Introduction

Readers familiar with previous volumes of this series will know the causes and nature of the events described in this one. Any one else is advised to read the foreword to one of the earlier volumes or to that of Henry Newman’s Salzburger Letterbooks.¹ Otherwise, let it suffice to say that, when the Lutherans were expelled from Salzburg in 1731, not all the exiles went to East Prussia and other Protestant lands in Europe: a small number, some two hundred, were taken to the colony of Georgia, then in its second year. Georgia, the last of Britain’s thirteen North American colonies, was founded according to the grandiose schemes of a group of benevolent gentlemen in London, called the Trustees, who wished to provide homes for impoverished Englishmen and persecuted foreign Protestants, to protect the more northerly colonies from the Spaniards in Florida, and to provide raw materials for English industry.

The first Salzburger transport, or traveling party, consisted of recent exiles who had been recruited in and around Augsburg, a Swabian city just north of Salzburg. This group arrived in Georgia in 1734 and settled some twenty-five miles northwest of Savannah, where they founded a settlement which they named Ebenezer. By the time the second transport arrived a year later, it had been discovered that the land that had been chosen was sterile and that the stream on which it was built, Ebenezer Creek, was unnavigable. When a third transport arrived in 1736, composed mostly of Upper Austrian exiles, the survivors at Ebenezer joined them on the Red Bluff on the Savannah River, bringing the name of the earlier settlement with them. The original site, which became the Trustees’ cowpen or cattle ranch, was henceforth called Old Ebenezer.

A fourth and last transport, consisting of Salzburger exiles who had been sojourning in Augsburg and other Swabian cities, arrived in 1741. The Salzburgers were joined by Swiss and Palatine settlers from Purysburg, a Swiss settlement a short way down the Savannah River on the Carolina side, and also by some Palatine servants donated by the Trustees. Not finding enough fertile land on the Red Bluff, many Salzburgers moved their plantations to an area along Abercorn Creek where the lowland was flooded and enriched each winter by the Savannah River. This explains the terms “the town” and “the plantations.” After some gristmills and sawmills were built on Abercorn Creek, it was usually called the Mill River (Mühl-Fluss).

Despite appalling sickness and mortality and the hardships incident to settlement in a wilderness, the Salzburgers were the most successful community in Georgia. This relative success was largely due to the skill, devotion, and diligence of their spiritual leader, Johann Martin Boltzius, the author of most of these reports. This young divine had been trained at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and had taught in that city at the Francke Foundation, a charitable institution that was to have great influence on the development of Ebenezer. Although Boltzius was at heart a minister, his secular responsibilities in Georgia moulded him into a skilful administrator, economist, and diplomat. A few of the reports were written by Boltzius’ admiring younger colleague, Israel Christian Gronau, who officiated whenever Boltzius was away in Savannah or elsewhere.

Boltzius’ journals were edited contemporaneously by Samuel Urlsperger, the Senior of the Lutheran clergy in Augsburg. Comparison of the original manuscripts surviving in Halle with Urlsperger’s published edition shows that he took considerable liberty in deleting unpleasant reports and suppressing proper names, which he replaces with N. or N.N. The original documents for 1742 no longer exist, so there is no way to know how much Urlsperger changed or deleted; but there is reason to believe that Boltzius made an entry for every day, as he had been instructed to, and that Urlsperger made major deletions both for diplomatic and for economic reasons. In some cases he simply consolidated the material for two or more days into one. Urlsperger’s deletions are very illogical: he often deletes a name in one passage even though it appears in another and can be easily recognized. For example, he deletes the name of a sinful town immediately after discussing Purysburg; and, when the Schwartzwälder child dies, the blame is put on N., who can be none other than its father.

The first important event of the year 1742 was the distribution of gifts sent from Augsburg and Wurttemberg, the area in which members of the fourth transport had resided after their expulsion from Salzburg. To account for the charities, Boltzius submitted careful lists of the recipients and the gifts they received; and this is very fortunate, since no ship manifest survives for the fourth transport. Later in the year the Salzburgers received another great benefaction, a large chest full of clothes, tools, and other useful gifts from Halle. In addition to the list of recipients, this volume also contains a valuable list of crops grown by all the householders.

Among the important events of 1742 were the construction of a 300 foot bridge and the beginning of a church on the plantations. This year also saw the beginnings of viticulture, which was a failure, and of sericulture, which became for a while the Salzburgers’ greatest claim to fame. Cattle raising remained the number one industry, even though the Salzburgers, so often praised for herding their cattle, now found it more practical to let them run free as the other colonists did.

While the earlier settlers who had survived the unhealthy climate were at last beginning to prosper, the fourth transport did not share in their prosperity. Although they had enjoyed a relatively healthy voyage and were welcomed and aided by the seasoned settlers, they succumbed to disease, of which a great many perished. Even Boltzius had to admit their pitiable condition, which was proof that it is God’s manner first to humble and then to raise up.

Of importance for Georgia was the founding of Vernonburg, a Swiss and German settlement on the Vernon River just south of Savannah. The most significant historical event of the year 1742, the War of Jenkins’ Ear between England and Spain, received very little mention in this volume until prices rose and refugees began pouring into Ebenezer from Savannah and Frederica and crowding the inhabitants’ simple quarters. Oglethorpe’s brilliant victory at Bloody Marsh was praised as a victory of the Lord, to whom thanks were duly given by the Ebenezer ministers as well as by Oglethorpe himself. Despite Boltzius’ admiration for Oglethorpe, the champion of the Indians, he was beginning to express a disdain for the noble savage, especially after the brutal murder of a German woman and her infant at a nearby fortress.

The mostly trivial and humdrum occurrences of these reports have value as social history, for we get glimpses into the past not afforded by standard histories. So far the Ebenezer records had made no mention of geese, a fowl dear to the European peasants; but we can infer their presence when a woman confesses to having stolen a goose egg. We also learn that, because of a shortage of cash money, the people of Ebenezer used scrip prepared and vouched for by their ministers and leaders. We see how even godly people can accept superstition: whereas sensible cures had previously been used against snakebite, Ruprecht Steiner was buried naked in the ground to draw out the poison, a cure suggested by someone from Purysburg.

We also learn a bit more about the Salzburgers: some of the exiles, such as Anna Maria Flerl, had not embraced Protestantism until the expulsion had begun; and Elisabetha Klocker did not do so until reaching Ebenezer. Some readers may find the index excessive; except for Boltzius and Gronau, nearly everyone is listed each time he is mentioned, no matter how trivial the occasion. Even when the reference has little significance, it does show that the person in question was at the place in question at the time in question, facts which may help identify him and differentiate him from other people with similar names. Because the nature of the reference is given in the index, the reader is spared looking up a reference only to learn that the person is a “recipient” or is “growing in Christianity.”

New readers are advised, and old readers are reminded, that we must watch out for a bit of Pietist jargon, for Boltzius was a Pietist, and Pietists gave certain common terms specific spiritual meanings. For example, a man may be indolent (träge) because he spends too much time in chopping and hoeing and not enough in praying. A man is “honest” (ehrlich) if he accepts the Pietists’ views. Rich people in Charleston live in great misery (Elend) because they indulge in worldly pleasures (The word Elend originally meant exile, and in this case it means “exile or alienation from God”). Bourgeois respectability (bürgerliche Ehrsamkeit) is a vice rather than a virtue because it gives people a false sense of security (Sicherheit).