Baron Stiegel

Front matter

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Preface

“Baron Stiegee” was written in the hope that, in these days, when the attainment of riches and fame are held up as the highest ideals of a truly successful life, it might be seen that God intends life on earth to be the avenue which ends at the gate of heaven. The story insists that virtue is the strength and beauty of the soul, and Christian character the highest attainment.

It emphasizes that failure in business and the loss of fortune do not necessarily make life a failure. Its aim is to show that

“ ’Tis only noble to be good,”

and that

“ Kind hearts are more than coronets And simple faith than Norman blood.”

“ Baron Stiegel ” is a historical tale. The outline of the story follows the historical account of StiegePs career. It is true that history and tradition both assert that Stiegel was twice married ; but, for reasons of our own, our “ Baron Stiegel ” marries only once. Conjugal love is unlike friendpreface.

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ship, in that it cannot fix itself upon more than one object at a time ; but, like friendship, in that it must have an object all the time, at least so say some ; but we could not bear to think that our “ Baron Stiegel ” should twice wed.

History and tradition both say that Baron Stiegel started in business anew after his imprisonment. Our “ Baron Stiegel,” after his imprisonment, devotes himself to the highest calling in the gift of man and of God, and so does not enter into the work again in which he had spent most of his life. With this exception and that of his re-marriage, our “ Baron Stiegel ” follows the real account of the life of Baron Stiegel.

Our “ Baron Stiegel ” is, therefore, not a novel in the real sense of the term, but a biography, in which the imagination of the writer (in the absence of the Baron’s diary and a full account of his life) supplies all detail.

With these introductory words we are willing to send “ Baron Stiegel ” out, a drop in the vast ocean of literature, in the hope that he may not be engulfed in the maelstrom ; but be taken up by many with expectation and pursued to the end with profit.

The Author.

Chapter I. An Immigrant

One evening in the latter part of July, 1750, a vessel, which in those early days was considered a very fine ship, was lazily borne through the Delaware Breakwater, on its way to Philadelphia, by the incoming tide. The vessel had four masts, fore and main top sails, and topgallant sails, all of which were neatly furled now, inasmuch as the seabreeze had ceased to blow and its more gentle companion, the land-breeze, had not yet even begun to kiss the quiet waters into gentle ripples. This vessel, the “ Nancy,” from Rotterdam, had guns in broadsides as well as one in the bow and another in the stern. It is true, the nations of Europe were just then at peace with each other, under the spell of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which had been ratified two years before, yet nearly all vessels carried armament.

The voyage of the “ Nancy ” had been short

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when compared with voyages in those days. It was the season of the year when the wind breathes softly on the waters of the ocean, scarce stirring them into ripples. The sun had shone from a cloudless sky for almost every day of the more than four weeks’ voyage, so that our ship had as little use for her lifeboats as she had for her guns.

It is not in the vessel herself that we are interested. In fact, we would not have called attention either to the ship or to this particular voyage, or her approach to what was then already the first city of the Colonies, were it not that we are interested in one of the little company of passengers, on board at this particular time. This passenger, at the time the vessel was lazily borne through the Narrows, by the incoming tide, is standing at the prow of the ship, eagerly looking toward the shore of what to him was an entirely new world, a world which he was not about to visit for a brief season ; but a world which was to be his home for the remainder of his life. No wonder, therefore, that he gazed eagerly toward the new and strange scenes before him. The light blue eyes, and flaxen hair curling gracefully around his wide forehead, make it easy to determine his nationality. Although he has sailed from Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, his home from his earliest youth has been in the beau-

AN IMMIGRANT.

tiful little city of Mannheim, Germany. His features are regular, his lips are thin, and when closed form but a red line under his sharp nose. By this description we do not wish to intimate that the young man had what the great English poet is pleased to call a “ February face, so full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness,” but you, kind reader, may as well know now, in this introduction, that our friend had a will of his own, a hot temper, which had frequently broken the barriers set up by good resolutions.

Outside of the fact that the features mentioned proclaimed their possessor’s having a mind and will of his own, the face had no story to tell. It indicated a history neither romantic nor prosaic. The reason this face had no story to tell is because the soul mirrored therein had as yet experienced few of the trials and heartaches, the disappointments and sorrows which bring hard lines and pinched features. Whilst this is all true concerning the face of our young immigrant, we must admit that no life which has existed twenty-three years in this world, as had this one, is wholly without the effects of the scenes through which it has passed, stamped in the lineaments of the countenance. Then, too, this face reflected, as do all faces, some of the distinguishing characteristics of its ancestors. This face bore evi-

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dences of belonging to a long line of noble and intelligent ancestors. Some men are called noblemen, but their lives give very little evidence of true nobility, and their children bear all the stains of the sins of the parents ; but this man’s ancestors were noble both in name and character.

In determining the character of a man, we must know something of the religion of his ancestry. There is nothing in all this world which can make up for the lack of pious home-training. The Christian parent wins the heart of his child for God when he, day by day, leads him to the family altar, and teaches him his dependence upon God. This young man had a large fortune, as we shall presently see ; but by far his greatest wealth lay in his Christian ancestry, which had implanted the fear of God in his own heart, in his earliest youth. He belonged to a family which had embraced the Lutheran faith before our friend was born. It had cost them not a little to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience, and for this reason they prized their faith very highly.

The young man himself scarcely realized what his forefathers had paid for the privilege he was now enjoying, although he did know something of the horrors of war. Though he was no more than ten years of age when the Austrian War broke out,

AN IMMIGRANT.

II he was old enough to see and appreciate its devastation and horrors. He little thought that day, as he was approaching his new world, that ere many years a nation would be born therein which would outstrip his Fatherland in almost every element of true greatness. In the life of nations and individuals God has seen best to let the years unfold all their strange and stirring history.

In every life the three great factors in the production of character are the home, the age, and the country of a man’s birth. We have already seen that our friend was born in a Christian home, and in a land and in an age when and where God in His providence had laid the foundation of a new and grand development. If our friend had remained in the land of his birth, surrounded by the influences which had gained an imperishable hold upon him, it would have been comparatively easy to predict his future ; but in a new world, under new and strange influences, even these early impressions might, to some degree, fade in the trying light of his new surroundings. He 'himself could scarcely comprehend that he was entering a veritably New World — new from the fact that it was the last discovered, and until recently unsettled ; new, because its great forests and mighty treeless plains were still untrodden in all their vastness ; new, be-

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cause the rich treasures hidden away in its mines, treasures which were to revise the Old World’s commerce, yea, its very life, were unknown ; new, because it was already becoming an asylum for the persecuted and the oppressed of the Old World. Because all this was true, we may not be able to illumine the life-path which our friend is about to enter, so that we can read all its glory or its trials in store for him who still stands, in this the opening chapter of our narrative, on board the “ Nancy,” at her entrance into port. Be this as it may, we will predict, in the language of the illustrious apostle to the Gentiles, that our friend, in this New World, will often be “in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from his own countrymen, in perils from the Gentiles (Indians), in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” This we predict, although we know that his life will not be so noble, nor will his impression upon the ages be so deep, so powerful, in any one respect, as has been the life of the illustrious apostle from whose writings we have just quoted. Whilst we admit all this, we nevertheless insist that his life is truly worthy of a place among the pioneers, the patriots, and the pious.

Chapter II. Getting Acquainted

Our young friend was soon safely landed in Philadelphia. There was not, in those days, the long line of coaches, the jingle of bells, the scream of whistles, and the hoarse cries of men shouting the names of hotels, which now inundate the ears of the arrival in the City of Brotherly L,ove, whether he comes by land or by sea. In those days there were no surging streams of humanity, and no long lines of street cars, drays, coaches, hansoms, and what not, that now intercept the way of the traveler. The young immigrant was soon safely established in comfortable quarters. In those early days no custom-house officer boarded the incoming vessel when it was still far from its pier, to compel every passenger to declare that he had or had not anything dutiable, and then, before he could leave the pier, subject all his baggage to a rigid examination. It has always been a question in our mind why the United States government pays these men to board ships and get the affidavits of passengers, ( r 3)

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BARON STIEGEE.

and then, as soon as those passengers come on shore, pay no attention whatever to what the passengers a few moments before had affirmed.

Our friend had letters of introduction to several of the most prominent families in the city, and it was not many days before he presented himself at their homes. It is needless to say that they received him cordially. Already, in those early days, the poorest who came to the New World were deprived of the little property they possessed, where that was possible, and they themselves enslaved to serve weary years to earn their passage money. This form of slavery has now been changed into another which is just as oppressive. We refer to the thousands who enter the sweat-shops of our great cities, glad to work, fourteen and more hours per day, in order that they may earn enough to keep body and soul together. Of those who were sold for their passage money, in those early days, many in a few years became their own masters, and soon acquired land which made them and their posterity rich.

We have said our friend was well received wherever he introduced himself. It was because the people of Philadelphia were more hospitable in those days than they are now, and because of the nature of the letters this man presented. His getting acquainted.

newly made friends feasted him in their homes, and showed him about the young giant of the New World with a becoming pride. “ This,” said they, “is, and always will be, the metropolis of this Western world.”

It is true, the growth of the town had been marvelous. In 1683 it contained only a few houses — three or four. In two years afterward, it had already 600 houses, and, in one year more, it had outgrown its older sister, New York. At the time our friend arrived in Philadelphia, it still was the great seaport of America ; but it was not long before it was compelled to yield the palm to its more favorably situated neighbor.

Our friend also had letters of introduction to representative families in the latter city. It was only a few months, therefore, after his arrival, until he planned to go to visit the fat old Dutch burghers to whom he had the letters of introduction. In those days people went from Philadelphia to New York in the heavy lumbering stage-coach. It required two days to make the journey, which is now made, with incomparably more ease and- comfort, in two hours. We wish we could here introduce a hairbreadth escape from the Redman’s tomahawk or the highwayman’s blunderbuss. Adventures such as these will, no doubt, come to our friend, again i6

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and again, in his life in the wilds of America, but they did not come to him in this journey. The Redman seldom gave the passengers on the stagecoaches between the two cities any trouble. The civilization of the country had scarcely advanced far enough at that early period to afford the luxury of the well-armed and systematic highwayman of the Old World.

Edward Moore, wdio wrote in England in 1753 of the danger attending a stage-coach journey in those days, says : “It required as much courage for a journey from London to Bath as in the march from Carlisle to Cullodon.” He makes us believe that the highwayman was an institution especially connected with the stage-coach. Knight tells us, in his History of England, that even at that early period he had been growing in power for many years. “ He was in his most high and palmy state when Fielding had ceased to write and George III. began to reign. In 1761 the flying highwayman 1 engrosses the conversation of most of the towns within twenty miles of London. He robs upon three different horses, a gray, a sorrel, and a black one. He has leaped over Colnbrook Turnpike a dozen times within this fortnight ’ ” (History of England, Vol. 6, p. 393).

Everything is done on a bigger scale in these opening days of the twentieth century than it was in the eighteenth. There are few first-class robbers who are content to waylay the stage-coach unless they are getting rusty for want of bigger jobs, or are assured beforehand that there is large booty to be had. The flying express train, with its hundreds and thousands, alone satisfies the ambition of the modern robber. Our friend did not suffer at the hands of any highwayman, as we have already asserted. In due time he arrived in New York.

We will not attempt to describe the city of those early da^s. Suffice it to say, that if any of the fat old Dutch burghers who were, the day our friend arrived, lounging on the corners, could return to-day to the great metropolis, they would not know the old localities. The very soil upon which they trod lies buried many feet beneath the surface of the ground upon which the modern city stands. The alluvial sand beds, the marshes, and ponds which covered the southern part of the island have all disappeared. What was once the site of the “ Collect Pond,” into which the filth of New York was drained, is now a collect pond of a different sort. The grim old Tombs Prison, which stands on the site of the “ Collect Pond,” has for many years been the receptacle for the moral filth of the city. Nor does that filth always flow from 2

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the lower stratas of society. It often comes from the mansion instead of the hovel. Tike all filth, it is just as obnoxious when it comes from the upper strata as when it comes from the slums.

In those early days there was nothing in the architecture of either Philadelphia or New York which was very different from corresponding cities of the Old World. The houses were frame, with the exception of the one gable which faced the street. That was of small yellow or black brick, imported from Holland. The date and the name of the person who erected the building was put into this gable, in the most ornate manner.

It did not take our friend long to see New York, and to make up his mind that he preferred Philadelphia for his home. We do not know what were the reasons for this preference. It may be that he had already formed friendships in the City of Brotherly hove, or that he had already concluded that he would be able to make better investments there. Be this as it may, it was only two short months until Baron Stiegel (for such the illustrious personage of whom we write all this actually is) was ready to return to the city upon whose streets he first trod on his arrival in this country.

The journey back to Philadelphia was as uneventful as the one to New York had been. On his arrival at Germantown he for the first time looked into the face of a man whom he had known in the Old World. What is more, this man was from Stiegel’s native city. To look into the face of almost anyone whom Stiegel had known in his own home would have been a welcome sight in this strange land ; but a look at this face was anything but welcome. Had this face belonged to a fierce highwayman, known and dreaded throughout the whole colony of Penn, had the owner of this face sought the gold of Stiegel, with a murderous dirk uplifted to strike at the heart, it would not have caused him half the consternation which one glance at this face caused him.

Bulwer-Tytton says : “ Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few ; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many.” Baron Stiegel had few enemies ; but of all he had, this man was his most lasting, his bitterest, and, as we shall see throughout this narrative, his most hurtful. It does not become us here to state how this enemy had been made, what strange providence had brought him to Germantown before Baron Stiegel himself arrived there. That he was there was not to be mistaken by Stiegel. He had looked into his face, and his enemy had recognized him. The

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enemy had allowed his eyes to wander in a careless and listless manner over the little company of passengers, as the stage rolled up to the hotel ; but when his eyes caught sight of Stiegel, the latter saw him start, then look away, as if he hoped that he might not be recognized by Stiegel. Then, after this startled look into vacancy, Stiegel saw him give another more searching look which amounted to a stare. As he looked the Baron saw his eyebrows knit and his lips tightly compress. He then turned upon his heel and walked slowly to the other side of the house.

Baron Stiegel was not an expert student of character, but he saw in the countenance of his enemy that a resolution had been formed in his heart which was not by any means to add to the happiness of the Baron’s life. Our friend did not think as seriously in those days as he was led to think a few months afterward ; but he could not help asking himself what strange destiny was pursuing him in the presence of this man in the land of his adoption. He did not particularly fear this man, but he knew enough of him to believe that from henceforth he was to have a presence hovering near him which would perhaps try to strike him to the earth, or, what was more probable, try to distill poison into his cup of happiness at every opgetting acquainted.

portunity, and thwart all his plans for a truly successful career. Baron Stiegel knew his danger in this enemy, and he would have bought him with his gold had that been possible.

Baron Stiegel stopped at the principal inn in the city. At present the high-gabled little stone structure where the Baron lodged would attract few guests, and those would not be the rich and influential ; but it was different in the latter half of the eighteenth century. This building then was the largest public house in the city. Its landlord and landlady, being childless, sober, and industrious, as well as strictly honest, were ever interested in their guests. It did not take them long to know their guests, and those whom they considered deserving they treated as friends, rather than as guests.

In those days of peace and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness found a home in the breast of every Quaker in the City of Brotherly L,ove. They vied with their Dutch neighbors in keeping things clean. The great parlor, which occupied the whole of the second floor, was open to permanent guests only, who had already given proof of their worthiness to enter this sanctum sanctorum. When there were no such guests, it was difficult to imagine of what earthly use the great room was outside of

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being held in readiness for the next permanent boarder and for the lady of the house to spend her spare time in hunting for spiders and for the slightest speck of dirt. Only once a week was the parlor entered in the absence of the guests mentioned, and then only by the landlady and her most trusted maid, when she had more than one maid, which was scarcely ever the case. On such occasions the shoes of the cleaners were left at the door, lest they should bring more dirt than they removed. This custom has not entirely died out among our thrifty Pennsylvania German housewives. There are still many parlors into which the daughters of the home bring even their most favorite gentleman callers with hesitancy. By far the greatest part of the first story of our largest farm-houses is closed to everybody during the whole week. The family and their help cook and eat in a little out-house so as to be able to keep the main house clean !

In the hotel of which we are speaking, and in nearly all buildings of the period, there was one room which was open to everybody. This was the large dining-room, with its great open fireplace. In this room all the guests, as well as the proprietor and his household, gathered. Here Baron Stiegel had many happy hours during the first winter of his residence in America. It was in the dining-room of the hotel that the Baron recounted some of his own adventures to his friends, the landlord and his wife ; for be it known right here that the Baron spent the first two years of his stay in the New World in traveling about in search of suitable places for the profitable investment of the great wealth which he possessed.

CHAPTER HI.

THE JOURNEY INTERRUPTED.

WE have seen that Baron Stiegel landed in Philadelphia in 1750. Less than four years after his arrival in the New World the first volley of the French and Indian War went flying on its mission of death. It marked the beginning of a new era for the inhabitants of what was once Penn’s Woods. From henceforth they were to realize the horrors of Indian warfare from which two generations had been spared. It is true that, because of the treaty into which the Indian nations of the whole of Eastern Pennsylvania had entered three-quarters of a century before the French and Indian War, no blood had been shed in Indian warfare. The famous Quaker had said : “ Between us there shall

be nothing but openness and love.” To this the chiefs replied : “ While the rivers run and the sun

shines we will live in peace with the children of William Penn.” The old chiefs were now long since dead. The generation following did not forget the vows of their fathers ; but times and men had changed, and the blood of many a white man was shed by the Redman’s scalping knife in the territory of Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. The fierce war-whoop was heard on both sides of the Schuylkill as well as of the Susquehanna. Whole families were butchered, plantations were laid waste, buildings burned, and the fruit of many years’ hard toil destroyed, and the hopes of a generation blasted. We who enjoy the results of those years of anxious and bloody war, in which the very existence of the English and German settlers on this American Continent was in jeopardy, can little realize what our forefathers endured.

It was at the beginning of these troublous times that Baron Stiegel began that series of excursions into the country between the Delaware and the Susquehanna which finally resulted in the investment of all the wealth he possessed. In these excursions he was always accompanied by a well-armed retinue, but, even with this precaution, many of his journeys were made at the imminent peril of his life. In order that the reader may realize that we are not exaggerating, we append an abstract of an order sent from what is now the city of Easton by Governor Demmy to Colonel Armstrong.

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It is an exact transcription from the Colonial Records, and is as follows :

Easton, Nov. — , 1756.

Sir,

I have received accounts of Murders committed by Parties of Indians all along the Front of Berks Co., from Manda Gap to the line of Northampton Co., and by their dress, part of which is red hats and Red Blankets, it is supposed that these murderous Indians came from the Ohio. As they may now or will in a little time be returning, they may be intercepted, their Prisoners, scalps and Plunder taken from them, and they destroyed. I therefore order you to send such Forces under your command as will be the most likely to meet with them in their return. . . . Let me know what you

do in consequence of this Letter ; the last mischief was done on Saturday at the East end of Berks Co., on the line of Northampton Co.

With this introduction the reader is now prepared to credit the account of the experience of Stiegel and his party on one of their trips into the interior. Let us begin, therefore, by saying that it was in the month of October of 1751 that Baron Stiegel, with a good escort, left the streets of Philadelphia for an extended journey West. He had not been idle for the more than twelve months since his arrival in the New World. He had learned the customs of the country. He had even studied the English language, and had become pro-

THE JOURNEY INTERRUPTED.

ficient in reading and writing it. He now felt himself fully able to begin his business career. He had heard of valuable deposits of iron ore, and of several furnaces already in operation, in Lancaster County, and he resolved to see for himself.

To one reared in the crowded cities of the Old World, in a country where timber for ages already has been scarce, and where the forests, that are still to be seen, are forbidden territory, because they are the private parks and hunting grounds of the nobility, the boundless woods of Penn were a neverfailing source of wonder and admiration. The deep dark green of oak and chestnut, pine and spruce, whilst their labyrinthian maze filled the soul with a sense of loneliness and dread, also possessed charming beauty, cooling shadows, fragrant bowers filled with life-giving ozone.

In their depths the rising and setting suns, with their long pencils of silvery or golden light broken a thousand times as they pierced their way through the maze of trunks and bough and foliage, filled the soul of the traveler with sensations of the weird, as well as the beautiful and the sublime, as he emerged out of one shaded depth to be lost in another, or perhaps to step into a clearing (for nature herself had her clearings before the woodman’s axe disturbed the giants of the forest, or devastating