Volume 13 , Issue 9

Our European Forefathers

The following comes from the book, A History of Highland County, Virginia, page 34, Chapter III, copyrighted 1911, by Oren F Morton. In chapter three it gives causes of early immigration from Europe as religious intolerance and European society. Why England led in the settling the colonies; the attitudes of other countries; the elements appearing in the immigration, the Scotch-Irish and the redemptorists and convicts.

It states when in 1607 there was an actual beginning of those thirteen colonies, which grew into the Untied States of America, Europe had not more than a third of her present population.

It was not a pleasure trip to cross the atlantic. The voyage often consumed more than a hundred days, the speed of the sailing vessel being no greater than that of a man afoot.

If the winds were very contrary, the supply of water and provisions might fail. Smallpox and other forms of disease were liable to cause havoc in the crowded and untidy ships. There was also the peril of shipwreck, but there was the further peril of capture by pirates.

Once safely across the ocean, the average immigrant was not at all likely to revisit his old home. The prime causes for the settling of America was Religious Intolerance and Economic Oppression.

For 15 centuries there was practically but one Christian Church in all Europe. The one church upheld the various national governments, and the various national governments upheld the one church.

It was the general conviction that unity in religious interest within the state was essential as unity and vigor in civil authority. So it was thought rightful and proper for the state to crush a new religious sect, just as it would crush a rival to its civil pretensions. Those times were harsh. Since a man could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, he might expect to be burned alive for being a heretic.

Each sect wished to be let alone, but would not let others alone. But here in America was a wilderness where men who could not agree might still get beyond elbow touch with one another. So the Pilgrims came to Massachusetts. The Baptists to Rhode Island. The Quakers to Pennsylvania. The Episcopalians to New York and the South. The Presbyterians to the frontier.

Another prime cause for the immigration to America was economic oppression. The long rule of the Roman Empire made Europe thoroughly acquainted with despotism. When that empire went to pieces, the lawlessness of Western Europe became intolerable.

The masses of the people saw no other recourse than to put themselves under the protection of military chieftains. They had to toil for the support of the leader and his household and to follow him in war. They thus became known as serfs, or villeins, and lived in virtual slavery.

The chieftains became the dukes and barons of the Middle Ages. They lived in castles, wore armor in battle, and boasted of their coats of arms. They were proud and overbearing, held labor in contempt, and despised the serfs on whose toil they lived. Toward these peasants there was no thought of social equality or intermarriage.

The structure of society was known as feudalism. It slowly gave way as new monarchies rose here and there out of the wreckage of the old empire. These gained power at the expense of the nobility, until the latter lost their authority as petty rulers, although regaining the ownership of the lands they had controlled. This loss of the nobleman's power worked an important change in the relation between noble and peasant. The former became little more than a landlord, to whom the peasant now paid rent instead of giving compulsory service.

The lot of the peasant was still hard, although he was coming into a higher consciousness of his natural rights and was more disposed to act upon them. In Europe the area of land was a fixed quantity. The arrogant landlords were virtually reducing the amount. They were enclosing large tracts, so that they might hunt deer and pheasants. This process of enclosure and the growth of population made the rents too high for comfort.

Poverty was spreading, and the yeoman farmer, the natural backbone of society, was being crowded to the wall. He could perceive that the future was with the mass of the people and not with the small privileged class. But he could also perceive that those who control the land control the government and determine the structure of society.

Europe would remain aristocratic until land monopoly was overthrown, and this result would come only after a long and bitter struggle. The universal tendency of rent was to leave the toiler only enough to enable him to exist. It was rent that determined wages.

In America there was a seemingly boundless amount of wild land. Wild land meant free land, free land meant ownership, and ownership meant relief from unjust rents.

Free access to land meant that direct participation in government would be generally diffused. It further meant that the resulting society would be democratic rather than aristocratic. It could still further be seen that a higher and more general degree of well-being was possible than where privilege was in the saddle and riding rough-shod.

So â?¦ the desire for economic freedom lured men to America even more than the desire for religious freedom.

It was inevitable that the varying degree of land monopoly and aristocratic thought and practice was a share of the baggage brought from Europe.

It goes on to say that humanity does not progress by leaps but by steps. And yet such weeds could never take firm root in the American soil so long as there was free access to a public domain.

Land could not be a dependable source of income unless the owner rolled up his sleeves and went to work. To evade this necessity, the planter imported white servants and soon afterward was purchasing negro slaves. Neither indentureship nor slavery could withstand the competitive power of free access to land.

Thus, economic and religious opportunity were thus the two arms of the magnet that drew Europeans to America and made this country great.

It has been reported that England was foremost in breaking the power of feudalism and giving the masses of her people a will to assert themselves.

Also, the strong religious sects in that country were better able to take care of themselves than was true of other European lands excepting Holland. Holland was the first commercial country of Europe, and owned as many ships as all the rest of the continent. With respect to civil and religious liberty, Holland was also the freest of the European lands.

Holland was quite exempt from persecution and had a keen eye to business. Hollanders were expert to found a single colony, and primarily for the purpose of trade rather than agriculture. This is precisely what took place, and the metropolitan city of New York bears witness to their good judgment.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland, dependencies of England, contributed to the stream of emigration, but as the interests of the Scotch, Welsh, and Irish in the new continent were identical with those of the more numerous English, these people did not seek to form colonies of their own.

Germany and Scandinavia had taken no interest in American exploration. The former was not then a united county. From 1618 to 1648 it was in the throes of the most terrible war that ever desolated Europe. Germany had not time to think of founding colonies of her own. Sweden was then a great military power. To find a haven for persecuted Protestants, her king started a little colony on Delaware Bay.

France, Spain and Portugal had been very active in the exploration of America. But the french were not emigrants by temperament or inclination, and they had made not resolute effort to colonize our Atlantic seaboard. As for Spain and Portugal, they took little interest in lands which lay outside the tropics.

Yet in an indirect way, France and Germany sent many of their people to our shores. A bigoted king undertook to crush the strong foothold the Reformation had secured in France. His Protestant subjects, known as Huguenots, were the most intelligent and enterprising of his people. The were the mainstay of French commerce and industry. The toleration extended to them by a former king was revoked, and it was made difficult for a Huguenot to escape with his life. Yet to the number of 300,000 they did get away, and they found a refuge in England and Germany.

In England they joined the Puritans and in many instances adopted English surnames. In Germany they became a large degree a German-speaking people. In both countries they joined very numerously the emigration to America. In New England and South carolina they were particularly numerous. Unhappy Germany continued to be desolated by war after war. An incident in one of these was the devastation of the Palatinate, a province on the Rhine and bordering France.

This was done by order of the French king, and the fine province was made a temporary desert. Villages and farmhouses were burned to the ground, orchard trees were destroyed, and wells were filled up. BUT William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, invited the now homeless people to join his colony, and many of them complied. This early German emigration was almost wholly from the valley of the Rhine and from Switzerland.

It was not until the second decade of the eighteenth century that America was more homogeneous than it had ever been since.

The volume of immigration had become relatively small, and the institutional differences among the colonies, the people were predominantly of English blood and character.

They viewed with considerable disfavor the heavy volume of Scotch-Irish and German immigration which now set in. This was because of the alien appearance and in part the alien speech of the newcomers. While events did not justify the fears of the older population, the future of America as profoundly influenced by the new arrivals and very particularly by the Scotch-Irish. This is the very element which led in the settlement of Highland county, Virginia.

If you were to sketch the peculiarities of the European stocks from which the Colonial Americans were derived, the English, the Lowland Scotch, the Saxon Irish, the Hollanders, the Germans, and the Swedes were of the Germanic stock, which is cool-blooded and persistent.

The Welsh, the Highland Scotch, and the native Irish were of the Celtic stock, which was more turbulent than the other and more impatient of restraint. The Huguenots were of the Latin stock, which, like the native Irish, was of warm sensibilities.

This NW Okie's ancestors had all of the above mixture of Colonial Americans: the English, Lowland Scotch, Irish, Hollanders, Germans and the Welsh. you can view our Paris Pioneers by clicking the link herein. The Paris Pioneers is a combined family tree of Paternal, Maternal & NW Okie's Husbands ancestors.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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