Chapter One
Johannes Valentin (John Valentine) Pressler prepared his family for what
was undoubtedly going to be a long and difficult journey. The dream was America,
and though what lay ahead was uncertain, the possible promise of a brighter
future for his family seemed to him to be worth the risk and probable hardship
that was involved. Whatever lay ahead could not be worse than what he and
his family had endured in the last few years, and what he foresaw coming
in his village in the months ahead.
It was late March or early April in the year 1709, and Valentine was forty years old. He had been married to his wife, the former Anna Christina Frantz who was five years his junior, for fourteen years. He and Christina had been blessed with five children. There were the two oldest daughters: Anna Elizabeth, who was thirteen, and Anna Gertrude, who was eleven, both old enough to help with the younger children. Then had come three sons: Andreas, who was eight, Anthonius, who was four, and the youngest son, who was just two years old. Valentine had spent his life, as had his father and grandfather, working in the vineyards of the Rhine valley. Now, all that was about to change forever.
The Kaiserdom in Speyer (Herman Kohl, Die deutsche Pfalz am deutschen Rhein (Pirmasens: Adolf Deil, 1929)
One can imagine that as Valentine stood on the banks of the Rhine, his wife
and children getting ready to start the journey down the river the next morning,
he might have watched a sunset behind the towers of the ancient medieval
cathedral. As he did so, it might have seemed to him that the sun was setting
not just on a busy day, but on the previous forty years of his life. It might
have seemed in a sense that the sun was setting on all the preceding centuries
in which his family, his father and his grandfather, had lived in the little
village where he had grown up, where he had brought his wife, and begun raising
his family. Indeed, it might have seemed to Valentine, and to many other
of his fellow travelers at that time, that the sun was setting on the history
of a people and a way of life, for it seemed there could be no future for
anyone in that war-ravaged land.
He could not remember, and neither could his father or grandfather, when
their countryside had not known the footsteps of marching armies and the
destruction which they left behind them. As soon as people had begun to recover
their lives, another army would appear on the horizon, demanding tribute,
burning their houses and churches, and leaving poverty, disease, and suffering
in their wake. Then had come the bitter winter from which the warm Spring
sun was just beginning to thaw the frozen earth. It was undoubtedly with
sadness that Valentine lay down beside his wife and children for the last
night he would spend in his homeland.
The Pressler family was only one of thousands who had come to the same conclusion
to emigrate from Germany in that Spring of 1709. Many sold their lands or
received help from relatives which enabled them at least to start the journey
down the Rhine and across the Channel to England. They had to pay their passage
and to take food for the journey, along with the means to prepare it. Perhaps
they would be able to buy food if they had money, but who knew if food would
even be available in the war-torn land. As it turned out, many of their fellow
citizens, sympathetic to their plans, did provide help and food along the
way.
Before Valentine fell asleep from exhaustion he must have kept asking himself
if anything had been forgotten. Were the necessary papers in order? Had they
forgotten anything they would need? Someone would need to look after the
two-year old toddler. He couldn't be left alone on a boat, and thank goodness
the older girls could help. Restless sleep! Next morning they boarded their
small, flat-bottomed riverboats with the goods they could carry and their
faith in God as their only possessions.
Germany was not a nation in those days in the sense that we would understand
the term. It was a loose collection of 300 small states and free cities,
each with its own autonomous ruler. The old Holy Roman Empire, to which all
these princes pledged some allegiance, was more an illusion than a reality
as a political power. Most of the people who were emigrating were from that
area of the empire known as the Palatinate, and called themselves Palatines,
but many were from the districts of Würtemberg, Darmstadt, Hanau, Franconia,
Alsace, Baden, and other areas on both sides of the Rhine from its junction
with the Moselle south to Basel in Switzerland and from Zweibrücken
next to Lorraine west to Baireuth bordering the Upper Palatinate.
The Palatinate, or Pfalz as it was called in German, consisted of
lands ruled by the Counts Palatine, a title held by a leading prince of the
Holy Roman Empire. The boundaries of the Palatinate varied according to the
political and dynastic fortunes of the Counts Palatine, who eventually became
the Electors Palatine and with other Elector princes determined the identity
of the Holy Roman Emperor. The upper Palatinate was a part of his territory
that was located in northern Bavaria, while the lower Palatinate was located
on both sides of the Rhine from the Main River south to Alsace.
In times of peace it had been a rich land with a mild climate, an area of
ancient cities and old vineyards. The vineyard-covered countryside extended
from west of the Rhine back to the densely wooded Haardt Mountains, known
as the Pfälzer Wald, or Palatinate Forest, the largest area of
continuous woodland in Germany. The cultivation of the grape was an ancient
occupation going back to the time of Charlemagne and even to the days of
the Roman Empire.
While the law required that any person wishing to emigrate from the Palatinate
must obtain permission from the Elector Palatine, many of Valentine's companions
were traveling without such permission. They were afraid, and quite rightly,
that the princely rulers of the various domains would never give permission
for such a large number of people to leave (who would pay the exorbitant
taxes?), but people also knew that their rulers would be unable to stop such
a large exodus of citizens all at one time. By early May the Elector Palatine
had forbidden anyone to leave, and at least two boats had been seized and
the fleeing passengers imprisoned.
We have no record of a passport for the Pressler family, but we do know that
they traveled as Catholics, possibly due to the fact that at that time it
was not generally thought that Catholics would be emigrating to America.
It could have been that Valentine thought it would be easier to travel as
a Catholic, and possibly he had given that information to the officials who
issued passports. Of course, as it later became clear, the boats traveling
down the Rhine that Spring were filled with many thousands of genuine Catholics
along with their Protestant neighbors.
Religion was not the primary reason for most of these people leaving their homes, although there undoubtedly were some amongst the emigrants who may have lacked such freedom in their home districts. Every army seemed to bring a change in religious affiliation, the rulers each wanting the populace to conform to their particular beliefs. Some people had adopted a "universal Christianity" which placed not too much strain on their consciences when the form of worship changed. Life seemed to go on whether there was a Catholic priest or a Protestant minister in the pulpit on Sunday mornings.
Hochstadt is located eleven miles southwest of Speyer (From The Rhineland by Walter Marsden (New York: Hastings House Publishers, 1973))
As the Pressler family traveled down the Rhine from the southern Palatinate,
they passed many of the sites where German history had taken place. At Speyer
they would have seen a city that had been occupied since Celtic times with
its ancient Romanesque cathedral, the Kaiserdom, begun under the Emperor
Konrad II in 1030 A.D. With its twin towers at both the east and west ends
of the building and its twin domes, it was the burial place of eight emperors.
No fewer than fifty Diets (meetings of the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire)
had met in Speyer, that of 1539 having confirmed the Edict of Worms which
ruled against the teachings of Martin Luther. The reaction of the Lutherans
to the Edict gave rise to the term Protestant. The cathedral had been badly
damaged in the Thirty Years War.
Beyond Ludwigshafen and the junction of the Rhine with the Neckar River where
they may have been joined by emigrants from Heidelberg, the capital of the
Palatinate, they would have arrived at Worms, which had been a garrison town
under the Romans and over the centuries a center of the German wine trade,
where they would have seen another great Romanesque cathedral begun in 1171.
At Worms more than one hundred Diet meetings had been held over the centuries.
That of 1521 had summoned Martin Luther to defend or recant his criticisms
of the Church. His ultimate refusal to recant led to his being expelled from
the Empire by the emperor Charles V and his works being burned.
Although we know nothing for certain about Valentine's father and grandfather
due to the destruction and loss of so many records during endless years of
war, it would not be far-fetched to imagine Valentine recalling, as he passed
this ancient city, what he had been taught about this history of the Reformation,
stories perhaps passed down from his father and grandfather. We can reasonably
suppose that his father might have been born near the end of the Thirty Years
War (1648) and his grandfather near its beginning (1618).
During the Reformation the Palatinate accepted Protestantism, and Protestants
flowed into the Palatinate from other parts of Germany, Holland, and Switzerland
where they suffered persecution. In 1618 the Protestant nobles of Bohemia
rebelled against their Catholic Habsburg king and heir apparent to the imperial
throne. When the aged emperor died the following year, the Protestant princes
of the empire could have joined in the rebellion, denied the right of King
Ferdinand of Bohemia to serve as an Elector, and blocked his election as
Holy Roman Emperor. The Protestant Elector Palatine, Frederick V (1596-1632),
was the only one willing to do this. The Bohemian rebels deposed their king
and elected Frederick as King of Bohemia in 1619. The emperor prepared to
crush his rebel Bohemian subjects and punish the Elector Palatine. Thus began
the Thirty Years War and the eventual defeat of the Elector Palatine.
By 1622 Frederick had lost not only his Bohemian crown but also his Palatine
lands as well. A solution to these original issues did not end the war, however.
The fighting continued as private armies led by soldiers of fortune and the
armies of the kings of Denmark and Sweden and France each took their turns
on the battlefield. The European powers fought one another, not in their
home countries but on German soil, and not entirely for religious reasons
either, but to acquire territories, power, loot, and dynastic aggrandizement.
The emperor dreamed of driving out all the Protestant princes and unifying
the empire under a Catholic Habsburg banner. The struggle went back and forth
with the last thirteen years of the war being the most destructive.
The situation of the people of central Germany by 1635 was such that they
were dying of plague, hunger, and exposure. In cities their bodies lay in
the streets and were stepped over by those citizens who still struggled to
survive. The groans of the sick and starving filled the night air. Children
hid in cellars and killed and ate rats. Armies confiscated what little grain
was in the granaries. The wine harvests were trampled down by fugitives and
by invaders. Famine ravaged the countryside. There were reports of people
eating the raw flesh of dead horses, of the bodies of criminals being torn
down from the gallows and eaten. Graveyards in the Rhineland were guarded
to prevent newly-buried bodies from being dug up and eaten. Near Worms it
was reported that hands and feet were found cooking in a gypsy's pot.
The atrocities never ceased. The torturing, raping, and pillaging continued
year after year. There were no hospitals for the sick and dying. Few churches
were left standing to serve as sanctuaries for the oppressed. No matter how
little the peasants had, the soldiers, and the camp followers, who trailed
after them, took what little was left. Horses, herds of cattle, fodder, food
stores were all taken, and famine, pestilence, pain and death were left behind
in their place.
The Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War in 1648 made few
changes to the political map of Germany, but it represented a final recognition
by the Catholic princes inspired by the Counter-Reformation that they could
not reverse all the gains that Protestantism had made in the preceding century.
Germany remained extremely fragmented, the emperor with little real
authority.
Cathedral at Worms (The Rhine (Berlin: Reichszentrale für Deutsche Verkehrswerbung, 1927))
It may have been at Worms that Valentine Pressler met a fellow passenger
who came on board named Johann Philipp Greisler (sometimes spelled Kreußler
or Chrysler). A man just three years Valentine's junior from Herrnsheim,
he came aboard with his wife, Anna Catharina, and their three children:
seven-year old Johann Georg, six-year old Johannes, and three-year old Beata
Maria. It is likely that these two families became friends and traveled and
stayed together all the way to New York.
Sixteen miles north of Worms the emigrant family's boat passed the village
of Oppenheim on the left bank of the Rhine with its Gothic church sitting
high up the steep hill. Large areas of Oppenheim had been burned and destroyed
in 1689, the evidence of which the Presslers probably still saw twenty years
later. This had been the center of Charlemagne's wine estates with the hills
of Oppenheim and Nackenheim curving around Nierstein in between them, their
slopes covered with vineyards. It was said that Charlemagne once stood on
the balcony of his castle at Ingelheim, looked at these hills, and sent men
to Orléans for grape vines. Legend is that when the grape blossom
fills the air with its fragrance in the spring, the shadowy figure of Charlemagne
wanders about the vineyards blessing the vines. It must have been with much
sadness that Valentine thought that he might never stroll through these German
vineyards again. Would there be vines in the New World to tend?
The end of the Thirty Years War was followed by horrible epidemics. The Black
Death, or the bubonic plague, depopulated the countryside. Thousands of
unemployed, mercenary soldiers, homeless peasants, and camp followers were
left on their own to roam the countryside as robbers, thieves, and disabled
beggars. Valentine may have heard his father tell about the scenes of death
and poverty during his younger years. It was a healing time, but still a
time of great hardship. Not until after Valentine's birth were economic
conditions recovered to a comparable level as they were before the war and
had the population of the countryside recovered.
In fact, war in Europe never seemed to cease during the seventeenth century.
Louis XIV came to the Bourbon throne of France in 1643 at a time when the
government became centralized and his power absolute. France was the most
powerful country in Europe, but Louis had an almost neurotic fear of being
encircled by Habsburg power. He initiated a series of wars in 1667 by attacking
the Spanish Netherlands. Allied with England and Sweden, he attacked Holland
in 1672. Austria, Spain, and Brandenburg joined in the fray, and in the end
France gained nothing, but Louis continued to nibble away at German territory
in the west in Alsace and Burgundy. Strassburg was annexed in 1681.
All of this meant that armies and soldiers were constantly crossing the
Palatinate countryside. Even if fighting was not occurring in a particular
place, armies in those days lived off the land over which they traveled,
and they demanded of the people of the countryside that they provide food
and shelter. Soldiers marched with only a couple days rations in their packs.
Marching on foot (the only way an army had to move), it took weeks to move
an entire army across a region, during which time they had to be fed by the
people. No law, no court, and no authority protected the people from these
armies, be they of German or of foreign origin.
Then in 1688, when Valentine had become a young man, the Palatinate was ravaged
by war again in a struggle variously known as the Palatinate War of Succession,
the War of the League of Augsburg, the War of the Grand Alliance, or the
Nine Years War. In 1685 the Elector Palatine Karl Ludwig died without leaving
a direct descendant. His sister, Liselotte (or Elisabeth Charlotte) was married
to Philippe I d'Orléans, the brother of the French King, Louis XIV.
The king demanded that parts of the Palatinate be given to her as an inheritance,
although at the time of the marriage any claim to Palatine territory had
been renounced. He sent in his army to occupy the Palatinate, but opposed
by a coalition of European powers, he was forced to withdraw from much of
the area, but not before ordering his commanders to burn the countryside.
Heidelberg and Speyer were left in ashes, as were other towns and villages.
While Louis wanted to destroy the Palatinate as a base of operations for
any invasion of France by the German princes, he succeeded instead in arousing
German patriotic sentiment and made the princes even more firmly opposed
to him. The French turned the town of Landau in the Palatinate into a fortress
with the largest fortifications in Europe at the time. The war dragged on
until in 1697 the Peace of Ryswick was signed, which brought a measure of
reduced fighting for only a few years.
As if it weren't enough that the people of Germany had to endure the ravages
of war and the depredations of the armies who crossed their land, they had
to tolerate the heavy taxation of their own rulers, who demanded money not
only to fight the wars, but to support their lavish and extravagant lifestyles.
The petty princes looked at the splendor of the court of Louis XIV at Versailles
and tried to emulate it, based on the resources of their own exhausted
subjects.
A whole new phase of war began again in 1700 when King Charles II of Spain
died without direct heirs. The result was the War of Spanish Succession which
lasted until 1713. The struggle was between France and Austria, with Louis
promoting his own candidate for the vacated Habsburg Spanish throne. England
and Holland, fearing the increase in power of France in acquiring the Spanish
overseas empire and the control of overseas trade, joined in the controversy.
The result was war once more fought primarily on German territory.
The imperial army crossed the Rhine at Speyer to attack the French fortress
at Landau in 1702, but as soon as they had driven out the French and the
German forces had been moved to another theater of battle, the French returned.
Over the next few years there were roving armies, French and German, back
and forth across the Palatinate, with the resultant looting, confiscation,
requisitioning, burning, pillage, beating and killing of the civilian population.
All of these movements of armies and political maneuvers would have been
of little interest to the Presslers and their fellow villagers had it not
directly affected their lives---but they were profoundly affected. Hunger,
starvation, disease, burned homes and churches, lack of security, and death
was all around them in those years, a never ending torment so it seemed.
Yes, life went on. It had to. But what kind of a life? What kind of future
could Valentine and Christina see for themselves, and more importantly for
their children. All of these recollections and uncertainties must have plagued
Valentine's thoughts during those days as they slowly made their way down
the river, always being joined by more and more people just like them, hoping
for a better life somewhere down the river and across the sea.
Mainz, the ancient city and capital of the Roman province of Germania Superior,
must have caught the attention of the Presslers in their little river boat.
There was another of those great, medieval Romanesque cathedrals along the
Palatinate Rhine, this one begun in 1239. It was here that the Rhine was
joined by the River Main, and it was here in 1450 that Johannes Gutenberg
invented the printing press. It was the result of just that invention that
had brought enticements to so many German citizens to abandon their wretched
conditions and strike out for a new life in America.
English proprietors in America, such as William Penn, seeking colonists to
occupy their land, and thus put money in the proprietors' pockets, advertised
and extolled the climate and life in the New World. Pamphlets were distributed
throughout the Rhine Valley, and agents of proprietors in Carolina and
Pennsylvania entered into negotiations and correspondence with prospective
colonists.
One German by the name of the Reverend Joshua Kocherthal, an evangelical
minister, published a book in 1706, Aussführlich und umständlicher
Bericht von der berühmten Landschafft Carolina, extolling the virtues
of the New World, and Carolina in particular. In it, he suggested, or at
least hinted, that the English Queen might help them in crossing the English
Channel and in going to the colonies. The book, which the Germans sometimes
called the Golden Book, because of its title printed in gold letters, and
its golden promises, contained a picture of the Queen and was so much in
demand that three more editions were printed in 1709 alone. Emigrants expected
to find free land, no taxes, and free farming tools awaiting them in
America.
Richard Blome's English America, which described the English possessions in America, had been translated into German and published in Leipzig in 1697. Pennsylvania was the best advertised province, and various books had been published in Germany about the colony over the preceding twenty years. Valentine must have remembered seeing, or hearing about, some of these printed encouragements to emigration.
The Mäuseturm, near Bingen (The Rhine (Berlin: Reichszentrale für Deutsche Verkehrswerbung, 1927))
Five miles beyond Mainz the Rhine begins its course through the Taunus Mountains.
North of Rüdesheim, a riverside village of half-timbered medieval houses,
the Presslers undoubtedly noticed the ruins of Ehrenfels Castle which stood
for four centuries until the French had destroyed it in 1689. At Bingen they
would have seen the Mäusturm, or Mouse Tower, where legend held that
the wicked Bishop Hatto of Mainz was eaten by mice. Actually, the tower,
which clings to a rock in the river was a customs tower from which Hatto
collected tolls from the river traffic.
While the Rhine Gorge is most beautiful, it is doubtful that the Presslers
and their fellow passengers found much comfort or pleasure in its castles
and other sights. The 38-mile stretch of river was marked by rapids, which
had wrecked many a boat, and the passage was repeatedly interrupted by the
need to pay tolls. The castled Rhine was built by tolls. During the Middle
Ages there was no law of primogeniture as in England where an inherited estate
passed intact to the eldest son. In the Holy Roman Empire the law required
that the lands of the nobility be divided among all heirs, with the result
that a growing number of small estates lined the river with each feudal lord
extorting money from the river traffic along the Rhine, the main artery of
European commerce.
In time, there were 62 toll stations between Basel on the border of Switzerland
and Rotterdam on the seacoast. In the 96 miles between Bingen and Cologne
(Köln) there were more than 30 castles each situated so as best to extort
tolls from anyone who passed.
The trip down the Rhine for the Presslers and their companions took from
four to six weeks. At each of the toll stations customs officials examined
the boats and the goods and belongings of the people. Travelers had to present
their passports, and endure the leisurely searches. Officials were under
no incentive to be efficient, courteous, or even honest. Bribery was considered
to be part of their pay. If they did not finish today, tomorrow would be
soon enough for these insignificant peasants. Meanwhile, the people were
delayed and had to seek shelter, thus increasing the cost of their journey.
They passed the village of Aßmanshausen on the right bank with its half-timbered houses and with three castles on the mountainside and cliff face on the opposite side of the river. Three miles downstream was the village of Niederheimbach also dominated by a castle. The village of Lorch was next with the ruined towers of Furstenberg on the opposite side of the river.
-
Left: Bacharach (the ruin is the Wernerskirche, destroyed in the Thirty Years War)
-
Right: Schloss Pfalz (built for protection of collection of tariffs on the Rhine)
(The Rhine (Berlin: Reichszentrale für Deutsche Verkehrswerbung, 1927))
Bacharach was a wine shipping town, its name derived from the Latin Bacchi
ara, meaning Altar of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Just beyond Bacharach
was a narrow island on which the Pfalz castle appeared to rise from the riverbed,
another of those toll stations. Then came Kaub with its 13th century
castle, and Oberwesel with its 13th and 14th century
watchtowers and its Schönburg Castle high above the town. If the Presslers
did not know the legend about this last castle, perhaps someone aboard the
boat told it to them. Certainly, the children would have enjoyed hearing
it.
The story is that there were seven maidens who taunted their suitors and then did not keep their promises. They were punished and turned into stones and placed in the riverbed just downstream from Oberwesel. Rivermen can judge the level of the river by the Seven Maidens Rocks which appear above the surface, one by one, as the water level drops.
The Lorelei Rock (The Rhine (Berlin: Reichszentrale für Deutsche Verkehrswerbung, 1927))
Or perhaps the children would have loved the stories of the Lorelei, a 417-foot
cliff which rises from the water's edge, on which it is said that the marks
of the devil's claws can be seen, left when he tried to prevent God from
creating this beautiful gorge. The children would have looked for the marks.
Another story that might have been told was that about rivermen always being
warned to beware the golden-haired siren, who is clothed in white with a
wreath of stars on her head and who tries to distract them from their work
so that they will crash their boats against the dangerous cliffs. The whirlpools
in the river here would have made the story all the more dramatic to the
young ears.
Burg Katz (Castle of the Cat) near St. Goarshausen (The Rhine (Berlin: Reichszentrale für Deutsche Verkehrswerbung, 1927))
Next came the twin villages of St. Goar and St. Goarshausen, the villages
of Boppard, Braubach, and Lahnstein, each with its castle. At the junction
of the Lahn River were Lahneck Castle and Stolzenfels Castle. The emigrants
did little traveling on the Sabbath or on religious holidays. They stopped
and sought shelter and attended church. It would have done no good to try
to do otherwise, since the toll officials were also attending church.
Further delays were occasioned by adverse weather, forcing them to remain
on shore. In cities such as Mainz and Cologne municipal boatmen's guilds
had a monopoly on river transport and baggage had to be unloaded and loaded
from boat to boat. No doubt the family lost many things through theft, accident,
and corruption and carelessness on the part of boatmen and officials.
They probably saw the spires of the cathedral of Koblenz where the Moselle
River joins the Rhine long before they arrived there. Beyond Koblenz were
the Eifel Mountains, once the hunting lands of Charlemagne. These mountains,
which rose to 2000 feet, were covered with beech and spruce forests, trout
streams, lakes and castles. They passed the village of Neuwied where the
river Wied joins the Rhine. In Valentine's grandfather's time, this had been
the town of Langendorf, but it had been completely destroyed in the Thirty
Years War. The local count had built his castle and a new town there in 1648,
but the French had destroyed that, and new construction had just begun in
1706.
They passed Andernach, burned by the French in 1688, Bad Honnigen, Linz, Remagen, Bad Honnef, Königswinter, where the great quarries had provided stone for so many of the Rhineland's church buildings. At Bad Godesberg with its ruined castle which sits on a place where worshippers sacrificed to the ancient forest god, Odin, perhaps Valentine noticed for a last time the vines, the northernmost place in Germany where the vine is cultivated.
The Cathedral of Cologne, begun in 1248 A.D. (The Rhine (Berlin: Reichszentrale für Deutsche Verkehrswerbung, 1927))
Five miles beyond, they passed the fishing village of Bonn, and then Cologne.
Here the Rhine had become slow-moving, and the flat, vast lowland stretched
northward all the way to the sea at Rotterdam. Perhaps the Presslers paid
special attention to this city which at one time was the largest city north
of the Alps and a major political and commercial center. Perhaps they noticed
its great unfinished cathedral which had been begun in 1248 to house the
relics of the Three Magi. Perhaps they were more concerned with the safe
off-loading and on-loading of their children and precious possessions from
one boat to another
Even though they had been traveling northward, the weeks had rolled by and
the Spring weather had warmed. As Valentine and his family sat on deck enjoying
the warm rays of the sun, they undoubtedly remembered the horrible past winter
they had so recently endured. From the beginning of October the cold had
become intense, and by November the firewood would not burn out-of-doors.
In January wine had frozen into solid blocks, and birds fell dead while flying
across the sky. Western Europe was experiencing the most severe winter in
over a century.
All the rivers were ice-bound, including the Rhine. It was even reported
that the sea along the coast had frozen so that carts could be driven over
the ice. People who could not store a winter's supply of flour and meal had
no bread when the water-driven mills were brought to a standstill. Fruit
trees died, their trunks and limbs splitting open; winter wheat and rye perished;
chickens, ducks and geese froze to death in their coops. The snow and bitterly
cold weather lasted into April.
In the Palatinate, the destruction of the precious vines meant that the
husbandmen and vine-dressers, such as Valentine, were facing the loss of
their livelihood. Everyone could see that more famine and starvation lay
ahead in the coming months. For some men and their families, this was the
final straw. Emigration seemed not just a means of survival, but the only
means of providing a future for their children. The men who worked in the
vineyards constituted more than half of the emigrants that Spring and Summer
of 1709. They abandoned the same old struggles they had fought for generations
and struck out for promise of a better future.
Twenty-five miles north of Cologne the emigrants passed Düsseldorf,
then Duisburg, Wesel, Emmerich, and then the border with the Netherlands.
Its flat land, crisscrossed by canals and dikes, and dotted by windmills
and green fields must have been a strange and welcome sight to the Presslers
as they neared the end of the first leg of their journey, but they must at
the same time have felt some trepidation. Very soon they saw the rooftops
and church steeples of Rotterdam with its busy harbor filled with the masts
of ocean-sailing ships.
Valentine and Christina had arrived in Holland. While the burdens of history lay upon them, they hoped to be able to lift those burdens from their children. They hoped for the dawning of a new day. Germany lay behind them. "Auf Wiedersehen, mein armes Deutschland-Goodbye, my poor Germany." Only God knew what lay ahead!
© 1997 Donald W. Presley. Reproduction of this material for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission of Donald W. Presley. No claim is made to previously copyrighted material. Elvis, Elvis Presley, and Graceland are registered trademarks of Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc.
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