Famous Americans of Recent Times

by James Parton

The great day in the life of a German child is that of his confirmation, which usually occurs in his fourteenth year. The ceremony, which was performed at Waldorf every two years, was a festival at once solemn and joyous. The children, long prepared beforehand by the joint labors of minister, schoolmaster, and parents, walk in procession to the church, the girls in white, the boys in their best clothes, and there, after the requisite examinations, the rite is performed, and the Sacrament is administered. The day concludes with festivity. Confirmation also is the point of division between childhood and youth,—between absolute dependence and the beginning of responsibility. After confirmation, the boys of a German peasant take their place in life as apprentices or as servants; and the girls, unless their services are required at home, are placed in situations. Childhood ends, maturity begins, when the child has tasted for the first time the bread and wine of the Communion. Whether a boy then becomes an apprentice or a servant depends upon whether his parents have been provident enough to save a sum of money sufficient to pay the usual premium required by a master as compensation for his trouble in teaching his trade. This premium varied at that day from fifty dollars to two hundred, according to the difficulty and respectability of the vocation. A carpenter or a blacksmith might be satisfied with a premium of sixty or seventy dollars, while a cabinet-maker would demand a hundred, and a musical instrument maker or a clock-maker two hundred.

On Palm Sunday, 1777, when he was about fourteen years of age, John Jacob Astor was confirmed. He then consulted his father upon his future. Money to apprentice him there was none in the paternal coffers. The trade of butcher he knew and disliked. Nor was he inclined to accept as his destiny for life the condition of servant or laborer. The father, who thought the occupation of butcher one of the best in the world, and who needed the help of his son, particularly in the approaching season of harvest, paid no heed to the entreaties of the lad, who saw himself condemned without hope to a business which he loathed, and to labor at it without reward.

A deep discontent settled upon him. The tidings of the good fortune of his brothers inflamed his desire to seek his fortune in the world. The news of the Revolutionary War, which drew all eyes upon America, and in which the people of all lands sympathized with the struggling colonies, had its effect upon him. He began to long for the "New Land," as the Germans then styled America; and it is believed in Waldorf that soon after the capture of Burgoyne had spread abroad a confidence in the final success of the colonists, the youth formed the secret determination to emigrate to America. Nevertheless, he had to wait three miserable years longer, until the surrender of Cornwallis made it certain that America was to be free, before he was able to enter upon the gratification of his desire.

In getting to America, he displayed the same sagacity in adapting means to ends that distinguished him during his business career in New York. Money he had never had in his life, beyond a few silver coins of the smallest denomination. His father had none to give him, even if he had been inclined to do so. It was only when the lad was evidently resolved to go that he gave a slow, reluctant consent to his departure. Waldorf is nearly three hundred miles from the seaport in Holland most convenient for his purpose. Despite the difficulties, this penniless youth formed the resolution of going down the Rhine to Holland, there taking ship for London, where he would join his brother, and, while earning money for his passage to America, learn the language of the country to which he was destined. It appears that he dreaded more the difficulties of the English tongue than he did those of the long and expensive journey; but he was resolved not to sail for America until he had acquired the language, and saved a little money beyond the expenses of the voyage. It appears, also, that there prevailed in Baden the belief that Americans were exceedingly selfish and inhospitable, and regarded the poor emigrant only in the light of prey. John Jacob was determined not to land among such a people without the means of understanding their tricks and paying his way. In all ways, too, he endeavored to get a knowledge of the country to which he was going.

With a small bundle of clothes hung over his shoulder upon a stick, with a crown or two in his pocket, he said the last farewell to his father and his friends, and set out on foot for the Rhine, a few miles distant. Valentine Jeune, his old schoolmaster, said, as the lad was lost to view: "I am not afraid of Jacob; he '11 get through the world. He has a clear head and everything right behind the ears." He was then a stout, strong lad of nearly seventeen, exceedingly well made, though slightly undersized, and he had a clear, composed, intelligent look in the eyes, which seemed to ratify the prediction of the schoolmaster. He strode manfully out of town, with tears in his eyes and a sob in his throat,—for he loved his father, his friends, and his native village, though his lot there had been forlorn enough. While still in sight of Waldorf, he sat down under a tree and thought of the future before him and the friends he had left. He there, as he used to relate in after-life, made three resolutions: to be honest, to be industrious, and not to gamble,—excellent resolutions, as far as they go. Having sat awhile under the tree, he took up his bundle and resumed his journey with better heart.

It was by no means the intention of this sagacious youth to walk all the way to the sea-coast. There was a much more convenient way at that time of accomplishing the distance, even to a young man with only two dollars in his pocket. The Black Forest is partly in Astor's native Baden. The rafts of timber cut in the Black Forest, instead of floating down the Rhine in the manner practised in America, used to be rowed by sixty or eighty men each, who were paid high wages, as the labor was severe.

Large numbers of stalwart emigrants availed themselves of this mode of getting from the interior to the sea-coast, by which they earned their subsistence on the way and about ten dollars in money. The tradition in Waldorf is, that young Astor worked his passage down the Rhine, and earned his passage-money to England as an oarsman on one of these rafts. Hard as the labor was, the oarsmen had a merry time of it, cheering their toil with jest and song by night and day. On the fourteenth day after leaving home, our youth found himself at a Dutch seaport, with a larger sum of money than he had ever before possessed. He took passage for London, where he landed a few days after, in total ignorance of the place and the language. His brother welcomed him with German warmth, and assisted him to procure employment,—probably in the flute and piano manufactory of Astor and Broadwood.

As the foregoing brief account of the early life of John Jacob Astor differs essentially from any previously published in the United States, it is proper that the reader should be informed of the sources whence we have derived information so novel and unexpected. The principal source is a small biography of Astor published in Germany about ten years ago, written by a native of Baden, a Lutheran clergyman, who gathered his material in Waldorf, where were then living a few aged persons who remembered Astor when he was a sad and solitary lad in his father's disorderly house. The statements of this little book are confirmed by what some of the surviving friends and descendants of Mr. Astor in New York remember of his own conversation respecting his early days. He seldom spoke of his life in Germany, though he remembered his native place with fondness, revisited it in the time of his prosperity, pensioned his father, and forgot not Waldorf in his will; but the little that he did say of his youthful years accords with the curious narrative in the work to which we have alluded. We believe the reader may rely on our story as being essentially true.

Astor brought to London, according to our quaint Lutheran, "a pious, true, and godly spirit, a clear understanding, a sound youthful elbow-grease, and the wish to put it to good use." During the two years of his residence in the British metropolis, he strove most assiduously for three objects: 1. To save money; 2. To acquire the English language; 3. To get information respecting America. Much to his relief and gratification, he found the acquisition of the language to be the least of his difficulties. Working in a shop with English mechanics, and having few German friends, he was generally dependent upon the language of the country for the communication of his desires; and he was as much surprised as delighted to find how many points of similarity there were between the two languages. In about six weeks, he used to say, he could make himself understood a little in English, and long before he left London he could speak it fluently. He never learned to write English correctly in his life, nor could he ever speak it without a decided German accent; but he could always express his meaning with simplicity and force, both orally and in writing. Trustworthy information respecting America, in the absence of maps, gazetteers, and books of travel, was more difficult to procure. The ordinary Englishman of that day regarded America with horror or contempt as perverse and rebellious colonies, making a great to-do about a paltry tax, and giving "the best of kings" a world of trouble for nothing. He probably heard little of the thundering eloquence with which Fox, Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan were nightly defending the American cause in the House of Commons, and assailing the infatuation of the Government in prosecuting a hopeless war. As often, however, as our youth met with any one who had been in America, he plied him with questions, and occasionally he heard from his brother in New York. Henry Astor was already established, as a butcher on his own account, wheeling home in a wheelbarrow from Bull's Head his slender purchases of sheep and calves. But the great difficulty of John Jacob in London was the accumulation of money. Having no trade, his wages were necessarily small. Though he rose with the lark, and was at work as early as five in the morning,—though he labored with all his might, and saved every farthing that he could spare,—it was two years before he had saved enough for his purpose. In September, 1783, he possessed a good suit of Sunday clothes, in the English style, and about fifteen English guineas,—the total result of two years of unremitting toil and most pinching economy; and here again charity requires the remark that if Astor the millionaire carried the virtue of economy to an extreme, it was Astor the struggling youth in a strange land who learned the value of money.

In that month of September, 1783, the news reached London that Dr. Franklin and his associates in Paris, after two years of negotiation, had signed the definitive treaty which completed the independence of the United States. Franklin had been in the habit of predicting that as soon as America had become an independent nation, the best blood in Europe, and some of the finest fortunes, would hasten to seek a career or an asylum in the New World. Perhaps he would have hardly recognized the emigration of this poor German youth as part of the fulfilment of his prophecy. Nevertheless, the news of the conclusion of the treaty had no sooner reached England than young Astor, then twenty years old, began to prepare for his departure for the "New Land," and in November he embarked for Baltimore. He paid five of his guineas for a passage in the steerage, which entitled him to sailors' fare of salt beef and biscuit. He invested part of his remaining capital in seven flutes, and carried the rest, about five pounds sterling, in the form of money.