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The Journals and Papers of David Shultze, Vol. 1: 1726-1760
273 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1952
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July 6, 2017
The diarist in question, David Shultze (1717-1797), was at times a pretty interesting man. Born in the German village of Harpersdorf, his family belonged to the Schwenkfelder movement, an obscure and now-defunct religious group organized around the teachings of Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig. The Shultze family came to America in 1733, and David himself didn't stay with the Schwenkfelders, though he rubbed shoulders with plenty. He got a job as a local surveyor and 'bush lawyer' in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
He and his wife Anna Rosina Beyer took in an unruly indentured servant boy, Hans Ulrich Seiler, whom Anna's father Abraham brought over as a "redemptioner" but then couldn't handle. Unfortunately, in 1750, Ulrich brutally murdered 29-year-old Anna in her sleep while David was away on a surveying job. (A day shy of five months later, Ulrich became the first redemptioner executed in the New World, an event David insisted on watching and recorded with no small degree of vengeful satisfaction.)
In 1758, David married a woman named Elizabeth Lahr, seventeen years his junior, who remained his companion for the remainder of his life and then outlived him by a decade. And toward the end of this collection of journals and papers, David records the December 1759 marriage of Elizabeth's younger sister Magdalena to a certain Henrich Rauch. (To me, that short mention was the beginning of the real fascination of this book, insofar as Henrich and Magdalena are my seventh-great-grandparents.)
Most of the book may not make for especially scintillating reading - the minutiae of life frequently don't - but taken together, it's an incredibly valuable look into a segment of the colonial world.
He and his wife Anna Rosina Beyer took in an unruly indentured servant boy, Hans Ulrich Seiler, whom Anna's father Abraham brought over as a "redemptioner" but then couldn't handle. Unfortunately, in 1750, Ulrich brutally murdered 29-year-old Anna in her sleep while David was away on a surveying job. (A day shy of five months later, Ulrich became the first redemptioner executed in the New World, an event David insisted on watching and recorded with no small degree of vengeful satisfaction.)
In 1758, David married a woman named Elizabeth Lahr, seventeen years his junior, who remained his companion for the remainder of his life and then outlived him by a decade. And toward the end of this collection of journals and papers, David records the December 1759 marriage of Elizabeth's younger sister Magdalena to a certain Henrich Rauch. (To me, that short mention was the beginning of the real fascination of this book, insofar as Henrich and Magdalena are my seventh-great-grandparents.)
Most of the book may not make for especially scintillating reading - the minutiae of life frequently don't - but taken together, it's an incredibly valuable look into a segment of the colonial world.
Displaying 1 of 1 review