Mennonite Handbook of Information/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE STORY OF RUDOLPH CRONAU
The great forward movement of German emigration to America by way of the sea-ports of Philadelphia and New York, the story of such as landed at the latter place has long been very meager in the details, until we have the account related by Rudolph Cronau. It is related by him that all emigrants who took ship for New York were Palatinates from the Rhine valley, and that among them were people of different religious faith including, as is subsequently shown, numbers of whom were Mennonites who, after enduring great distress and privation in New York, a remnant finally joined company with their brethren in settlements in Pennsylvania. The following extracts written by Cronau and published in 1901 at Boppard am Rhine by Otto Maisel, are here presented in an English translation made by Dr. John W. Wayland in 1907 while at the University of Virginia:
"It was in the spring of 1709 that the Rhine became the theater of one of the most extraordinary events. All floating craft in the shape of rafts, skiffs, boats, and other vessels went gliding down the beautiful stream, all laden with unfortunate people who with their bundles, boxes, and chests were carrying with them the few things they still possessed. These emigrants took ship in Holland, passed over from there to England, where they tarried at London, to obtain from the English government a passage to North America.
"Here there were soon assembled from 13,000 to 14,000 Palatinates. It was found that the government did not have ships enough to transport so great a multitude, when by the beginning of winter, the miseries of the waiting multitude became constantly greater, which in consequence caused the death of about a thousand persons. Under such circumstances some remedy for the state of affairs had to be provided.
"With this arrangement several thousand of the unfortunates were shipped back to Holland and Germany. Some three thousand eight hundred were taken over to Ireland to aid in the weaving industry there. Six hundred were sent to the Carolinas, while over three thousand took ship for New York. But two thousand, two hundred and twenty seven of these reached their destination on the Hudson, for four hundred and seventy persons died of shipfever during the voyage. Two hundred and fifty more .perished on Governor's Island where they had been detained for several weeks in bad lodgings under the suspicion that they were taken with contagious disease.
"When finally this frightful quarantine was lifted, these Palatinate survivors were led to hope that their worst difficulties were overcome. Following their release they located in two camps near the Hudson river not so far away from the Catskill mountains, in the state of New York, where for some time they passed a most wretched existence.
"With the slender hope held out to them to obtain relief, they determined to take advantage of an offer made them by some Indian chiefs from the Valley of the Schoharie. In March of the year 1713 they set out on their journey thither, which on account of the difficulties of the route required fourteen days of travel. This was rendered most difficult because they had no draft animals and no wagons to transport the baggage, the women, the children, and the sick. All property had to be carried by hand or on the back, while in the meantime far and wide there lay a deep snow over the country. When finally the poor wanderers reached the beautiful Schoharie, they had nothing to live on, and they would in all probability have starved, had not the Indians taken pity on them and provided them with game until the disappearance of the snow and the coming of spring.
"Possibly no settlement of pioneers in America was begun under greater distress of circumstances. There were no plows or other farming implements. Houses were built of rough unhewn tree trunks, and clothing was made from skins of animals killed for them by the Indians. In this way the poor creatures dragged along till the following autumn, when the meager corn crop afforded some relief. Even this had to be beaten on stones in order to be prepared in any way for food.
"By the close of the year 1714, it developed that they could not hold their land on the Schoharie which had been offered them as a gift by the Indians. The majority of the survivors decided to migrate once more. Others continued to struggle for existence on the Schoharie and in . later years became founders of a number of the now larger towns and villages of that valley and on the Mohawk. The residue, after a series of wanderings down the valley of the Susquehanna, found new and more permanent homes with people of like religious faith and nationality in the Mennonite settlements of Pennsylvania."