Emigration from Germany to Colonial Philadelphia:
Since their arrival at Jamestown in 1607 along with the English, Germans have been one of the three largest population components of American society. When Columbus arrived in America in 1492, he did so in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, that is, with the entitlement of the Habsburgs who also ruled Germany as part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was a German cosmographer, Martin Waldseemüller, who suggested that the New World be designated "America."
German immigration began in the seventeenth century and continued throughout the postcolonial period at a rate that exceeded the immigration rate of any other country; however, German immigration was the first to diminish, dropping considerably during the 1890s. Contrary to myth, the first German immigrants did not originate solely in the state of Pfalz. Although emigrants from Pfalz were numerous from 1700 to 1770, equally high percentages came from Baden, Württemberg, Hesse, Nassau, and the bishoprics of Cologne, Osnabrück, Münster, and Mainz. During the American pre-Revolutionary War period, immigrants came primarily from the Rhine valley, an artery that gives access to the sea. German emigration during this period was almost exclusively via French or Dutch ports like LeHavre or Rotterdam.
Between 1671 and 1677 William Penn made trips to Germany on behalf of the Quaker faith, resulting in a German settlement that was symbolic in two ways: it was a specifically German-speaking ward, and it comprised religious dissenters. Pennsylvania has remained the heartland for various branches of Anabaptists: Old Order Mennonites, Ephrata Cloisters, Brethren, and Amish. Pennsylvania also became home for many Lutheran refugees from Catholic provinces (e.g., Salzburg), as well as for German Catholics who also had been discriminated against in their home country.
By 1790, when the first census of Americans was taken, more than 8.6 percent of the overall population of the United States was German, although in Pennsylvania more than 33 percent was German. During the Revolutionary War, these German Americans were numerically strengthened by the arrival of about 30,000 Hessian mercenaries who fought for England during the hostilities, of whom some 5,000 chose to remain in the New World after the war ceased.
In addition to those who had arrived for political and religious reasons until about 1815, Americans and some foreign shippers brought many Germans to America under the redemptioner system. The scheme was that a German peasant traveled on a sailing vessel without charge and on arrival at an Atlantic port was sold to an American businessman to work from four to seven years to redeem his passage and win his freedom. Some of the early sectarians—Baptist Dunkers, Schwenkfelders, Moravian Brethren, and others—were only able to reach America in this way.
Populous as German immigrants to America were by the end of the eighteenth century, the major waves of immigration came after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Germany's economy suffered in several ways. Too many goods were imported, especially cloth from industrialized England. Antiquated inheritance laws in southwestern Germany caused land holdings continuously to be divided, rendering farms too minuscule for assistance. A failing cottage industry collapsed when faced by a flood of foreign products. Finally, the population had grown artificially large because of growing dependence on the potato. Like Ireland, rural Germany in the 1840s was suddenly hit by famine precipitated by the potato blight.
Because the 1848 revolutions in Europe failed to bring democracy to Germany, several thousand fugitives left for America in addition to the nearly 750,000 other Germans who immigrated to America in the following years. While a mere 6,000 Germans had entered the United States in the 1820s, nearly one million did so in the 1850s, the first great influx from Germany. Despite annual fluctuations, especially during the Civil War period when the figure dropped to 723,000, the tide again swelled to 751,000 in the 1870s and peaked at 1,445,000 in the 1880s.
During the nineteenth century religious and political refugees were numerous. During the 1820s, for example, Prussia forced a union of the Reformed and Lutheran congregations, which by the late 1830s caused many Old Lutherans to emigrate.
Societies sponsored by German princes sought to use emigration as a solution to social problems at home. For example, the Central Society for German Emigrants at Berlin (1844), the National Emigration Society at Darmstadt (1847), the Giessener Emigration Society (1833), and the Texas Braunfels Adelsverein (1843) operated on the principle that a one-way ticket for the downtrodden was cheaper than a long-term subsidy.
During the 1850s small farmers and their families dominated the first major wave of immigrants, who often came from southwest Germany. Soon after artisans and household manufacturers were the main arrivals from the more central states of Germany, while day laborers and agricultural workers from the rural northeast estates characterized subsequent waves of German immigrants. Not until German industrialization caught up with the English in the late nineteenth century did German emigrants no longer have to leave the country to improve their lives. Beginning in the late 1880s and for several decades thereafter, migrants from depressed German agricultural regions were destined less for America than for the manufacturing districts of Berlin, the Ruhr, and the Rhine in Germany itself.
Interspersed among these waves of economic emigrants were fugitives from oppression, including thousands of other Germans who left because of economic and social discrimination. Young men sometimes fled to avoid serving in the Prussian military. Organized industrial laborers also fled the antisocialist laws enacted when a would-be assassin threatened the life of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm I, who blamed socialist labor leaders for the attempt. Catholics, too, were oppressed by Bismarck's infamous May Laws during the 1870s, which suppressed the influence of the Catholic Center Party and its drive for greater democracy during the first decade of the new emperor's reign.
Also during the latter half the nineteenth century, a host of agents fanned out across Germany to drum up emigration. Some were outright recruiters who were technically outlawed. More often these agencies took the form of aid societies working to better the lot of the emigres in Germany, such as the Catholic Raphael Society, the Bavarian Ludwigsmissionsverein, the Leopoldinen Stiftung in Vienna, the Pietist society of Herrnhut in Saxony, and the Lutheran support groups at Neuendettelsau of Franconia in northern Bavaria. Frankenmuth, Michigan, for example, traces its roots to the latter organization. Aiding the immigrants on this side of the Atlantic were such agencies as the Catholic Leo House in New York and the Central-Verein in St. Louis. Much better funded promoters were those established by the north-central states (most prominently, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota) as they joined the Union, many of which had ample support from their legislatures for their Immigration Commissioners. Even more influential were transcontinental railroads that sent agents to the ports of debarkation along the Atlantic and Germany to recruit immigrants to either take up their land grants or supply freight activity for their lines. Especially active was the Northern Pacific during the time when German immigrant Henry Villard headed the corporation and sought to populate his land grant with industrious German farmers.
In the latter phases of German immigration, newcomers joined established settlers in a phenomenon called "chain migration." Chain migration is defined as the movement of families or individuals to join friends and family members already established in a given place. Chain migration strengthened the already existing German regions of the United States. One such concentrated settlement pattern gave rise to the phrase "German triangle," that is, St. Paul, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, with lines stretching between them so that the triangle incorporates Chicago, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Davenport, and other strongly German cities. Other descriptors include the more accurate "German parallelogram," which stretches from Albany westward along the Erie Canal to Buffalo and farther westward through Detroit to St. Paul and the Dakotas, then south to Nebraska and Kansas, back to Missouri, and eastward along the Ohio River to Baltimore. Except for large settlements in Texas, San Francisco, and Florida, German American settlement is still largely contained within the German belt.
The number of German Americans has remained constant. From 1850 to 1970 German was the most widely used language in the United States after English. In the 1990 U.S. census, 58 million Americans claimed sole German or part-German descent, demonstrating the persistence of the German heritage in the United States.
The first mass migration from Germany to the Americas began with the "Palatine" emigration of Germans to New York in 1709-1710. Emigration from Germany to the colonies grew until it hit its highest numbers in the period 1750-1753, with many of the North American colonies in direct competition in recruiting of Germans in Germany. Although the term "Palatine Emigration" has been applied to this migration in general, the Germans were not only from the Palatinate (Pfalz) region. They were primarily from protestant parts of central and southern Germany which had been heavily hit in the wars of the previous century.
This was an era of change in central and southern Germany. Many areas had been devastated during the 30 Years' War (1618-1648) and the subsequent War of Louis XIV (1688-1697). The areas hit hardest were those bordering France and along the Rhine River (Rheinland, Pfalz, Baden, Hessen, etc.). Many of these towns were partially or completely depopulated, so that new settlers were recruited to re-settle from France (Huguenots), Switzerland, and other parts of Germany.
As these villages slowly rebuilt and began to flourish again, the population quickly rose. Within about two generations there was already an overabundance of workers. Without hope of owning land or making a good living, the stories of possibilities in America began to sound enticing!
Although the most well- known emigration was the settlements in south east Pennsylvania and Maryland, there were also large groups of Germans who came at this time to Nova Scotia (Neu Schotland), New England (Neu England: Boston, Waldoboro), New York, Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina (Karolinas). The thumbnail image, below, shows where these centers of German emigration were in colonial North America.
German Settlement in North America
Prior to the 1800s, Germany was not a united country but made up of many kingdoms, duchies, knightly estates, margraves, etc. Each had its own laws and record keeping methods. A manumission record from Baden might be a single line entry; in Hessen an eight page document listing all of the property and who it was sold to, for how much, etc.; or might not exist for the lands ruled by the count of Kastell-Rüdenhausen family in Unterfranken (Bavaria). There are no general census records or tax lists for all of Germany. If these type of records exist they will be for the particular jurisdiction that ruled over that part of Germany in the 1700s.
The journey to America fell into three parts. The first part, and by no means the easiest, was the journey down the Rhine to Rotterdam or some other port. Gottlieb Mittelberger in his "Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750", writes:
This journey lasts from the beginning of May to the end of October, fully half a year, amid such hardships as no one is able to describe adequately with their misery. The cause is because the Rhine boats from Heilbronn to Holland have to pass by 26 custom houses, at all of which the ships are examined, which is done when it suits the convenience of the custom-house officials. In the meantime the ships with the people are detained long, so that the passengers have to spend much money. The trip down the Rhine lasts therefore four, five and even six weeks. When the ships come to Holland, they are detained there likewise five to six weeks. Because things are very dear there, the poor people have to spend nearly all they have during that time".
The second stage of the journey was from Rotterdam to one of the English ports. Most of the ships called at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight (remember these are the old sailing ships). Here there was another delay of one to two weeks, when the ships were waiting either to be passed through the custom house or waiting for favorable winds. When the ships had for the last time weighed their anchors at Cowes or some other port in England, then, writes Mittelberger: "The real misery begain with the long voyage. For from there the ships, unless they have good wind, must often sail eight, nine, ten to twelve weeks before they reach Philadelphia. But even with the best wind the voyage lasts seven weeks".
The third stage of the journey, or the ocean voyage proper, was marked by much suffering and hardship. The passengers being packed densely, like herrings, as Mittelberger describes it, without proper food and water, were soon subject to all sorts of diseases, such as dysentery, scurvy, typhoid and smallpox. Children were the first to be attacked and died in large numbers. Mittelberger reports the deaths of thirty-two children on his ship alone. Of the heartless cruelty practiced he gives the following example: "One day, just as we had a heavy gale, a woman in our ship, who was to give birth and could not under the circumstances of the storm, was pushed through the porthole and dropped into the sea, because she was far in the rear of the ship and could not be brought forward".
The terrors of disease, brought about to a large extent by poor food and lack of good drinking water, were much aggravated by frequent storms through which ships and passengers had to pass. "The misery reaches the climax when a gale rages for two or three nights and days, so that everyone believes that the ship will go to the bottom with all human beings on board. In such a visitation the people cry and pray most piteously. When in such a gale the sea rages and surges, so that the waves rise often like mountains one above the other, and often tumble over the ship, so that one fears to go down with the ship. When the ship is constantly tossed from side to side by the storm and waves, so that no one can either walk or sit or lie, and the closely packed people in the berths are thereby tumbled over each other, both the sick and the well - it will be readily understood that many of these people, none of whom had been prepared for hardships, suffer so terribly from them that they do not survive".
When at last the Delaware River was reached and the city of brotherly love hove in sight, where all their miseries were to end, another delay occurred. A health officer visited the ship and, if any persons with infectious diseases were discovered on the ship, it was ordered to remove one mile from the city.
A vivid account of the arrival of these passenger ships in the harbor of Philadelphia, is given by the Rev. Henry M. Muehlenberg, in a report, which he prepared in 1769. He writes:
"After much delay, one ship after another arrives in the harbor of Philadelphia, when the rough and severe winter is before the door. One or more merchants receive the lists of the freights and the agreement which the emigrants have signed with their own hand in Holland, together with the bills for their travel down the Rhine and the advances of the 'newlanders' for provisions, which they received on the ships on account. Formerly the freight for a single person was $27.00 to $45.00, but now it amounts to $65.00 to $75.00 (remember purchasing power was much greater at that time). Before the ship is allowed to cast anchor at the harbor front, the passengers are all examined, according to the law in force, by a physician, as to whether any contagious disease exists among them. Then the new arrivals are led in procession to the city hall and there they must render the Oath of Allegiance to the King of Great Britian. After that they are brought back to the ship. Then the announcements are printed in the newspapers, stating how many of the new arrivals are to be sold. Those who have money (to pay for the trip) are released. Whoever has well-to-do friends seeks a loan from them to pay the passage, but there are only a few who succeed. The ship becomes the market-place. The buyers make their choice among the arrivals and bargain with them for a certain number of years and days (they become indentured servants for a period of time). They then take them to the merchant, pay their passage and their other debts and receive from the government authorities a written document, which makes the newcomers their property for a definite period."
When the ship “Brothers” sailed up the Delaware River and arrived at the docks of Philadelphia on September 23, 1754, Peter Eisenbrey and his fellow passengers looked upon the largest city in the American colonies and the second largest city in the British Empire. Only London surpassed Philadelphia in population at that point in time. However, the estimate of inhabitants of Philadelphia in 1754 indicates that its population was only between 15,000 and 25,000 people.
By modern standards 18th century major cities would be considered towns today. Nevertheless, relative to Peter’s frame of reference Philadelphia as he viewed it from the “Brothers” must have appeared to be huge. An early engraving of Philadelphia dating from 1754, the year of Peter’s arrival, was commissioned by Nicholas Scull, Surveyor General of the Province of Pennsylvania. The large panorama depicts the water front view of Philadelphia from the New Jersey shore looking across the Delaware River.
The central portion representing about half of the total width of the engraving is presented below. The engraver employed by Nicholas Scull was Gerard Vandergucht. This image was taken from a book titled Philadelphia: a 300 Year History by the Barra Foundation and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1982. The cited source of the picture in that publication is the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
The structures noted numerically are as follows according to the caption accompanying the picture in the book cited above:
1. The steeple of the State House (Independence Hall) on Chestnut Street.
2. The original Court House dating from 1710 in the center of Market Street.
3. The steeple of Christ Church near Market street.
4. The steeple of the Academy on Arch Street at Fourth.
5. The steeple of the Presbyterian Church on Arch Street at Third.
6. The steeple of the German Reformed Church on Race Street near Fourth.
The engraving of 1754 offers some insight into what Peter and his fellow passengers would have noticed as they sailed closer and closer to Philadelphia. The engraving depicts many docks along the shoreline of the central part of the city. In fact in excess of 60 different wharfs existed on the waterfront in mid 18th century Philadelphia. Clearly, the port of Philadelphia was a busy place for arriving and departing vessels. The engraving shows a wide variety of vessels; ships, sloops, schooners, brigs, warships, & etc.
One of the frequently published professional historians on the topic of Germanic immigration into Pennsylvania in the 18th century is John T. Humphrey. His most well known publications are a fourteen-volume set of Pennsylvania Births that list more than 170,000 recorded births in eleven eastern Pennsylvania counties. Mr. Humphrey manages the Education Program of the National Genealogical Society in Arlington, Virginia. He wrote an article titled Life in Mid-Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania which discusses many aspects of the Germanic immigration experience. I found a copy of the article on the internet. The following excerpts describe the experience of German immigrants as they arrived in Philadelphia:
“When a ship finally arrived in Philadelphia, people usually gathered on the wharf. The narrator of another journal noted as they approached the dock, “…a crowd of persons was seen gathering on shore in expectation the newly arrived immigrants were to be exposed for sale.” Merchants looking for servants soon boarded. Frequently, those merchants were the proprietors of the ship or were in the employ of the owner. An official account was taken to determine the passengers who could be sold as indentured servants. The merchant then placed an advertisement in one of the Philadelphia newspapers, “German Servants For Sale.” Sometimes, those advertisements noted the wharf where the ship docked—information that can be especially useful for any family historian whose ancestors may have arrived on a ship so advertised.
Frequently, a representative of the government accompanied the merchants. The official was not looking for servants, but wanted to make certain that all fit males sixteen and older who were aliens disembarked and proceeded to the courthouse where the required oath was given. Immigrants, whose origins were not in the British Isles, made their way to the courthouse located at second and High Streets. As they proceeded to the courthouse they climbed the steep riverbank to the city on some very wobbly legs. After an extended period of time at sea they were used to the rocking motion of the ship, and they did not have their “land” legs. Most probably looked like a pack of drunken sailors as they proceeded to the courthouse.
The captain of the vessel usually led the way. When the alien immigrants entered the courthouse, a representative of the government—namely the Mayor, President of the Assembly, or a Justice of the Court—was waiting. He told them they were now in a country that belonged to the King of England; a fact that required them to take an oath of allegiance to that King and his successors. The oath was then explained to the immigrants. Given the numbers of Germans arriving in Philadelphia, one presumes that someone was available who could translate. The immigrants had to promise they would conduct themselves as good and faithful subjects, that they would not revolt against his Majesty, nor would they settle on lands that were not their own. They were also required to abjure or renounce allegiance to the Pope. In the words of another narrator, “After we took the oath, we signed our names to two different papers, one belonged to the King and the other to the government of Pennsylvania.”
Newly arrived German immigrants probably noticed several things almost immediately. First, the city had not walls. Many towns and villages of comparable size in Europe still retained their medieval fortifications. Second, the streets in Philadelphia were rectilinear, running at ninety-degree angles to one another. Streets in the Quaker capital did not meander as did many streets in European towns and villages. Newly arrived immigrants most likely commented that in Philadelphia streets were much wider than in Germany or England.”
When Peter Eisenbrey arrived at the dock in Philadelphia on September 15, 1754 he was escorted along with other male passengers aged sixteen and older to the court house which was on 2nd and High (Market) Street. This court house was constructed in 1710. In the History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 by Scharf and Westcott, published in 1884 by L.H. Everts & Co. the following description was given:
(The court house) “which was completed towards the close of the year 1710, was built at the eastern end of the old market-house, on High Street, between Second and Third Streets. It stood upon arches, with brick pillars for them to rest upon, the basement being open for market stalls. It was a quaint, old-fashioned structure, with a little cupola and a bell, and having a balcony in the front, over the door, and flights of steps leading up to it. This balcony covered an enclosure beneath it which was rented for a shop, and from the balcony nearly all the out-door speech-making in Philadelphia was heard. The Governors used to deliver their inaugural addresses here,…This court-house was the town hall and seat of the Legislature and the Municipal Council also, statehouse, and town-house, until the State-House was erected in 1735.”
According to other descriptions, the upstairs portion of the building was used for the mayor’s office and his court. The Legislature stopped using the 1710 court house in favor of the State-House when it became available in the 1730’s. However, the mayor of Philadelphia and municipal government continued using the 1710 court house until 1791 when the second courthouse was completed next to Independence Hall (the State-House). The following drawing is taken from Scharf & Westcott’s History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884:
Another drawing of this 1710 court house was made in 1764 in a political cartoon which is considered to be the earliest depiction of an internal view of Philadelphia. It is taken from a publication titled FIRST CITY: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory by Gary B. Nash, published in 2002 by the University of Pennsylvania Press:
It is apparent from this picture in 1764 that the stairs leading to the balcony from both sides of the building were still intact at that date. The market building extending westward from behind the court house is also evident.
This important historical structure where Peter Eisenbrey, upon his arrival in 1754, officially pledged his allegiance to the King of England and gave his oath to obey the government of the Province of Pennsylvania, was removed in 1837.
Today not a trace of this important historical facility remains. No commemorative plaque or any other reminder is present on the sight. It seems very inappropriate and disappointing that nothing exists to remind anyone visiting the spot in Philadelphia today of the significant role this building played in receiving thousands of German speaking immigrants into their new homeland.
After visiting the court house to take the various legal oaths and to sign the appropriate documents of that process, the German immigrants were led back to their ship. If they were able to pay they own expenses of the trip from Europe, they were free to leave the ship with no further restrictions beyond those they affirmed when taking their oaths and commitments at the court house.
However, 50% to 70% of the immigrants had to endure the often traumatic indentured servant ordeal.
But, in spite of all difficulties and hardships, new settlers continued to come. The wonder is not that so many succumbed, but that so many faced all hardships uncomplainingly and after a few years of service emerged from all difficulties as successful farmers.
An indentured servant was typically a young, unskilled laborer contracted to work for an employer for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of their indenture. They included men and women; most were under age 21, and most became helpers on farms or house servants. They were not paid wages.
Farmers, planters, and shopkeepers found it very difficult to hire free workers in colonial America, primarily because it was so easy for those workers to set up their own farm. One solution was the purchase of black slaves, but the more common solution was to pay the passage of a young worker from England or Germany, who would work for several years to pay off the passage. During that indenture period they were not paid wages, but they were provided food, room, clothing, and training. Most white immigrants arrived in Colonial America as indentured servants, usually as young men and women from Britain or Germany, under the age of 21. Typically, the father of a teenager would sign the legal papers, and work out an arrangement with a ship captain, who would not charge the father any money. The captain would transport the indentured servants to the American colonies, and sell their legal papers to someone who needed workers. At the end of the indenture, the young person was given a new suit of clothes and was free to leave. Many immediately set out to begin their own farms, while others used their newly acquired skills to pursue a trade. Legal arrangements of this type have been widespread throughout world history in different forms.
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There is no evidence, direct or indirect that the Eisenbrey family was indentured in any way, Peter Eisenbrey and his family immigrated from Guendelbach, Germany, down the Rhine River to Cowes, England through Rotterdam on the Ship “Brother” across the Atlantic Ocean to Philadelphia on September 26, 1754.
What can be said, is that this voyage was the establishment of a large and dynamic Eisenbrey family in the United States.
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So what happen once they got there…………
Doctor (Benjamin) Franklin, describing the state of the people about the year 1752, says they were all loyal and submitted willingly to the government of the crown, or paid for defence cheerfully. " They were led by a thread. They not only had a respect, but an affection for Great Britain, for its laws, its customs, and its manners, and even a fondness for its fashions,"—not yet subsided. Natives of Great Britain were always treated with particular regard; and to be "an Old England man" gave a kind of rank and respect among us."
Doctor Franklin has said, that before the war of Independence " to be an Old England man gave a kind of rank and respect among us." I introduce this remark for the sake of observing, that for many years after that war, even till nearly down to the present day, I can remember that we seemed to concede to English gentlemen a claim, which they were not backward to arrogate, that they were a superior race of men; this, too, from their having been familiar at home with superior displays of grandeur, more conveniences of living, higher perfections in the arts, &c., and, above all, as having among them a renowned race of authors, poets, &c. Their assumptions, in consequence, were sometimes arrogant or offensive. And I remember to have felt with others some disparagement in the comparison. If it were only to speak of their grand navy, we felt diminutive when we heard big tales of their " Royal George"—the grandeur of their " great fleet," &c.,—we who had never seen more among us than a single frigate. But the time is now passing off,—we have in turn become renowned and great. Our navy has become respectable; our entertainments have become splendid and costly. I have lived withal, to find that even we, who before cowered, have taken our turn of being lordly; which we manifest in the offensive deportment of a mother country to our numerous colonies in the west. I only "speak what I do know" when I say, I have seen Philadelphians and New Yorkers, as metropolitans, assuming airs of importance at Washington City, at Pittsburg, at Cincinnati, at New Orleans, &c. Those pretensions of our vanity formerly in those places will subside and pass away ; already they will scarcely be observed there, and could hardly have been believed but for this remembrancer, which shows, indeed, the general state of rising society in this new country.
The tradesmen before the Revolution (I mention these facts with all good feeling) were an entirely different generation of men from the present. They did not then, as now, present the appearance in dress of gentlemen. Between them and what were deemed the hereditary gentlemen there was a marked difference. " The gentry think scorn of leather aprons," said Shakspeare. In truth, the aristocracy of the gentlemen then was noticed, if not felt, and it was to check any undue assumption of ascendency in them, that the others invented the rallying name of " the Leather Apron Club," —a name with which they were familiar before Franklin's "junta" was formed, and received that other name. In that day the tradesmen and their families had far less pride than now. While at their work, or in going abroad on weekdays, all such as followed rough trades, such as carpenters, masons, coopers, blacksmiths, &c., universally wore a leathern apron before them, and covering all their vest. Dingy buckskin breeches, once yellow, and check shirts and a red flannel jacket was the common wear of most working men ; and all men and boys from the country were seen in the streets in leather breeches and aprons, and would have been deemed out of character without them. In those days, tailors, shoemakers and hatters waited on customers to take their measures, and afterwards called with garments to fit them on before finished.
One of the remarkable incidents of our republican principles of equality, is, that hirelings, who in times before the war of Independence were accustomed to accept the name of servants, and to be dressed according to their condition, will now no longer suffer the former appellation; and all affect the dress and the air, when abroad, of genteeler people than their business warrants. Those, therefore, who from affluence have many such dependants, find it a constant subject of perplexity to manage their pride and assumption. (Source: Annals of Philadelphia…, by John Watson)
Obviously, German immigrants although they may have signed an oath of allegiance at the time of their entry into Philadelphia, they did not have a strong “affection to Great Britain.” The taverns of Philadelphia were the havens for talk of sedition, many of which were run by German immigrants like the Eisenbreys. One can only wonder what the discussions of the Declaration of Independence and the progress of the war, the occupation of the British, the victory of the war and the Constitution were at the Samson and Lion, located only a few blocks away from the cradle of the American Revolution and the creation of a new country. Given the nature of the German people, it is not surprising that 24 year old John (Isenberry/Isenbry) Eisenbrey served in the Philadelphia Militia to defend his economic interests or fight to establish his new country for his American born family.
For the American family that is the Eisenbrey’s from Philadelphia, now located around the country, the drive to make a new life in a new country with their struggles, hard work and devotion to God, to family and to their community continues from 1754 to the present day.