virginia Magazine, vol. xii, pp. 134 ff. The original is printed in German American Annals, vol. iii (Americana Germanica, vol. vii), pp. 342 ff. and 369 ff. The following is the list of Moravian brethren who located in Wachovia and founded the village of Bethabara Grube, Meekly, Feldhausen, Lung, Pfeil, Beroth, all of Germany; Kalberlahn and Ingebretsen of Norway; Peterson of Denmark; Loesch of New York; Loesch of Pennsylvania, and Lischer of unknown origin. The last three have German names.

of Wachovia were exempted from military duty by the payment of a triple tax. In 1804 the Salem Female Academy was founded, which has educated the daughters of prominent families of North and South Carolina, Virginia, and other Southern States. The Moravian settlement at Salem-Winston is still the centre of the Moravian denomination in the South. Their quaint customs and beautiful music, particularly at Easter, attract a large number of admirers from all the surrounding country.

The Carolinas, as shown in the preceding pages, received a good share of early German settlers in the eighteenth century. Newbern in North Carolina was the earliest German colony, 1710, but Charleston, South Carolina, became the distributing centre of the German immigrants in the South. Germans became most numerous in the socalled Saxe-Gotha district, the present Orangeburg and Lexington counties of South Carolina, and thence spread to neighboring counties and to the westward. The interior of North Carolina likewise received an ever increasing number of German settlers, who came from Pennsylvania, beginning about 1750. The Moravians established a colony at Salem-Winston, which has flourished ever since its foundation.

CHAPTER IX

GERMAN SETTLEMENTS

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION IN GEORGIA AND IN NEW ENGLAND

The Salzburgers in Georgia, 1734 - Founding of Ebenezer - The "great embarkation," 1736- Storm at sea-John Wesley - The Moravians leave for Pennsylvania - The location for Ebenezer changed - Governor Oglethorpe's kindness - The Reverend J. M. Bolzius and the Reverend I. C. Gronau actual governors of the colony - The question of negro slavery Industries: milling and silk manufacture The building of churches A church-quarrel arbitrated by the Reverend H. M. Mühlenberg Prosperity of the colony. Waldo's interest in German colonization in New England- The founding of Waldoburg (1741) in the Broad Bay district of Maine - Sufferings of the first colonists-The war with France, 1744-The Indian massacre (1746) -Rebuilding of Waldoburg and accessions to colonists - Massachusetts attempts to encourage German immigration-Crellius and Luther as agents-Colonies in Massachusetts at Adamsdorf, Bernardsdorf, Leydensdorf - Nova Scotia - Colonies in Maine: Frankfort, Dresden, Bremen, etc.- Disputed land claims and migration to South Carolina — Germantown near Boston - Strength of the German element. GEORGIA, the farthest south of the American colonies, became the home of the Salzburgers, immediately after the earliest settlement at Savannah. They were German Protestants' exiled in 1731 by a decree of Archbishop

1 Among the Salzburgers there were descendants of the Waldensians, named after their founder Waldo, a citizen of Lyons in southern France. The sect was formed about 1170, and its chief seats were in the Alpine valleys of Piedmont, Dauphine, and Provence. They have often been included under the name Albigenses (from Albi, a district in Languedoc). These first Protestant sects in Europe, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented a purer form of Christianity than the dogmatic mother church. Wars of extermination were waged in their homes, and popes preached crusades against them (Pope Innocent III, in 1208). The Waldensians welcomed the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and as a result again suffered terrible persecutions. A portion of them were supposed to have settled in the Alpine district of Salzburg in the secluded glens and valleys of the Deferegger Mountains (now in the extreme eastern part of the Tyrol).