Chapter Two

The first Palatine refugees reached the vicinity of Rotterdam on April 19, 1709. There is no record of the Pressler family at Rotterdam, but we do know they were among the first to arrive in London, so they certainly must have been among the vanguard of the flood of people who began to arrive at the Dutch seaport that Spring.

List of Palatines Arriving at London, 1709 (note Valentine Presler & Family)

James Dayrolle, the British Resident at The Hague, had heard rumors all winter that many German emigrants were headed down the Rhine. Beginning on March 29^th as the first families began to arrive, he began granting passes to sixty to one hundred families at a time. Dayrolle felt that these industrious people would be an asset to England and to her colonies in America. He suggested to the British government that the ships which were bringing troops from England to Holland to fight Louis XIV's French troops could carry these Palatines back to England on their return trip. With the Queen's approval, orders were issued to that effect.

On April 19^th Dayrolle reported that nine hundred Palatines were at Rotterdam, and late in April four ships with 852 of the German emigrants aboard arrived in England. Their subsistence on the voyage, which probably took about a week, had been provided by private contributions that had been obtained in Holland from such organizations as the United Baptists at Amsterdam, and the burgomasters of Rotterdam had distributed money amongst the poorer emigrants.

Valentine and his family were among this first party of Palatines to arrive at London on May 3, 1709. Did they have money to pay for their own passage? We don't know, but because they were among the earliest families to make the trip down the Rhine and had to wait but a short time at Rotterdam, their resources may not have been totally depleted and they were able to find passage fairly easily. The rough waters of the English Channel, confinement in the hold of a ship, and probable seasickness were all foretastes of what they would experience in the coming months on a much longer voyage.

By May 10^th another 1,000 emigrants were awaiting transportation across the Channel. Dayrolle appointed two Dutch merchants to supervise the loading of the emigrants on the ships that began arriving after that date. On May 12^th, 1,283 persons were shipped at British government expense. By the 24^th of the month, another two thousand people were awaiting transport. They continued to arrive in Rotterdam in increasing numbers, and by early in June they were coming at the rate of one thousand a week, which rate was maintained until late in July.

The emigrants were encamped outside Rotterdam in shacks covered with reeds and in miserable conditions. This was not much different from the way many of them must have been living at home, for in a letter to officials of the British government published in 1709 and signed simply "The Palatines," they were said "to make the cold Earth our Lodgings, and the Clouds our Coverings." The embarkation was pushed with as much speed as possible, with provisions being given the people for six or eight days for the crossing. The packet boats carrying dispatches, and even men-of-war, were employed in the transport of emigrants. By June 8^th, six thousand Palatines had been shipped at the expense of the British government, which considered that they would be a great asset in the American plantations.

However, in June the cost of moving and supporting all these new arrivals became of concern to the British government, and on June 24^th orders were issued to refuse passage to Roman Catholics. It was difficult to discriminate and identify Protestants from Catholics, and so the problem was left to the London authorities. They were coming so fast, that it was becoming increasingly a problem to care for the people in Rotterdam, and also in London.

On June 29^th Dayrolle sent some of the Palatines back to give warning to the several thousand people reported to be on the way down the Rhine, that no more would be accepted. He also put an advertisement in the Cologne Gazette to that affect. On July 5^th he reported that 2,776 Palatines had sailed the day before for England and 500 more were in Rotterdam. The following week, 1,200 were at the city. On July 18^th, 1,433 sailed for London.

London in the early 1700s (picture source unknown)

Warnings were sent from Britain to the Dutch authorities to stop the flood of emigrants. The Dutch just wanted to rid themselves of these poor people who had exhausted their charitable resources, but they did send notices and deputies up the Rhine to try to stop them, and they sought help from the National Assembly of Holland. The latter ordered their ministers at Cologne and Frankfort to warn the people not to come. All was to no avail.

Dayrolle informed the Palatines at Rotterdam that they would be sent back from England, but late in September there were 1,500 more emigrants trying to reach England. The British government refused to accept any more, yet on October 11^th another 1,100 sailed from Rotterdam. The Queen felt sorry for the "poor Palatines", Dayrolle was sympathetic to their plight, and the Dutch officials were determined to rid their city of these people who would not return home. All totaled, there were 13,500 Palatines who reached England that year.

Valentine, Christina and the children had none of the delays on the continental side of the Channel that were experienced by those who came after them, but once in England the story was different. The German emigrants had expected that on their arrival in England they would be shipped immediately across the sea to Pennsylvania, but the promises made in the Golden Books had not been made by the British government. No one was prepared to implement such a plan.

The people of London, at first, welcomed their visitors, and such terms as "innocent, laborious, peaceable, healthy, ingenuous, rather…a blessing than a burden" were used to describe them. However, the government was hard pressed to provide for such a large number of people. London was hardly so large a city that these thousands of new arrivals could be easily accommodated. The squares, taverns, and inns were filled with Palatines, and the Board of Ordnance issued 1,600 tents for encampments at Blackheath, Greenwich, Camberwell, near the Tower of London, Tower Ditch, Wapping, Nightingale Lane, and East Smithfield. Barns, sheds, and cheap houses were rented for them at Kensington, Walworth, Stockwell, and Bristol Cansey. Fourteen hundred people were housed in a large warehouse. Even as early as May, it was reported that "very often 10 to 30 men and women together with their children" were packed into one room.

Conditions were unhealthy and the Palatines were dependent on the British government to provide for them. Charitable collections were taken up for them, but nevertheless, this was insufficient to provide for their needs. They were unemployed, and while some (especially the married women) were reduced to begging on the street, others made small toys and sold them to the crowds of Londoners who came to the encampments on Sundays to see them. People gave them clothing and shoes.

Soon, however, the novelty wore off, and the poorer English people began to resent the fact that wages were dropping, presumably due to the fact that Palatines were taking jobs at starvation wages. They noted that charity was being given to these foreigners rather than to them. There was fear, even by the upper classes, of contagious diseases being spread by these people. The encampments were sometimes attacked by London mobs. Queen Anne, who felt kindly towards these "poor Protestants," was much chagrined, and the Palatines, in self defense, soon met violence with violence.

Various plans were considered as to what to do with these people. Her Majesty, at first, wanted to settle them in England, but as the numbers grew, other plans had to be devised. Most of the Palatines, over half of the first four groups, were farmers and vine-dressers, with carpenters, textile workers, and other trades also represented. Some of the vine-dressers brought vine plants for a new start in the plantations, and one wonders if Valentine had managed to slip a few cuttings into his baggage when he left home.

There was concern that these people were bringing in religious unorthodoxy. After all, many were admitted papists, and rumor was that they were changing their religion in name only. The truth was that the sudden conversions to Protestantism of many of the Catholics (perhaps even the Presslers), was just another accommodation to changing government as they had been accustomed to seeing in their homeland. The sudden changes of state religion from Protestant to Catholic, or vice versa, had been a fact of life for them for generations.

As stated previously, the Queen was willing to save only "poor German Protestants," but the Catholics were required to become Protestants or to be returned to Germany. The Queen agreed to pay their expenses for the return trip. While Valentine had indicated that his family was Catholic on arrival in London, he may have been Protestant all along and change in his status at this point was merely a formality, or as previously indicated, perhaps his religious affiliation was merely an accommodation to political realities. The Presslers were not required to return. Amongst the Palatine emigrants 2,257 were sent back because they were Roman Catholic, another 900 voluntarily returned home, and an additional 618 Roman Catholics were sent back in March of 1711. This meant that the British government had left 10,000 people with which to deal.

They waited, while the bureaucrats fumbled. Living in unhealthy conditions in the London encampments, it was inevitable that diseases and epidemics should break out. Fevers and plagues resulted in perhaps a thousand of their number dying during these months while the inefficient British bureaucracy decided their fate.

The attempt to settle some of the emigrants in England was often a failure. The new people were not exactly welcomed in all communities, were given no land, and were expected to work as day laborers, which some refused to do. They had dreamed of working their own land, and as far as they were concerned, they had been promised their own land in America. Money was offered by the government to the various parishes to help with their support. Some of the very poor may have had to stay where they were sent, but many returned to London. In desperation, 322 of the men enlisted in the British military, 56 people became domestic servants, and 141 children were "purchased by the English," or apprenticed. Probably, several thousand of the Palatines eventually settled in England.

Other proposed plans were to settle several thousand of them on the Rio de la Plata in South America, or in the Canary Islands. The expense involved was deemed to have been prohibitive. Proposals were received to employ some of them in the silver and copper mines of Wales, to ship them to Barbadoes or other islands in the West Indies, to employ them in the fishing industry in Newfoundland, to settle them on the Scilly Islands off the coast of England. None of these proposals was accepted as practical.

Three promising ventures were finally decided upon by the government, which involved sending Palatines to Ireland, to Carolina, and to New York. Late in August, 794 families were taken to Chester in wagons and embarked for Ireland where they arrived during the first week of September. Others followed in October. They were temporarily lodged in Dublin where they were supported by the government and charitable contributions until they were distributed in lots among 43 Irish landlords who agreed to settle them on their lands. The Palatines were dissatisfied with this arrangement, the golden promises of America still paramount in their minds. Most of them left the areas to which they had been sent, and even with monetary offers made by the government for them to stay, by September of 1712 only 254 of the families remained.

Another large party of Palatines was sent to Carolina. An aristocratic Swiss man by the name of von Graffenried had been enlisted to lead a party of Palatines, for which he was granted 10,000 acres by the Lords Proprietors of Carolina on which to settle them. About 90 families were chosen, and they sailed for America in January 1710. Death overcame half of them before they were settled on land which was called New Bern, to which additional settlers were sent over from Bern in Switzerland. Indian attacks, lack of supplies, political disputes, dissatisfaction among the Palatines regarding their lands, etc. all resulted in a colony which did not prosper.

Finally, there was the proposal to send some of the Palatines to New York. The Swedish government had a monopoly on providing naval stores, and Britain was seeking another source for tar and pitch, as well as timber, so necessary for the wooden sailing ships of the day. The government had been investigating for years the possibility of obtaining these supplies from the pine forests of America. It was with that in mind that the Reverend Joshua Kocherthal had been sent with a small party of 55 immigrants to New York in 1708, although no provisions were made at the time of their settlement in the Hudson valley to start such an industry.

It was from this idea, however, that a plan was formed to settle a group of the Palatines in New York, and by means of their labor, they would repay the government for their passage and initial support, and at the same time they would provide the British navy with the much needed supplies of tar, pitch, rosin, and timber. An additional benefit would be to strengthen the New York frontier against the pressure being exerted by the French. As it later became clear, however, the weakness of the plan was that it placed the Palatines in perpetual indentured servitude, a weakness which ultimately doomed the project to failure.

For the Presslers, who chose to join this group of settlers, it must have represented the promise of a new life in the New World, of which they had so desperately dreamed back in the vineyards of the Palatinate. We begin already to see certain characteristics of this family which will lead them all the way to Graceland-determination to follow their dreams, a willingness not to cling to the past, but to move on to the next frontier, or the next valley, where opportunity seemed to beckon, and an acceptance of the risks and possible hardships they might encounter along the way. Strong, hardy, and daring people!

© 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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