Germantown, Pennsylvania, was founded in October of this year, the first of the German townships in America. Its birth was the direct result, six years after the event, of a visit made by the Englishman William Penn to Frankfurt in 1677. Frankfurt was then the center of the German Pietists, a sect of devout, semi-mystical Christians whose purpose was to loosen the rigid, creed-bound systems of the Lutheran Church. Their emphasis on the individual spirit made it likely that they would find a kindred soul in the famous Quaker, and he kindred souls in them. When Penn, a few years later, became a great landholder in America, it was natural that a large number of his German friends should wish to join him in his “holy experiment.”
The Frankfurt Land Company was formed: it purchased fifteen thousand acres of American soil, made an extraordinary man named Francis Daniel Pastorius its agent, and the Germans began to come.
Pastorius himself arrived in Germantown in October 1683. He was a lawyer, a scholar, and a writer. He had studied at the universities of Strasbourg, Basel, and Jena and had taken a law degree at Altdorf. He worked at his profession but became increasingly dissatisfied with it; his thoughts turned toward religion, and he hoped to find in Pennsylvania a refuge from the stir and vanity of worldly affairs.
He did. In his thirty-six years in Germantown he served as mayor, clerk, and schoolmaster and wrote several books. One work alone would ensure his permanent and honorable place in our history. In 1688, with three other men, he wrote and signed the first protest against slavery ever made in the English colonies. He found it “a terror, or fearful thing, that men should be handelled so in Pennsylvania. … How fearful and faint-hearted are many at sea when they see a strange vessel, being afraid it should be a Turk, and they should be taken, and sold for slaves into Turkey. Now, what is this better done, than Turks do?”
The protest was buried by various committees and had no effect.
1883 One Hundred Years Ago
The evening of October 22 offered an embarrassment of riches to New York society. At the Metropolitan Opera House the first of all first nights; at Madison Square Garden, the first National Horse Show. Both were socially obligatory; some of the great managed to split their time evenly between the two events, and a Mrs. Paran Stevens, it was reported, squeezed in yet a third entertainment at the Academy of Music.
The gaslit Metropolitan presented Faust (sung in Italian) with Christine Nilsson, Italo Campanini, and Franco Novara (an Englishman named Frank Nash). The New York Times generally approved of the splendor of the evening but had several reservations about the acoustics and sight lines of the new theater. The performances were well received, and Nilsson’s rendition of “The Jewel Song” prompted an avalanche of flowers.
The horse show was every bit as big a success. The Garden was filled to capacity for five afternoons and evenings, the mayor made a speech (which no one could hear over the noise), the great English actor Henry Irving came and applauded. The only “mistake,” according to the press, was the effort to introduce “Anglo-mania.” The American “lover of horse flesh who is used to the free, open and handsome action of that noblest of animals, the American trotter, cannot be induced by the imitators of English mannerisms to accept in its stead the mincing, jumping-jack action of the English cob.”
NOVEMBER 3: The World Women’s Christian Temperance Union was organized in Detroit.
1908 Seventy-five Years Ago
In October the Ford Motor Company offered for sale a light (twelve hundred pounds), cheap ($825 for the roadster; $850 for the touring car), massproduced, fuel-efficient (about twenty miles to the gallon) motorcar to the American public. It was called the Model T, a name soon and affectionately modified to Tin Lizzie or flivver. No single product has ever effected such a profound change in the social fabric of this country.
Some background: In 1902 there was one car for every 1,500,000 people; in 1905 one to 65,000 people; and in 1907 one to 800. In 1907 the Ford Manufacturing Company was absorbed into the Ford Motor Company: Henry Ford was then in a position to control every aspect of production and marketing. This was essential to his dream of supplying the masses with a good, cheap car. In 1909 the company informed its branch managers that 10,607 cars had been sold during the Model T’s first year. When the car was retired in 1927, total sales had climbed to a staggering 15.5 million.
The automobile had its faults. The front and rear wheels were of different sizes, so it was necessary to carry a double set of tires and inner tubes. It bucked, slipped gears, and rattled. But the country’s love affair with this machine was such that even these character traits were regarded fondly. The goal was a combination of lightness with power and durability, and this was achieved. “Perhaps nothing in it was beautiful,” wrote one observer, “but nothing in it was false.”
Thirty years after the car was introduced, an Ohio farmer, thinking of the old days, wrote to Edsel Ford: “Until your father provided low-cost transportation, the vast majority of [farm] families had scarcely been five miles from home. I can truthfully say that every time such a family group met my eyes, I would reverently say, ‘God bless Henry Ford …’”
NOVEMBER 3: William Howard Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan for the Presidency. Eugene Debs, running on the Socialist ticket, got no electoral votes.
NOVEMBER 16: Arturo Toscanini made his American debut, conducting Aida at the Metropolitan Opera House.
