Fritchie, Barbara.—Immortalized by Whittier in a patriotic poem bearing her name, in which her defense of the Union flag during theCivil War is celebrated, came of an old German family which settled in Pennsylvania in colonial times, and her own life spanned the two great crises in the history of her country, the founding of the republic and the struggle for the preservation of the Union. She was born in Lancaster, Pa., December 3, 1766. Her maiden name was Hauser.
First Germans in Virginia.
First Germans in Virginia.—Jamestown, Va., the cradle of Anglo-Saxon America, is the place where the Germans are met with for the first time. The earliest incidents on record are cases of imported contract laborers. Those sent to Virginia in 1608 were skilled workmen, glass-blowers. Capt. John Smith (“John Smith, the Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, the Summer Isles,” London, 1624, p. 94), characterizing his men, gives the following account of them: “labourers ... that neuer did know what a dayes work was: except the Dutch-men (Germans) and Poles, and some dozen others.” In 1620 four millwrights from Hamburg were sent to the same settlement to erect saw mills. (“The Records of the Virginia Company,” ed. S. M. Kingsbury, Washington, 1906, I, pp. 368, 372, 428.) In England timber was still sawed by hand. (Edward Eggleston, “The Beginners of a Nation,” New York, 1896, p. 82.) The Germans who settled in the Cavalier colony in large numbers about the middle of the seventeenth century seem to have been attracted chiefly by the profitable tobacco business. The most highly educated citizen of Northampton county in 1657 was probably Dr. George Nicholas Hacke, a native of Cologne. (Philip Alexander Brue, “Social Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century,” Richmond, Va., 1907, p. 260.) Thomas Harmanson, founder of one of the most prominent Eastern Shore families, a native of Brandenburg, was naturalized October 24, 1634, by an act of the Assembly. (William and Mary College Quarterly, ed. L. G. Tyler. Williamsburg. Va., I, 1892, p. 192.) Johann Sigismund Cluverius, owner of a considerable estate in York County, was ostensibly also of German birth. (From “The First Germans in North America and the German Element of New Netherlands,” by Carl Lohr, G. E. Stechert & Co., New York, 1912.)
First German Newspapers.
First German Newspapers.—The oldest German newspaper in the U. S., the weekly “Republikaner,” at Allentown, Pa., ceased publication December 21, 1915, after an existence of 150 years. Another old paper in the German language, the “Reading Adler” ceased in 1913, after continuous publication since November 29, 1796.
German Americans in Art, Science and Literature.
German Americans in Art, Science and Literature.—An analysis of a comparatively recent edition of “Who’s Who in America” shows a list of 385 German-born persons in the United States who have achieved fame in art, science and literature, against a total of 424 English-born persons so distinguished, a remarkable bit of evidence,considering that the former were initially handicapped by the necessity of having to learn a new language in their struggle for recognition. Nor does this list include a number of Germans credited to Austro-Hungary by reason of their birth.
Dating back to the early decades of 1600 down to the present day, the German element has produced a formidable literature, ranging from travel descriptions to political works, like Schurz’s “Life of Henry Clay,” von Holst’s important work on American constitutional government, George von Bosse’s comprehensive volume on the German element, A. B. Faust’s “The German Element in the United States,” Seidensticker’s and Kapp’s books on the early settlements of Pennsylvania and New York, and further including scientific books by eminent authorities, original explorations, discussions of the fauna and zoology of certain regions, novels and contributions to the poetry of America in both languages.
One of the most active minds in political circles was Carl Nordhoff, who came to the United States with his father in 1835 at the age of five, and in his later years represented the New York “Herald” as its Washington correspondent through numerous sessions of Congress. At the age of nineteen he enlisted in the United States Navy, visited many parts of the world during his term of three years’ service, and after publishing some books about the sea, he worked for many years for Harper Brothers in a literary capacity and for ten years was employed in the editorial department of the New York “Evening Post.” In the interval he published several books, notably his popular “Politics for Young Americans” and then acted as Washington correspondent of the New York “Herald.” His chief literary work was published in 1876 as the result of a six months tour of the South, “The Cotton States,” in which he exposed the Republican misrule in the South.
While Steinmetz, Mergenthaler and Berliner rank high among American inventors, Herman George Scheffauer, George Sylvester Viereck and Herman Hagedorn are among the foremost poets of the present day, to cite those writing in the English language, without taking account of a generation of German-writing poets of the distinguished lineage of Conrad Kretz and Konrad Nies. Theodore Dreiser is one of the best-known novelists. Bret Harte had a strong German strain in his blood; Bayard Taylor had a German mother; the second name in Oliver Wendell Holmes indicates German relationship; Joaquin Miller was of German extraction; Owen Wister owns to German antecedance, while one of America’s greatest actors, Edwin Forrest, was the son of a German mother, and Mary Anderson is likewise credited with this racial admixture; Maude Powell, the famous violinist, had a German mother to whom she attributed her genius for music.