On Aug. 30, 1720 the ship Laurel, John Coppel, Master, from Liverpool and Cork, docked in Philadelphia with about 240 Palatine immigrants. It is believed that aboard that ship were New Hanover pioneers Henry Antes, his father and sister, as well as John Philip Boehm, school master, who founded and led the Falkner Swamp Reformed congregation, among others. It is helpful to remember that in those days the job of “school master” was not similar to our school teacher, but more accurately an adjunct minister. The Laurel is the first recorded ship bearing Lutheran and Reformed immigrants to Philadelphia.
When some of the Laurel’s passengers made their way here to the Schwamm (Germanic for meadows or lowlands), they no doubt found a group of Lutherans already settled here. There was, in the autumn of 1717, a personal account in the city of three ships bearing some 300 Palatinates (Germans from the regions of the upper Rhine Valley) arriving, but no records of disembarking passengers were kept until 1720.
A Lutheran minister, Anthony Henkel, his son-in-law Valentine Geiger and several others had bought land here as early as 1718 and it can be supposed that they were passengers on those earlier ships.
The journey here took about half a year and can be divided into three parts: the trip down the Rhine to Rotterdam, then crossing the channel to the departure port in the British Isles and, finally, the transatlantic crossing to Philadelphia itself.
It is very likely that the Antes family, living in Freinsheim, and the Boehm family, living in Lambsheim, knew each other as they were both of the Reformed faith and lived in towns only about five miles apart. Also, they almost surely traveled here along with a group of relatives and townsmen who knew each other.
At this time it was becoming increasingly difficult for residents of a Protestant faith to live in the Upper Rhine region as the Elector Palatinate (similar to a state governor) was Roman Catholic. It was his privilege to determine the official religion of his province, and to harass with petty persecutions the non-Catholics in his domain.
The English edition of the Ephrata Chronicle states that “… about the same time (1715-1720) many persons were banished from the Palatinate for conscience sake; at Freinsheim, Lambsheim, Mutterstadt, Frankenthal, Schriesheim, etc., the most of whom ended their lives in Pennsylvania.” In a similar vein, the 1728 letter from the consistories of the Reformed Churches at Falckner Schwalm, Schipach and Witmarsh to the Dutch Reformed Classis at Amsterdam contains the following: “… there came over to us Johan Philip Boehm who according to his testimonies was compelled to emigrate by the persecution of the Papists on account of the Reformed religion.”
Interestingly, they almost always emigrated as a group of families or people otherwise acquaintances.
Aaron Fogelman, in his book Hopeful Journeys, examines the immigration patterns of immigrants from Kraichgau, a region along the Rhine. “The northern Kraichgauers tended to emigrate with other family members and villagers on the same ship and in the same year. In fact, the villagers rarely traveled alone or as single families when they emigrated. Eighty-five percent of emigrants from the six sample parishes traveled with family members. Ninety-six percent traveled with other persons from the same parish in the same ship – either from the same or different family and ninety-seven percent traveled in the same year as other persons from the same parish.”
Arranging to emigrate was not a simple matter. Political power and civil authority were tangled in a Byzantine web. People had no right to emigrate and in some cases farmers and peasants living in villages were still legally bound to the land as serfs. They had to pay for manumission similar to a slave’s buying his freedom, although citizens of the towns and cities such as the Antes and Boehm families were generally free.
Boehm held the position of school master for the congregation of Lambsheim. His first wife, Anna Maria Stehler, daughter of a Lambsheim citizen, died and his second wife, Anna Maria Scherer, accompanied him to Pennsylvania. The last reference to Boehm in Lambsheim is on April 6, 1720, one day after the last known sale of land by Philip Frederick Antes (Henry’s father), his half-morgan of vineyard on April 5, 1720. Of the actual journey of the passengers of the Laurel, nothing is known, but on Aug. 30 they arrived in Philadelphia.
Next week, part 2…The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Township Historical Society. Contact Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with questions or comments.
