The Immigrants, Part I: The Germans

The more things change...

Growing up in Arizona, issues surrounding immigration have always been bubbling in the background - occasionally erupting onto the national stage. The arguments that get thrown around during those eruptions tend to follow familiar patterns. Any objective analysis of those arguments can see that the root cause of the controversy is always about the same thing: Fear of the Other. Whether the specific conversation is about trade, possibility of war, or even policies based in outright racism, the arguments revolve around the definition of the divide between  "Us" and "Them".

Growing up in the 1980s & 1990s, there was also an ever-present, underlying tension between two cultures living side by side and vying for the right to define who "Us" and "Them" might be. The first was the inclusive, celebratory culture of the post-1960s; these were the people who came of age during the Civil Rights era and who embraced the notion of the "melting pot". Their attitudes were evident in the school curricula I remember from early public school days and in the PBS children's programming (especially from the Children's Television Workshop) - and in my church, in the form of songs like "Jesus Loves the Little Children" and lessons about mission work in Asia and Africa.

The second culture was less noticeable in my childhood. It really came to my notice when I got to college, and saw the rise of 24-hour news cycle and growth of the talk radio media market giving a platform to people who had long existed on the fringes. These figures questioned ideas of "multiculturalism" and "diversity" that I personally had always taken for granted as a common part of American culture. They forced me to question my assumptions, and I quickly determined that they were conflating the notions of equality and fair treatment with something called "political correctness" in order to demonize those ideas. They championed the notion that rather than being a sign of common decency, celebrating different cultures was some kind of progressive plot to erode the primacy of "real" Americans.

It probably goes without saying, but this was not a new idea. It is even older than the concept of a "real American". These ideas and arguments are just a restatement of the "us vs. them" attitude that has plagued Americans since colonial times.

Words and Identity

Though the first permanent settlement in the New World was English, all of the major players in Europe began setting up colonies along the Atlantic coast. The Dutch, French, Spanish, and Germans all sent people over in the first century or two after Columbus's journey.  Whether they were sent as explorers, settlers, prisoners, refugees, governors, traders, or even as military forces, it is critical that modern readers understand that those people would not have necessarily identified themselves with a nation the way we label them today.

Not only were the boundaries between German territory and French territory (just for one major example) very fluid, but the very definition of what these territories were was evolving as the feudal system decayed. The concept of a "nation" was still new, and not broadly well understood even by those who championed it. The New World colonists who spoke German didn't identify with a concept of "Germany" - not as a national identity - and once they settled throughout the New World, tending their new homes and raising their families was their main concern. They tended to keep to themselves as much as possible as political control over their communities shifted from the French to the British and back.

There are a number of parallels between the way English colonists viewed these German people and the way modern Americans view Hispanic and Latino neighbors. The most visible divide, then as now, seemed to be along language boundaries.

Benjamin Franklin wrote of the German-speaking settlers in the Pennsylvania, after he began serving in the Pennsylvania legislative assembly:

"Few of their children in the country learn English; they import many books from Germany... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German. They begin of late to make all their bonds and other legal writings in their own language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our courts, where the German business so increases that there is continual need of interpreters; and I suppose in a few years they will also be necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our legislators what the other half say."

In other places, he wrote of the impossibility of the two cultures mixing, and contrasted the German standards of beauty for their wives against that of the English in terms which, if he were saying them about Latinos today, would have likely scuttled his political career. And yet, two things stand out to me about this:

1. The same Ben Franklin who held and expressed these opinions, and predicted what seemed like increasing enmity within his own colony, went on to champion the fundamental idea of unity between the colonies that allowed the Continental Army and Congress to force the break with Britain and found the United States.
2. He was wrong about the future. When Franklin writes of the "continual need of interpreters" he seems to forecast an untenable, unbridgeable split between English and German speakers - which clearly did not come to pass.

The lesson I take from this is that arguments warning of seemingly permanent, trending, and eternally intolerable differences between groups of people should not be treated with the weight that people give them. They are specious arguments that assume people aren't capable of growing, changing, or of setting aside their differences to come together for their common good when necessary.

Or, to put it another way - the words we use to identify ourselves are always just words. When it comes to how we live and how we treat each other as neighbors, words aren't what matters.

Melting Pot

As for the mixing of cultures, I think it's evident that our past (Franklin's future) demonstrates how just a few short generations can change the entire social landscape. The Germans that Franklin was writing about almost certainly included my own German ancestors. The Witters (probably originally a variation of "Weider") who came to Arizona via Kansas after the Civil War migrated from Fulton county, Pennsylvania, where they were married to Pipers (Pfeiffers), Volkman, Shrivers (Schreibers), Zollingers, Howers, and Kerschners.

As I said in "Faiths of Our Fathers", most of them were probably Lutheran. Like other communities formed around religious ideas, they struggled with finding the right balance between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. And the dismay that Franklin expressed over the character of new immigrants wasn't expressed only by Englishmen. Henry Muhlenberg, Lutheran pastor, and immigrant from Germany (arrived 1742, writing in the 1750s):

"It is almost impossible to describe how few good and how many exceptionally godless, wicked people have come into this country every year. The whole country is being flooded with ordinary, extraordinary and unprecedented wickedness and crimes... Our old residents are mere stupid children in sin when compared with the new arrivals! Oh, what a fearful thing it is to have so many thousands of unruly and brazen sinners come into this free air and unfenced country!"

But for every example of conflict and discomfort with the Other, there are also stories of acceptance and tolerance in abundance.

Take the story of my ancestor, Leopold Zindle, a Hessian soldier during the Revolutionary War who spent his four years as a prisoner of war winning friends and earning a place in his New Jersey community. The rhetoric people today throw around about being "invaded" from our neighbor to the south looks rather silly in comparison to actual soldiers sent here to subdue the rebellion - and yet Leopold was accept and honored as a citizen here.

Sadly, the story doesn't end there. American immigration problems continued as different groups "threatened" to swarm in and "overrun" the place. Happily (for me, anyway) we've never successfully fenced ourselves off from Them, or many of Us wouldn't exist!

Me No Go; Me Can Die First

In 1776, the American revolutionary colonists built several forts to defend the western banks of the Hudson river, one of which was located at Paulus Hook. After suffering defeats in New York City, the rebels abandoned Paulus Hook and the British occupied it. The fort was a naturally defensible position that guarded the gateway to New Jersey.

In mid-summer 1779, a flamboyant 23-year-old Princeton University graduate, Major Henry Lee, recommended to General George Washington a daring plan to attack the fort, in what became known as the Battle of Paulus Hook. The assault was planned to begin shortly after midnight on August 19, 1779. Lee led a force of about 300 men, some of whom got lost during the march, through the swampy, marshy land. The attack was late in getting started but the main contingent of the force was able to reach the fort's gate without being challenged.

Frederick II
(from Wikipedia)

They surprised the British, taking 158 prisoners, and withdrew with the approach of daylight. Despite retaining the fort and its cannons, the British lost much of their control over New Jersey. Lee was rewarded by the Second Continental Congress with a gold medal, the only non-general to receive such an award during the war.

Among the prisoners were a number of German soldiers, known as Hessians. Like other German princes were doing, Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel (a small independent country in northern Hesse) had leased 22,000 Hessian troops to his nephew George III of Great Britain to fight against the rebels in the American revolution - for about £3,191,000. They came not as individuals but in entire units with their usual uniforms, flags, weapons and officers.

General Washington needed to find some place to board a growing number of these prisoners, so he paid a visit to John Jacob Faesch of Mount Hope, New Jersey. Faesch, originally from Holland, came to the colonies around 1766 and in 1772 had built the Mt. Hope furnace. He took sides with the colonists on the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, and large quantities of cannon balls for the American army were cast at his furnace.

Erbprinz Regimental colors

While Faesch had the honor of entertaining him at his house, General Washington arranged for Faesch to take 250 Hessian prisoners to board in exchange for their work in chopping wood in Faesch's coaling job. (Making charcoal for the furnace, in other words.) Faesch erected five log houses for them, and for the four years from summer 1779 to the close of the war in April 1783, they lived and worked for him, assisting in the American war effort.

At the close of the war the British had a certain number of days to gather up these hired soldiers, and they were required to pay for every one they did not return to the old country. Among the 250 men was Leopold Zindle, who had been captured in Lee's attack on Paulus Hook.

Leopold was almost certainly a private with the Erbprinz Regiment, born in Essingen. According to writings from other Hessian soldiers, back in Europe they were told they were needed to defend the American Colonies against Indian incursions. Only after they arrived, did they discover they had been hired to fight against the American colonists, rather than the Indians. Some may have taken that deception more seriously than others; some might have gone so far as to adopt the now-independent colonists' side as their own, rather than return to serve the whims of a monarch who would sell their services under such pretexts. Around 5,000 of the 30,000 soldiers sent to fight the colonists elected to stay in the newly independent country after the war.

William F. Wiggins, who knew Leopold very well, and was at his funeral, related this incident¹:

When the British officer visited Mt. Hope for the purpose of getting these men he commanded Zindle to go with him. Zindle replied, "Me no go; me can die first." This so aroused the officer that he drew his sword and struck Zindle in the breast, breaking the weapon in three pieces -- one remaining in Zindle's body, one in the officers hand and one falling to the ground.  Zindle still persisted in saying "Me no go, me die first." This occurred in the presence of a large crowd, and seeing the resistance which Zindle made, and the many friends he had, the officer was obliged to retreat to save his own life.

Just a few years later, Leopold married Anna Margareta Schaak in the Zion Lutheran Church of Oldwick at Mount Hope. Their son Charles eventually had a daughter named Mary Elizabeth who married a bloomer foreman (iron worker) named Samuel L. Tuttle. Mary and Samuel were the grandparents of John Jackson Tuttle, one of "My Sixteen," which makes Leopold my 6th great-grandfather.

Leopold died in 1820, an old man who was respected in his community. Presumably, he never returned to Germany.