"The German is like a willow. No matter which way you bend him, he will always take root again."
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Lahn between Gießen and Wetzlar.

   Our line of the Hause family—first called the Hauß family (a "ß" is the equivalent of "ss" in the German alphabet)—hails (not "heils") from the Rhine River area of Germany, which at that time was split into hundreds of different states, run by different rulers. The borders of those states changed constantly over the course of the area's war-torn history, but today the general area is called Hessen (or Hesse).
   Our line of the family lived in a village near the Lahn River, called Klein Altenstädten, which was situated near the Imperial Free city of Wetzlar, and 15 kilometers west of Gießen, in what was then the Herzogtum (also called a duchy—which was the official territory of a duke) of Solm.¹
   We can tell a lot about the village of Klein Altenstädten, just from its name alone: In the German language, "Alten" means "old one," and a "städt" was a place that had a large number of inhabitants with a dense grouping of buildings, and a clear division of labor (town guilds).
   "Städte" have existed for centuries in Germany, and their formation was usually determined by the consideration of military defense position, and the location in regard to important roads or rivers, which were needed for the transportation of goods.
   The Dutchy of Solm was located near the Imperial Free Cities of Friedberg and Wetzlar, in between Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Nassau, and the Hauß family lived in that area under the jurisdiction of the Lutheran Parish of Aßlar. In fact, there are still members of the Hauß line living there today: in a quick Google search for this family history, I found 78 year-old Eva Hauß placing second in her bracket using a souped-up wheelchair at the 2001 10K "Run'n'Roll for Help in Giessen."
   Solm had its first documented mention in the year 788 AD, in a donation document from the Lorsch Monastery. The Counts and Princes of Solm ruled the area from their ancestral castle in Burgsolms, with their main lines being the Solms-Braunfels (with their seat in Braunfels), and Solms-Hohensolms-Lich, with their seat in Lich. (The Hauß family was registered at Hohensolms in the 1500's and 1600's.)
   The bordering town of Wetzlar has existed since 897 AD. It was a free Imperial city from 1197 until 1803. In 1698, Wetzlar became the seat of the Reichskammergericht, or the supreme court of justice in the Holy Roman Empire.² So Wetzlar gained a prominent status within the Empire, with many famous people visiting the town, or working temporarily at the court (Goethe being the most famous).
   A map of the general area where our branch of the Hauß family lived is displayed below:

A map of the area where the Hauß family is first recorded (for a larger version, click on the image). You can view more maps of the area from the University of Marburg Archives, which charts the war-torn area from 1567 to the 1800s. Klein Altensdädten, 15 kilometers west of Gießen, is where the family was registered in the 1500's and 1600's. But there are still many Hauß families there today.

Klein Altenstädten today.

   It's now impossible to say when our family arrived in Klein Altenstädten, but the first mention of the Hauß family living there appeared in the 16th Century.
   A Peter Hauß of Altenstädten was registered at offices in Königsberg (in Eastern Prussia) and at Hohensolms (Hohensolms castle in Lahn-Dill-Bergland, Hessen, is 18 km from Wetzlar), according to the Marburg Archives lists of Shrove Tuesday hens, garden taxes, and subject money (110 Acc. 1939/31, No. 167). He was listed several times, in the years 1558, 1559, and 1565.
   Jorg and Jacob Hauß were registered there twenty years after Peter, and Johannchen and Jürgen Hauß were listed a decade after that. Their exact relation to us is unknown. But we do know that the Hauß families made the Klein Altenstädten area their base, surviving wars (the Count of Solms supported the Protestant cause during the Thirty Years War), famine, and the Black Death, which swept through the region in 1625 and then again in 1634.

Parts of Wetzlar and the Lahn look remarkably the same today as they did in the 1500's (well, except for the Direct TV antenna).

The Duchy of Solm today.

   A man living in Germania 400 years ago was a commodity more than a person, and "freedom" as we know it today was unheard of—there wasn't even a word for it. (Nothing comes for free in the mind of a Reformist Christian.) The population in the area was split into two groups, labeled either Leibeigene ("serfs") or Leibfreie ("free subjects," with more rights than serfs, but still bound to their local ruler). The best a man could hope for was that, through hard work and penance, he could eventually rise out of serfdom to earn the privilege of citizenship, which was called Bürgerrecht. With this, a man could gain property and possessions, which provided wealth and power, strengthened his family (and his descendants) through political influence, and gave him a say in property disputes. Bürgerrecht would define a family's alliances with other clans in times of emergency, as well as those they would exclude. It wasn't freedom, but at least you had a voice. This was as close to "freedom" as a poor subject could get, or even understand.
   In order to attain Bürgerrecht, a serf had to register as a taxpayer and provide church penance (as Peter Hauß was doing in those tax lists). There was no separation of church and state—so you had to worship under whatever faith your ruler commanded, and paid that church. The official state religion could change as often as the rulers—and in feudal Germany, they changed a lot!
   The Hauß surname appeared sporadically in the few church texts that weren't burned or trashed: The church books of Altenstädt of Marsberg marked an occasion in 1653 of an organ purchase for the village church. This document contains a list of donors, with approximately 125 names. One of them was a "Johann Hauss." There were other related families in the region, as well: A Hanns Hauß was recorded on the tax rolls in Nieder-Weisel, Solms-Lich, near the village of Hausen in 1643. His family operated a tavern called The Stag and The Swan.

   Then, sometime around 1666, JOHANN CHRISTIAN HAUSS, our earliest known direct ancestor, was born. Information on his early life is obviously scarce. Still, we can be sure it was a pretty rough childhood.³
   The number of children born to each marriage in this area was fairly large—from 6 to 12, depending on the age at which the mother married—but the mortality rate was also very high. Childhood diseases and smallpox took their toll, and the specter of the plague was always present for young and old alike. (During 1667 and 1678, the nearby town of Mannheim lost half its population to the disease.) Lack of even basic sanitation control brought epidemics of cholera and typhus. As a result, it was likely that a married couple would raise no more than three or four of their 6-to-12 youngsters to any stage of healthy adulthood. Therefore, we can assume that Johann Christian Hauss had plenty of siblings, although few would have survived. One sibling may have been Daniel Hauß, who was registered at Königsberg in 1694.
   Meanwhile, the industrious Johann Christian became a carpenter. It was a well-chosen career, because a carpenter could always find work in a town that was ransacked and destroyed on a continual basis. But living in that sort of squalor also meant there wasn't much chance for Bürgerrecht. Still, Johann Christian prospered enough to marry a local beauty named MARIA CATHERINE. According to family lore, they had six sons (or the term a peasant carpenter calls his male children: "cheap labor") and a daughter. Those children were:

CHILDREN OF JOHANN CHRISTIAN & MARIA CATHARINE HAUSS

JOHANNES HAUSS was born to Johann and his first wife between 1690-1692 in Germany. After traveling across the ocean to America he married 20-year-old SARAH ALLEN in 1715. Johannes was Naturalized as a British subject (as "Johannus Hausz") in 1721.

RHEINHARDT RYNIER HAUS, born @ 1690 in Germany, and was Naturalized as a British subject (as "Rynier Hous of Phillipsburg, a yeoman"), in New York on January 10,1715/16. He married ANNA MARIE GUSSINGER (or ANNA ELLIS or ANNA ELIZABETH NEIDHOFER), and they settled in Westchester County, raising their children Johann Heinrich (5 Nov 1715), Anna Juliana (5 Feb 1718), Susanna (9 Apr 1720), Jannet (married Thomas Meredic in 1737), Christian (2 Aug 1722), Johannes (baptized 29 May 1726), Maria (baptized 27 April 1728), Maria Elisabetha (21 Mar 1731), and Rheinhardt Jr. (baptized 21 Aug 1733).

CONRAD HAUS married CHRISTINA WALRRAAD. Children unknown.

JURRIAN (GEORG) HAUS married CATHERINA EHRHARDT. They had the following children: Conrad (born @ 1730), Maria Elizabetha (30 Oct. 1734), Maria Dorothae (baptized 7 Jan 1736 ), Johann George (baptized 18 Nov 1737), and Jurgen (7 Oct 1749).

ELIAS HAUS (?) on the list of the Van Slyke Patent in 1715.

HERMANUS or HARMONIOUS (HERMAN) HAUS married MARIE ELIZABETH. Children unknown.

ANNA ELISABETH HAUS married CONRADT RICKERT, who was christened on 28 Feb 1703 in Nieder-Grundau, Hesse, Germany. They had MARIA ELISABETH RICKERT, who was christened on 18 Aug 1734 in Schoharie, Schoharie, NY.

   But while Johann Christian's family grew, his fortune did not. With the political and religious instability now in the area of Solm, the German concept of freedom was disappearing. A man's land, his money, even his religion, could be taken from him at any moment. Men went from privileged landowners to paupers overnight, and their families were left homeless, or worse. And money was getting more scarce, because while the land was dying, the population was growing again.
   In the latter 17th Century, the various Germanic states had struggled to recover from The Thirty Years' War. But by 1700, commerce had just about recovered and the population levels had returned to those of 1600. This was achieved because the local rulers had eased immigration laws and offered religious tolerance, so new people had come from outside the Holy Roman Empire, including the Swiss, French, Dutch, and Scandinavians. Another cause of the growth was a high fertility rate which overcame the high level of infant mortality and epidemics. (Hey, when you're poor and unemployed, what else do you have to do?) In a few areas, the growth had been so strong that the population had reached unsustainable levels.
   During the 17th and 18th centuries, many European powers forced their subjects to follow an official state religion, and whenever the area the Hauß family lived in was conquered, the official religion changed. And with each religious "conversion" came a new government, demanding more and more money. Depending on the year, Johann might have been paying taxes to the Germans, French, or any number of invading princes—as well as the Catholic, or the Lutheran, or the Calvinist Church.
   Not only that, Johann could be pressed into military service, as the various Hessian rulers often sold off their subjects for military service to other countries. In the 1670's, a French move to expand into the Empire during the 1670's started another war. Then in 1677-1678, Hessian troops fought for Denmark, against Sweden. In 1688, Hessian troops in fought for Venice, against the Ottoman Empire.

"As governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad. If it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn."
—William Penn

   When William Penn toured the Rhine in 1677, spreading the word of a new kind of religious freedom in the American colonies where you could decide for yourself what to believe, he found a receptive audience. And it's probably when Johann Christian Hauss, eleven or twelve at the time, first heard of America.
   The area was to face another assault from France near the end of the 17th Century. The 'War of the Grand Alliance' involved Louis XIV, who was claiming part of the Palatinate for France, pitted against the League of Augsburg—a coalition of European princes who refused to hand over their land. The conflict lasted eight years, from 1689-1687. What land that Louis didn't want, he destroyed. In fact, he even destroyed a lot of the land that he did want!
   Finally, the Treaty of Ryswick restored the contested lands... But by that time the land had become so ravaged that many of the inhabitants fled the area entirely, following William Penn and becoming the earliest German settlers of America—the Pennsylvania Dutch.
   Meanwhile, the War of Spanish Succession, 1702-1713, was completing the destruction of the area. During the war, Hessians supported the Emperor against the French invaders. The area's farmland became barren and charred, villages were destroyed, and the inhabitants were imprisoned, burned at the stake, broken on wheels or drowned. In 1702, nine thousand Hessians served under the maritime powers, and in 1706 eleven thousand five hundred men were in Italy. England was the best customer. Through a large part of the eighteenth century she had Hessians in her pay (in fact, our family would end up fighting mercenaries from Hessen in the American Revolution).

THE WORLD IN THE EARLY 1700s:

The average life expectancy was about 30-35 years. The population in Colonial America reached 357,500. Elias Neau, a Frenchman, opened a school for blacks in NYC In the Colonies, adultery was punished by whipping, branding, fining, imprisonment, and wearing a letter "A" sewed upon the sleeves of the outer garment. Many words now considered obscene were freely used. Even the f-word commonly appeared in court documents! April 24, 1704: The "Boston News-Letter," the first successful newspaper in the American Colonies, was published in Boston by John Campbell. May 1, 1704: the "Boston Newsletter" published the first newspaper ad, which is why we have all those great, glossy, color lingerie ads in the Sunday "New York Times" today. July 24, 1704: The War of Spanish Succession, with English & Dutch troops occupying Gibraltar. August 13, 1704: French & Bavarian forces were routed by the Duke of Marlborough with a combined British, German & Dutch army at Blenheim, Germany. August 25: Battle at Malaga: French vs English & Dutch fleet September 28: Maryland allowed divorce if a wife "mispleased" the clergyman/preacher

"They have endured one hundred years of war—King Gustavus Adolphus burned the city of Spiers in 1633. Invaded by Imperialists in 1644, by Germany in 1676 and by the Dauphin in 1688. Restored to the German Empire by the Treaty of Reswish, then destroyed by the French in 1693 who made a desert of 2,000 cities, towns and villages; destroying their vines with design to make so fatal a waste that the country might never be peopled or inhabited again. Vast numbers of Palatines perished in the woods and caves, among the wild beasts, through hunger, cold and nakedness."
—From a House of Commons investigation of the "Poor Palatines now living in London," as recorded in the "Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York," Vol. 111

Queen Anne of England, of the Stuart dynasty.

   At this time, there was a young Lutheran Minister from the Kocherthal area in the Palatinate, named Joshua Harrsch (later known as Joshua Kocherthal). Appalled at the plight of his people, he went to England to plead their cause with the London Board of Trade and with Queen Anne.
   Queen Anne was related to the "Queen of Hearts" of the Palatinate, Elizabeth. They were both part of the Stuart Dynasty, (in fact, Elizabeth was the sister of Anne's great-grandfather, Charles I), so Anne was sympathetic to the plight of the poor Palatines.
   Kocherthal's petition was submitted to the Board of Trade, which suggested that the Palatines and other German refugees should be settled in Antigua.
   Upon the opinion that the Palatines would not be suited to the hot climate of the West Indies, it was then suggested that they be directed to the Hudson River Valley in the Province of New York. (After all, Indian attacks and below-zero winter temperatures were much more enjoyable than drinking rum and coconut milk on a sunny beach, right?) They decided that the Germans would instead be used to assist the English on the frontier, as a buffer against the French and the Indians. (In other words, the Palatines would be stationed on the land that would be attacked first, giving the British time to prepare. It was also hoped that through Palatine trade and intermarriage with the Native Americans that France would lose the support of the Indian Nations.)
   Kocherthal also persuaded Queen Anne that German labor would be a valuable asset in establishing and fortifying her colonies (although he thought they would be helping to create vineyards and wineries, not fortifying military bases). He then returned to the Palatinate, where he wrote and distributed a pamphlet throughout the Rhine Valley, entitled Aussfuhrlich und umstandlicher Bericht von der beruhmten Landschafft Carolina. It promised that the English government would provide Palatines with monetary assistance to travel to the New World.
   This pamphlet and others like it painted a glorious picture of life in the British Colony of New York: A "LAND OF MILK AND HONEY," where life could be as rich and rewarding as any man wanted. British land agents traveled through the Rhineland in brightly colored wagons. Drawing a crowd with trumpets and drums, they drew crowds like snake oil salesmen, glowingly describing the life that awaited in America, offering land and prosperity and handing out "THE GOLDEN BOOK," a tome from 1702 which promised safe passage to America by way of the British government, and even featured an etching of Queen Anne on the back. These "handbooks" made wild promises: "Wild pigeons fly so low here that one can knock them out of the sky with sticks. Wild turkeys are big and fat, some as much as 46 pounds. The Indians often bring gifts of six or seven deer at a time..." America became more than an escape for these impoverished people—it became the Promised Land. During 1709, approximately 13,500 German and Swiss emigrants would apply for passage to the English colonies... and after seeing all of the death and destruction in his country, it sure sounded good to Johann Christian Hauss.

LEFT TO RIGHT: A recent map of Johan's homeland, now in the state of Hessen; Louis XIX invades the Rhine, 1693; Ships leave for New York with Palatines; Klein Altenstädten today.

   Finally, after the bitterly cold winter of 1708-1709, in which the frozen Rhine was closed for five weeks, "wine and spirits froze into solid blocks of ice; birds on the wing fell dead; and it is said, saliva congealed in its fall from the mouth to the ground," Johann took up a British agent's offer of advancing his expenses to emigrate to the New World. To repay the "advancement," Johann sold everything he owned—including himself and his family—into indentured servitude—agreeing to be legally bound to the Queen for several years, until his entire family's debt was paid. But even that was preferable to starvation, war and Armut ("poverty") surrounding his home. The money he got for the few possessions he did own were probably used up in paying the tax that the town and duchy assessed for his migration.
   Johann Christian Hauss was in his forties, and several of his sons were already men, so some people may have wondered why he took such a risk so late in life (about a quarter of the emigrants were over 40, in fact). Most probably, Johann was thinking about the future of his family, and it looked bleak in Solm. There would be new opportunities in the Colonies: towns to be built, houses to be razed—and carpenters would be needed... and most importantly, there would be land: Fresh, unspoiled land where Johann and his children—and their children—could finally prosper. True Bürgerrecht.
   And so the Hauss clan started their long journey to the promised land, in search of a better way of life, with the hope that one day in the distant future, Johann's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson would live in peace and be free to write crappy movies and date bikini models. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!

The Oldharbor of Rotterdam, from which Johann Christian Hauss and his family sailed in 1709.

   The British agreed to send some 3,000 refugees to America, from the Palatinate, Franconia, the Archbishoprics of Mayence and Trèves, and the districts of Hessen-Darmstädt, Hanau, Nassau, Alsace, Baden, Würtemberg and Zweibrücken (although the name "Palatine" would from then on be used indiscriminately to describe all of the travelers). Collectively they were called Teutschen (the equivalent of "Germans" today), although because of the hundreds of provinces in the region, with numerous local governments, religions, and the various nationalities of the migrant people who had relocated there in the previous century, there was no unified term for all of them. If you asked Johann was he was, he was more likely just to have answered tischler ("carpenter") than anything else.
   Johann made the cut to emigrate, probably because carpenters were sorely needed to build new villages. In the spring or early summer of 1709, the group left for Rotterdam, the first stop on their journey. They traveled by riverboat on the Rhine River, and then made their way to Holland.
   Later generations would claim that our family and the other refugees, "Palatines," left their homeland for religious reasons, but this doesn't seem to be the case. The emigrants who left for England seemed to be evenly distributed in terms of religion (four lists of the 6500 "Palatines" arriving in London during 1709—comprising 1770 families—reveal 550 Lutheran families, 693 Reformed, 512 Catholic, 12 Baptist, and three Mennonite), so discrimination against any particular denomination seems unlikely. For the most part, they didn't seem all that religious, anyway. Antone Wilhelm Böhme, pastor of the German Court Chapel of St. James, related that only a few of the arriving Germanic immigrants in England came with a prayer book or similar religious work. Fewer still had a New Testament or Bible, until Queen Anne had them supplied in England.
   Johann had much more earthbound reasons to leave for the English Colonies. Solm at that time was too impoverished a place to make decisions based solely on theology. He was a poor peasant who worked day and night to provide for his family—after paying the numerous taxes, tithes, and special fees for whomever the lord of his region was that week. And he knew that his children could expect no better.
   Johann Christian Hauss was making this journey to give his descendants a chance to find and attain the happiness that had eluded him at home: He wanted that milk and honey. But it would be many months before Johann would arrive at this land of opportunity with the "Wonder Fleet." Along the way he would face poverty, starvation, disease, and death—and would find that there wasn't any "milk and honey" waiting for him, either, in...

CHAPTER TWO: THE NEW WORLD—NEW YORK,
1711 - 1725. Johann Christian Hauss arrives in the New World, with Johannes in tow—and that's when it really gets confusing.

NOTES
¹—The town is situated in Lahn-Dill-Kreis, Giesharpen, Hessen, Germany, its geographical coordinates are 50° 35' 0" North, 8° 28' 0" East and its original name (with diacritics) is Klein Altenstädten (Satellite image: http://www.maplandia.com/germany/hessen/giesharpen/lahn-dill-kreis/klein-altenstadten/). Wetzlar and the Duchy of Solm are also in the German State of Hessen. The County of Solms was dissolved in 1806. After a short while being part of the Duchy of Nassau, the cities passed to Prussia in 1815. In 1977 Wetzlar was merged with Gießen to form the new city Lahn, however this attempt to reorganize the administration was very unpopular and was reverted in 1979. Heavy American bombing destroyed about 75% of Gießen in 1944, including most of the city's historic buildings.
²—The Reichskammergericht was the highest judicial institution in the Holy Roman Empire, founded in 1495 by the Reichstag in Worms. All proceedings in the Holy Roman empire could be brought to the Reichskammergericht, except if the ruler of the territory had a so-called privilegium de non appellando, in which the highest judicial institution was founded by the ruler of that territory. The Reichskammergericht was infamous for the long time it took to reach a conviction. Some proceedings, especially in law suits between territories belonging to the Holy Roman Empire, took several hundred years, some of them were not brought to an end by the time it was dissolved in 1806 after the downfall of the Holy Roman Empire.
³—According to research by Charles Hause, now in possession of Bob and Shirley Hause of Kansas, the family of Johann Christian Hauss was Armigerous (entitled to use a coat of arms), and the Heraldic Bearing was an Argent Shield with Sable Fesse; the Crest a Plume of feathers tinctured as the shield and in the form of a pine cone; this surmounting a Peer of the Realm Crown borne by a dexter facing Argent and Sable Helm. These Arms are in Reitstap's "Armorial General" and are attributed to Haus-Alsace. An earlier version of the same shield, dating back to 1185, is in Die Wappen Rolle de Zurich (a roster of the Heraldry by the Antiquarian Society of Zurich). The family again is listed as Alsatian and is given several spellings: known in Switzerland as Von Hus, in Italy as de Domo, in France as de la Maison, and in Germany as von Hauss or Vom Haus; these names were derived from the Burgen (Castles or Strongholds) of Isenheim in the District of Gebweiler; Wittenheim (District of Mulhouse); and Wassenburg (District of Kolmar). Alsace is in the Haut Rhin of France, north-northwest of Mulhouse. Interestingly, the Dukes of Solm held territory less than fifty miles from the Haus holdings in Alsace. Charles Hause believed that Johann Christian Hauss fled Alsace after it was conquered by the armies of Louis XIV, and found refuge in the Duchy of Solm.

LITERARY SOURCES FOR THIS PAGE:

The Palatine Families of New York by Henry Jones, Jr., 1985.

Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Immigration, by Walter Allen Knittle, Ph.D. Philadelphia, 1937. Reprinted in 1965 by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. Baltimore, Md.

Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York, by Philip Otterness. Published by Cornell University Press, 2004.

The Book of Names Especially Relating to The Early Palatines and the First Settlers in the Mohawk Valley, compiled by Lou D. MacWethy, 1933.

"London Churchbooks and Immigration of 1709." (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Department of History and Archives.)

Das aelteste deutsch-amerikanische Kirchenbuch, by Otto Lohr. In Jahrbuch fuer auslanddeutsche Sippenkunde, jahrgang 1 (1936), pp. 54-60 (Johan Christian Hauss, Page 56)

Palatine Roots: The 1710 German Settlement in New York as Experienced by Johann Peter Wagner, by Nancy Wagoner Dixon. Picton Press, Camden ME, 1994.

Palatines, Liberty and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America, by A.G. Roeber. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1998.