Five Hundred Years of the Schieffelin Family

Inhalt

Preface I

The Schieffelin family belongs to the “secret aristocracy” of the United States, which has brought forth generations of industrious, progressive, influential, and philanthropic personal-ities. Politically, the Schieffelins on both sides of the Atlantic held a firmly democratic stance for centuries and were very committed to their respective parish and society. That they were “aristocratic” only means that they belonged to the old families that were formative during the early years of the new nation, and that they felt attached to the other old families.

The premises of the literary Lotos Club are located at 5 East 66th Street in Manhattan. This house was originally built by Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard in 1900 for the family of her daughter Maria Louisa as a Beaux-Arts townhouse. Maria Louisa and William Jay Schieffelin lived in the house for several decades with their nine children.

The Lotos-Eaters of the Odyssey were a relaxed and harmonious people in a land that re-sembled Elysium. Having lost their personality through the loss of their memory, they did not think about their future; they were caught only in the present.

We do not find such exotic substances as Lotos, Manna and Soma in the portfolio of phar-maceutical products from Schieffelin & Co., leading US pharmaceutical drug wholesaler for over 200 years. The Ithaca of the Schieffelin family is Tranquility Farm at Schieffelin Point on a peninsula in Maine.

The emigrant Jacob Scheuffelin had left the city Weilheim an der Teck in the 18th century not out of economic, political, or religious need, but out of curiosity, and the desire for a freer and better life that he hoped to find in the maturing colony of America. The “Schieffelin” family had already had a long history as the “Scheuffelin” family in southern Germany and Switzer-land before the first emigrants abroad.

In the following, the history of the Schieffelin family from 1400 to today will be told both realistically and comprehensively. Where gaps appear, the author has attempted to bridge these plausibly with his own narratives.

Biographies of currently living family members in the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th generation after Jacob (3) Schieffelin were omitted for legal reasons.

The here presented biographies include persons bearing the name “Schieffelin” or persons in their immediate vicinity. The naming system of the United States, especially where there are many descendants, is designed to preserve all original names; forenames and surnames reoc-cur across generations, signifying one’s long lineage.

The book is roughly divided into three parts:

• Schieffelin family in the German-speaking area from 1400 to 1700.

• The emigrant generations between 1700 and 1800, presented as free narrative.

• Individual biographies of the descendants of Jacob (3) Schieffelin in the US from 1800 to about 1950.

For the sake of uniformity, the name “Scheuffelin” is used for persons in German-speaking countries despite the many variations used. The American lineage used the same spelling, “Schieffelin”, throughout.

“Weilheim” is used throughout as an abbreviation of the city “Weilheim an der Teck” in to-day’s Baden-Württemberg. Weilheim’s urban area was divided into Unterhofen (the lower part of Weilheim), Oberhofen (the upper part of Weilheim) and the center.

My thanks go to the people and institutions who provided the invaluable source material for this work, the Main State Archives of Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart (Judith Bolsing-er, Katharina Maiworm, Martina Böhm), the City Archive of Weilheim (Gabriele Mühlnick-el-Heybach and Jochen Fuchs), the City Archive of Nördlingen (Dr. Sponsel) and my uncle Karl Gottfried Scheufele, who shared with me records of his family tree. Many thanks to Dr. Ulrich Scheufelen, who gave me interesting background information about the Scheufelen family branch in Lenningen. Thanks to the Evangelical-Lutheran parish office in Auhausen, Google™, ARTE and my trusted first reader Dr. Jörg Noller.

Particular thanks must be extended to Gabriele Mühlnickel-Heybach from the City Archive in Weilheim. With excellent intuition, she always found the corresponding documents that answered our questions. My gratitude also goes to her colleague Jochen Fuchs who could read even the most difficult old texts. I would like to thank both for their enthusiasm and their pa-tience during my research.

Many thanks to the church historian Hans Klöhn and the Evangelical parish office of Weilheim who gave me interesting background information about the Peterskirche in Weilheim. Thanks also to Dr. Jan Ilas Bartusch from the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities who clarified some facts about the painting of Michael Scheuffelin from 1613 that originally hung in the Peterskirche.

Many thanks to Anja Heron Lind, a graduate of the University College London, who con-verted the book into excellent English.

My special thanks go to Barbara Jay Schieffelin Powell and Julia Schieffelin Powell for their continued support of this project and for the foreword, which opens the book and contains a summary of the family history.

– Michael Scheufele

Preface II

As a descendant of Jacob Schieffelin whose father emigrated to America in the 18th century, I am delighted to write this preface to Michael Scheufele’s book, which will be a useful vehicle for understanding the Schieffelin family in Germany. This preface sketches the path of Schieffelins after Jacob came to America. The material has been adapted from a forthcoming brief history of the Schieffelins in America by my husband Arthur G. Powell and myself.

– Barbara Schieffelin Powell

The Schieffelin Legacy in America

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired a well-executed altar panel, The Visitation, by the German Renaissance artist Hans Schäufelein (ca. 1480–ca. 1540). Schäufe-lein was one of the most gifted pupils of Albrecht Dürer, a painter and printmaker generally regarded as the greatest German artist of his time. Hans was also one of the first Schieffelin ancestors (the spellings differed a bit in earlier times) about whom concrete knowledge exists. He lived and worked in the Bavarian town of Nördlingen.

Two hundred years after Schäufelein’s painting was finished, his direct descendant, Jacob Schieffelin (the first of three early Jacobs), still lived in Nördlingen. Jacob I traveled to the New World to seek his fortune but returned to Germany. His son Jacob II sailed to Philadelphia and stayed. His son, the third Jacob Schieffelin, was born in Philadelphia in 1757 and remained per-manently in North America until his death in 1835. He lived a long and productive life as one of the early Republic’s leading business entrepreneurs. Jacob III became in effect the Schieffelin family’s American founding father.

Jacob III’s work and name, passed down through generations of the drug business he helped found in 1794, created a strong sense of family identity and continuity. “Schieffelin” came to mean not merely a name on a genealogy chart but a proud family institution – tangible bricks, people, products, innovation, reputation and public service sustained across time. Like Schäufelein’s art, the company named Schieffelin was concrete, visible and pathbreaking. Its centennial history published in 1894 celebrated a hundred years “always under the name of Schieffelin and always with members descended in a direct line from the founder.” By the twentieth century it was among the very oldest companies in the United States.

Jacob Schieffelin III’s career demonstrated how an energetic and creative entrepreneur could achieve business success in post-Revolutionary New York City. Jacob had fought conspicuous-ly on the Loyalist side, helping to fund provisions for British troops in Canada. He had been captured and imprisoned by the Americans. But Jacob was hardly an ideological supporter of British rule. His German heritage gave him a certain freedom of political and geographical movement; he easily switched sides according to where business opportunities seemed most promising. After he escaped from American captivity in 1780, he returned to British New York where he was billeted in the home of the Quaker merchant John Lawrence. The Lawrence clan was pacifist but leaned toward the American cause.

Jacob promptly fell in love with Lawrence’s daughter, Hannah, described at the time as a “noted beauty and popular poetess.” Hannah was no pacifist but strongly pro-American. Her incendiary anti-royalist verse might have gotten her hanged if she had ever been caught. Their 1780 marriage made New Yorkers forget Jacob’s former British sympathies. It also supplied him with useful business connections to various Lawrences, especially his brother-in-law John. With John he created in 1794 the wholesale drug-importing and shipping firm that soon would bear his name alone, Schieffelin & Company. The firm endured for seven generations until the late 20th century.

Although the drug business is Jacob’s best-known legacy, he initiated many other major projects, including a real estate venture to develop the neighborhood of Manhattanville in New York City as a planned community. He also sold land for Alexander Hamilton to build his family home. Jacob died in 1835, a prosperous and respected member of the New York busi-ness community. Over the decades, the Schieffelin company grew and relocated, but always remained physically near the warehouses and docks of lower Manhattan.

Meanwhile the entrepreneurial bug bit many of Jacob III’s children and their descendants. A son, also named Jacob, e. g., moved to Pennsylvania on land his father had bought as an investment and forged a successful international business career. Jacob IV’s colorful grandson “Ed” Schieffelin (1847–1897) spent a lifetime wandering the American West as a prospector, miner and “character.” His silver discoveries at what he named Tombstone, Arizona, made him rich and famous in the 1870s. After his somewhat mysterious death at age 49, he was buried just outside Tombstone in miner’s clothing alongside his pick and canteen. The town and his tombstone remain tourist attractions today.

Eugene Schieffelin (1827–1906), the son of Jacob IV’s brother Henry Hamilton Schieffe-lin, was equally colorful. He rivaled Ed in fame and surpassed him in eccentricity. Driven by the curious desire to introduce into America all species of birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays, Eugene in 1890 released a flock of imported starlings in New York’s Central Park, with enormous consequences for much of the North American continent. The starlings multiplied rapidly to become what is generally regarded as an invasive pest that tends to displace some indigenous, useful birds.

Eugene’s father, Henry Hamilton Schieffelin, succeeded Jacob III as head of Schieffelin & Company for 35 years. The father lacked the son’s weirdness but possessed the business acu-men which kept the Schieffelin name prominent in New York over the nineteenth century. Another of Henry’s sons, Samuel Bradhurst Schieffelin followed his father as senior partner. Upon Samuel’s retirement in 1865, the family business passed to his only son, William Henry Schieffelin. The latter ran the company until his death in 1895. William Henry was the father of William Jay Schieffelin, my grandfather known as Pop, who took over until the 1920s.

The three decades after 1880 were momentous for both the country and the company. The pharmaceutical industry was not only expanding greatly but being transformed by the rise of scientific chemistry in America. William Henry Schieffelin built a small laboratory in 1882 to manufacture finished drugs for distribution to retailers. This approach was very different from the prior one of owning large warehouses just to store imported chemicals and other products prior to distribution. The oldest son, William Jay Schieffelin, my grandfather, was brought up to believe that the new scientific chemistry held the future of the wholesale drug industry. His father encouraged him to make chemistry his future career.

And at the beginning he did just that. Young Willie Schieffelin studied chemistry as an un-dergraduate at the Columbia School of Mines, the applied science branch of Columbia Univer-sity. Like many future scientists and scholars of his generation he then traveled to Germany to learn what the Old World could teach the New about research. He received his chemistry Ph.D. in 1889 at age 23 from the lab of Professor Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Munich. Willie published several chemistry research papers after he joined the family business in 1890. Sci-ence would soon transform the pharmaceutical industry, and the Schieffelin company seemed well positioned to be a leader in that transformation.

By the mid-19th century the name Schieffelin had come to represent successful business en-trepreneurship in New York City. The family had emerged respected, wealthy, and well-known in commercial circles. William Henry’s branch of the Schieffelin family would now become linked to families far better-known in national social, political and financial circles through two marriages 28 years apart.

In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, William Henry Schieffelin married Mary Jay (1846–1916). Mary was a great-granddaughter of John Jay, one of the nation’s most prominent Found-ing Fathers and the first Chief Justice of the United States. John Jay had been dead for 34 years in 1863, but his place among the revolutionary generation of Founding Fathers was secure.

Jay had twice been Governor of New York and had written some of the famous Federalist Papers which provided intellectual background for Constitutional debates. He had drafted the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, and later the Jay Treaty of 1794 which avoided war with England.

As the years passed, the slavery question grew in prominence. Jay and his descendants be-came prominent actors in that national drama. Jay was a slaveholder. But he also opposed slavery and freed his own slaves well before he died. He early endorsed a “gradualist” approach toward slavery’s eventual elimination. In 1799 slavery in New York State was abolished by the legislature; but the law took effect only in 1827. The New York decision, however, had the effect of closely associating Jay’s name and later life with the antislavery cause.

His son, Judge William Jay (1789–1858), devoted essentially his entire adult life to the promo-tion of emancipation. William Jay’s son John Jay II (1817–1894) was the leading activist lawyer

defending fugitive slaves in New York during the 1840s and 1850s and also a tireless crusader against racism in the Episcopal church.

John Jay II lived until 1894 as a patriot-statesman whose interest in good government and African American progress kept the Jay name in the public eye. One of the founders of the Re-publican Party, John Jay II later served as United States Minister to Austria-Hungary between 1869 and 1875. While in Vienna Mary’s sister, Anna Jay, re-established the family’s German connection by marrying the German diplomat Lothar von Schweinitz. Anna’s grandson from that marriage was Adam von Trott zu Solz (1909–1944), a German Rhodes Scholar, diplomat and aristocrat. Adam’s participation in the ill-fated July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler cost him his life but created a 20th century hero.

Mary Jay was John Jay II’s daughter. From early childhood she was exposed to antislavery ideas through her father, grandfather and great grandfather. She was a close blood relation of those Jays most active in the antislavery cause. Frederick Douglass, the prominent escaped slave and public intellectual, wrote in 1859 that “Abolitionism seems hereditary in the family.”

The Civil War had been raging for two and one-half years when Mary Jay married Wil-liam Henry Schieffelin in October 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued nine months earlier – in effect changing the North’s main war aim from preserving the union to eradicating slavery.

William and Mary’s son was William Jay Schieffelin, my grandfather. Young Willie Schieffe-lin grew up deeply influenced by this rich heritage. From his Schieffelin ancestors he acquired intense loyalty to the family and the family business. From the Jay line he acquired an urgent sense to fight for large moral causes. Pop was perhaps the first Schieffelin to grow up possessing the two strong family traditions of reform and public service.

Another significant family merger occurred on February 6, 1891 when young William Jay Schieffelin, now equipped with an abolitionist middle name and a science doctorate, married Maria Louisa Shepard, in New York City. Called Granny Lou by her descendants, Maria Lou-isa was the daughter of Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard, who was the oldest daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt. Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard was called “Grandmama” by the Schieffelins.

William Henry was the son of the famous billionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commo-dore. Perhaps the most successful of all Vanderbilts save the Commodore, he had doubled his father’s fortune through building the New York Central Railroad. He died in 1885, six years before his eldest granddaughter married young Schieffelin.

Pop was 24 when he married. The young Schieffelin was now firmly linked with three promi-nent American success stories: the business prowess of the Schieffelins that had gone on for over a century; the patriotic and reform endeavors of the Jays from Revolutionary through Civil War times; and now the unparalleled Gilded Age wealth of the Vanderbilts. His life pos-sibilities, impressive at birth, were now greatly magnified. Pop entered the family business in

1890 as its specialist in chemistry. A research lab was created for him later in the 1890s. This work competed for his time with the new opportunities for his interests in political and social reform opened up by his wife’s money and social position. Over the years he sought, without complete success, to balance these pressures. He became president of Schieffelin & Company in 1906. But over the years he clearly derived the greater satisfaction from his good works, which combined a Jay background with Vanderbilt resources, than he did by converting a wholesale drug company into a 20th century scientific enterprise. His grandfather John Jay II had advised him as a young man, “Willie, lend a hand.” That stuck as a kind of life challenge.

Schieffelin & Company survived for a time but drifted some from its core pharmaceutical mission.

In 1962 the firm abandoned its drug business almost entirely, and in 1980 was acquired by a much larger French conglomerate. Renamed LVMH Moët-Hennessy in 1987, that conglom-erate styled itself as “the world leader in luxury.” Except for keeping the name Schieffelin on liquor bottles for a few more years, a marketing gambit to emphasize continuity and quality, Schieffelin & Company ceased to exist.

William Jay Schieffelin’s historical significance today rests primarily on the causes he cham-pioned and the funds he raised in support of them. He lent his name to many projects, chaired many fundraisers, initiated many initiatives. The central theme in all of them was political and social reform in New York, the nation, and eventually overseas. He was a progressive, moderate Republican of a sort that had nearly vanished from the land by the end of the twentieth centu-ry. He remembered well the advice of his Jay grandfather to lend a hand.

In New York he helped found the (still existing) Citizens Union in 1897, one of the first good government member organizations serving as a watchdog for the public interest and a check on the growing Tammany political machine. As its president over many decades he supported investigations to root out corruption in the city. His most famous civic reform triumph was helping in the 1930s to end the political career of New York’s charming but corrupt Mayor Jimmy Walker. His first battle with City Hall was a successful campaign in 1890 to prevent Central Park from being cut into sections and distributed through franchises. He campaigned for women’s suffrage and against sweat shops. He anticipated the dangers of Hitler before Hit-ler took power and later gave money to postwar Czechoslovakia when it was surrounded by the Iron Curtain. A lifelong concern over the plight of lepers led him to help found the American Leprosy Mission and the Schieffelin Leprosy Research and Training Center in Karigiri, India.

His preeminent passion was promoting civil rights and advancing opportunities for African Americans. The Jay family’s antislavery tradition ran deep and was a source of great Schieffelin pride. His grandfather had harbored fugitive slaves in violation of federal law. He led a New York organization dedicated to improving the economic circumstances of African Americans migrating from the South, a forerunner of the National Urban League. Schieffelin also hosted

annual New York fund-raising events with black leaders such as Booker T. Washington, Tuske-gee Institute president, and Tuskegee scientist George Washington Carver. He served 40 years on the Tuskegee Board, which he chaired for 23 years. He served simultaneously on the board of the Hampton Institute, an all-black agricultural and vocational institution in Hampton, Virginia.

One of Schieffelin’s most courageous and steadfast commitments, which also spoke to his high national standing, was his unflinching service on behalf of the imprisoned Scottsboro boys. In early 1931, nine black teenage boys were arrested on charges of raping two white girls near Scottsboro, Alabama. The case seemed open and shut, at least to Alabama justice. Eight of the nine were quickly convicted and sentenced to death. The ninth, a twelve-year-old, pro-duced a hung jury not because it doubted his guilt but because it disagreed whether the pun-ishment for a minor should be execution or life imprisonment. The trial displayed the full spectrum of racial bigotry: frame-up, all-white jury, angry mob and near-lynching. But the many cracks in the case, especially the incompetence of the defense, galvanized an unprece-dented nation-wide protest.

A national committee was created, the Scottsboro Defense Fund, to raise money for appeals, publicity, and anything else that would reopen the case and keep the “Scottsboro Boys” and their cause alive. Pop became the Fund’s long-serving national treasurer. In 1937, after six years, nobody had been acquitted and seven had spent the entire time in jail. The case in its many facets continued into the 1940s and beyond, with money still needed. Throughout, Pop raised monies for the Defense Fund and kept the issue before the public. In the end, not one of the “boys” was executed. The last of the nine Scottsboro Boys died of natural causes in 1989. In 2013 all nine were granted posthumous pardons by the State of Alabama. Over an 80-year period the Scottsboro Boys had become a lasting national symbol of racial injustice, in sub-stantial part because of the money raised to pay lawyers and write appeals on their behalf. This was Schieffelin’s quiet but substantial triumph.

In 1949, celebrating his 83rd birthday and his lifetime of public service, the New York Times editorialized that William Jay Schieffelin had spent a total of 237 years on five major civic boards: the New York Citizens Union, Tuskegee Institute, Hampton Institute, American Bible Society and American Mission to Lepers. The Times wrote: “He glories in a tough battle.”

Pop and Granny Lou had 9 surviving children. The sixth was my father Bayard Schieffelin. He had a deep love of family, both the one he came from and the one he created. He and my mother, Virginia Langdon Loomis, had four children: Edward, Barbara, Olivia and Nancy.

From our parents we learned that community did not just happen: you had to work hard to create it and to nurture family values such as loyalty, hard work, tolerance, and social justice. My father served in World War II and then worked for the New York Public Library, raising funds so that the iconic institution could be sustained. My mother tutored African American

children in the inner city. They raised their children with the values they gained from their Langdon-Loomis and Schieffelin forebears: a passion for civil rights, social justice, adventure, as well as an entrepreneurial spirit, curiosity about the world, integrity, and respect for edu-cation. We have tried to instill these values in our own three children. Benjamin has founded an organization that supports socially responsible entrepreneurs in Latin America, Alexander helps families and organizations solve vexing legal issues, and Julia, is an artist, just like Hans Schäufelein, more than five centuries ago.

A summer place on the coast of Maine brings together descendants of 7 of the 9 children of William Jay and Maria Louisa Schieffelin, representing the third, fourth, fifth and sixth generations (roughly 250 people and counting). They come from all corners of the world. In addition to boating, sailing, tennis, hiking and swimming, we continue traditions started in my grandparents’ day. These include a treasure hunt, replete with pirates and buried treasure; sings, accompanied now not by the piano but by guitar and banjo; a softball game between the “Lobsters” and the “Clams;” picnics on island sandbars at low tide; and a square dance with a live band. These traditions continue to bind us together as a family. And we are all grateful for Jacob Schieffelin and Hannah Lawrence for starting it all!

Part I: The Years 1400–1700

Jacob climbed the last few feet to the summit of the volcanic mountain Limburg. Below the northern slopes of the Limburg lay the city Weilheim an der Teck. On the southern slope were the vineyards that Jacob’s family had cultivated for centuries. It was a lovely spring day. Jacob’s gaze wandered along the Swabian Jura to Teck castle and down into the Neckar valley to Esslingen. The plateaus of the Swabian Jura bordered an area full of hills and castles. To the north were the Drei Kaiserberge (Three Emperor-Mountains) of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, to the southwest the mighty castle Hohenneuffen and further away the castle of the Hohenzollern dynasty, whose reach extended already to the river Spree in Berlin at that time.

Jacob was proud of his family’s vineyards. Although they were the highest vineyards in Württemberg, they carried plenty of grapes. The climate in Weilheim was ideal for fruit grow-ing. Around the Limburg there were hundreds of orchards and thousands of fruit trees.

The Scheuffelins received the male fief ( Mannlehen ) from the House of Württemberg in the 15th century. For centuries, this fiefdom was passed on to the oldest family member. It had even survived the Thirty Years’ War without interruption.

The invasion of Württemberg in 1634 by the Habsburg Imperial Army spread to Weilheim and continued through the Neckar valley, reaching as far as Stuttgart. Württemberg was con-tested by France and the Habsburgs, suffering from the rivalry between the House of Bour-bon and the House of Habsburg for centuries. The German protestant principalities with their Swedish allies had lost the first Battle of Nördlingen (1634) against Habsburg’s imperial power. Clever negotiations with France, however, tipped the scales in the other direction in the follow-ing years. In the second Battle of Nördlingen (1645), ten years later, the German duchies, this time supported by French and Swedish troops, were successful against the Imperial Army and their Spanish, Croat and Bavarian allies.

This terrible war for supremacy in Europe did not only decimate soldiers and their armies. It had awful effects on the civilian population, especially in Germany. Daily life during the Thirty Years’ War was arduous. Marauding, poorly paid mercenary armies roamed the lands. The Habsburg army even developed a special military unit with the Croat light cavalry which was intended to terrorize the protestant civilian population, and which was responsible for countless war crimes.

Persecution, arbitrary looting, murder and plague were the order of the day. For thirty years Germany became hell on earth. In southern Germany, half of the population disap-peared. At least eight million people died across Europe. The Renaissance from 1500, in which Europe and the German duchies flourished for a hundred years in art, science, med-icine and general welfare came to an abrupt and terrible end. Europe was lost in chaos, and people fled, dispersed all across the continent. Some even sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in the 1630s.

Protestantism in Germany, one of the triggers of the war, survived in the end. It emerged from this European disaster if not strengthened then at least firmly established. With the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Luther’s evangelicals became an integral part of German culture.

All branches of Jacob’s family, in the city Weilheim, in the free imperial city ( Freie Reichs- stadt ) Nördlingen and in Geneva, Switzerland, took part in the Reformation movement from the outset, and were able to preserve their Protestant tradition.

Fig. 2. Weilheim an der Teck 1683. View from the Limburg mountain to the north. Andreas Kieser [2003].

Fig. 3. Weilheim an der Teck 2020. View from the Limburg mountain to the north. [2.1]

Fig. 4. Weilheim’s Bürgerhaus (townhouse) seen from the central Marktplatz (view to the east).

The townhouse was rebuilt in 1557. Originally it was the parish house of the St. Calixt church, and the pastor of the St. Calixt church lived there. The house and the church belonged to the

Adelberg monastery, which was located near the castle Hohenstaufen. The monastery received strong support from the House of Hohenstaufen in its founding phase, and by about 1600 it had a Protestant monastery school, the most famous student of which was Johannes Kepler.

After the Reformation, from 1557 onward, this new building in Weilheim served as the deacon house of Peterskirche. [2.4]

Fig. 5. Eastern part of the choir of Weilheim’s Peterskirche and the rectory seen from the central Marktplatz (view to the north). [2.6]

Fig. 6. Weilheim’s fountain on the market square and behind it the entrance to Peterskirche.

The figure represents a tree gardener. [2.7]

Fig. 7. The house Amtgasse 1 (sometimes called “Kapuzinerhaus” (Capuchin house) because of its hooded roof) in Weilheim was built in 1565. It was originally built as a school and as the house of the city clerk (Stadtschreiber). In the 18 th century the house was divided into two parts, the owners of which frequently changed. One half belonged to the families Weinundbrot, Hölderlin, Sigel, Autenrieth, Blanck and Scheufele. Today the building contains the city library of Weilheim. At the very top of the gable is a wooden figure attached to the façade.

It is called “envious head” (German “Neidkopf”), presumably intended to keep bad people away from this beautiful house. [2.8]

Fig. 8. Weilheim and the Limburg mountain (view from the Breitenstein to the northeast). On the southern slopes of the Limburg we see the vineyards of the “Hinterburg” parcel. Weilheim lies north of the Limburg mountain. Behind the city we see the Aichelberg mountain (crossed by the highway A8) and far back the Hohenstaufen mountain (ancestral seat of the House of Hohenstaufen and part of the “Drei Kaiserberge”). [2.10]

The Scheuffelin Family in Nördlingen

Around the year 1437 Agnes Scheuffelin and Ulrich Strauss had a legal dispute at the Council of Basel (1431–1449). Ulrich was the son of a council member in Nördlingen. The young lady had received a promise of marriage from Ulrich, had probably become preg-nant before the marriage and then did not get married. The Council in Basel sided with the young man, and Agnes, having lost the trial, was required to pay the court fees. Agnes’ father Johannes (Hanns) Scheuffelin and her two brothers Conrad and Andreas, all resi-dent in Nördlingen, apparently opposed the judgement, and decided to act directly against

Ulrich. As a result, Johannes, Conrad and Andreas were all interned in the Nördlinger prison in 1438 for disobedience and stubbornness but were released after an Urfehde (oath of truce). Johannes had to swear to acknowledge the judgment of Basel and to bring to reason his third son Franz. This was not to be the sole legal violations of Johannes and his sons, however, and in 1439 the three men were expelled from the city of Nördlingen. They were to cross the Ryn (the river Rhine, indicating expulsion from the country, or perhaps from their familial origin across the Rhine in Alsace) and never return to Nördlingen. Be-tween 1440 and 1442, however, the three men found high-ranking advocates in Mechthild of the Palatinate and King Frederick III, who aided them in their request to be admitted again in Nördlingen.

Fig. 9. Mechthild of the Palatinate, Countess of Württemberg, Stuttgart in 1440: letter to the city of Nördlingen. Mechthild of the Palatinate asks Nördlingen to let

Hanns Scheuff elin and his sons back in town. [4.1]

Mechthild wrote the following letter (here abbreviated and modernized):

Two years later, Frederick III (King of Germany from 1440, Holy Roman Emperor from 1452) wrote the following letter to Nördlingen (abbreviated and modernized):

Fig. 10. Letter from King Frederick III to the City of Nördlingen regarding

Hanns Scheuff elin and his sons in 1442. [4.2]

We don’t know why the countess and the king supported Johannes Scheuff elin. It is likely that Johannes was a wealthy merchant and an infl uential taxpayer and had gained their favor economically. Whatever the case, in 1443, aft er another Urfehde , Johannes and his sons were permitted to return to Nördlingen.

Johannes’ son Franz (1) Scheuff elin (1415–ca. 1490) lived in Nördlingen with Elisabeth Fuchshard from Bopfi ngen and had three children: Hans (1), Afra and Franz (2).

Hans (1) (ca. 1435–1505) was a merchant and guild master in the city council of Nördlingen.

Th e brothers Hans (1) and Franz (2) ran a trading company together in Nördlingen and sold

goods at the fairs in Geneva, Lyon and Besançon. Later they dissolved this joint trading ven-ture, and Franz (2) went to Nuremberg to set up his own trading company.

Franz (2) in Nuremberg possibly had a son called Hans, who might then have been Hans (2) Scheuffelin (1482–1540), the well-known painter. There is no firm evidence of this, however – we don’t know for sure where the painter Hans (2) was born, nor exactly who his parents were.

The merchant Hans (1) in Nördlingen had two sons: Conrad and Hans (4). Hans (4) was also a merchant and moved from Nördlingen to Nuremberg to work for his uncle Franz (2). Hans (4) remained in Nuremberg and married a née Vischer in 1522. The couple had a son, Hans (5), who married the Nuremberg patrician daughter Katharina von Thill.

There were rumors that one of these Nuremberg merchants with the name “Hans Scheuffelin” was involved in transactions on the stock exchanges in Antwerp and Lyon in the 16th century. This is said to have resulted in losses of French government bonds. Hans (2) Scheuffelin (1482–1540)

The painter Hans (2) Scheuffelin joined Albrecht Dürer’s workshop in Nuremberg around 1503. He was one of Dürer’s three students named Hans: Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Scheuf-felin and Hans von Kulmbach. Little is known about Hans (2) Scheuffelin’s early life. As an adult based in southern Germany he was an industrious early Renaissance artist, amassing an extensive oeuvre.

Fig. 11. Portrait of a Young Man. Hans Scheuffelin, 1504. This portrait shows an unidentified

25-year-old man. The portrait probably commemorates the marriage of the man depicted, who holds a sprig of Eryngium, a spiny herb symbolic of success in love. Hans Scheuffelin so ably emulates the distinct portrait style of his master that it could easily be mistaken for a portrait by Albrecht Dürer himself. A false Dürer monogram was later painted on the young man’s shirt. [6] Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.

Fig. 12. Frau und Tod als Schleppenträger. Woman and death as train-carrier. Hans

Scheuffelin, ca. 1506–1507. This pen drawing comes from the artist’s early career when he was working in Dürer’s workshop in Nuremberg. There is a similar drawing by Albrecht Dürer from 1500. The students imitated their master and tried to develop their own style.

[21] Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.

Fig. 13. The Rape of Europa. Hans Scheuffelin, ca. 1506–1507. This drawing is an example of the early Renaissance in Germany, which took up themes from Greek antiquity. It is an example of

Scheuffelin’s earliest drawings and his vigorous style of pen-works. In Greek mythology Europa

(the broad-faced) was a Phoenician princess abducted by Zeus, who disguised himself in the form of a bull. There must have been a special smell or magic emanating from the tri-colored bull, because Europa willingly sat on his back and allowed herself to be carried across the sea to

Crete to celebrate her wedding there. The myth presumably suggests that, from the perspective of the Greeks, European culture originated from the Levant. The drawing shows Europa riding a bull, wading through water. She clings to his horns and her clothes gather up behind her.

[11] © Trustees of the British Museum.

Hans (2) produced drawings, prints and paintings, including some altarpieces. On one of these altar pictures, in the evangelical St. Maria church in Auhausen near Nördlingen, Hans (2) included a self-portrait next to the saints Apollonia, Katharina and Barbara. Painting in the monastery church of the Benedictines had given Hans (2) much joy. The diet of the monks was varied. They had their own granary under the church ceiling, and they worshipped Anthony with his pig and Saint Odilia. The monastery kitchen had developed recipes against ergot poi-soning, which they used for therapy in their own hospital. The special water of the Odilia was generously served. Hans (2) took a jug daily with him to his work at the altar. His eye sharp-ened, and his skill grew similarly, painting the figures with mounting ease and flourish. On closer inspection, the figures in the Passion pictures appear as if they are in motion. The image of purgatory took on expressionist traits. Hans (2) reached the peak of his artistic expression with the Auhausen altar. He hoped for further commissions in the wealthy monastery but did not receive them. Ten years after its construction, in 1525, the altar barely escaped attack during the Peasants’ War. The monks were warned, however, and were able to hide the so-called Scheuffelin-Altar in time in the church tower.

At the end of the 1530s, Hans advised his artist colleague Jesse Herlin on the Grisaille paint-ing of the church ceiling in St. Maria. The predominantly green leaf tendril contains simple an-cient Greek motifs, animals that have been hunted and eaten, Adam and Eve and many broken red pomegranates. It seems that the client, the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, wanted to transform St. Maria into a hunting lodge during secularization. In 1608 several German dukes joined together to form the Protestant Union in the monastery Auhausen. The young Refor-mation was still severely endangered. But the Scheuffelin altar survived all the turmoil of the times and has been shining colorfully for each visitor for 500 years.

Hans (2) painted another self-portrait in 1535, when he was in his fifties and only a few years before his death. The inscription on the bottom of the painting reads:

This consideration may indicate that Hans (2) suspected he would not live to see old age, or perhaps a growing preoccupation with his own mortality and the finality of aging.

Another important painting dates from 1515. Abendmahl (The Last Supper) adorns the cross altar under the choir arch of the Ulmer Münster (Ulm Cathedral). The sacrament table was set up in 1548 on the visit of Emperor Charles V to Ulm Cathedral. The altar served the reformed cult practice of the Lord’s Supper. The emperor took part in the reformed and conservative Lord’s Supper in Ulm. Below the picture there was originally a quotation of Paul from the Letter to the Corinthians. Perhaps the picture and the quotation serve as an illustration of the

transition in cult practice: in the Corinthians the transition from Eleusis to the Christian cult, here from conservative to reformed.

Fig. 14. Rescuing the Blessed from Purgatory.

Hans Scheuff elin, 1513. All Saints’ altar in Auhausen. [5.3]

Fig. 15. Virgins with Emperor Heinrich and Cunigunde. St. Catherine and St. Barbara.

Hans Scheuff elin, 1513. All Saints’ altar in Auhausen. Self-portrait with logo board “Monogram HS and shovel symbol.” [5.1]

Fig. 16. Coronation of Mary, choirs of angels and worship of the Lamb of God by patriarchs, prophets and apostles. Hans Scheuff elin, 1513. All Saints’ altar in Auhausen. [5.2]

Fig. 17. The Dormition of the Virgin. Hans Scheuffelin, ca. 1510. The Metropolitan

Museum of Art. The Met Fifth Avenue. New York, NY [8.2]

From 1515 Hans (2) lived again in Nördlingen and was supposedly married twice, first with Afra Tucher and later with Apollonia. He likely had two daughters and one son: Dorothea (1515–ca. 1580), Walpurga (1517–ca. 1580) and Hans (3) (1522–ca. 1580).

Hans (2) Scheuffelin in Nördlingen created his last known painting in 1538. It depicted him with his two sons gazing upon the Easter lamb or the sacrificial lamb. The lamb later became the symbol of the Schieffelin family in America.

Hans’ (2) religious work was evidently influenced by the Reformation. His representation of The Last Supper shows the container for the “Blood of Christ” alongside many chalices for the distribution of the wine to the parishioners. The serving of wine to parishioners was common in Reformed church practice.

Hans (3), the son of painter Hans (2), also became a painter. He emigrated from Nördlingen to Fribourg, Switzerland in 1543.

The Scheuffelin Family’s Origin on the Upper Rhine

It is likely that the Schiffelins originally came from the Upper Rhine or Alsace region, somewhere around Basel, Strasbourg or Haguenau. The Schiffelins seem to have been a family of artists. The origin of the mysterious painter Martin Schiffelin, who, like Hans (2) Scheuffelin, also signed his pictures with the shovel or oar symbol and who described him-self as a “ Mäler ” (Alsatian dialect for painter), could be around the Upper Rhine region. Another painter, the “monogramist IS with the shovel” moved back to the Upper Rhine or to Alsace. It was assumed that the painter signing with “IS” was a relative of Hans (2), and who was responsible for the woodcuts in the Nördlinger workshop. “Monogramist IS with the shovel” published his graphic works in Haguenau, Alsace. If there were family ties to Haguenau at that time, then that would indicate that the Scheuffelins spread from the Upper Rhine area to northeast Swabia during the reign of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The area around Weilheim, Göppingen, Schwäbisch Gmünd and the Riesgau (an area around Nördlingen), like many places on the Upper Rhine and the Alsace (Haguenau and the area around Strasbourg), were typical residences of the House of Hohenstaufen. The House of Ho-henstaufen was a merger in the 11th century of Alsatian territory on the maternal side (Hilde-gard von Egisheim, aka Hildegard von Schlettstadt) and lands in the northeast of Swabia (the Rems river area from the cities Waiblingen to Schwäbisch Gmünd, the area around Göppingen and the Riesgau around Nördlingen) on the father’s side (Friedrich von Büren). Frederick I, Duke of Swabia, married Agnes of Waiblingen, daughter of Emperor Henry IV from the Salian dynasty. The Salian dynasty held estates in the Speyergau, Wormsgau and Nahegau located north of the Alsace. Frederick II, Duke of Swabia, founded a water castle in Haguenau and an abbey in the Forest of Haguenau (“ Heiliger Forst ”). Frederick Barbarossa, the most famous Emperor from the House of Hohenstaufen, was most probably born in what would become his favorite Haguenau palace. Here Frederick Barbarossa grew up hunting in the huge floodplain forests next to the Rhine. Frederick Barbarossa continued his father in developing Haguenau as the home and center of their dynasty.

It was also in Haguenau where the so-called Hagenauer Religionsgespräch (Hagenau reli-gion dialogues) took place 400 years later in 1540. These religious discussions were the first attempt to mediate between the two denominations after the Reformation. Considering the Hohenstaufen’s role in reconciliation during the Investiture Controversy and these religious discussions, Haguenau took on an important role for conflict moderation between the church, the state and the denominations.

Haguenau has often changed hands between France and Germany throughout its history. The fact that king Louis XIV (the Sun King) destroyed the palace of Frederick Barbarossa in 1673 emphasizes the significant role that Haguenau played for the House of Hohenstaufen. (Louis XIV’s original intention during the Thirty Years’ War was to eradicate the House of Habsburg in Alsace.)

Alsace remains today one of the most beautiful cultural landscapes in Europe. It is dotted with wonderful vineyards and hundreds of idyllic villages with half-timbered houses, and it has a long artistic and humanistic tradition. Alsace contains the Humanistic Library of Sélestat, the Gothic Strasbourg Cathedral and the Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar. Goethe studied law in Strasbourg and his first partner was Friedericke Brion from the nearby vil-lage Sessenheim. Today, both the European Parliament and various other European insti-tutions are situated in Strasbourg. Strasbourg thus features as one of the four main capitals (and perhaps the heart) of the European Union (under Paris’ jealous gaze). What is perhaps the world’s most important symbol of freedom, the Statue of Liberty, was also designed by the Alsatian sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi in Colmar as a gift from France to the United States.

There is a second, albeit weaker, indicator that the Scheuffelins came to northeast Swabia during the Hohenstaufen era. Before the Reformation, many Scheuffelins in Weilheim lived in Unterhofen, belonging to the parish of St. Calixt church. St. Calixt church in turn, as of 1412, belonged to the Adelberg monastery. The Adelberg monastery, together with the Lorch monastery (not to be confused with the Lorsch monastery in nearby Worms), was the main monastery of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in Swabia. “Calixt” (the chalice) is a very unusual church name in Swabia. The name Calixt was chosen for Weilheim’s first church during the reign of the Zähringer dynasty. Nevertheless, the church was closely linked to the Adelberg monastery and therefore to the former Hohenstaufen dynasty during the 15th century. The name Calixt also serves as a worthy commemoration of Pope Callixtus II, who signed the Concordat of Worms to end the Investiture Controversy in 1122 (the same year Frederick Barbarossa was born), in which the Salian dynasty and the Hohenstaufen dynasty played an important role.

The merchants in the Scheuffelin family maintained close trading relations with Geneva, Lyon and Besançon. Family members from Nördlingen moved to Fribourg and Geneva in

southwestern Switzerland. It is possible that members of the Scheuffelin family, originally a family of artists, traders and winemakers on the Upper Rhine, emigrated independently of each other to Nördlingen and Weilheim. The only hint of a connection between Weilheim and Nördlingen is the family Bible that two brothers from Weilheim brought to America, which was printed in Nördlingen in 1560.

The Scheuffelin-de la Palle Family in Geneva, Switzerland

Conrad de la Palle (1495–ca. 1560) Conrad was a son of the merchant Hans (1) Scheuffelin from Nördlingen. He was born in Nördlingen in 1495. Conrad oversaw his father’s business in Geneva, Switzerland while still resident in Nördlingen, later emigrating to Geneva to better manage the business.

Conrad Schüffelin became Conrad de la Palle in Geneva. He regarded his new name as a translation. Understanding the name Schüffelin as derived from the German word Schiff (ship), the word Palle refers variously to ships and shipping ( Pale , Palle and Palée mean the flat side of an oar, shovel or rudder. Paléage means the loading and unloading of goods from ships with a shovel).

On February 14th, 1518, Conrad de la Palle received citizenship of Geneva from Besançon Hugues. He married the niece of Besançon Hugues, Bastienne de Fernex (1505–ca. 1575). Bas-tienne came from the merchant family de Fernex , which had a long tradition of political of-fice in the city of Geneva. The name may indicate their origin from Ferney-Voltaire (former Fernex), a village close to Geneva, later home to the philosopher Voltaire.

The couple had a daughter and a son: Barbe de la Palle (1524–ca. 1590) and Claude de la Palle (1526–1587). Barbe de la Palle married Claude de Malbuisson, with whom Conrad had dis-putes regarding his daughter Barbe’s dowry. Claude de la Palle married Jeanne Maillet in 1550 and bore seven sons and four daughters. Claude de la Palle was Citoyen de Genève (1551–1587), Membre du Conseil des Deux-Cents (1545–1587), Conseiller du Petit Conseil (1572–1587) and Syndic de Genève (1573, 1579). In 1607 Judith de la Palle, great-granddaughter of Conrad and Bastienne, married Gabriel Cusin, who was rector of the Genevan Academy (founded by John Calvin 1559). The family had close ties to the parish of Cathédrale Saint-Pierre and Temple de Saint-Gervais in Geneva.

Conrad de la Palle established himself very quickly in Geneva, perhaps indicative of old fam-ily ties. He was a contemporary of the reformer John Calvin and probably knew him personal-ly. Conrad was also in contact with the other Germans in Geneva, exchanging correspondence with Erasmus Tucher of the Tucher merchant family from Nuremberg.

On July 6th, 1527, Conrad acquired the Fief de la Molière. In 1529, Rue des Allemands was indicated as his residence. Conrad is said to have bought a respectable house and land from the city of Geneva. The purchase of the house was said to have been carried out during his absence by his stepbrother Melchior Scheuffelin, who had also moved to Geneva. In 1541 Con-rad worked as a merchant, owned various properties in Geneva and was even authorized to sell cannon powder. Conrad was also a member of the Reformation movement in Geneva; his name was on a Lutheran register in 1534. The descendants of Conrad de la Palle in Geneva rose to political offices in the city and the canton. Conrad’s younger stepsister Barbara Scheuffelin remained in Nördlingen and was married to the Reformation theologian Theobald Billicanus, who introduced the Reformation in Nördlingen in 1524.

The Reformation in Geneva led to political disputes, and the wealth of the city aroused certain desires. Geneva was occupied by Savoy troops but was liberated by the rebellion of Besançon Hugues, at that time a member of the Grand Council of Geneva. This rebellion against the rule of the Savoy dynasty in Geneva finally led to the independence of Geneva in 1526, and Geneva subsequently became a Protestant city. On the darkest night of the year 1602 the forces of the Duke of Savoy again tried to conquer the city-state of Geneva. The forces climbed over the city wall, but they were pushed back and defeated. Geneva continues to celebrate the annual festival L’Escalade to this day, in commemoration of this incident.

A Brief History of the City Weilheim an der Teck (until the 17th century)

The name “Weilheim” indicates a settlement founded close to the remains of a former Roman estate. The Latin word “Villa” became “Wil”, while Weilheim’s ending, “heim”, means “home”. The Romans retreated after the destruction of their border defenses, “līmes”, in Germany. In the 3rd and 4th centuries the Alemanni tribes settled along the river Neckar, probably coming from the Rhine plain upstream, and founded a village at today’s Weilheim. The Alemanni were Christianized by the Franks over the following centuries and were responsible for building the first church, St. Calixt, in Weilheim, around the year 850. The Christians also worshiped Saint Michael on top of the Limburg mountain, hence its previous name Michelsberg (Michael’s mountain). According to an old fable, an evil dragon lived on the Limburg and demanded hu-man sacrifice. This story is reminiscent of the Greek mythology of Theseus and the minotaur or Perseus and Andromeda and indicates a pagan cult on top of the mountain. The Limburg seems to have been an important place of pagan worship, with psychoactive plants that grow there perhaps involved in the cult. According to legend, Saint Michael slew the evil dragon,

symbolizing the shift to Christianity. A Saint Michael’s chapel was later erected on top of the Limburg mountain. The name Limburg could perhaps be derived from Lindwurm , the Old High German word for snake or dragon, which would tie into this legend.

Weilheim (“Wilheim”) was first mentioned in the year 769 in a deed recounting the city as a gift to the famous Lorsch Abbey. At this time Weilheim belonged to East Francia. As a result of its mention in the Lorsch Codex, Weilheim an der Teck counts among the oldest cities in Germany.

One hundred and fifty years later, in 904, Lorsch Abbey traded ownership of the Neckargau (the area along the Neckar river around the cities Esslingen am Neckar and Kirchheim unter Teck, including Weilheim an der Teck) with a count from Switzerland. The deal was carried out in the Imperial Palace of Ingelheim in the city Ingelheim upon Rhine. This region along the Neckar is one of the most densely industrialized areas in Europe today.

In the following one hundred and fifty years it is unclear who owned Weilheim. It is possible that it belonged to the Counts of Winterthur (today a city in Switzerland close to Zürich) who were related to the Salian dynasty.

In 1050, the important Count Berthold I (ca. 1000–1078) built Limburg Castle on top of today’s Limburg mountain and founded a monastery in Weilheim. Berthold I came from the Breisgau county, an area in southwest Germany that lies between the Rhine river and the foot-hills of the Black Forest (the German ending gau refers to a medieval county). His dynasty would come to be known as Zähringer. One of Berthold’s ancestors was Guntram the Rich who possessed land in today’s Alsace, Sundgau, Breisgau and the Black Forest. Guntram the Rich was likely a progenitor of the House of Habsburg.

The Habsburg castle is in Switzerland (close to Lake Constance), but today we associate the House of Habsburg with Vienna and Austria and lands to the east of France and Germany (the German term for Austria, Österreich , literally translates to “eastern empire”). The House of Hohenzollern has a similar story, with their ancestral seat in Swabia but today more closely associated with Berlin and Prussia.

In the 10th century, many of these feudal houses competed in today’s tri-border area of east-ern France, southwest Germany, and Switzerland. These were crucial areas of contention in vying for power and influence in Europe.

Berthold I’s father was Bezelin von Villingen, who was count in Breisgau and advocate of the city of Basel. Berthold I was married to Richwara, who probably brought the land around the Limburg and Weilheim an der Teck into her marriage. The ancestry of Richwara is still unclear, although she was likely of the Salian dynasty like Henry IV. The couple had three sons: Herman I of Baden (founder of the House of Baden), Berthold II (Duke of Swabia) and Gebhard (Bishop of the city of Constance). It seems that Berthold I held a particular affection for the northeastern territory around Weilheim, as he was quick to begin construction on a

castle on top of the Limburg mountain. Limburg Castle was the first high aristocratic castle in this area. Berthold’s ties to this area would have been complete if he had received the Duchy of Swabia as he was promised by emperor Henry III. Henry III died young, however, and his widow Agnes of Poitou gave Berthold I the Duchy of Carinthia instead, which was markedly less interesting for it was not directly connected to his homeland. Nevertheless, with this title Berthold I achieved the status of a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

Berthold I’s successor of Limburg Castle was Berthold II (ca. 1050–1111), Duke of Swa-bia. Berthold II was married to Agnes of Rheinfelden (daughter of Rudolf von Rhein-felden, who was Duke of Swabia and elected anti-king to the rightful king and emperor Henry IV). The two Bertholds from the House of Zähringen had big plans for Weilheim. In the latter half of the 11th century, they were the most powerful rulers in southwestern Germany, Switzerland and Burgundy. Berthold II was even entitled to the Duchy of Swabia and ruled as the Duke of Swabia from 1092–1098, before conceding the title and becoming the Duke of Zähringen.

Berthold I and II founded a monastery in Weilheim and started construction work on a new and beautiful church there that would serve as their burial place. Was it also their plan to make Weilheim the capital city of their new duchy, and did they intend to create a large country consisting of today’s Baden-Württemberg, Switzerland, and the French Burgundy? It may be assumed that this was the case. Whatever their plans, Weilheim was a significant place at that time, and still counts among the Zähringer cities today.

In 1078, Berthold I died, depressed, at Limburg Castle. He always wanted the best for his counties, but now his dreams for Limburg Castle and Weilheim had been swept away along the Neckar and the Rhine. By 1089 the Zähringer had changed their plans for Weilheim. The new St. Peter monastery in Weilheim was relocated and became the Abbey of Saint Peter in the Black Forest, which then in turn owned the city of Weilheim.

The House of Zähringen all but ignored further development of Weilheim an der Teck from 1090 on. Berthold II’s wife Agnes von Rheinfelden took over the monastery Saint Pe-ter in the Black Forest and was entrusted with beginning to move away from Weilheim. Lat-er, the Zähringer withdrew from Limburg Castle entirely, and sold Weilheim to the Earls of Aichelberg.

Berthold I was not buried in Weilheim as planned, but in Hirsau Abbey in the Black Forest, known for its spiritual proximity to Cluny Abbey in France and the conservative Cluniac Re-forms implemented in the German lands. These reforms had nothing to do with the Protestant Reformation five hundred years later, and the important Hirsau Abbey was finally destroyed during the Nine Years’ War by the French troops of General Mélac in 1692. Hirsau Abbey appears to have been targeted due to the proximity of the House of Zähringen and the House of Habsburg.

What was the reason for these sudden changes instigated by Berthold I? Why did the House of Zähringen leave Limburg Castle and Weilheim?

During the Investiture Controversy, a conflict between the church and the state over the determination of church leadership, the House of Zähringen came into conflict with Henry IV, son of Henry III and Holy Roman Emperor of the Salian dynasty (spanning four kings and emperors during the 11th and 12th centuries). Prior to this controversy, the investitures of bish-ops and abbots were performed by the ruling secular nobility. The church organization want-ed more power over their own concerns, however, and wanted independence from the state. Broadly speaking, the controversy concerned where there should be a “strong state ruled by a strong king”, which included the church, or a “strong church (without the practice of simony, i. e., selling church offices)”. The Zähringer wanted a strong church. Henry IV and later the House of Hohenstaufen (the House the famous Frederick Barbarossa hailed from), however, argued for a strong state, led by a sovereign king who was responsible only to God. In addition, those who argued for a strong state wanted to keep the power to name (invest) the pope, the bishops, and the abbots (this could be interpreted as a kind of state-Protestantism). Despite a number of setbacks (e. g., the Walk to Canossa), Henry IV (and the House of Hohenstaufen) appeared to win this conflict against the church (and the House of Zähringen, which had sup-ported the church). Soon after the Salian dynasty, the House of Hohenstaufen rose to gover-nance of the Holy Roman Empire, leading the empire to its greatest territorial extent in the 13th century. Berthold II was forced to withdraw his claim to the Duchy of Swabia and had to hand over this title to Henry IV’s faithful adherent, Frederick I of the House of Hohenstaufen. The residential castle of the Staufer dynasty, Hohenstaufen Castle close to Göppingen, was visible from Limburg Castle (the two only ten miles apart). In the 12th and 13th century three Emperors emerged from the powerful House of Hohenstaufen.

Between 1076 to 1078 the Investiture Conflict reached a conclusion. At the Synod of Worms in 1076, and in agreement with the German bishops, Henry IV managed to remove the Pope, who in turn promptly excommunicated Henry IV from the church. Henry IV’s Walk to Ca-nossa, however, managed to smoothen the tensions between the king and the church. In the same year, king Henry IV’s adversary voted for the anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden. At the Hoftag (an exceptional meeting with the king) in Ulm, Henry IV condemned his opponents as high traitors (including Berthold I) and marched furiously throughout the country with his army. This was the time of chivalry, where one solved one’s disputes through battle rather than diplomacy.

At the time, it was suspected that Henry IV and Frederick I destroyed Weilheim and Lim-burg Castle in 1078, but there is no evidence that this was the case, despite the role that Lim-burg Castle played during the Investiture Conflict. Regardless of who was responsible, the Zähringer dynasty relocated from Limburg Castle towards Freiburg im Breisgau in the very

southwest of today’s Germany, the area of their ancestors. In Zähringen near Freiburg, from where they took their name, they built their new castle, Zähringen Castle.

Frederick II (born 1090) from the House of Hohenstaufen became the next Duke of Swabia. He was father to Frederick Barbarossa (born 1122) and the great grandfather of Frederick II (born 1194 and nicknamed “the wonder of the world”), the Holy Roman Empire’s two greatest and most famous medieval emperors. Before becoming Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa reigned as Frederick III Duke of Swabia. The House of Hohenstaufen ruled the Duchy of Swabia from 1079 until the middle of the 13th century.

The House of Zähringen eventually reconciled with the imperial House of Hohenstaufen, although conflicts and rivalries continued. They continued to rule in Ortenau and in Bre-isgau (counties in the very southwest of today’s Germany), in Thurgau (northern Switzer-land), on the Baar plateau (between the Black Forest and the Swabian Jura) and in Burgundy (today central-eastern France). The Zähringer founded many cities, villages and monas-teries in these counties in the 11th and 12th centuries, such as Bern, Freiburg im Breisgau, Fribourg, Murten, Neuenburg upon Rhein, and they pursued an active settlement policy. Through silver mining in the Black Forest the House of Zähringen were able to amass a large fortune.

The oldest son of Berthold I of Zähringen was Herman I of Baden, the founder of the House of Baden. Today, Baden is the western part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Adal-bert I, a grandson of Berthold II, styled himself Duke of Teck (1189), and founded the noble house who possessed Teck Castle near Weilheim. The House of Zähringen did not thus com-pletely withdraw from the area around Weilheim an der Teck. The line of the Dukes of Teck in Württemberg ended in the 15th century, continuing for a few centuries as a sideline of the British royal family (called “Cambridge” after World War I).

Konrad I, Duke of Teck, and grandson of Adalbert I, founded the city and nunnery in Kirch-heim unter Teck in 1235. This nunnery was well equipped and owned land in Weilheim, and it is from this nunnery that Caspar and Michel Scheuffelin would receive their farm Spätenhof in the 15th century. One of the daughters of the Dukes of Teck married a count of Aichelberg, resulting in Weilheim coming into the possession of the counts of Aichelberg, who built the first modest castle in the town.

In 1319, Weilheim received city rights from Count Ulrich of Aichelberg. Weilheim has been classified as a city ever since, but has always had a modest area, resembling rather a large vil-lage than a city. Soon afterwards, the city of Weilheim was sold to the House of Württemberg. In 1334, Count Ulrich III of Württemberg bought the city of Weilheim. As of 1478 the city of Weilheim became directly subordinate to the Duchy of Württemberg. Weilheim now belonged to the House of Württemberg, three hundred years after it stood as the origin of the House of Zähringen and the House of Baden.

The male fief ( Mannlehen ) of the House of Württemberg was granted to “Hans Schif-felin” in 1485, in part as Hans Schiffelin was claimed to have saved the life of a count of Württemberg.

In 1489 the construction of Weilheim’s Peterskirche (St. Peter’s church), planned as a gothic hall church, began. The old Romanesque basilica from 1089 had become too small.

In 1534, Duke Ulrich of Württemberg introduced the Reformation to Württemberg and therefore also to Weilheim. Ulrich was only able to regain possession of Württemberg after suffering an imperial ban with the support of Philip I, landgrave of Hesse, who had previously hidden him in one of his castles. Ulrich had a volatile personality, and he had a lot of problems: the poor economic situation in Württemberg, the so-called Armer Konrad (Poor Conrad) movement of impoverished farmers, and conflicts with the Emperor, the Swabian League and with his wife Sabina. Ulrich’s troops lost against the Emperor during the Schmalkaldic War in 1547, where numerous Lutheran Imperial States fought against the conservative, ruling House of Habsburg. The emperor sent his troops to Württemberg to restore its former order, leading to the occupation of Weilheim by Spanish troops in 1548. The monks from St. Peter in the Black Forest took over the service. The Weilheim parish wasn’t happy with the situation, but these events were perhaps only warning signs of far more dramatic events to come in seventy years.

Württemberg’s situation improved with the reign of Ulrich’s highly educated son Christoph. Christoph, Duke of Württemberg, converted to Protestantism and carried through the Refor-mation in Württemberg. He developed and consolidated his country economically, clerically and in its urban development, and counts among the best rulers in Württemberg.

In 1599, Duke Frederick I of Württemberg, born in Mömpelgard (the city and county Möm-pelgard belonged to the House of Württemberg at that time, while today Montbéliard is in eastern France), bought Württemberg back from the Habsburgs. Frederick I was well-educated by his father Christoph, Duke of Württemberg. He was sent to many European aristocratic courts including Windsor and was in contact with Elizabeth I of England. Frederick I signed the Formula of Concord, an authoritative Lutheran statement of faith (also called a confession). Upon control of Württemberg, he again granted city market rights to Weilheim.

At the end of the 16th century, Weilheim’s golden years ended abruptly with the onset of the Thirty Years’ War at the beginning of the 17th century.

In 1634, Weilheim was occupied by the Habsburg Imperial Army, and a Spanish gener-al was billeted in Weilheim. During the following years, many inhabitants died of hunger, disease and maltreatment. In 1645, the winds had finally begun to change; French troops were now billeted in Weilheim to bring an end to the terrible war. In 1652 Weilheim had just 1,100 inhabitants, a drastic reduction from its 2,500 before the war. Nevertheless, Weilheim

in fact came out of the war comparatively unscathed; many of the neighboring cities and villages were destroyed.

Today, Weilheim an der Teck is a small and picturesque town. What makes the city so inter-esting, however, is this long and interweaving political history, connected closely at different points with several important medieval noble houses: the House of Zähringen, the House of Baden, the House of Hohenstaufen, and the House of Württemberg. This political mixture was also reflected in the church. Weilheim’s oldest church, St. Calixt, likely erected in the 9th cen-tury, came under the influence of the Adelberg monastery during the 15th century and was de-molished after the Reformation. Weilheim’s Peterskirche, constructed in the 11th century, has been a Protestant church since the very beginning of the Reformation, but was also influenced by the Zähringen through the Abbey of Saint Peter in the Black Forest and its connection to the Cluny Abbey and Hirsau Abbey.

The Scheuffelin Family in Weilheim an der Teck

First Appearances of the Name Beginning in the 15th century, the name “Scheuffelin” started to appear more and more fre-quently both in Weilheim and the nearby cities and villages.

According to a book of records in the monastery of Saint Peter, a farm close to Weilheim “was lent to the daughter of Bert Scheuffelin” in 1429. This indicates that the Scheuffelin family were already resident in Weilheim since the 14th century.

Fig. 18. Häringen 1683. Andreas Kieser [2009]. This is likely the farm that

Bert Scheuffelin and his daughter cultivated around 1400.

In the year 1485, we fi nd major entries in the manorial records of Kirchheim. Hans Scheuff elin and Caspar Scheuff elin held a grange fi efdom in that year.

Fig. 19. Hans Scheuff elin had to pay duties on his rented farm and for his fi efdom (Lehen) in the year 1485. Th e taxes and duties were paid with money and with agricultural products, as was typical at that time: “Hans Schuff ellin has to pay one pound and 13 shillings and six Heller for his half of the farm. Further items to be paid are: one chicken at carnival time, three chickens in autumn, three pieces of cheese, fi ft y eggs, one Simri (about 22 liters) of oil.

For his fi efdom he has to pay one pound and fi ve shillings.” [9] Th e Hölderlins and the Scheuff elins

Johann Christoph Scheuff elin (1667–1737) was a pastor in Weilheim. He was born in Stuttgart on January 14th, 1667, and started as a deacon in Weilheim’s parish in 1698. From 1705, Johann Christoph served as pastor of the Peterskirche (St. Peter’s church) in Weilheim until his retire-ment in 1726. He was married to Maria Dorothea Hummel, who was an educated daughter of a pastor. Johann Christoph Scheuff elin seamless succeeded both Alexander Hölderlins, father and son, who were pastors in Weilheim from 1659.

Th e Hölderlins served as devoted pastors in Weilheim for more than fi ft y years. In addi-tion to their role as pastor, the Hölderlins acted as godfathers in the parish of Weilheim. Th e Scheuff elin and the Hölderlin families were friends in Weilheim. Sara Hölderlin, pastor Alex-ander Hölderlin (Jr.)’s wife, was the godmother of many members of the Scheuff elin family. Th ree Scheuff elin babies at that time were named “Alexander” and “Sara” aft er the pastor and his wife. In 1695, the pastor’s daughter Elisabeth Catharina Hölderlin married Johann Philipp Göltz in Weilheim. It is very likely that there was a relationship between these two families, as

the Göltz and Scheuff elin families were also related to one another through multiple mar riages. Th e Hölderlin descendants later settled further down the Neckar in Großbottwar, Lauff en am Neckar and Nürtingen. Th eir off spring produced more pastors, but no more from this charis-matic family were to serve in Weilheim.

Fig. 20. Hans Jörg (Sr.) Scheuff elin and Sara Hölderlin, pastor Alexander Hölderlin (Jr.)’s wife, were godparents in 1683. During the 1660s Hans Jörg (Sr.) had chosen Anna Maria Hölderlin (wife of pastor Alexander Hölderlin (Sr.)) as godmother for all his children. [1000]

Th e famous poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) was a direct descendant of Alexander Hölderlin. Th e lineage is as follows:

Alexander Hölderlin (Sr.) (1613–1676, was a pastor in Weilheim 1659–1676) and Anna Maria Köhler – Alexander Hölderlin (Jr.) (1638–1704, was a pastor in Weilheim 1676–1704) and Sara Zimmermann – Johann Conrad Hölderlin (1672–1719, married in Großbottwar 1698) – Fried-rich Jacob Hölderlin (1703–1762) –Heinrich Friedrich Hölderlin (1735–1772) –Johann Chris-tian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843, the poet and philosopher).

Friedrich Hölderlin lost his father at the age of two. According to his mother he was to become a pastor like his forebears. Like many brilliant sons of Württemberg, he was thus sent to the Evangelical Seminaries of Maulbronn and the Tübinger Stift . Th ere he shared a room with the philosophers Hegel and Schelling. Friedrich Hölderlin refused to become a pastor, however, and tried to work as a private tutor instead. He went to Bordeaux and sympathized with the French Revolution. Back home he dreamed of a free and democratic Germany, without despotic rulers and such materialism and with civil rights. Friedrich Hölderlin was a Francophile but took issue with the political changes occurring in France during the Napoleonic era; he is said to have run like a madman through the streets of Bad Homburg exclaiming “I am not a Jacobin”. Friedrich Hölderlin liked the French notion of Liberté, égalité, fraternité , but was not fond of violence. He was in fact wrongly accused of conspiring against the Duke of Württemberg and was kidnapped

and tortured without legal basis. After the investigation he was declared insane, and he lived for more than thirty years in the care of a family in the Hölderlin Tower in Tübingen. Hölderlin’s literary oeuvre is unique in Germany, with his style independent from the Weimar Classicism and Romanticism of his contemporaries Goethe and Schiller. Hölderlin was a passionate admir-er of ancient Greek culture and mythology, and his novel Hyperion was set in Greece, featuring a protagonist who was ultimately unable to reach his beloved. The plot was drawn from Hölder-lin’s life, mirroring his unrequited love of Susette Gontard, the wife of a wealthy Frankfurt banker. Hyperion also features his famous scorn of Germany: in the patchwork-like German duchies and principalities, he missed the humanity he had experienced in Bordeaux and Paris. “I do not know of any nation which is more torn than the Germans. You see craftsmen, but no humans; thinkers, but no humans; priests, but no humans, …” Michel Scheuffelin (ca. 1500–1559)

In 1537, Michel Scheuffelin was one of the eight judges of the city of Weilheim. Michel owned the so-called Scheuffelin-Lehen (the Scheuffelin’s man fiefdom from the House of Württem-berg) as of 1550. Michel was the predecessor of Heinrich Scheuffelin who owned the ducal fiefdom. He died in 1559. Michel Scheuffelin’s wife was most likely Ursula, who was mentioned as a godmother and widow in 1560.

After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, holy Roman Emperor Frederick III from the House of Habsburg needed to raise funds for his army to fend off the Turkish troops from the Balkans. To this end, he invented the so-called Türkensteuer (Turk Tax). All citizens who had to pay the tax were listed on a so-called Türkensteuerliste (Turk Tax List). Total tax required depended on one’s financial assets and applied to all citizens of the empire in the 15th and 16th centuries. The tax list of Weilheim from 1545 can be used as a valuable indicator of how wealthy the citizens were in the 16th century.

Michel Scheuffelin was listed as one of the ten wealthiest individuals in Weilheim. He owned a large agricultural business that led to both wealth and influence, and he held honorable posts in the city administration. He sold wine, spirits, apples, cherries, pears, cereals, and all kind of vegetables. Heinrich Scheuffelin (ca. 1500–ca. 1570)

On January 3rd, 1530, Heinrich Scheuffelin, citizen of Göppingen, swore to renounce the Ana-baptists with an Urfehde (oath of truce). The Anabaptists were a widespread religious reform

movement active at that time in Württemberg, membership of which was forbidden and often punished harshly. During the exile of Ulrich, Duke of Württemberg, Heinrich Scheuffelin was imprisoned in Göppingen prison by the Habsburg rulers in 1529, but he was released after his Urfehde .

Around 1550, Heinrich Scheuffelin was involved in the construction of Göppingen Cas-tle for Christoph, Duke of Württemberg. Christoph was the son of Ulrich of Württemberg and the legitimate heir of the Duchy of Württemberg. In his youth, and before his reign, he was forced to flee the House of Habsburg and go into hiding. Back in Württemberg, and after a discussion with his father, Christoph reconciled with him. Christoph converted to Protestantism, and he was sent to France for education. In 1542, Christoph became governor of Mömpelgard ( Montbéliard ) in Württemberg. In 1550, Christoph succeeded his father as Duke of Württemberg. He immediately started building the regular, four-winged Renais-sance castle in Göppingen. The masonry of the nearby Hohenstaufen castle, which was de-stroyed in the Peasants’ War in 1525, is said to have served as building material for Göppingen Castle. It seems that the House of Württemberg styled itself as the successor of the House of Hohenstaufen.

Fig. 21. Engraving of the city and castle of Göppingen around 1650 by Matthäus Merian.

Heinrich Scheuffelin was a citizen of Göppingen in the 1550s, and he was involved in the construction of the castle. [25]

Heinrich’s predecessor as fiefdom owner in Weilheim was Michel Scheuffelin (ca. 1500–1559). Michel was mentioned as owner in the fiefdom letter from 1550. He died in 1559, and the fief-dom was handed over to Heinrich Scheuffelin (ca. 1500–1570).

On November 15th, 1559, Heinrich Scheuffelin from Göppingen received the Scheuffelin’s man fiefdom from Christoph, Duke of Württemberg. The fiefdom comprised twenty-three of the best plots of land in Weilheim, and it was awarded to the family directly by the House of Württemberg.

Heinrich proudly wrote the certificate of this fiefdom, which is presented in an abbrevi-ated and modernized form in the following. The core of the text consists of a list of fields,

meadows and vineyards that belonged to the fiefdom. In addition, three other family members are mentioned.

Fig. 22. Heinrich Scheuff elin’s fi efdom letter from November 15 th , 1559. [10] Michael Scheuff elin (1561–1620)

Michael Scheuff elin and Anna Hüblin from Altdorf (married in 1583) had four children: Catha rina, Anna Magdalena, Martin, and Michael.

Fig. 23. Michael Scheuff elin and his wife Anna in 1613, both wearing typical Renaissance clothing with a fashionable Spanish-style collar. Th e painting hung in Weilheim’s Peterskirche

(today only a copy, as the original was lost). Michael holds three keys in his right hand. He was the church curator of the Peterskirche for 22 years. Below the painting is a quote from the Bible,

Job 19:25, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, …” Th e clothes and posture of Michael’s wife are reminiscent of a painting of Anna Maria of Brandenburg-Ansbach, the wife of duke Christoph, who spent her later years in Nürtingen in the 1580s. [3.1]

Michael Scheuff elin and Barbara Hengst (married in 1588) had six children: Agnes, Brigitta, Andreas, Ursula, Anna, and Barbara.

We can assume that Michael was killed by the Imperial Army on September 7th, 1634.

Fig. 24. Death of Michael Scheuff elin on September 7 th , 1634, shortly aft er the fi rst Battle of Nördlingen. [1100]

Th e Battle of Nördlingen took place on September 5th, 1634, and was one of the most devas-tating battles during the Th irty Years’ War. Th e numerically inferior Swedish Army, without their leading King, came to the aid of the besieged Nördlingen. Th e Swedes and their German protestant allies were defeated by the Habsburg Imperial Army, which in turn was support-ed by 15,000 Spanish soldiers. Th is was the worst defeat of the protestant forces during the war. Aft er the battle, imperial troops marched west and invaded the reformed Württemberg. Eberhard III, Duke of Württemberg, fl ed into exile in Strasbourg, leaving Württemberg ex-posed and without defenses against the imperial troops. On their way to Stuttgart the impe-rial troops left a trail of devastation behind them. Many cities and villages were looted and destroyed.

An entry in Weilheim’s council books on February 5th, 1635, contains a document detailing the inventory and distribution of Michael’s assets. Michael’s heirs were his grandchildren, as three of his children had moved to Dettingen-Schlossberg aft er marrying, and all died or were murdered in 1634. Only Michael’s grandchildren survived the attack.

Fig. 25. Distribution of the assets of Michael Scheuff elin, enacted on February 5 th , 1635.

Michael Scheuff elin died the year before during the imperial invasion and occupation of

Württemberg in 1634. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 794]. [1506] Joannes Scheuff elin (1601–1661)

Joannes Scheuff elin was born on December 4th, 1601. Joannes Scheuff elin married Barbara Schlatter (1607–1690) on April 26th, 1625. In the year 1607, seven babies called “Barbara” were born in Weilheim, and the marriage entry does not record Barbara’s maiden name, making it diffi cult to fi nd out precisely which Barbara Joannes married. As we know exactly what age Barbara reached, however – 83 years and 7 months – this reduces the number of possible can-didates to two: Barbara Stahl and Barbara Schlatter. Comparing the names of Joannes and Barbara’s children to the respective Barbaras’ relatives, Barbara Schlatter seems the more likely candidate. Th e last name “Schlatter” suggests that this family also came from the Upper Rhine or Alsace to Weilheim.

Barbara was remarkably healthy and resilient: She grew up during the Th irty Years’ War, and birthed and raised eight children in the famines, epidemics and violence that surrounded the confl ict. She outlived both of her two husbands and lived to over eighty years old at a time when people were lucky to live to their sixties.

Fig. 26. Marriage of Joannes Scheuff elin (Michael’s son) on April 26 th , 1625. Th e document does not mention whom he married. He most probably married Barbara Schlatter, who was just eighteen years old at the time of her marriage. [1017]

Fig. 27. Birth of Barbara Schlatter on January 20 th , 1607. Barbara was the daughter of Hans Schlatter (Bart Schlatter’s son) and Barbara. [1018]

Joannes Scheuff elin and Barbara lived in Weilheim and had eight children: Maria, Michael, Hanss Conrad, Anna, Barbara, Hans Jörg (Sr.) (1638–1693, married Ursula Reichlin on Au-gust 30th, 1660), Johannes and the Hans Balthasar.

Fig. 28. Birth of Jörg (Hans Jörg (Sr.)) on May 13 th , 1638. Th is is the lineage of the US line. [1021] Joannes and Barbara’s adulthood was defi ned by the Th irty Years’ War, but they never lost hope for a better future. Others weren’t as resilient: Ludwig, a cousin of Joannes and son of Uncle Paulin (1584–1619), threw himself into the icy fl oods near Weilheim’s Mill shortly aft er Christmas in 1650. Ludwig was born in 1618, and the times were simply too hard for him.

Joannes and Barbara were both strong personalities. Joannes was mayor of Weilheim and led the city through the dark and diffi cult 1630s. According to church book entries, Joannes

took office in 1634 and handed over his position to Johann Jacob Reichlin in 1639. Joannes also worked as judge at Weilheim’s court, and he was a Castenpfleger in his later years (a financial administrator in the city government and in Peterskirche). Joannes was also a member of the city council and an innkeeper. Joannes and Barbara supported their parish for a long period of time and acted as godparents on numerous occasions.

At the end of the terrible war, Weilheim had suffered less damage than many nearby and similarly sized cities, e. g., Nürtingen. Joannes evidently did a good job as mayor of moderating the war’s impact on Weilheim.

There was a story about an imperial Spanish officer quartered in the doctor’s house who discussed openly what he considered the right religious denomination. Doctor Melchior Daubenschmid had grown up in a non-reformed family and had understanding for both de-nominations. After a night of drinking the Spanish officer proclaimed that his denomination was the right one, because God let the Imperial Army triumph over the reformed forces of Germany and Sweden in Nördlingen. The officer urged Doctor Daubenschmid to pray the rosary in Latin. The doctor recited this well, and additionally scolded Martin Luther, im-pressing the Spanish officer. That a Spanish officer of the Catholic League lived peacefully in a purely protestant city during the throes of the Thirty Years’ War was truly astonishing. (It also must be mentioned that the parish of Weilheim at that time was purely reformed, but Peterskirche still displayed the pre-Reformation paintings, including a painting of the Rosen- kranz (rosary)).

During the Thirty Years’ War, the city of Weilheim was occupied several times by different armies. The city was forced to accommodate these troops, in addition to paying ransom mon-ey, neither of which much mitigated the poor treatment of the city’s residents and the destruc-tion of numerous buildings.

After 1634, the Habsburg Imperial Army moved west to occupy the German duchies and started the Counter-Reformation. In their wake, and after experiencing a serious famine in 1637, Weilheim was looted by Bavarian troops in 1638. It seems the Bavarian troops of the former Catholic League sought to take advantage of the weakened German duchies. The Im-perial Army even dared to attack northern France, prompting the French Cardinal Richelieu to cooperate with the protestant German duchies by sending French troops. The French troops worked together with the Swedish troops to push back the Habsburg Imperial Army from the German duchies. Perhaps already at that point France considered setting up a buffer zone in Germany.

In 1645, French troops stayed in Weilheim. The troops were welcome, bringing with them the hope of finally ending this terrible war. In Nördlingen, the French army defeated the Habsburgian troops in the second Battle of Nördlingen (1645). Led by Marshal General de France Turenne (descendant of a Huguenot family from the Principality of Sedan) and the

French General Louis de Bourbon (from the House of Bourbon), the French and Protestant German allies triumphed.

Two years later, in 1647, Swedish troops took up residence in Weilheim. Accommodating these troops was particularly expensive for the city.

A year later, French troops occupied Bavaria and the Swedish army besieged Vienna, forcing the Habsburg dynasty and the former Catholic League to sign two peace treaties, the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648. The terrible Thirty Years’ War was over! Peoples across Europe rejoiced in the return to peace and began the long process of rebuilding their destroyed and depopulated countries.

After Joannes’ death in 1661, his widow Barbara married Johann Jacob Reichlin (1597–1675) in 1662. Johann Jacob Reichlin was Joannes’ successor as mayor of the city and was a wealthy citizen of Weilheim. He personally loaned the city of Weilheim 900 Gulden between 1636 and 1646. This was Johann Jacob Reichlin’s third marriage. His first marriage, in Weilheim in 1621, took place the same day that Melchior Scheuffelin married. Reichlin’s first wife, Katharina Deschler (1599–1634), died young in Kirchheim unter Teck in that fateful September of 1634, followed by some of her children. Her daughter Ursula Reichlin survived, however, and in 1660 she married her stepbrother, Hans Jörg (Sr.) Scheuffelin, the son of Joannes Scheuffelin and Barbara Schlatter (they married two years before Johann Jacob Reichlin and Barbara).

The inventory and subsequent division of Joannes and Barbara’s assets for inheritance was done one year after Joannes’ death, in October 1662, and took three days. They were one of the wealthiest couples in Weilheim at that time. It is almost unbelievable, one must almost pinch oneself: During and shortly after the Thirty Years’ War, when great swathes of Europe were destroyed and countless lives were lost, those who survived invariably suffered from disease, poverty and starvation. Joannes and Barbara, however, seemed to live a healthy, happy and prosperous life, against all of these odds.

The record of this inventory in 1662 is well preserved and lists all the assets of the cou-ple across 17 pages. The assets are divided into several categories with lists and totals of the amounts, which gives an acute insight into life at that time.

It is difficult to convert the currency of the time, Gulden, into today’s euro. A roughly esti-mated conversion factor could be anywhere between 500 to 1,000. Conservatively, the sum of all the late Joannes and Barbara’s assets amounted to several million euros.

Despite their apparent riches, we must not assume that Joannes and Barbara lived an easy and luxurious life. Their prosperity meant that they were well-equipped with all that they needed to live well a good and self-sufficient life. They had to work hard to cultivate and man-age their fields and vineyards, which likely provided surplus income too. And they held public offices, with Joannes acting variously as city mayor, judge and Castenpfleger , and Barbara as godmother.

In the following are a range of extracts from the inventory and distribution record from 1662:

Fig. 29. Inventory and distribution of the assets of Joannes Scheuff elin, Castenpfl eger, aft er his death in 1661. Th e inventory was carried out in Weilheim on October 21 st , 22 nd and 23 rd , 1662. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 797]. [1507]

Joannes had the following children and heirs:

1. Michael Scheuff elin, married.

2. Hans Jörg (Sr.), married.

3. Hans Conrad, still single, but in marriageable age.

4. Hans Balthasar, still underage.

5. Barbara (Joannes’ widow), who married Johann Jacob Reichlin (Castenpfl eger and one of the judges in Weilheim) three weeks before this inventory took place. Her legal assis-tant was Georg Hieronymus Dürner (also one of the judges). [It was also mentioned that Barbara was the third wife of Johann Jacob Reichlin, who brought huge assets into this marriage].

In the following, further transcriptions are provided to illustrate what a family inheritance typically entails (the items listed are only part of the total assets).

Property, Houses:

• One house with a barn and a garden behind it (interest of 7 shillings annually) worth 700 Gulden.

• Half a house with a barn and a garden (located on Mühlengasse) worth 300 Gulden.

• A newly built barn on the same Mühlengasse worth 200 Gulden.

Fields:

• In the upper “Ösch” parcel: one Jauchert between Melchior Daubenschmid’s field (the doc-tor, who housed the Spanish officer during the Thirty Years’ War) and old Michael Reichlin’s field.

• In the lower “Ösch” parcel: three-quarters of a field on the Holzmaden hill. The field pro-duces a yield of one sack of spelt grain per year.

Meadows:

• One Tagwerk of a meadow between Hans Jacob Reichlin’s meadow and Jörg Heinrich Keller’s meadow, worth 100 Gulden (interest of 8 shillings annually).

Garden and vegetable fields:

• One herb field and one hemp field, worth 30 and 15 Gulden.

Vineyards:

• One quarter between the vineyards of Melchior Daubenschmid and young Bastian Göltz (interest of 7 shillings) worth 80 Gulden.

Forests:

• One Morgen of woods located between the forests of old Martin Weber and the heirs of Hans Maurer.

• One Morgen of woods located in the Limburg forest between the forests of Vincent Zwissler’s widow and Paulin Schlatter’s.

Miscellaneous assets:

• Cash: 110 Gulden.

• Gems and silverware: one set of silver-coated spoons worth 4 Gulden.

• One (leather-bound) Bible worth 3 Gulden.

The late man’s clothes: one black wool coat. His sons have already taken the rest of the clothes.Beds and linen: all in all, ten fully equipped beds worth 50 Gulden. It seems that beds at that time were more important and valuable than today. The listing of all beds, pillows, duvets, sheets, blankets, etc. comprises two pages.

Brass cookware: five large and small pans. Three baking trays. One small mortar and pestle. Two brass lights. One ember pan.

Pewter dishes: Ten one-liter pots. One half-liter kitchen pot. Copper dishes.

Iron kitchenware: two pans. One ember pan. One pot. Two frying pans. One ladle.

Carpentry: four four-poster beds. One commode. Five tables. One four-poster bed for children. Two comfortable four-poster beds. Eight armchairs.

Tools: five hayforks. Two pitchforks. Three pickaxes.

Cattle and sheep: two cows. Two one-and-a-half-year-old cattle. One pig. Three sheep. 162 sheep and mutton. 69 lambs.

Grain: four bags of spelt from the last harvest. Oat from the last harvest. Anise grain. Four bags of barley. 404 spelt sheaves. 90 oat sheaves. 79 barley sheaves.

Wine: Old Neidlinger wine. Old Weilheimer wine. 25 liters of brandy.

Debts receivable (rentals to the sons):

• Pending from the son Michael Scheuffelin, for two horses and half a house in Unterhofen.• From the son Hans Jörg (Sr.), for one horse and half a house on Mühlengasse.

• From the third son Hans Conrad, for a carriage, a foal, a vineyard and half a house in Un-terhofen (note: the other half belonged to his older brother Michael).

The son Michael already received assets at his wedding:

• Half of the house in Unterhofen worth 100 Gulden (the sons inherited the houses during their parents’ lifetime and had to pay a pension while their parents were still alive).

• One Jauchert of a field in the “Roten Steig” parcel.

The son Hans Jörg (Sr.) already received assets at his wedding:

• One house in the Mühlengasse worth 100 Gulden.

• One Jauchert of fields at the Brunnengasse worth 35 Gulden.

The son Hans Conrad should receive similar assets at his wedding (he married in 1663):

• The house in Unterhofen worth 100 Gulden.

• Three quarter fields in the “Naberner Weg” parcel worth 35 Gulden.

• One Jauchert of fields at the Untergasse.

• One Tagwerk of meadows.

Fig. 30. Inventory and distribution of the assets of Joannes Scheuff elin in 1662. Sum of all assets

(“Summasummarum Hansen Vermögens Substanz”): 5,470 Gulden. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 797]. [1507]

Assets that the spouses had brought into their marriage in the year 1625:

• Joannes: 619 Gulden.

• Barbara: 1,700 Gulden.

Sum of assets brought into their marriage: 2,319 Gulden.

We see here that Barbara brought three times the asset of Joannes. Th is does not mean that Joannes was poorer than Barbara; the assets that a spouse brought into the marriage depended on whether their parents were still alive and how many siblings they had. We also see here that the married couple more than doubled their wealth during their 35 years of marriage, from 2,300 to 5,400 Gulden.

• Gain of both spouses during the marriage: 3,040 Gulden.

• Gain per spouse: 1,520 Gulden.

Th e following inheritance calculations resemble modern divorce laws.

• Joannes brought into the marriage 619 Gulden and has a gain of 1,520 Gulden, i. e., his as-sets at the time of his death were set to 2,139 Gulden.

Joannes’ assets of 2,139 Gulden were then divided between his widow Barbara and their four sons, with each receiving a fi ft h of the total. Barbara thus inherited 427 Gulden, while the four sons together inherited 1,711 Gulden.

• Th e total worth of the widow Barbara was as follows: She brought into her marriage 1,700 Gulden and received half of the lifetime marital gain, 1,520 Gulden. Her inheritance from her husband totaled 427 Gulden. Th e sum of Barbara’s worth was thus 3,648 Gulden.

Now follows the inventory recording what Barbara brought to her new marriage with Hans

Jacob Reichlin (in the document called “her new landlord”).

• Real estate worth 2,585 Gulden.

Some of Barbara’s further assets:

• Silver key hook and associated case.

• Silver-coated knives and sheath.

• Silver-coated belt.

Clothes:

• Skirts in different colors and fabrics.

• One fur worth 12 Gulden.

• Five bodices.

• One women’s hat.

• Four white aprons.

• Two satin hoods.

• One silk hood.

• Three veils.

The total sum of assets that Barbara brought into her new marriage was worth 4,712 Gulden. Barbara still had to pay her four sons their inheritance of 427 Gulden per son, but her sons each had debts payable, which were immediately deducted from the total.

Barbara’s payments to her four sons (their maternal inheritance) were:

• Michael Scheuffelin: 427 Gulden minus 255 Gulden he already received, i. e., 172 Gulden.• Hans Jörg (Sr.) Scheuffelin: 427 Gulden minus 275 Gulden he already received, i. e., 152 Gulden.

• Hans Conrad: 427 Gulden minus 305 Gulden he already received, i. e., 122 Gulden.

• The youngest son Hans Balthasar was still owed his full paternal inheritance of 427 Gulden.That all parties agree with the current inventory and inheritance (according to the laws) is confirmed with their signature. Negotiated on October 26th, 1662. Starting with the signatures of the dignitaries, administrators, and lawyers.

Next were the signatures of the sons of Joannes and Barbara. Then followed the signature of Barbara herself.

Fig. 31. Inventory and distribution of the assets of Joannes Scheuff elin in 1662. Signatures of both Barbara and her new spouse alongside Barbara’s lawyer: Hans Jacob Reichlin, Barbara

Scheuff elin Reichlin and Georg Hieronymus Dürner. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 797]. [1507]

To manage their assets, women needed a so-called Kriegsvogt who provided legal assistance in the court and with the notary. Barbara only signed the inventory document that regulated her assets, which would be worth several million euros today, with her fi rst name. Hans Jörg (Sr.) Scheuff elin (1638–1693)

Hans Jörg (Sr.) was the son of Joannes Scheuff elin and Barbara Schlatter. He was born on May 13th, 1638.

Hans Jörg (Sr.) Scheuff elin married Ursula Reichlin (1629–1699) in Weilheim in 1660. Ursula Reichlin was the daughter of Johann Jacob Reichlin and probably grew up in Kirchheim unter Teck. Her father was mayor of the city of Weilheim aft er Joannes Scheuff elin (1601–1661).

Fig. 32. Kirchheim unter Teck 1683. Andreas Kieser [2001]. Hans Jörg (Sr.)’s wife Ursula

Reichlin grew up in Kirchheim.

Fig. 33. Marriage of Hans Jörg (Sr.) Scheuff elin and Ursula Reichlin on August 30 th , 1660. [1023] Hans Jörg (Sr.) Scheuff elin and Ursula Reichlin had four children: Anna Catharina, Barbara, Hans Jörg (Jr.) (born 1666, married Barbara Maurer Knab in 1690) and Hans Jacob.

Fig. 34. Birth of Hans Jörg (Jr.) on December 27 th , 1666. He was an ancestor of the US line. His godmother was Anna Maria Hölderlin. Anna Maria Hölderlin, the wife of pastor Alexander Hölderlin (Sr.), was godmother to all the siblings. [1025]

Hans Jörg (Sr.) was a council member and owned a guest house in Weilheim. Aft er his death, an inventory was made between October 26th to 30th, 1693. His wife Ursula had already devel-oped health problems at that time, so Hans Jörg (Sr.) and Ursula’s assets were handed over to their grandchild Anna Catharina (her mother Anna Catharina died of puerperal fever shortly aft er her birth in 1682) and their son Hans Jörg (Jr.). Th ese assets were worth several thousand Gulden.

Despite the wealth of this inheritance, Ursula had accumulated a lot of debts. Th e sum of these debts was not signifi cant with regards to their assets, but it was perhaps an early indi-cator of the dwindling wealth of the family over the following generations. Ursula explicitly allowed some of the assets to be sold. During these inventory negotiations, the judge Georg Scheuff elin was present. Ursula’s legal assistance (her Kriegsvogt ) was Th omas Maurer and her son in law Leonhard Weissinger. Th e inventory record listed two houses in Oberhofen located

on Gemeinen Gasse that were worth 1,500 Gulden together. Th e sum of all her remaining property was worth 3,261 Gulden.

Th eir daughter Anna Catharina received several assets for her marriage in 1682: some fi elds, one meadow, one vineyard, one forest, many clothes, dresses and festive robes, linen bedsheets, kitchenware and cutlery. Altogether this was worth 325 Gulden.

Th eir son Hans Jörg (Jr.) received some fi elds, one meadow and one vineyard worth 299 Gulden for his marriage in 1690.

Th e sum of all assets negotiated in this inventory was 4,080 Gulden (about three million eu-ros today). Ursula’s outstanding debts amounted to 1,191 Gulden, a quarter of the total assets.

Finally, their granddaughter Anna Catharina (eleven years old at the time) inherited half of both the houses, worth 750 Gulden, plus some fi elds. Th eir son Hans Jörg (Jr.) inherited half of both the houses, worth 750 Gulden, plus the other half of the fi elds.

Fig. 35. Inventory and distribution of the assets of Hans Jörg (Sr.) and Ursula Reichlin

Scheuff elin on October 26 th to 30 th , 1693. Heirs were their granddaughter Anna Catharina and their son Hans Jörg (Jr.). Liabilities were already mentioned on the fi rst page. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 800]. [1508]

Fig. 36. Inventory of Hans Jörg (Sr.) and Ursula Reichlin Scheuff elin in 1693. Th e sum of all assets was worth 4080 Gulden. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 800]. [1508]

Fig. 37. For her wedding in 1682, daughter Anna Catharina received over 30 items of clothing, worth ca. 30 Gulden (about 20,000 euros today). “One black, one blue, one turquoise skirt, one green colored bodice …” Clothes at that time were hand-made from sheep’s wool, fl ax or linen, and were very expensive. Anna Catharina even had cotton clothes, which were very rare and lavish at that time. It seems that the Scheuff elin women were generally very fashion-conscious and well equipped at that time. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 800]. [1508]

Fig. 38. Granddaughter Anna Catharina (eleven years old in 1693) inherited half of the house and a barn in the upper city of Weilheim, worth 750 Gulden (half a million euros today).

[Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 800]. [1508] Hans Jörg (Jr.) Scheuff elin (1666–1725)

Hans Jörg (Jr.) was the son of Hans Jörg (Sr.) Scheuff elin and Ursula Reichlin. He was born on December 27th, 1666.

Hans Jörg (Jr.) Scheuff elin married Barbara Maurer Knab (1667–1750) on November 11th, 1690.

Fig. 39. Marriage of Hans Jörg (Jr.) Scheuff elin and Barbara Maurer Knab on November 11 th ,

1690. Hans Jörg (Sr.) was named as a council member and innkeeper. Barbara was mentioned as the widow of Hans Jacob Knab, saltpeter producer. [1026]

Barbara Maurer Knab was the widow of Johann Jacob Knab, a manufacturer of saltpeter for nitrate used in gunpowder production. She brought with her two daughters from her fi rst mar-riage and had another six children in her second marriage with Hans Jörg (Jr.).

Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara had the children: Ursula, Barbara, Hans Jörg, Eva, Hans Jacob, and Johan Jacob (born on April 10th, 1712, married Maria Catharina Auwerder on April 24th, 1731, died 1750 in Philadelphia, PA).

Fig. 40. Birth of Johan Jacob on April 10 th , 1712. He was born on Good Friday and was named aft er Barbara’s fi rst husband. Th is Johan Jacob is Jacob (1) of the US line. Johan Jacob was the second emigrant of the family, and the one who remained in the US. [1030]

Th e last son of Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara Knab Scheuff elin was the later emigrant Johan Jacob Scheuff elin (born on April 10th, 1712).

Hans Jörg (Jr.) took over his wife’s business and became a nitrate producer. In Weilheim he also worked as a council member and owner of an inn (Lammwirt) . Th e family lived in a spacious two-story house with a barn and a courtyard with a garden. Th e house had a vaulted cellar and a water well in the kitchen (which was very rare at the time). It was located near the upper city gate in Oberhofen . Th e family also owned a large and well-built barn. Aft er the death of Hans Jörg (Jr.) in 1725, the family moved between their own buildings. Th e oldest son Hans Jörg bought the house with the water well in the kitchen for 650 Gulden and moved in with his wife, Anna Maria Moll, and their young children. Between 1727 and 1731, the fam-ily converted the well-built barn into a house for Barbara Knab and the youngest son Johan Jacob (the barn was later valued at 650 Gulden too). Th e widow Barbara Knab lived in this new barn-conversion until 1747. Th is new house was later sold to Barbara’s daughter-in-law Anna Maria.

Aft er the death of Hans Jörg (Jr.) in the Advent season in 1725, his assets were distributed between May 13th and May 15th, 1726, a huge fortune of 4,817 Gulden. Half of the fortune went to his wife Barbara and the other half was divided among their four children. Barbara’s daugh-ters from her fi rst marriage, Agnes and Brigitta, received their inheritance from Barbara’s half. Agnes lodged a complaint in court that she was wronged out of the inheritance from Barbara’s second marriage with Hans Jörg (Jr.), which was in line with Hans Jörg (Jr.)’s wishes.

Hans Jörg (Jr.) owned some books that were counted among his assets. One of the books was the Württembergisches Landrecht (the Württemberg Civil Law Book). As mayor of Weilheim, Hans Jörg (Jr.) had needed this law book to do his work (at this time the city’s mayor acted primarily as its treasurer.)

Fig. 41. Inventory and eventual division of the assets of Hans Jörg (Jr.) Scheuff elin from May 13 th to May 15 th , 1726 (aft er his death in 1725). He was mentioned as a council member and saltpeter boiler in Weilheim. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 884]. [1511]

Fig. 42. Inventory and eventual division of the assets of Hans Jörg (Jr.) Scheuff elin in 1726. Th e fourteen-year-old son Jacob (1) Scheuff elin was assigned 533 Gulden but did not yet receive this inheritance because he was still a youth. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 884]. [1511]

Fig. 43. Th e sum of all assets of Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara totaled 4,817 Gulden in 1726.

[Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 884]. [1511]

In 1731, we fi nd the next key document. Six years aft er the death of her husband, Barbara Knab Scheuff elin distributed her assets to her children and grandchildren. It was said that she was no longer able to run her large farm and manage all her assets herself. It was also said that she had already amassed considerable debt to the city of Weilheim. It was also common for parents to voluntarily hand over their assets to their children and then receive a pension as compensation. Her youngest son, Johan Jacob, also wanted to get married soon. In January 1731, the ‘voluntary handover’ of all the assets of Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara Knab Scheuff elin took place. It was a huge fortune, and it took seven days to inventory everything and to sign the contract. Altogether, the inventory came to 50 pages and added up 3,998 Gulden (several million Euro). It was signed by Barbara Knab Scheuff elin, Hans Jörg Scheuff elin (1696–1735), Jacob (1) Scheuff elin and Jacob’s legal advisor Michael Scheuff elin. Jacob (1)’s inheritance was set at 872 Gulden.

Fig. 44. Voluntary handover of the assets of Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara Knab Scheuff elin from January 11 th to January 18 th , 1731. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 805]. [1509]

Fig. 45. Voluntary handover in 1731. Th e son Jacob (1) received 872 Gulden, aft er deducting the clothes and many other things he had already inherited. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 805]. [1509]

Fig. 46. Voluntary handover in 1731. Jacob (1) received a quarter of the house, worth

172 Gulden. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 805]. [1509]

Th e voluntary handover document in 1731 mentioned that Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara’s son Hans Jörg was Lammwirt (owner of the inn “ Lamm ”, Lamb).

From Hans Jörg (Jr.)’s time as mayor, whose offi ce he shared with Jacob Scheuff elin (1659–ca. 1715) in 1709 and in 1710, a residual debt to be paid to the city of Weilheim remained. It was not a typical fi ne for misappropriating public funds, but rather it seems that Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Jacob had miscalculated the city’s fi nances and now had to pay back about 150 Gulden. At the time banks were not yet common, and it was normal for the city to borrow money from its citizens and vice versa.

Fig. 47. Voluntary handover of the assets of Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara Knab Scheuff elin: signatures from January 22 nd , 1731. Th e interested parties were the widow Barbara Scheuff elin and her legal advisor, as well as their oldest son Hans Jörg, their son-in-law and Jacob (1) Scheuff elin and his legal guardian Michael Scheuff elin. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 805]. [1509]

At the time of the voluntary handover in 1731, Barbara Knab Scheuffelin decided to demolish the saltpeter manufacturer. Although Jacob (1) had learned the profession of a saltpeter boiler, he had no interest in the work. Jacob (1) was nineteen years old in 1731 when he explained to his mother that he didn’t want to be a saltpeter boiler. His mother was left with no choice but to dissolve and demolish the saltpeter manufacturer in 1731.

Jacob (1)’s older brother, Hans Jörg, inherited the house in the city center and founded the inn Zum Lamm. Jacob (1) may have occasionally worked at his brother’s inn, but he also found himself unsatisfied in this profession. Jacob (1) seemed to have no occupation that he longed to pursue and to dedicate his life to. He started to cultivate the fields and vineyards from his inheritance and married and established his family. But then he began to imagine a different future.

After the death of Barbara in 1750, twenty-five years after the death of her husband, her re-maining assets were distributed to her children and grandchildren. The inventory and division took place on June 1st, 1750.

Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara had a lot of grandchildren who were considered in the inheri-tance. In the introduction, the document mentioned the “little legacy that was left”; they had already handed over their assets in the years 1726 and 1731. It is notable that the document does not feature a single Scheuffelin signature: The oldest daughter Ursula and the oldest son Hans Jörg had already passed away, the second daughter Barbara was represented by her hus-band, and the second son Jacob (1) was in America. Instead of the signature of Jacob (1)’s wife, Maria Catharina, her legal assistant signed the document.

Johan Jacob Scheuffelin is recorded in the inventory document as, at present, in Pennsylva-nia. His wife Maria Catharina Auwerder and her legal assistant Johann Friedrich Moll were present at the inheritance negotiations in Weilheim. Maria Catharina demanded that she re-ceive more clothes, as she supposedly deserved aliments from Johan Jacob. Although he was in America, Johan Jacob Scheuffelin was recorded as a citizen of Weilheim; he did not give up his civil rights upon emigrating, indicating that he had the firm intention of coming back. What this document did not mention, however, is that the two sons of Johan Jacob were already on their way to Philadelphia, PA.

The introduction to the residual distribution document mentioned that there was little for-tune to be inherited. The sum of all assets was 69 Gulden, minus 22 Gulden in debts still to be paid. The remaining 47 Gulden divided by 4 resulted in 11 Gulden per child.

Evidently there has been a growth in inheritance in the family over time. Hans Jörg (Sr.) inherited over 400 Gulden in 1662, and then his son Hans Jörg (Jr.) inherited a house and field worth about 800 Gulden in 1693. In the following generation, Johan Jacob inherited about 900 Gulden in 1750. What we also see, however, is a trend towards increasing debts among the

citizens at large. This was part of a wider trend in the 18th century, resulting from poor political and economic conditions.

The Duchy of Württemberg had many problems and expenses. Württemberg, like Prus-sia, started to arm their country and their citizens after bad experiences during the Thir-ty Years’ War (1618–1648), the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). Unlike Prussia, however, Württemberg was badly and inefficiently ruled at that time. There were extremely high taxes and duties in place, and many families were forced to sell their properties and to take on debts. This broader trend of impoverish-ment and over-indebtedness in Württemberg was by no means exclusive to the city of Weil-heim – signs of this trend were already visible in Ursula Reichlin Scheuffelin’s inventory in 1693.

Württemberg did not only start to amass armaments but also had to pay for the provisions of billeted troops in addition to extortionate war contributions to France. The state of Württem-berg was unable to cover all these costs itself, so the cities and the citizens were required to pay directly. Even worse, a new poll tax was introduced. This led to a high level of debt for the city of Weilheim and its citizens, as in many other cities of Württemberg. Eberhard Louis, Duke of Württemberg from 1692 to 1733, wrote in 1694: “Despite all efforts, we failed to obtain a reduc-tion in contribution to France. On the contrary, the crown of France is pushing for several tons of gold to be paid in full. That’s why we had decided to introduce a poll tax in Württemberg.” The background for this was the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697).

King Louis XIV of France (the Sun King) was the most powerful monarch in Europe at that time, an absolute ruler who changed French politics in many areas. He ended religious tolerance and persecuted the Calvinist Protestants in France (the Huguenots). During the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century, France had supported the Protestant German duchies against the Habsburg imperial forces, but now King Louis XIV, with the help of his terri-ble General Mélac, tried to expand his influence in Alsace, the Palatinate and Württemberg. The order came: “ Brûlez le Palatinat! ” The Palatinate was to be burned to the ground. Many cities in Baden-Württemberg were torched and the French crown lost a lot of respect across Europe in the process. Württemberg was even forced to pay war contributions to France and feared that it might have to cede areas to their control. The Sun King cast a long shadow over Württemberg.

France was not the only worry of the Duke of Württemberg, however. Duke Louis Eberhard also aspired to absolute (and hedonistic) rule in Württemberg, loving his extravagant life and opulent courthouse. He built a huge new castle in Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart to spend more time with his mistress. By the end of his life, Duke Eberhard Louis had left Württemberg in poor shape and with a mountain of debts (ca. one million Gulden). His successors during the

18th century, Duke Charles Alexander (1733–1737) and Duke Charles Eugene (1737–1793), were no better.

Württemberg and Prussia were in similar condition at the beginning of the 18th century. Prussia managed to create a modern, efficient, tolerant state and a standing army, perma-nently reforming itself from the inside and establishing a strong and independent judiciary. Frederick the Great, Kind of Prussia, was a devout Francophile, often preferring to speak French rather than German. Instead of squandering state wealth on mistresses at the ducal court and the persecution of critical voices, Prussia housed famous scholars from all over Europe at its court. Moreover, Prussia did not hesitate to take in the persecuted Hugue-nots, strengthening thus its economy. The Dukes of Württemberg, in comparison, evidently missed their chance to turn Württemberg into a similarly modern, prosperous and powerful state.

Württemberg’s poor political and economic condition during the 18th century naturally had an impact on its citizens, including those of Weilheim. The city of Weilheim and its surroundings were a popular transit camp for all kind of troops during the many wars of the 17th and 18th centuries. This was advantageous in that Weilheim did not become a target for the destruction that these troops brought, but it did mean that the city was forced to pay large sums for the board and lodging of the stationed soldiers. The accommodation of the ducal Garde du Corps, the Freudenberg regiment, the French Dragoons of Vauban, imperial troops, the von Graevenitz regiment, to name a few, cost the city and its citizens tremendous amounts, at a time when the debts from the Thirty Years’ War had not even been fully paid off.

The Dukes of Württemberg curtailed the nobility in their country, developing instead a strong bourgeoisie early on. This lack of nobility gave Württemberg a more democratic form of government, with the dukes ruling together with the so-called Landstände (Estates of Würt-temberg). The Estates of Württemberg existed from the 15th to the 20th century, and they pro-vided a key forum for difficult disputes between the nobility, the protestant clergy, and the citizens.

It has been alleged that Realteilung in Württemberg made citizens poorer over the centuries, the practice of equally splitting heritable property and thus carving up land lots. This cannot alone explain the general impoverishment of the citizens, however; every generation produced two to four heirs, and usually the heirs married with families with similar status and assets. Thus, assets were divided through inheritance, but also merged through marriage, and many worked hard to build up their wealth.

Perhaps Johan Jacob felt a pressure to stake a claim in a new, emerging country, rather than invest his energy in a Württemberg increasingly in decline and wrought with debt.

Fig. 48. Inventory and residual property distribution of Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara

Scheuff elin on June 1 st , 1750 (aft er Barbara’s death in 1750). Hans Jörg (Jr.) was mentioned as a former saltpeter boiler and “Lammwirt” (inn keeper). [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 812]. [1510]

Fig. 49. Inventory and property division of Hans Jörg (Jr.) and Barbara, which reads: “His son

Johan Jacob Scheuff elin, citizen of Weilheim, is currently in Pennsylvania .” Johan Jacob’s wife, Maria Catharina Auwerder, and her legal assistant were present during the negotiations on June 1 st , 1750. Th is document is evidence of Johan Jacob’s emigration to Philadelphia, PA. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 812]. [1510]

Fig. 50. Johan Jacob Scheuff elin, saltpeter boiler, currently staying in Pennsylvania, still owes

10 Gulden subsistence payment for two years to his recently deceased mother (5 Gulden each for the years 1748 and 1749) in 1750. Further debts: three sacks of spelt, bacon and salt. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 812]. [1510] Johan Jacob Scheuff elin (1712–1750) – Jacob (1) Schieff elin

Johan Jacob Scheuff elin (1712 in Weilheim an der Teck – 1750 in Philadelphia, PA) was born on April 10th, 1712. He was the last-born child of Hans Jörg (Jr.) Scheuff elin and Barbara Maurer Knab, with a long gap between his birth and that of his older siblings. Barbara was 45 when she gave birth to him!

Johan Jacob was the fi rst emigrant of the family to stay in America. Johan Jacob Scheuff elin became Jacob (1) Schieff elin . He emigrated in 1749, his fi rst trip to America.

Jacob (1) Schieff elin married Maria Catharina Auwerder in 1731 at just nineteen years old. In his wedding entry he was mentioned as Hans Jörg’s son, who was a council member and a nitrate producer (saltpeter boiler).

Fig. 51. Marriage of Jacob (1) Scheuff elin and Maria Catharina Auwerder on April 24 th , 1731.

“Misericordias Domini” means a Sunday in Eastertide. Jacob (1) was also born in Eastertide (mentioned in his birth entry). [1034]

Maria Catharina was the daughter of Adam Auwerder, a farmer in Bünzwangen near Göppin-gen. She was orphaned as a child. Maria grew up with her cousin in Jesingen.

In 1732, the young couple Maria Catharina and Jacob (1) compiled a marriage inventory to document what assets they had brought into their marriage. While Jacob (1) had inherited a lot of properties in 1731, these are notably absent in the marriage contract. He valuated his house-hold goods, clothes, debts payable and debts receivable, listing many things: three quarters of his mother’s house (this was the well-built barn converted into a house, worth 650 Gulden), silver spoons, two guns, one mare with a saddle, a sermon book, several beds, pillows, linen, and many other items. His brother-in-law owed him 38 Gulden and he had to pay his sister 5 Gulden for inheritance equality. Jacob (1) also had to take one quarter (55 Gulden) of the debts payable to the city of Weilheim from the time his father was mayor.

Maria Catharina brought no land into their marriage. She was orphaned early, and her legal guardian had sold all her parent’s land and loaned out the money. She thus had debts receivable of 700 Gulden. Her clothes and houseware were worth 200 Gulden. Both spouses contribut-ed the same amount of 900 Gulden to their marriage, and the marriage was well endowed with approximately one million euros today. Maria Catharina owned a valuable coral necklace made of silver, which she had received from Jacob (1) for their wedding.

Fig. 52. Marriage inventory of Jacob (1) and Maria Catharina Auwerder Scheuff elin, created on

November 5 th , 1732 (almost two years aft er their wedding in 1731). [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 884]. [1511]

Fig. 53. Marriage inventory of Jacob (1) and Maria Catharina Scheuff elin in 1732. Maria

Catharina mainly brought capital in the form of loaned money, worth 927 Gulden, into their marriage. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 884]. [1511]

Fig. 54. Signatures of the newly married couple confi rming their marriage inventory, 1732.

Jacob Scheuff elin and Maria Catharina Scheuff elin. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 884]. [1511]

Jacob (1) and Maria Catharina had ten children, but onl y four of them reached adulthood. Two sons followed their father and emigrated to Philadelphia, PA: Georg Adam and Jacob (2).

Th e children of Jacob (1) and Maria Catharina were: Georg Adam (1732–1762), Th omas (1) (1733), Jacob (2) (1734–1769), Barbara (1736), Maria Catharina (1738–1800), Th omas (2) (1740), Simon (1741), a male infant (1743, died shortly aft er birth), Th omas (3) (1744–1809) and Gottfried (1746).

Fig. 55. Birth of Georg Adam on February 4 th , 1732, in Weilheim. Georg Adam and his younger brother Jacob (2) emigrated to the US. [1035]

Fig. 56. Birth of Jacob (2) on August 18 th , 1734, in Weilheim. Jacob (2) emigrated to the US in 1750 and was the father of Jacob (3). [1036]

The Emigrants to America: Jacob (1) and his sons Jacob (1) Schieffelin (1712–1750)

In 1731, Jacob (1), like his father and grandfather, worked as a saltpeter cooker for nitrate pro-duction. He didn’t like this work. He looked for a new profession, trying out different paths – he did not initially dream of emigrating. For sure, Jacob (1) had heard a lot about the new colonies of New England, New York, and about the Germans in Philadelphia, but that wasn’t where he imagined his road leading him.

In 1743, Jacob (1) was 31 years old. His son Georg Adam was eleven years old, and his son Ja-cob (2) was nine years old. On April 23rd, 1743, a baby died shortly after birth. It was the fourth of their children to perish as an infant. They seemed to have little luck with children.

Jacob (1) was close to his relative Hans Jacob (born on December 24th, 1705). When he heard in 1743 that Hans Jacob wanted to emigrate to America, he was spellbound. Nobody else with-in the family had ever had such an idea, let alone the courage to go through with it. Jacob (1) keenly followed any developments, until eventually, he decided he wanted to leave for America as well.

For Hans Jacob, the decision to leave his home and his family for an adventurous business trip to the other side of the Atlantic was far from easy. Again and again, he climbed to the summit of Limburg to ask God for advice, hoping to receive a sign. He saw flocks of sparrows flying by, but never did they turn west, as he intended to.

There were countless stories of the unlimited possibilities of the New World. Thousands had emigrated from the Palatinate. Penn advertised his colony around Philadelphia. The emigrants wrote letters to their old homeland, reporting that they were well and encouraging their rel-atives to follow them. France under the rule of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was keen to expand its influence on the Palatinate. The Huguenots, Lutherans, Mennonites, Pietists and other Reformed groups came under threat, with many Huguenots having already fled in droves to America. They were threatened, impoverished and starving.

Hans Jacob decided to make the journey. Life could only get better. He packed clothes for every occasion, an old Bible, medicine, maps, stationery and money into his leather suitcase. He had a cheque with him to buy land for a large sum.

It was hard to say goodbye. Everybody wept, even Hans Jacob. But he was sure that it would go well. He took a carriage to Esslingen in May 1743. On the Neckar, small barges drove to Heilbronn and then further past Heidelberg to Mannheim. He then had to change rivers in

Mannheim. On the Rhine, a larger vessel would bring him to the river’s termination in the Atlantic Ocean near Rotterdam. The ship had to pass more than thirty custom houses on the Rhine, because Germany consisted of many small counties at that time; this leg of the journey took four weeks and cost a sizable sum. The ship was full of emigrants from the Palatinate who had embarked in Mannheim, and Hans Jacob had to adjust to their dialect. Entire families with children in tow were on their way. The few Huguenots among them were immediate-ly recognizable, well-groomed, and well-educated. Hans Jacob talked to them to improve his French and listened to their stories.

Chartering a ship for the Atlantic crossing was easy in the port of Rotterdam. The Rosanna was the largest vessel on the quay, a handsome three-masted ship. The rigging was checked and repaired by ten sailors. Jacob looked for accommodation a little off the beaten track and wrote a letter to his wife and children.

Hans Jacob negotiated his own cabin with the captain a few days before departure, for a price of 50 Gulden. He had already heard about the hygienic conditions and wanted to limit his risk. The cabin was small, but it had everything he needed: a porthole, a table, a bed and a closet. Hans Jacob spent a few days shopping in Rotterdam. He knew how stingy a ship’s kitchen was with distributing food on the sea, so he stocked up on large quantities of long-life groceries and stowed everything in his cabin. He even bought a large barrel of water and a small barrel of wine. Once his cabin was overflowing with supplies, he felt safe.

With the proud ship brimming with men and goods, it was time to set sail and leave the har-bor, and the very first occasion that Hans Jacob felt the magnitude of the voyage begin to set in. He could hardly hold back his tears. He was accustomed to having solid ground under his feet, to laboring hard each day. Now he was at the mercy of those treacherous elements, the winds, and the waves, for months to come, far removed from his family and without any meaningful occupation. He straightened up, and addressed himself firmly:

Hans Jacob stashed his personal effects away in the closet. After a few days, the first cases of illness were already beginning to strike: children with diarrhea and fever. The food onboard contained no vitamins, and the drinking water was poor. Hans Jacob always boiled his wa-ter before drinking it. He wasn’t a doctor, but he was medically educated, and his uncle had studied medicine in Tübingen and gave him good advice before the trip. Conditions aboard the ship were so bad that almost one hundred of the six hundred passengers died during the crossing and were cast into the sea.

Hans Jacob felt particularly sorry for one of the children. Small children rarely survived the voy-age. The young French family took care of everything delicately, but the fever refused to go away. Hans Jacob made a compress for the child’s calves. He had stocked up on ginger at a pharmacy in Rotterdam, the medicinal root was otherwise hardly available in Europe, and he cooked it into a brew and gave the child half a liter of it to drink. It took days for the fever to go down, and the parents were desperate. But finally, after a full week, the child showed signs of recovery. The family visited Hans Jacob every few days, and they shared ginger tea. His French was making progress. Hans Jacob imagined absently how the first pharmacy in Philadelphia might be stocked.

The sea felt different every day. Hans Jacob spent a lot of time on deck, looking into the dis-tance. Back to Europe. Nothing to see. Forward to America. Nothing to see. The salty sea air did him good. Although it was cool and humid, he hardly froze. He breathed deeply and filled his lungs as far as he could.

In the middle of the Atlantic, the sky darkened with heavy rain clouds. The storm that fol-lowed lasted three days. The sea rages and surges and the waves rise so high that they crest the ship before tumbling down upon it, and everyone fears capsizing. The ship was restlessly tossed from side to side, so that nobody could walk, or sit, or lie. The passengers sleeping together in the hold were at the end of their nerves. They would have plunged themselves into the sea out of desperation had the crew not held them back.

When the coast of New England appeared on the horizon, all the passengers flocked to the deck. A pastor from Heidelberg organized a divine service. The few musical instruments that were on board were taken up. People felt like they had been born again, already waving as the ship sailed along the wide bay to the north.

Quite suddenly, on September 26th, 1743, Philadelphia appeared in the distance. The feeling of arrival was indescribable. Their dream had finally come true. At the harbor there was always a festive atmosphere when a ship arrived. English, French, German, all languages blended at once, rising above the home-brewed beer, Alsatian Weckle, Strasbourg sausage salad, onion

pie, fish and potatoes. Europe partying on the other side of the Atlantic? Immigrants should eat their fill first!

The new arrivals were entered into the new citizen lists. Hans Jacob was recorded as Jacob Schuffele in America on September 26th, 1743. At the Philadelphia Court House, he made his Oath to the Government as Jacob Schäuffele .

Reality and everyday life soon caught up with the new arrivals. Early life in the New World revolved around the construction of an entirely new state, which was by no means a walk in the park. The next day, those who had financed their journey through servitude were assigned to their new masters. Families were torn apart, and the conditions they were to meet were often precarious.

Jacob said goodbye to the French family he had met onboard and sought to orient himself a little in Philadelphia. He found a neat accommodation in 2nd Street and wanted nothing other than to sleep in a soft duvet for the next few days.

The city exceeded his wildest expectations. Although already late in September, it was pleas-antly warm. The sun was shining, and Hans Jacob took a walk to the city center and down to the harbor. The houses were in good order. They were spacious and made of brick or wood, with English and Dutch style alternating. He saw beautiful gardens and parking lots, and the streets had sidewalks, all very well maintained. Hans Jacob found the name “New England” fitting, although the French and Germans numbered no less. The Quakers had created a beautiful, free city. As promised, he wrote a letter to his family in Weilheim. The letter ended up in a mailbag which was brought back to Rotterdam on the same Rosanna that had ferried them here.

Hans Jacob wanted to establish contacts among the German immigrants and get to grips with the city milieu. He was warmly welcomed into the German community. Every Sunday he went to the church and recited the Lord’s Prayer in German. He always wore his finest suit, and after the service he talked to the families on the English lawn in front of the church.

Philadelphia was in a period of strong and rapid growth. The number and frequency of emigrant ships had increased considerably since 1680. Once a month a new boat of hopefuls arrived from Europe. It was not only Germans but also Quakers and other English groups who arrived in their masses. The Quakers already had two churches in Philadelphia at that point. The British Crown even tried to lure long-established, aristocratic landowners into the new colonies to consolidate their possessions and build up loyal trading partners. Acquiring land was easy, and taxes were low.

Every morning before it opened long queues would form outside the new cadastral office in the city center. Hans Jacob lined up too and took notes about the land distribution. He con-sidered which land was well located, and how it could best be used, exploring the city and the surrounding area on foot or on horseback. The city was well situated, at the end of a wide bay, not far from the Atlantic coast and with hills to the west. He drew up plans with descriptions of the areas, labelling them as “potential residential area,” “swampy,” “meadows and pastures”

or “trading place”. Aft er comparing his plans with those of the land registry, he decided on his fi rst deal. He negotiated a purchase of land southwest of the city center, on a hill on the banks of the river. He also wanted to acquire the shore for later construction of a port.

Th ere was a great shortage of supply stores. Many products, such as soap, fabrics, medical and pharmaceutical articles, books and metal goods couldn’t be produced in high enough quantities and had to be imported from Europe at great cost. Th e ships did not typically have enough capacity for cargo, as the transport of people was more lucrative.

For Hans Jacob, this time in Philadelphia was both intense and exciting. He saw with enthu-siasm how a new world began to fl ourish here, and how it was better than the old one. Th e sun shone brighter, the sky was bluer, the grass was greener, and the people freer and more optimis-tic. Old Germany seemed a grey, rainy country in his memory, ravaged by wars, exploited by despotic rulers and full of distrust and envy, without any sign of economic growth.

Firm in his conviction to return and settle here for good, Hans Jacob boarded a ship back to Rotterdam in 1744. Th e ship had a strong tailwind and crossed the Atlantic faster than planned. It was already autumn, and the captain was in a hurry, eager to be clear of the fre-quent storms that plagued the season. Hans Jacob was one of the few passengers and had plenty of time to examine the exports of the young colony.

When he arrived home in Weilheim, his family and his relatives welcomed him warmly. Th e gift s he brought with him were admired. Hans Jacob told endless stories of his adventure, and in his memory New England seemed to grow even more beautiful.

Jacob (1) listened to Hans Jacob’s stories again and again. His own conviction to emigrate grew with each retelling, though it would take fi ve years still to prepare.

Between 1743 and 1744, Jacob (1) was recorded as godfather several times in Weilheim’s Peterskirche.

Fig. 57. On May 8 th , 1743, and on April 28 th , 1744: Jacob (1) Scheuff elin, saltpeter boiler, and

Maria Rosina, wife of the fabric dyer Matthaeus Scheuff elin, were godfather and godmother in Weilheim’s Peterskirche. [1039]

Th e last child of Jacob (1) and Maria Catharina, Th omas, was born on August 14th, 1744. Th o-mas Scheuff elin (1744–1809) and his sister Maria Catharina (1738–1800) grew up in Weilheim and remained in Swabia.

Jacob (1) was not a dreamer, but a realist. He saw great business potential in America and weighed up his options for exactly how to proceed with his family. He decided to follow in Hans Jacob’s footsteps and travel to Philadelphia. His wife Maria was unconvinced by his plans, and rightly feared that Jacob (1) would not come back. Maria wanted to stay in Weilheim. Jacob (1) had discussed his thoughts and his plans with her many times, and in the end they decided that he should travel alone to Pennsylvania for a longer stay. Th eir sons Georg Adam and Jacob (2) would succeed their father as soon as Georg Adam was grown up. Aft er her husband and two of her sons moved out, Maria didn’t seem to fare so well. She had to apply for fi nancial support from the Armenkasten (City Administration) in Weilheim to raise her remaining two children.

Jacob (1) was mentioned several times in the land register in the 1740s. From 1743 on, he sold so many properties, fi elds, vineyards, and land that the offi cials simply crossed out his name and wrote the new owner above it. He tried to sell most of the land within the family or to his sister-in-law. In 1743, e. g., he sold a meadow to Johannes Scheuff elin.

Fig. 58. Land register of Weilheim in 1743. Jacob (1) sold many of his possessions during the

1740s. Here he sold 3/8 of 2 Morgen acres. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 257]. [1504]

In 1747, Jacob (1) sold his house to his sister-in-law’s new husband. Th e restaurant Lamm that his late brother Hans Jörg had built was now run by his sister-in-law.

Between 1743 to 1748 Jacob (1) sold possessions worth 530 Gulden (around three to four hundred thousand euros). We can assume that Jacob (1) took approximately this much capital with him to America, although whether he took it all himself or split it such that his sons could bring some later is unclear. It was certainly not easy to bring so much capital safely to America, and might have been dangerous, too.

Fig. 59. Land register of Weilheim in 1747. Jacob (1) even sold his fi efdoms, for which he had to pay interest to the Kirchheim monastery administration. Th is fi efdom from the church sponsors had nothing to do with the Scheuff elin’s man fi efdom from the House of Württemberg, which they were not permitted to sell. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 257]. [1504]

In 1747, two years before his emigration to America, Jacob (1) travelled to Belgium and the Netherlands. We do not know what the goal of this journey was, but we can assume it regarded the safe transfer of his huge capital to America. It might have been that he already wanted to emigrate in 1747 but had no permission; at that time a special permit from the authorities was needed to emigrate, and usually one had to give up their civil rights at home. Th e authorities did not want people to emigrate and made it diffi cult for them. If Jacob (1) tried to emigrate illegally, he was probably sent back to Weilheim.

When Jacob (1) returned to Weilheim on December 8th, 1747, he was arrested and impris-oned in Weilheim’s prison. He broke out easily and fl ed to the town of Reutlingen, thirty miles away, but was later arrested again in Kirchheim unter Teck and sentenced to several more months in prison by the district court in Neuff en. Two years aft er what was likely his fi rst at-tempt to emigrate, Jacob (1) was fi nally given a permit.

It seems that Jacob (1) got along well with his mother. Before he left, he met his mother several times in the inn Hirsch in 1748. They talked about the wonderful life they had in Weil-heim, and about the upcoming change and Jacob (1)’s great future in America. Jacob (1) told his mother about everything he was going to do there. Barbara was old, and tired. She was over 80. But she also dreamed a little. Though neither could imagine what would become of the new branch of their family in America.

In 1749, Jacob (1) set off on his journey to Philadelphia with a large amount of capital, a suit-case full of clothes, a sermon book and one of the guns he inherited from his father. He left his wife, Maria Catharina, and their four children. His sons Georg Adam and Jacob (2) followed him one year later and brought a large amount of capital with them too. Jacob (1) planned to move his wife and their two younger children a few years later.

Jacob (1) sailed on the ship Chesterfield from Rotterdam via Cowes in England and arrived in

Philadelphia on September 2nd, 1749. He was signed as “Jacob Scheiffeler” on the passenger list.

After arriving in Philadelphia, Jacob (1) tried to establish trade relations between German-town and his Swabian homeland. From November 1749 on, he spent a large amount of time in the Swan Inn making contacts. He wanted to buy a house and some land and wrote to his sons that he was expecting them. For all his plans and dreams, however, his lot was to turn out quite differently. Jacob (1) was 38, with a golden future ahead of him, when he died suddenly in Philadelphia on August 28th, 1750. We do not know the exact circumstances of his death. Maybe he was sick. Or maybe someone was after his fortune.

Jacob’s (1) sons George Adam and Jacob (2) arrived in Philadelphia on September 29th, 1750, aboard the ship Osgood. They were registered as “Georg Scheufflen” and “Jacob Scheufflen” on the passenger list. During the crossing, the two youths had spiritual assistance from the Protestant pastor Gottlieb Mittelberger, who had also embarked on the Osgood. Mittelberger had accepted a position as an organist and teacher in Pennsylvania, but he returned to Württemberg in 1754 and published his travelogue, “Journey to Pennsylvania”, in Stuttgart in 1756. The book dealt critically with the topic of emigrating to America. He wrote about the dangers of the Atlantic crossing and the diseases at sea, the redemption payment system for the poor, unhappy servants, and the lax sexual morals in Philadelphia. Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg, supported the printing of the book. Fearing mass emigration, the authorities were keen to discourage the dream of America.

Jacob (1) was not one of the poor and oppressed emigrants yearning to breathe free. He did not belong to the tired, poor, huddled masses, the wretched refuse of the European shores, which Emma Lazarus’ poem would later describe. But seen across the Atlantic Ocean, the German principalities appeared to him somehow stifled, traumatized and unfree. He was searching for freer living conditions and a more promising economic environment, and that is exactly what he found in Philadelphia, and what he described to his sons. Unfortunately, cut short as he was, he found himself unable to put his ideas and dreams into practice.

Jacob (2) Schieffelin (1734–1769)

Georg Adam and Jacob (2) were shocked when they found the grave of their father Jacob (1) on the Strangers’ Burial Ground at what is now Washington Square. The two half-orphaned young men, aged eighteen and sixteen, turned to the parish of St. Michael. On the first Sunday after their arrival, the church was full to the last seat. The doors remained open so that those outside could also listen. It was a warm, late summer’s day in early October. The sons of Ja-cob (1) had brought their old family Bible, printed in Nördlingen in 1560, and read from the Gospel of John. When the service was over, a minute of silence followed. The two sons left the church, weeping quietly, and laid an ivy wreath on their father’s grave. Their mother wouldn’t hear the news for another three months.

Life had to go on. The two men were integrated into the community as orphans, but they were just like their father: they worked hard on building up new contacts, bought land, and were always on the lookout for places to set up shops or open new trade routes.

Life also had to move on for Maria Catharina in distant Württemberg. After the death of Jacob (1) in 1750, Maria married a second time, in 1769, and moved to Weilheim’s neighboring town of Neidlingen.

Georg Adam and Jacob (2) changed the German spelling of their name “Scheuffelin” to “Schieffelin” . They knew the old spelling “Schiffelin” , making Schieffelin the obvious choice. Perhaps they were thinking of the meaning “little sheep”, Schäflein , which Schieffelin resem-bles a little. Perhaps the interpretation of the name as “sheep” is more appropriate than “shov-el” or “ship” (oar). The sacrificial lamb of the Eucharist fits well to the eu in Scheuffelin, and to the accumulation of symbolic Christian first names like Johannes and its derivates, Hanns and Hans, in the 15th and 16th centuries, themselves related to John.

In one of his last paintings, the artist Hans (2) Scheuffelin had depicted the lamb with the crozier. Upon it was written “ IOAN BAP ”, John the Baptist, and beneath it stood the cup of the Eucharist, to collect the blood of the sacrificial Lamb. We find a similar motif in Matthias Grünewald (Isenheimer Altar of the Antoniter Order) and Jan Van Eyck (Ghent Altar, Ado-ration of the Lamb). Hans (2) Scheuffelin did not go as far as to depict the “blood ray” from the lamb as Grünewald and Van Eyck did, however. The Agnus Dei , the Lamb of God, who embodies Jesus, is also depicted intact in his earlier All Saints’ altar painting of St. Maria in Auhausen, a depiction comparable to the depiction made by the two Cranachs. The Cranachs show the intact lamb, Jesus on the cross with a ray of blood in the same direction as the cro-zier of the lamb, and the spear of St. George who kills the dragon. The picture of All Saints by Dürer, which has similarities to the Auhausen altarpiece by Hans (2), depicts Jesus on the cross without a lamb. For Hans (2) Scheuffelin, the composition of lamb, John and chalice seemed to convey well enough the meaning he intended.

Th e lamb with the crozier became the family symbol of the Schieff elins in America. In the early years in the New World, the spellings “Scheuff elin” and “Schieff elin” were frequently mixed up, but it is Schieff elin that established itself and survived until today.

Aft er Jacob (2) and his brother Georg Adam arrived in Philadelphia, PA, they integrated into the German community of the city. Since they were only sixteen and eighteen years old, they were rather inexperienced, but they worked hard and skillfully.

Jacob (2) soon met an attractive young woman, Regina Margaretha Ritschauer. Regina was born on September 9th, 1731, in Mühlhausen an der Enz in Württemberg, not far downstream the Neckar river from Weilheim. Th e town of Mühlhausen was similar to Weilheim: situated on a tributary of the Neckar river and surrounded by vineyards and orchards. It was populated with idyllic Swabian half-timbered houses and inhabited by Reformed citizens.

Fig. 60. Birth of Regina Margaretha Ritschauer on September 9 th , 1731, in Mühlhausen an der Enz (close to Stuttgart). [1040]

Fig. 61. Mühlhausen an der Enz 1683. Andreas Kieser [2011]. Th e Ritschauer family emigrated from Mühlhausen.

In late summer of 1743, the Ritschauer family packed their suitcases: Johann Martin Ritschau-er and his wife Anna Maria Kraft Ritschauer, along with their four daughters, Christina

Katharina, Regina Margaretha, Dorothea, and Anna Maria. The family had taken the same route to Philadelphia as Hans Jacob Scheuffelin, and it is even likely that they were on the same ship. The Ritschauers boarded a boat in Heilbronn am Neckar, which brought them via Hei-delberg to Mannheim. Then they sailed via Rotterdam to Philadelphia. But the move to Phila-delphia brought no luck to the Ritschauer family. The mother died on the crossing after falling down the ship’s staircase and the father died in 1744, shortly after arriving in Philadelphia. The four Ritschauer girls were orphans just after arriving in America.

Regina Margaretha, just twelve years old in 1744, grew up with her sisters in Germantown. She could still speak Swabian dialect ( schwätza ). In Germantown she met Jacob (2) – old home-land, same fate, and new love united. The marriage of Jacob (2) Scheuffelin and Regina Mar-garetha Ritschauer took place in St. Michael’s Old Zion Lutheran Church in September 1756.This church was popular with the German citizens of Philadelphia as the divine service was sometimes held in German. The first son of Regina and Jacob (2) was Jacob (3). Jacob (3) was born in Philadelphia on August 24th, 1757, the first “real” American Schieffelin. The couple had a total of six sons and one daughter, although only three of them reached adulthood.

Jacob (2) tried many professions. First he was a weaver, then a merchant and then an em-ployee of the Commissariat Department of the British Army in Philadelphia. The young family lived on Vine Street from 1757 to 1758 and then on 2nd Street from 1758 to 1760.

Georg Adam also married an immigrant of German origin, Juliana Katharina Bender, in Philadelphia in 1758.

In 1760, Jacob (2) was transferred to Montreal by the British Army. The young family with two little sons suddenly had to uproot to a city far away. After the French and Indian War, Montreal was claimed by the British. Jacob (2) did business with the British military in Mon-treal, equipping their camps and getting supplies. But the family was not fated for a good life in Montreal. Their daughter Regina died as a baby in 1761, and Jacob (2) alongside three of his sons all died within the same year in 1769: first Melchior at the age of ten, then Lawrence at the age of five, then Joseph at the age of three, and finally, perhaps out of grief, Jacob (2) himself at the age of 37 on June 22nd, 1769.

Regina Margaretha stayed in Montreal with her remaining children: Jacob (3), eleven years old, Jonathan, seven years old and Thomas, one year old. She married Robert Gordon in 1771, and they had a daughter. After the death of her second husband, Regina Margaretha moved from Montreal to Manhattan. There she lived with her youngest son Thomas. Later she moved to her own apartment on Nassau Street.

The New World was still “small” back then: The brothers of Jacob (3), Jonathan and Thomas, had a shop on 197 Pearl Street on the corner of Maiden Line in Manhattan. Thomas married his cousin Hanna Kessler Schieffelin. Hanna was the daughter of Anna Maria Ritschauer, the youngest of the four orphaned girls from Philadelphia.

Part II: The Years 1700–1800

The Many Lives of Jacob (3) Schieffelin (1757–1835)

Jacob (3) Schieffelin was eleven years old when he and his younger brothers lost their father. He was a handsome boy and grew into an attractive young man. Jacob (3) often had to take care of his younger brothers and was used to working. At the age of twelve, he worked in the shop of Lazarus David, a merchant in Montreal. Lazarus had come from Wales to Montreal and built up a trading company in 1760, acting as a supplier to the British Army. The David family financed the first synagogue in Canada.

When Jacob (3) was eighteen years old, he started lucrative trading with the military in Montreal himself in 1775. Around 1775, a new military unit was set up to fight against the American colonists who had invaded Canada. Jacob (3) volunteered for the British Army. On September 25th, 1775, he had his first mission during the American War of Independence, when the colonists under the command of Ethan Allen attacked Montreal.

In the summer of 1776, Jacob (3) quit his job with Lazarus David and headed southwest. He had good references and many contacts and wanted to trade goods with the British fort and the settlements in Detroit. Jacob (3) opened a shop where he offered all kinds of supplies to the British. A short time later, Jacob (3) took ill and had a high fever. During his illness he was vis-ited by the governor Henry Hamilton (1734–1796). Hamilton took care of Jacob (3), giving him medicine and treating him like his own son. When Jacob was well again, Hamilton suggested that he should accompany him on his military actions. Jacob (3) agreed. On August 16th, 1776, Henry Hamilton, and Jacob (3) took part in the Battle of Bennington, VT.

In 1777, the British Army launched an offensive to the west. They used Detroit as a base to recruit Native Americans, who were armed by the British to attack and destroy American settle-ments. Hamilton appointed Jacob (3) Secretary of his government and First Lieutenant of Cap-tain Lamothe’s Detroit Volunteer Army. His merits at the Battle of Bennington were credited to him. Hamilton also recommended Jacob (3) as his troop’s preferred trading partner in Detroit and took care of Jacob (3)’s shop when Jacob was on the move in military or official affairs.

In June 1777, Jacob (3) formed a business partnership with Theophile Lemay (1734–1801). He bought a house and a piece of land. Jacob (3) had probably noticed how simple and lucrative the acquisition of land in the colonies was. This first acquisition marked the beginning of a lifelong career in real estate. While official rules of procedure prohibited British government

and military members from doing business with the colonies or the indigenous groups, the regulation was not strictly controlled, and there were various legal ways to circumvent it. Ja-cob (3) frequently did business as a member of the British Army during those years, and he was far from the only one. The trade climate was harsh and unstable at that time, however; in April 1779, a British cargo ship, on its way to a British fort, threw two large crates of China porcelain belonging to Jacob (3) into Lake Erie, and he lost a shipload of furs at the same time.

At the end of the American War of Independence (1775–1783), Jacob (3) filed a lawsuit against the American government through Governor Henry Hamilton of Quebec. Further le-gal complaints followed related to his losses as a loyalist during the revolution. Jacob (3) never hesitated in filing for lost goods. Even later, as an American trader in Manhattan, he filed law-suits against France and England for confiscated cargo.

In 1777, Governor Henry Hamilton in Detroit was ordered to start a military expedition to the south, along the Mississippi River to New Orleans. The British wanted to conquer the American fortresses in Illinois and thereby gain control over the country. Previously, the Americans, i. e., the Virginia Rangers under the command of George Rogers Clark, had con-quered several trading posts and settlements.

Jacob (3) wrote in his diary:

Lord Dartmouth was Secretary of State of the English Government, responsible for the American colonies from 1772 to 1775. At first, he pursued an agreement with the colonies for parliamen-tary English rule. In 1774, he conducted secret negotiations with Benjamin Franklin to end the crisis. But after the Boston Tea Party and the first military conflicts in Lexington and Concord in 1775, Lord Dartmouth considered the negotiations to have failed. He had long hesitated to take military action against the American colonists and wanted to prevent an escalation but was now forced to change his course of action, rejecting the Olive Branch Petition of the Continental Congress and planning for war from 1775. Native American tribes were to be used against the American colonists; an order carried out by Hamilton. The Olive Branch Petition was the last attempt by the colonists to prevent war with England. One of the authors of this petition was John Jay, a young lawyer from New York. Jacob (3) had heard the name for the first time in 1775.

In December 1778, General Hamilton’s expedition reached the French-speaking Vincennes. The local military soon surrendered to the British forces. Hamilton wondered if he should pursue Clark’s fleeing units but decided to hold out and wait over the winter for supplies. This strategy turned out erroneous; Clark turned around during his escape and waded with his units through the muddy area covered with snow and ice. At night he launched a surprise

attack on the now British-occupied Vincennes, surrounding the fortress and forcing the Brit-ish to abandon the settlement. On February 24th, 1779, the British had to surrender. Clark’s capture of Vincennes was one of the most important events on the western front of the Amer-ican War of Independence. Jacob (3), as a British officer, was taken hostage by the Americans.

Jacob (3) feared that the Americans would kill them; Clark was unpredictable. Jacob’s su-perior, Henry Hamilton, also had an especially bad reputation, considered a war criminal by the Americans. Hamilton had earned the nickname “Hair Buyer” because he paid the Native Americans bounties for killed colonists.

The Hamilton case was discussed by Jefferson and Washington in an exchange of letters. Thomas Jefferson was initially in favor of tough action against the “slaughter of men, women and children”. But he was also concerned about the legal and moral issues of a modern judiciary. He asked George Washington for advice. Washington too was shocked, angry at the atrocities Hamilton had committed. A few weeks later, Washington made two moderate proposals to Jef-ferson. First, Hamilton’s atrocities should be published in their entirety. Second, he feared that the British military would punish American officers in equal measure, and that it might thus be better for the prisoners to be interned. Perhaps Washington imagined a particularly unpleasant prison, where they might be kept in solitary confinement. The British prisoners were in any case valuable hostages. They were forced to march to their prison in Williamsburg, VA.

Fig. 62. Fort Sackville, Vincennes, 1779: George Rogers Clark captures

Henry Hamilton and his British troops. [12]

Were Henry Hamilton and his officers war criminals? They followed the guidelines of the British Army at that time, equipping the allied Native American tribes with weapons and am-munition and paying bounties for scalps and prisoners. This directive was drawn up by White-hall in London and signed by King George. Hamilton had in any case enacted this directive particularly eagerly. He was locked up in prison until October of the following year, 1780, where he was released in exchange for American prisoners.

Jacob (3) had been a prisoner in Williamsburg, VA, for over a year in spring 1780. He tried as hard as he could to make contacts and think up an escape route. The prison warden responsi-ble for guarding him was not overly cautious, and on some days sent for his daughter to serve food. Jacob befriended her. He had brought some valuable items from Detroit, which he gave to her. One day, how we do not know, he received the key to his cell. Jacob and his friend, the French officer Philippe Rocheblave, called “Chevalier de Rocheblave” , escaped on April 19th, 1780. They locked the doors behind them and exchanged valuables and words of friendship at a secret meeting place.

Jacob was versed in some Native American languages but critically he was also fluent in French. During their escape, Philippe and Jacob spoke French to the Americans, telling them that they wanted to make their way to New York City. The trick worked. The Americans they encountered along the way believed them to be French merchants, and thus allies of the Amer-icans against the British. They let the two men pass unharmed through American controlled territory. When they arrived at Chesapeake Bay, they pretended to be shipwrecked British sailors. An English ship took them to New York.

On July 9th, 1780, Jacob (3) Schieffelin and Philippe Rocheblave reached Manhattan. The two were well received in the British-controlled city. Jacob immediately contacted General Henry Clinton, the commander of the British Army in America. The general lived on Broad-way No. 1 and listened carefully to Jacob’s gallant report. General Clinton was impressed. He immediately gave Jacob hundred Guineas and appointed him an officer of the American Royalists.

Hannah Lawrence (1758–1838) was a pretty and young poet. She had long, auburn hair, and a distinct character, with steadfast views and energetic spirit. Hannah celebrated her 22nd birthday on July 8th, 1780, one day before Jacob’s arrival in Manhattan. The young poet came from a respected and proud Quaker family, who had arrived in the New World already in the 17th century and had settled on Long Island. Hannah’s father, John Lawrence, was a suc-cessful merchant in Flushing on Long Island. John Lawrence’s great-grandfather was William Lawrence from St. Albans, northwest of London.

William Lawrence, at the age of twelve, sailed with his mother and siblings from London to Massachusetts on the ship Planter in 1635. Later, he received the rights to 900 acres of land in Vlissingen, New Amsterdam, corresponding to today’s College Point and Flushing on Long

Island. This was the time when beaver pelts from Manhattan were the main export good from New Amsterdam to old Amsterdam, which the Dutch made into fancy hats.

William Lawrence was a landowner, councilman, sheriff and judge in Queens County, NY. He was upset when the British, under commission of the Duke of York (later King James) and spearheaded by Richard Nicolls, conquered New Netherlands and renamed New Amsterdam to New York in 1664. In 1665, Richard Nicolls proclaimed the Duke’s Laws, a code of laws gov-erning rules for land ownership and higher taxes in the spirit of the new British rulers. William Lawrence criticized these new laws and was fined as a result in 1666.

Hannah’s mother was Anna Burling. The Burling family came from Barking, today an east-ern suburb of London. The Burlings were Quakers. They were persecuted in England and em-igrated to America to escape. Like most Quakers, Hannah’s family was anti-British, but the Quakers were predominantly pacifists and remained neutral during the American War of In-dependence. Their anti-British sentiment led to strong sympathies with the Americans, how-ever and some young men even joined the revolutionaries. One year earlier, in 1779, Hannah had used her poetic talent to protest the British, in particular the unsavory behavior of British soldiers on Broadway in front of the Trinity Church. It was common for soldiers to chasing and harass young women there. Hannah wrote the following poem:

The veiled insult of the British continued a few verses further. Hannah dropped the poem as she passed the square in front of the church, and it reached all the way to General Clinton. The

general rebuked his soldiers but was also angry at the author and threatened him (naturally assumed to be a man) with the death penalty. Clinton never found out who had written these stanzas and would have been the last person to think of the Lawrence family.

It will forever remain Aphrodite’s secret, how the two, Hannah and Jacob, met on July 9th, 1780. It is certain that it must have been love at first sight, that Aphrodite intended to foil her lover Ares.

Jacob (3) was with General Clinton, the poem growing dusty on his desk. Clinton allowed Ja-cob to temporarily stay in the large house of the Lawrence family on Queen Street, today Pearl Street, in Manhattan.

Hannah and Jacob sat opposite each other at the Lawrence family table during dinner. Jacob showed himself a gentleman and got along well with Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence. Hannah counted the buttons on his uniform to distract herself, the number was odd; Jacob’s new red uniform matched his rosy cheeks, head over heels in love. A few days later Hannah returned Jacob’s affection and had from that point on “almost every hour the opportunity to discover new virtues in him.”

In her secret diary, Hannah named herself Lavinia and dubbed Jacob Altamont. On July 29th, 1780, she wrote:

She was puzzling out what to do next.

Hannah had written her anti-British poems under the pseudonym Matilda.

General Clinton wanted to make Jacob lieutenant of the Queen’s Rangers, but Jacob refused. Again, Aphrodite meddled. Jacob asked for permission to leave the army and return to Detroit, to settle his business affairs. It is likely that his father-in-law demanded Jacob’s resignation from military service to allow the wedding. John Lawrence protested his daughter’s intentions to marry Jacob. But Hannah and Jacob were inseparable.

On August 18th, 1780, six weeks after they met, Hannah and Jacob married secretly in the Trinity Church in Manhattan. Jacob whisked his bride out from her parents’ house with the help of a ladder, and a friend of his performed the ceremony. A few days later,

Hannah was expelled from the Quaker Association because her wedding plans had not been approved.

A few months after Hannah and Jacob’s wedding, Jacob planned to leave for Detroit. Han-nah was spontaneous. She did not want her new husband to travel alone, and imagined jour-neying with him, perhaps dreaming of a romantic honeymoon out in the nature. The sea route from Manhattan to Detroit was a long and complicated journey. Jacob received corre-spondence from General Frederick Haldimand, Governor of the Quebec Province in British service. Haldimand helped loyalists settle in present-day Canada after the American War of Independence.

On September 15th, 1780, the young couple boarded a small sailing ship, the Harlequin, setting sail from Manhattan along the coast to Saint Lawrence. The ship was full of loyal-ists trying to leave New York City. Autumn storms battered the ship, swaying threateningly in the high waves. The journey was exhausting and exciting. Hannah recorded everything in her diary, still eagerly read today by her descendants. Far to the north the ship turned southwest and sailed up the Saint Lawrence River. They arrived in Quebec on October 17th, 1780. Two days later, Jacob received his salary for his military service between 1778 and 1780. The payment was for the time he served with Governor Hamilton and in captivity in Williamsburg, VA. Financially well equipped, Hannah and Jacob sailed on to Montreal and then through Lake Ontario to Fort Niagara. The Niagara Falls bewitched Hannah, writing in her diary:

From Niagara Falls the journey continued over Lake Erie to Detroit, the westernmost British fort in North America. On their way there, they rested in a Native American camp. The Iro-quois were Loyalists, allied with the British. Hannah met Molly Brant and her brother, Joseph

Brant. The half-indigenous Molly impressed Hannah, who was amazed at the jewelry the Na-tive Americans wore:

Hannah and Jacob arrived in Detroit on April 24th, 1781. After half a year of dangerous and eventful travelling, the couple decided to settle here. Hannah was four months pregnant, and Jacob returned to his position as Secretary of the British Government. He dissolved his part-nership with Thomas Smith and started buying land. First, he bought a piece of land from William Macomb and built a new home for his family on it. Jacob engrossed himself in his business and in building his family. We don’t know if Hannah was happy in Detroit, an edu-cated poetess from Manhattan in the westernmost province, surrounded by wilderness. And as a Quaker she was morally opposed to slavery and had surely noticed that Macomb was a slave owner.

On September 13th, 1781, the first child of Hannah and Jacob was born in Detroit, the son Edward Lawrence. In the same year, 1781, Hannah’s brother Effingham Lawrence opened a pharmacy in Manhattan. The store was located at 227 Queen Street, later renamed to Pearl Street to banish the association with the British crown.

Another son, Henry Hamilton Schieffelin, followed on June 20th, 1783. He was named after Governor Hamilton, the close friend of Jacob during his time in the British Army. Hannah and Jacob had a total of nine children, eight of whom reached adulthood. In 1788, the daugh-ter Anna Maria followed. Maria was probably named after Jacob’s grandmother, who had re-mained in Weilheim. Effingham Lawrence, named after his uncle in Manhattan, was born in 1791, and Jacob (4) in 1793.

Although the British were forbidden to buy indigenous land, British officers acquired land in present-day Canada when it became apparent that the British would not emerge victorious from the American War of Independence. Jacob was experienced with the purchase of land. In 1783, he wanted to acquire a ten-by-ten-kilometer area on the south side of the Detroit River, near its mouth, from the Ottawa Native Americans. The contract with the Native Americans,

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signed with their marks, is still preserved today. The area was located directly opposite Isle au Bois Blanc. Jacob foresaw the British government’s strategic interest in owning a settlement on the Canadian side, opposite to the American settlement. The deal was never authorized by the British Government, however, so the British State requisitioned the land in 1790. Jacob had nevertheless learnt how to operate in the real estate business, experiences he would later call upon in New York.

After the end of the American War of Independence, the British Army was ordered back from the provinces on June 24th, 1784. Hannah and Jacob decided to return to Montreal. Here Jacob was able to continue his career as a merchant, state auctioneer and importer. He was appointed “Public Auctioneer of the City and District of Montreal”, giving him the right to buy any land, real estate, goods, and items that could be useful to Montreal. In 1791, he hired the sixteen-year-old John Shuter as his assistant. John was supposed to learn the art and secrets to good business within six years. Jacob was finally achieving success, and he was expected to stay in Montreal. In addition to his profession as a trader, Jacob continued to expand his land holdings. In 1789, 1792 and even in 1803, from Manhattan, he bought land in what is now Canada. One of the plots, 500 acres large, was located north of the Ottawa River. In 1794, Jacob bought land in the USA for the first time, a plot of land north of Manhattan.

In the late 1780s, Hannah and Jacob travelled to Manhattan several times with their young children to meet their parents and relatives. These trips seemed a precursor of where their future would lie. Only five years after the American War of Independence, American soci-ety seemed to be on track for good relations with the British. Whigs and Tories, Patriots and Royalists were settling into harmony. What John Jay arranged on the political and diplomatic level, his wife Sarah Livingston Jay implemented on the social level. Receiving an invitation to dinner at the Jays was considered the greatest honor in the young nation.

Sarah Jay’s Dinner List from 1787 to 1789 featured over 200 esteemed public individuals who were invited to the Jays’ spacious stone house on Broadway for lunch or dinner. The new social elite was in the process of formation, and even a former British officer was welcome in this milieu. The Jays also tried to moderate the personal conflict between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Hannah and Jacob were among the recipients of an invitation to dinner at the Jays, and so they dressed up and took the carriage to nearby Broadway.

The Jays were accomplished hosts: educated, widely travelled, eloquent, civilized and with good taste. Sarah was a Francophile who loved good conversation and the latest fash-ion, especially from Paris. Hannah and Jacob made a positive impression. The Quaker Lawrence family was highly regarded in New York, and Sarah and Hannah were both in-dependent, educated and strong women. John and Jacob conversed in French. John hadn’t the slightest doubt about Jacob’s integrity and his loyalty to the new nation. Furthermore,

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Jacob’s Swabian-German ancestors were Protestant from the beginning of the Reforma-tion; John came from a Huguenot family, aligning them in this respect. Both families were in favor of religious freedom, especially within the Protestant realm, and positioned themselves against slavery. The two men had similar interests. Jacob was interested in politics and diplomacy, especially where it regarded England, and John was curious about the economic and scientific development in the young states of the USA. Both were also practically gifted and had a sense for the beauty of nature. John longed for a country es-tate with gardens, pastures and fields to cultivate. He raved about his childhood in Rye, NY, the home surrounded by a large “English” garden. John told Jacob about his tentative plans for a farm further north of Rye, near the towns of Bedford and Katonah, where he had inherited a plot of land.

The European cuisine at the Jays was excellent, with French onion soup, cordon bleu and pudding flan and Bordeaux. Conversation was warm and the Jays and the Schieffelins bonded. It may not have been love at first sight, but a family tie had begun to be established, cemented three generations later with the marriage of Mary Jay and William Henry Schieffelin in 1863. An evening at the Jays was a memorable affair, and one that stuck in the minds of Hannah and Jacob for a long time.

On October 25th, 1789, Jacob travelled alone to London aboard the ship Integrity.

Hannah was worried that Jacob might encounter the same fate as his father, Jacob (2), who had suddenly died on a business trip, leaving the Ritschauer and her sons alone in Montreal.

Jacob wanted compensation for military service in Canada from the British government in London. He lobbied for himself and the loyal Canadian veterans of the British Army. Jacob also wanted to use the year in London to establish new business connections. He spent a lot of time sitting in a coffee house in the morning, studying the newspapers and meeting other businessmen.

A few years later in Manhattan the new Tontine Coffee House became the place to do business, replacing the sidewalk. The coffee house was located on Wall Street and became the nucleus of trading on Wall Street.

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Fig. 63. Tontine Coffee House in Manhattan on Wall Street

(on the left, sporting the US flag) in 1797. [22]

Jacob met Effingham Lawrence, his father-in-law’s brother, in London. Effingham Lawrence had moved to London and founded a pharmaceutical wholesale business to supply hospitals and pharmacies. Effingham Lawrence was the uncle of the Effingham Lawrence in Manhattan, who was also active in the pharmaceutical business and whose business Jacob would come to take over. This family tie created the link between the pharmaceutical dealers in England and Manhattan. Around 1800, the Quakers controlled a good half of the entire pharmaceu-tical business in England. Pharmaceutical products at that time were medicines, medical and surgical instruments, medicinal plants, as well as cooking spices, paints and glassware. The five months that Jacob spent in London and cultivated contacts laid the foundation for his later business in Manhattan. Jacob’s purchases in London were collated on a six-page list in February 1790. The freight he took with him to Montreal was in the order of 100,000 dollars today – and we don’t even know if he had it insured!

Although Hannah and Jacob lived in Montreal, British Canada, they maintained close ties with their large family in the USA. The New York family, for their part, tried to coax back the relatives who had left for Canada. They helped Hannah and Jacob buy back land in the USA and to relocate. Hannah eagerly kept in touch with her family in Manhattan by letter from Montreal. Maybe she was homesick. Hannah’s father wrote to her on September 27th, 1793:

No reason was given in this letter as to why Effingham wanted to sell his store but given his ear-ly death in 1800 it is reasonable to assume that he had health problems. Her father continued:The letter worked. In the spring of 1794, Hannah, Jacob, and their children returned to Man-hattan. Jacob, together with his brother-in-law John Burling Lawrence, took over the phar-maceutical business from Effingham Lawrence. In 1794 they founded the trading company Lawrence & Schieffelin, Pharma-Trade, at 195 Pearl Street. The shop was located opposite the Fly Market, next to the corner house of the Maiden Line, in an old Dutch house dating from 1626. The two new owners proudly displayed their company sign above the entrance door. To-day one might call it a “Chic store in prime location in a renovated old building”. The company Lawrence & Schieffelin existed in this form from 1794 to 1799.

Fig. 64. Old Dutch house architecture in Broad Street, Manhattan, built in 1698. The old Dutch house of Lawrence & Schieffelin on 195 Pearl Street had the same design and looked very similar, built in 1626 and rebuilt in 1697. Lawrence & Schieffelin moved into their Dutch house in 1794. [39]

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It was only ten years ago that the last soldier of the British Crown had left the country after the American War of Independence. The war had mainly been fought for economic reasons. The former colony no longer wanted to be controlled by the British motherland, and with them removed, the economic upswing was able to begin. Jacob had understood the context for the war, “changed sides” and, as a former British officer, had now opened a trading company in Manhattan. Even if relations with England began to stabilize again, the supply chains had changed since the war. Before the war, almost all pharmaceutical products were imported from England with the support of the Quakers. During the war and because of the trade embargo, supplies came to a halt, and the USA had to increasingly manufacture the goods themselves. After the war, it was only innovative products that were imported.

Lawrence & Schieffelin had a buyer in London who exported the goods to Manhattan. The largest share of the import of pharmaceutical products into the USA came through the Law-rence & Schieffelin store in Manhattan. In its early years, the company intensively advertised its products. A typical advertisement read as follows:

In 1794, Tontine Coffee House opened on the corner of Wall Street and Water Street in Man-hattan. This coffee house was the beginning of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1792, a group of 24 merchants came together to pen the Buttonwood Agreement, standardizing rules for the trade of goods. The two basic rules were: only trade with each other and charge a maximum of 0.25 % commission. Effingham was one of the men who founded this association of merchants. Augustine H. Lawrence was among the first 24 stock exchange traders.

The second floor of the Tontine Coffee House was the informational hub. The captains of the ships came there to report their cargo. Based on this information, the commission was determined, and the contracts were agreed upon. Jacob often visited Tontine to buy goods for his shop.

In the year of his return to Manhattan, in 1794, Jacob joined the German Society as a mem-ber and was appointed Director of the Washington Assurance Society. In the same year the National Government was provisionally moved from New York City to Philadelphia, PA, and later definitively to Washington, DC.

John Jay, First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the USA, travelled to England in 1794 on a rather unpopular mission: Jay wanted a trade agreement with England. The negotiations and the agreement were made with Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, but John Jay was blamed for the supposedly bad outcome of the negotiations. He was spurned and treated

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with hostility. Jay took the criticism with humor, saying that he could now travel from Boston to Philadelphia even at night, because the streets were lit up with burning Jay effigies. It soon became apparent that the Jay Agreement in fact established trade that was favorable to the US; the negotiations with England proved to be necessary, forward-looking and judicious. Trade with France, on the other hand, had decreased. The revolution was at its height, heads were rolling, and their economic performance was understandably hit.

In 1797, Jacob (3) rented the Walton Mansion at 326 Pearl Street in Manhattan. The rent was 1,000 dollars a year. The house was one of the most beautiful houses in Manhattan in the 18th century. Built in 1754, it had housed the Bank of New York in the 1780s. (The Bank of New York is one of the oldest banks in the United States, founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1784. Jacob had his accounts at this bank.) The house was exemplary and had park-like gardens be-hind it that reached down to the East River. Jacob had rented William Walton’s house on the condition that he would move out if William married, which in fact came to pass only soon after. The Walton’s reported that they need the house, and Jacob’s family had to find a new place to live. They moved into the Beekman townhouse on Pearl Street.

Fig. 65. Walton Mansion at 326 Pearl Street. The Walton Mansion was built in 1754.

This was the Schieffelin’s city residence in Manhattan in 1797 and 1798. [32]

The Beekmans had German and Dutch roots. They came to New Amsterdam as Dutch em-igrants and became a prominent New York family of politicians and traders. They owned a

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townhouse on 240 Pearl Street and a country estate on Mount Pleasant, the famous Beekman Mansion above Turtle Bay on 50th Street and 1st Avenue. The Beekman Mansion is steeped in history: General Washington spent several hours there after the lost battle of Brooklyn, in-structing the American army to reposition in Harlem. He advised the Beekmans to flee before the British arrived. The British confiscated the house and stationed their generals and officers there. For a few years it was General Henry Clinton’s residence. Fortunately, General Clinton did not come up with the idea to billet Jacob (3) in the Beekman Mansion in 1780 but chose the house of the Lawrence family in Pearl Street for him instead. Near the Beekman Mansion the American national hero Nathan Hale was exposed and hanged, the first agent to spy on the British during the American War of Independence. General Washington also came again, and after the victory over the British celebrated with merry feasts in the Beekman Mansion.

In 1805 another famous person lived near the Beekman townhouse in Manhattan: General Jean Victor Marie Moreau. Moreau was a French general under Napoleon. He was success-ful in Napoleon’s conquests in southern Germany against the Habsburgs, including the Ulm Campaign and the Battle of Elchingen. The French victory there is one of the greatest histor-ical examples of a strategic turn and the use of a double agent (Karl Schulmeister). The Ulm Campaign was later used by Leo Tolstoy in his novel “War and Peace”. Moreau’s successes were so significant that he was even touted as a rival to Napoleon around 1800. His republi-can political beliefs, however, were opposed to those of Napoleon, leading to his deposition. He went into exile in New York. President Madison asked him to take command of the U.S. troops against the British in 1812, but Moreau refused. After the fall of Napoleon’s Grand Army in Russia, Moreau returned to Europe and advised Napoleon’s opponents, especially Prussia, during the German Campaign of 1813 (the Liberation Wars). Jacob was surely happy about his famous new neighbor, and since he could speak French well, he was appreciated by Moreau as an interlocutor. The extent to which the two men became friends is not known, however.

The success of Lawrence & Schieffelin led Jacob to expand the business beyond pharmaceu-tical goods. The New York port was better suited to large ships than the port in Philadelphia, allowing for a greater turnover of goods. Jacob expanded the business to include international trade, buying several warehouses in New York City where he stored the imported goods. Law-rence & Schieffelin was now also a distributor for extra fine saltpeter from London, cotton from Guadeloupe, coffee, sugar and even gunpowder. Jacob sold unusually large quantities of these products. His partner, John Lawrence, did not support Jacob’s business expansion. Jacob had already started to enter international shipping in 1795, with the cargo from his first ship bringing him 25,000 dollars profit. Jacob a man of the world and was keen to engage in interna-tional trade, but international business was risky, especially in the years of political differences between the USA and Napoleonic France. John Lawrence withdrew from the partnership with

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Jacob in 1799 as a result and opened a new store a few blocks away on 199 Pearl Street. Jacob paid out John’s shares in the company and took over the warehouse. He continued to run the Drugs & Medicines store at 195 Pearl Street. The company was renamed to Jacob Schieffelin and existed from 1799 to 1805. Their business differences did not result in any personal misgiv-ings between Jacob and John, who maintained a friendly relationship. Shortly after the separa-tion of their companies they even made a new investment together, buying land at the north-western end of the island of Manhattan and founding the new city district of Manhattanville.

Trade in New York City flourished in 1799. The city was no longer the political center of the USA, but it had economically outstripped the other port cities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. Manhattan was well on its way to becoming the commercial center of the country.

In 1800 and 1802, Jacob acted as a grand juror at the Court of General Session of the Peace. The turn of the century was a politically turbulent time. Jefferson was the leading Republican, but Aaron Burr from New York was a close second. The election in February 1801 was exciting.

Jacob’s investments in international trade paid off, and he was able to reinvest the profits in his original business: real estate. Many of Jacob’s business activities were made possible through the help of his family connections, first to the Lawrence clan and later through his children and grandchildren. The partnership with John Lawrence was profitable for both par-ties. Another brother-in-law of Jacob, Richard Lawrence, had a hardware store just a few doors away. These startups within the family spurred other family members to found new companies in Manhattan. In May 1801, Jacob’s sons Edward Lawrence and Henry Hamilton opened their own business. In July 1802, Jacob became the wholesaler and sales agent of Paterson in London. In 1803, Edward Lawrence made himself independent of his brother and sold Glauber’s salt. Family cohesion increased when Edward founded a company with Jacob’s brother Jonathan in June 1804. The product portfolio was tailored to the current public health problems; yellow fever epidemics and cholera outbreaks, resulting from improperly stored and spoiled food.

In 1804, Jacob published the “Catalog of Drugs, Medicines & Chemicals sold Wholesale & Retail.” The catalog was checked and approved in 1806 by the New York Druggists Association and its then Secretary Henry Hamilton Schieffelin.

After the manifold business connections within the family, there was a major change again in 1805. Jacob took his son Henry Hamilton into the company’s management and renamed the company Jacob Schieffelin & Son, which existed from 1805 to 1814.

The carousel kept spinning. Business was running well. Company partnerships spread with-in the family, and the partners were friendly with each other. And there were only a few bank-ruptcies. Through his memberships in various corporations, Jacob had connections to many other businessmen – he was running a business network. The conditions were ideal. Jacob’s residence, shops and warehouses were all located in Lower Manhattan, near the East River Docks, where the large import-export houses of the time were located.

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The Tontine Coffee House was full of traders, speculators, politicians, and authorized sig-natories. The corner of Wall Street and Pearl Street was congested with carriages and goods trucks. Horses and humans intermingled. Everything was constantly in motion and changing. Every trader tried to do business with everyone, and the goods came from or were destined for Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Manhattan’s southern tip had fast become one of the commercial centers of the world.

There were however several factors that repeatedly slowed down free trade. One of them was the war between England and France that waged from 1790 over a period of 20 years. Both nations confiscated US ships indiscriminately, despite the USA remaining neutral. England and France tried individually and later together to damage or even ruin the maritime trade of neutral states like the USA to take the leading position themselves. The two countries confis-cated more and more merchant ships and arrested the crews. Alongside the trade wars with the big nations, piracy in the small, southern countries and in the Caribbean also complicated maritime trade. This prompted the United States to build its Navy, initially intended as a kind of police or “rapid reaction force” against piracy, and it solved the problem efficiently. The con-fiscation of cargo caused Jacob considerable losses. Thomas Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807 prohibited American ships from calling at foreign ports, intended as a warning to the warring England and France, removing American imports. The law mainly damaged the US economy, however, as European trade made up a large portion of their activities. The English travel writ-er John Lambert visited New York City at the beginning of 1808 and reported that:

The embargo was not the solution to the trade problems, and the Secretary of the Treasury summed it up neatly and cynically in a message to President Jefferson:

The trade embargo and the ensuing war in 1812 most affected the traders importing goods from Europe. Jacob was forced to completely restructure his company. Instead of imports from England, France, and Holland, he only sold American products. In addition to the selection of goods, Jacob also changed his business model. He had previously financed his business through investors or banks: As soon as he sold the goods, he then paid back the invested money. Jacob had taken on a number of high debts, and the repeated lost cargo complicated the repayments. This sometimes forced him to sell horses, wagons and even his country estate, Rooka Hall in Manhattanville. Jacob’s sales declined, and he had to cut his spending drastically.

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Jacob’s cargo wasn’t always insured. It is unclear what criteria he used to determine insurance. Maybe he did a simple risk assessment. Whatever the case, Jacob filed suits against England and France to obtain compensation for lost and uninsured cargo. He was not always successful, but he was dedicated in the pursuit of these complaints. For the confiscation and subsequent loss of his cargo on the ship Brunswick, e. g., moored in July 1807 by the British near the island of Antigua, Jacob sued England. The procedure was initially started as an insurance claim, but the Lords of Appeal in London changed the case to one without insurance. The government in London should have been required to pay for the damages, but they stretched the case out until 1823, repeatedly changing the argumentation. In the end, Jacob never received any compensa-tion. The case nevertheless shows how stubbornly and resolutely Jacob pursued his legal qualms.

France also confiscated Jacob’s cargo. The ships Dean and Resort were moored in Amster-dam on Napoleon’s orders. In contrast to England, however, France paid compensation to the sum of 10,000 dollars.

As the 1812 war came to an end, Jacob withdrew from pharmaceutical wholesale and inter-national trade. He handed over these divisions to his son Henry Hamilton. Despite all the dif-ficulties he had encountered, his balance was positive. He didn’t have any debts and was able to turn over a fortune. Schieffelin’s pharmaceutical division was well invested and brought high growth in the following decades.

In 1811, the New York City Council presented a grand plan for the development of Manhat-tan. Roads were planned up to 155th Street, and the city planners were considered megaloma-niacs. These grand plans were nevertheless fully in line with the economic upturn. Many old streets were redesigned to give way to the new rectangular shape, with one exception. As it was the access route to many farms on Manhattan Island, the diagonal course of Broadway was not changed. Also, Jacob insisted on keeping Broadway as a direct route from the southern tip of Manhattan Island to Manhattanville. Perhaps this architectural uniquity is part of the reason for Broadway’s fame today.

In 1813 and 1814, Jacob lived with his family at 16 Park Place in Manhattan. After the Schief-felin company was handed over to his son, Jacob exclusively focused on real estate.

Rooka Hall and Manhattanville

Real estate seems to have been Jacob’s favorite business. Immediately after returning to Man-hattan with his family in 1794, he began buying land in the USA. In 1796 he bought several properties in Pennsylvania, and in 1804 he expanded to Ohio. Jacob’s purchases were specula-tive investments as well as acquisitions out of private interest. He acquired some land together with his relatives, e. g., 100,000 acres of land in Lycoming, PA, and another 200,000 acres in

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northern Pennsylvania. He made speculative land purchases in Columbia County and in Sara-toga County, on the Hudson River north of New York City. Buying large plots of land was easy at that time. Jacob read the American Citizen, a New York daily newspaper that advertised land sales. An advertisement described a piece of land in Ohio as a good, lush highland, and it was to be auctioned at Tontine Coffee House on November 21st, 1804. Jacob briefly researched whether the information was plausible. Shortly thereafter, he noted on the front of the newspaper:

After his earlier land purchases in the northeast of America, he now increasingly bought land in the state of New York. Jacob wrote it down again:

Fig. 66. “Lands in Ohio and Pennsylvania belonging to the estate of Jacob Schieffelin, deceased, to be sold at the Exchange on November 18 th , 1835”. The lands were sold in parcels as shown in the list and the map. Executors were Henry Hamilton Schieffelin and Richard Lawrence

Schieffelin. The 9521 acres (ca. 15 square miles or ca. 38 square kilometer) of land were located near the cities of Marietta, OH, and Athens, OH, along the Ohio River in Washington county, Gallia County, Athens County, Meigs County, Tioga County and Lycoming County. [35]

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Land speculation and purchase was an important process in building the American nation. Land was abundant and cheap to acquire, unlike most of the countries emigrants were arriving from, where land, food and building materials were scarce and expensive. Here in America, everything was both abundant and affordable. Jacob followed in the footsteps of Washington and Franklin in the years of the early republic: He speculated with land.

The land purchases around New York City increasingly served Jacob’s private interests or were directly related to his company. In these cases, Jacob bought the land to actively develop and live on, not for speculation.

In 1795, Jacob took the profit of 25,000 dollars from a shipload of cargo to buy land on a hill above the Hudson River in the north of Manhattan. The property was located at Harlem Cove, a small bay of the Hudson. The area later became Manhattanville, and the first streets were called Schieffelin Street, Lawrence Street, Effingham Street, Hamilton Street and Manhattan Street. The new town of Manhattanville was to receive a church, a school, a harbor, residential buildings, and commercial space.

Five years later, Jacob sold half of his property to his friend Alexander Hamilton. Alexander acquired a right-angled, 15-acre plot of land at a reasonable price. The Schieffelins were look-ing forward to their new neighbor. Alexander Hamilton was given a plot of land equidistant from the Hudson River and the East River. It was a dreamlike hilltop location, surrounded by greenery, with views to the Hudson River, Harlem Valley and Manhattan. About a month later, Alexander Hamilton bought more land from Dr. Samuel Bradhurst to extend his existing property to the north. Hamilton built his country house there, which he called Grange, named after the country estate of his ancestors in Scotland and the house of his uncle in St. Croix on the Virgin Islands.

On the remaining plot, overlooking the Hudson River in the west, Hannah and Jacob built their own country estate, Rooka Hall. Hannah described Rooka Hall as follows:

The family enjoyed life in the rural area at Rooka Hall. Every summer, they traveled by horse-drawn carriage from their residence at the Beekman Mansion on Pearl Street to Rooka Hall, right through Manhattan Island, from the southern tip on the bank of the East River to the northern end on the Hudson River. While Hamilton’s house was situated so that he had a view to the East River and Manhattan to the south, the Schieffelins looked to the west, to the Hud-son and New Jersey.

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Fig. 67. Alexander Hamilton’s country house, Grange, in Manhattanville. In 1800 Hamilton bought a 15-acre plot from Jacob Schieffelin where he built this country home. Hamilton was fascinated by the location and the view to the Hudson River. The Schieffelins own country residence, Rooka Hall, was in the neighborhood. Rooka Hall has not been preserved, but its architecture probably resembled Hamilton’s Grange. [38]

In July 1804 a terrible incident took place on the other bank of the Hudson River. The evening before July 11th, Alexander Hamilton had left his house abruptly. A few days earlier, he had handed over the Grange to some trustees. Jacob and Hannah did not suspect that he would face a duel with his political opponent Aaron Burr in the morning. The two politicians despised one another.

Samuel Bradhurst might have known about the planned duel; he was friends with both men and sought to prevent it by demanding to duel Burr himself, to which Burr accepted; Burr came away entirely unscathed, while Bradhurst suffered a wound to his arm. When Burr applied for a post in New York, Alexander tried everything to prevent it. In Alexander’s opinion, Burr was a man of bad character. Alexander had badmouthed Burr at a public dinner, and his statements were published in the newspaper the following morning. Burr challenged Alexander to a duel, feeling his honor had been violated. Alexander met him in a forest near Weehawken, NJ, on the other side of the Hudson.

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Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton came to Rooka Hall. She was desperate because she had found a letter and a will from Alexander in his study. The letter contained statements regarding Al-exander’s strategy for the duel and his religious views. Already years ago, one of Alexander’s sons had been fatally injured in a duel. In the afternoon a carriage came from Manhattan. A messenger delivered the news that Alexander had been seriously injured and taken to a clinic in Manhattan. The Hamilton family left immediately. The next day, a messenger came to Roo-ka Hall. Hamilton had succumbed to his injuries. Hannah and Jacob were paralyzed. They could not believe that their neighbor and friend had been killed in such a wild turn of events.

Elizabeth Hamilton and her children visited Manhattanville less often now. The Grange was orphaned. The park around the estate grew wild. Hannah and Jacob commissioned their gardener to do the roughest work. Later, Elizabeth sold the house. Jacob was committed to ensuring that the Grange remained in its original form; it became a memorial and is a national monument today.

Jacob stuck to his plan of expanding Manhattanville. He bought more land, houses and warehouses and even built a harbor. He had houses built and established shops and educational institutions. With St. Mary’s Protestant episcopal church in the center, a separate congregation was established in the north of Manhattan. Manhattan Street in Manhattanville became a shopping street. It ended in the west at Harlem Cove and Cove Street, which ran north–south and was open to the bay. A ferry carried passengers between each side of the Hudson shore. The new suburb of Manhattanville had a marketplace and a language academy where Latin, French and English were taught. In 1808, interested in selling, Jacob advertised the lease of his school building and the associated accommodation in Manhattanville. Manhattanville devel-oped well.

In 1810, Jacob was forced to sell Rooka Hall to make up for losses from confiscated ship cargoes during the Anglo-French War. In the advertisement, Jacob described Rooka Hall as:In 1811, Jacob owned fourteen houses with small gardens in Manhattanville and seven houses in Lower Manhattan. In the same year he retired from the operational business of his company Jacob Schieffelin & Son. In 1813 and 1814 he lived with his family at 16 Park Place in Manhat-tan. Then the family moved to 107 East Broadway. In 1822, Jacob was listed among the wealth-iest men in New York City. In 1823, Hannah and Jacob donated money and a plot of land in Manhattanville for the construction of St. Mary’s church. St. Mary’s was the first free episcopal church in America. The new church was built between 1824 and 1826 and was inaugurated on

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Thanksgiving. The rows of seats in the church were not sold as usual; the congregation had a free choice of place, and the church was open to all residents of Manhattanville. Around the turn of the century, the first wooden St. Mary’s church burned down. The church was rebuilt with stone in neo-gothic style and is still standing today.

Fig. 68. Maps of NYC from 1918 show Schieffelin Avenue and Schieffelin Lane in today’s Bronx, north of East 222 nd Street. [34]

When Jacob died of a stroke on April 16th, 1835, he left Hannah and his children a huge fortune. Jacob was buried in the same church he had funded, St. Mary’s in Manhattanville, as Hannah would be a few years later. Ten years after his death, Jacob’s sons Henry Hamilton, Effingham Lawrence and Richard Lawrence were listed among the wealthiest citizens of New York City. They had a fortune in the order of 200,000, 300,000, and 350,000 dollars respectively, valued today at about 10,000,000 dollars each. Most of these assets came from their father’s land and real estate businesses.

To compare to John Jacob Astor, upon whom the French term Millionaire, a billionaire by today’s standards, was first applied, their wealth was almost insignificant. In 1848, among oth-er things, Astor bequeathed a cash fortune of 20,000,000 dollars.

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Fig. 69. Some of Jacob Schieffelin’s properties were sold after his death in 1835. Pictured here is an estate of his between Hudson River and Tulip Street in NYC that is for sale. [33]

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Part III: The Years 1800–1950

The Children of Hannah and Jacob (3)

Hannah and Jacob (3) had nine children, seven of whom reached adulthood:

• Edward Lawrence Schieffelin (1781–1850)

• Henry Hamilton Schieffelin (1783–1865)

• Effingham Schieffelin (1785–1789)

• Anna Maria Schieffelin Ferris (1788–1843)

• Effingham Lawrence Schieffelin (1791–1863)

• Jacob (4) Schieffelin (1793–1880)

• John Lawrence Schieffelin (1796–1866)

• Cornelia Schieffelin (1798–1800)

• Richard Lawrence Schieffelin (1801–1889) Henry Hamilton Schieffelin (1783–1865)

Henry Hamilton was the second son of Jacob (3) and Hannah. Henry was born in Detroit and was named after Jacob’s General in the British Army.

Henry Hamilton Schieffelin married Maria Theresa Bradhurst (1786–1872) in New York City on April 19th, 1806.

Maria Theresa was the daughter of Dr. Samuel Bradhurst. Samuel Bradhurst, Jacob (3) and Alexander Hamilton were friends and neighbors in Manhattanville. The Bradhurst family owned their grand Federal style mansion Pinehurst a few miles north of the Schieffelins.

It is said that Henry first asked for the hand of the Bradhursts’ younger daughter, Catherine, but that Mrs. Bradhurst told him she intended to marry her eldest daughter first. Henry accept-ed the offer without hesitation, and successfully courted Maria Theresa.

Henry and Maria had eleven children: Mary Theresa, Henry Maunsell, Samuel Brad-hurst, James Lawrence, Philip, Sidney Augustus, Julia, Washington, Bradhurst, Martha and Eugene.

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Henry graduated from Columbia College in Manhattan in 1801, where he studied law with the well-known jurist Cadwallader D. Colden. After his studies, Henry travelled to Europe together with Colden. They were in Paris when Napoleon was proclaimed emperor. Back in Manhattan, Henry ran his own lawyer’s office on 123 Pearl Street. Henry Hamilton entered into his father Jacob (3)’s pharmaceutical business in 1805. On June 1st, 1805, Jacob (3) sent a letter to all the employees of his company regarding the partnership with his son, and this was officially announced in a newspaper advertisement on July 3rd, 1805. Parallel to his work at Schieffelin, Henry continued to work with his partner Warren Bracket in his law firm on Pearl Street. At Schieffelin, Henry Hamilton worked to improve the purity of pharmaceuti-cal products and to institute ethical standards. He was secretary of the New York Druggists Association for a long time and was involved in the founding of the College of Pharmacy in Manhattan.

In 1805 the new company Schieffelin was renamed to Jacob Schieffelin & Son. Business was going well. Schieffelin had rented several buildings around the main building on 193 Pearl Street and used them as storage for pharmaceuticals and drugstore supplies. The general con-ditions of the time were favorable for economic development. Two years earlier, the USA had bought the state of Louisiana from France. The Western world wanted to settle, and the econ-omy was on course for growth. The father and son partnership dissolved through a mutual agreement in 1814; Jacob (3) retired, and Henry Hamilton officially took over the management of the company. The new company was called H. H. Schieffelin & Co, a name that was in force from 1814 to 1849. The business was restructured when Henry entered cooperation with his brothers Effingham Lawrence and Jacob (4), and the business books were filled with positive figures and links to well established businessmen.

After the War of 1812, the American economy was briefly weakened, but the volume of trade increased rapidly from 1815 onwards. The first Savings Bank was founded in New York in 1819. In 1824 and 1825, General Lafayette travelled through the country and admired the progress of the twenty-four states. He was greeted joyfully in New York City. In 1834, the Mayor of the City of New York was directly elected by the citizens for the first time. The elected candidate was the Democrat Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence, a nephew of Effingham Lawrence. New York City changed rapidly in those years. Gas lanterns illuminated the streets, the first horsecar came into commission and the water supply was improved. The Erie Canal was completed, which connected the vast western territory via the Hudson to New York Harbor. This was not a time of unabashed growth and prosperity, however; there were also repeated setbacks, such as epidemics of yellow fever and Asian cholera.

On December 16th, 1835, there was a fire in a warehouse on Pearl Street. During the winter it was often so cold that all the water froze, leaving an inadequate supply to extinguish the fire. The flames jumped uncontrollably from building to building, destroying the most valuable

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part of Manhattan. The fire raged for three days and in the end over 600 buildings were de-stroyed. The damage was enormous. The city managed to recover surprisingly quickly, only to plunge into a financial crisis in 1837.

In 1849, Henry Hamilton retired and handed over the company to his four sons, Samuel Bradhurst, James Lawrence, Sidney Augustus and Bradhurst. Henry Hamilton had worked for Schieffelin for a total of 44 years and had acted as its manager for 35 of those years. He had weathered myriad crises and considerably expanded the company. During his management the company had moved twice. First from the historic address on Pearl Street to the corner of Maiden Line and then to 104 & 106 John Street in 1841. Schieffelin survived the financial crisis of 1837 all but unscathed and was even able to take over a major competitor in 1848, subsuming the stock of Hoadley, Phelps & Co.

Henry Hamilton was scientifically oriented and artistically educated. He had the reputation of being a walking encyclopedia. He had acted as both Vice President and President of the College of Pharmacy in Manhattan.

After Henry Hamilton’s retirement, the company was renamed Schieffelin Brothers & Co in 1849. This name existed from 1849 to 1865. Henry’s son, Samuel Bradhurst, was the dominant partner among the brothers and was responsible for further growing the Schieffelin company. Jacob (4) Schieffelin (1793–1880) Jacob (4) was the fifth son of Jacob (3) and Hannah. He was born in Montreal. A year after his birth, the Schieffelins moved to Manhattan. As a teenager he served in the New York State Militia, and remained in the military for five years, reaching the rank of colonel and participating in the War of 1812 for three months. Jacob (4) received private tuition from several physicians and graduated as a Doctor of Medicine from Columbia College in 1822. Jacob (4) never practiced as a doctor, but he did work for the pharmaceutical business which his father had founded, and which was run by his brother Henry Hamilton. He travelled to South America, Cuba, Mexico, and Latin America on business for the company over a long period of time.

Jacob (4) Schieffelin married Elizabeth Brard (1797–1881) in Manhattan in 1822.

Jacob (4) and Elizabeth had nine children: Clinton Emanuel, Alfred, Elizabeth, Laura, Cor-nelia, Jacob B., Edward Girard, Jacob (5) and Hannah Lawrence (2).

Elizabeth was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church in 1798. Her parents were James Brard and Jane Black. Elizabeth’s grandfather, Martin Brard, was born in Paris in 1730. He served in the French army in Canada, then New France. He came to Manhattan in 1763 after the Seven Years’ War (the French and Indian War), probably as a prisoner of the Americans.

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In the French church of Saint Esprit, he converted to Protestantism, and he died not long after in 1768. Elizabeth’s grandmother, Madeleine Blanchard, was born in Saint-Martin-de-Re in France in 1727. She came from a wealthy Huguenot family. Her father was a wine merchant on the beautiful Ile de Re and in La Rochelle , France. The family was forced to flee because of religious persecution. Madeleine lived in the Sint Jansstraat in Amsterdam, Netherlands from 1737 to 1738, and she came to Manhattan in 1739. Madeleine’s parents, Francoise Blanchard and Anne Herve, married for the second time in 1738. The wedding took place at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. Their first wedding in France in 1726 had been declared invalid for reli-gious reasons. An elder sister of Madeleine, Jeanne, had an aunt in France. She was imprisoned, because her parents had not converted but had chosen to flee, because of the Sun King Lou-is XIV of France and his Edict of Fontainebleau.

In 1824, Jacob (4) opened a branch of Schieffelin & Co in Mexico City. In 1828, he left Mexico and moved with his young family to resettle in Tioga County, PA, where he had bought several thousand acres of land. The Schieffelin family were the first settlers on Hills Creek, Charleston Township in Tioga County. Around 1830, Jacob (4) worked as a farmer.

Jacob (4) heard about the Gold Rush in California in 1849. From January to September 1849, he sailed with his sons Alfred and Edward on the ship Morrison from New York via Cape Horn to San Francisco. It did not take long for him to sober to the realities of gold hunting, and he re-turned to New York at short notice. Shortly before his death in 1880, Jacob (4) learned about the successes of his grandson Edward Lawrence (2) Schieffelin in the search for silver in Arizona. Richard Lawrence Schieffelin (1801–1889) Richard was the seventh and youngest son of Jacob (3) and Hannah. His name is inherited from the grandfather of Hannah. He was born in the Beekman House on Pearl Street (at the corner of Sloat Line, today Hanover Street) in Manhattan.

Richard graduated from Columbia College with a law degree in 1819. A fellow student, Ben-jamin Ferris, was to become his later brother-in-law. Ferris became a well-known lawyer, and Richard Lawrence ran a joint office with him until 1843. At the age of 18, Richard joined the military and was promoted to brigade general of various regiments of the New York State Infantry. Richard Lawrence was admitted to the court in 1823. He was a founding member of St. Mary’s church in Manhattanville in 1823 and dedicated his life to this church. He was also a member of the parish of Saint Thomas episcopal church at Fifth Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Street. The Saint Thomas church was opposite to the house of Henry Maunsell Schieffelin, Richard’s nephew from his older brother Henry Hamilton Schieffelin.

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In 1833, Richard Lawrence Schieffelin married Margaret Helen McKay (1813–1892), the daughter of George Knox McKay (1791–1814) from Long Island, captain of the US artillery. Margaret Helen’s mother was Sarah Frothingham, and her grandmother was Ann Greenleaf. The Frothinghams and Greenleafs owned New York’s Argus newspaper, the leading Demo-cratic-Republican Party’s journal. The members of this party were also called Jeffersonian Re-publicans. The Democratic-Republican party was opposed to the centralizing policies of Alex-ander Hamilton, such as his belief that common debts were a national blessing and a cement for America’s union at a time when the North had more debts than the South. The party was also opposed to the Jay Treaty, which they saw as a renewed rapprochement with England. The members of this party were frequently Francophile and sympathized with the French Revolu-tion, and they were responsible for the Louisiana Purchase from France. Many of the party’s members joined the American Colonization Society.

Richard Lawrence and Margaret Helen had three children: Sarah Sophia, George Richard, and Helen Margaret.

The family lived in a townhouse in Manhattan at 18 East 22nd Street and at 12 East 48th Street. The family’s country estate was on 92nd Street on the Hudson shore, which was where the fam-ily spent their summer holidays. Richard worked in his law office until he retired in 1843. In 1844 he became a member of the council of the 15th district and later president of the council chamber.

Richard was a staunch opponent of Tammany Hall, and he published numerous articles in the local press against the practices of the “secret oligarchy”. The Society of St. Tam-many was an aggressive political association within the Democratic Party in New York. Their initial aim was to bring new immigrants into political leadership positions. Aaron Burr, who dueled and shot the American founding father Alexander Hamilton and the New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, who had to resign because of corruption, later belonged to Tammany Hall.

Richard Lawrence was a member of the German Society and was an asset manager of East River Savings and the Gebhard Insurance Company. He managed the lands and property of his father Jacob (3), his brother-in-law Benjamin Ferris and his father-in-law George Knox McKay. In 1881, Margaret Helen bought five acres of land on the east side of Lake Agawam in Southampton on Long Island. Richard was involved in the development of the summer colony in Southampton. A large summer house was built on their property already in 1882. The country house was given the name Bonnie Brae (pleasant hill) and it still stands today, at 309 South Main Street in Southampton. Richard handed over the house to his son George Richard Schieffelin. George Richard used the house frequently and was very interested in the further development of the holiday settlement in Southampton.

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A Brief Excursion: Scheufelen in Württemberg in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Carl Wilhelm Scheufelen (1823–1902) Around the year 1855, with Schieffelin Brothers & Co experiencing pronounced growth in Manhattan, a paper mill was founded on the European side of the Atlantic by Carl Wilhelm Scheufelen in Württemberg. Carl Wilhelm Scheufelen was a teacher in Ohmden, a village close to Weilheim. He was a descendant of the Scheuffelin family in Weilheim and his love of music prompted him to first become a teacher.

The March Revolution of 1848 brought the Germans the Frankfurt National Assembly (Frankfurt Parliament), the first democratically elected, all-German parliament. In March 1849, the National Assembly decided on a people’s armament ( Volkswehr ) to protect the fledg-ling democracy. People’s military forces were built up in many cities around 1848, including Kirchheim unter Teck, where a Jugendbanner , a small military unit made up of young people, was put together. The Frankfurt National Assembly dissolved in May 1849, and a Rumpfpar- lament (torso parliament) met in the Halbmondsaal (half-moon hall) of the Estates of Würt-temberg in Stuttgart in June 1849. Württemberg’s military quickly and violently dissolved this Rumpfparlament . The Jugendbanner were tasked with protecting the democratic parliament and marched to its aid, but no fighting occurred, and the unit was disbanded the next day, surrendering their weapons and ammunition. The teacher Carl Wilhelm Scheufelen was dis-missed from his position as a teacher due to his participation in the Jugendbanner , and his willingness to march for democracy.

Just 26 years old, Carl Wilhelm was forced to completely reorient his career. He purchased a dilapidated paper mill from his wife’s family which he then expanded into the profitable Scheufelen paper mill in Oberlenningen. Carl wanted to set up the mill in Weilheim, but the city refused to grant him permission. To make paper one needs water from a river. Although small, the Lindach river in Weilheim would have been suitable, but this was already in use by another manufacturer. The Scheufelen paper mill was thus erected in Oberlenningen instead.

The sons of Carl Wilhelm, Adolf Scheufelen (1864–1941) and Heinrich Scheufelen (1866–1948), continued to run the mill. Heinrich was an art collector who bequeathed his collection of paintings to the state gallery in Stuttgart ( Staatsgalerie Stuttgart ). The Scheufelen Collection contains one work by the Nördlinger painter Hans (2) Scheuffelin (Death of the Virgin Mary). Heinrich’s retirement home was the Villa Scheufelen in Stuttgart, a house surrounded by a park and situated on a hillside above the Olgaeck in Stuttgart, with a beautiful view of the city center.

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The grandchildren of Carl Wilhelm, Karl Eberhard Scheufelen (1903–1992) and Klaus Hein-rich Scheufelen (1913–2008) led the company in its 3rd generation. From 1942, Klaus Hein-rich worked as an engineer at the Peenemünde Army Research Center on the development of anti-aircraft missiles. After World War II, Klaus Scheufelen was brought to the USA as a missile expert during Operation Paperclip. From 1945 to 1950 he worked in a group headed by Wernher von Braun in Fort Bliss, TX, in the American missile project. In 1950 Klaus Scheufe-len returned to Germany and took over management of the Scheufelen paper mill. After the fire disaster of the Apollo 1 mission, Klaus Heinrich was commissioned by NASA to develop flame-retardant paper. This paper was used in subsequent Apollo missions. The End and Acquisition of the Scheuffelin’s Man Fiefdom in 1833

The Scheuffelin’s man fiefdom from the House of Württemberg lasted from 1485 to 1833, before ownership of the land was officially acquired by the Scheuffelin family in its entirety. During this period, it was personally bestowed from the count, the duke, or the king of Württemberg to the eldest of the Scheuffelin family every few years. Whenever the eldest man of the family died, it was handed over to the next eldest. Around 30 individual branches of the family were likely able to benefit from the fiefdom over the course of its 350 years. The fiefdom consisted of 23 excellent plots of land that could be managed for a worthy income.

Several legal changes took place in Württemberg in the 1830s. In 1831 the fiefdom was hand-ed over to the administration of four authorized family members, and in 1833 these four autho-rized administrators signed a dissolvement agreement with the Royal financial administration in Kirchheim unter Teck. Further fee payments were suspended, and the four owners had to pay a final redemption sum of 54 Gulden (about 50,000 euros) within four weeks. This amount was very low given the size and quality of the plots. This was not a purchase fee, because from a legal point of view the fiefdom was already owned by the family. The four administrators of the fiefdom paid until March 20th, 1833, when the contract was fulfilled.

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Fig. 70. Excerpt of the contract from 1833 between Württemberg’s royal fi nancial administration in Kirchheim unter Teck (dem königlichen Kameralamt) and the four administrators of the

Scheuff elin’s man fi efdom in Weilheim. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 643]. [1505] Fig. 71. Excerpt of the contract between the royal fi nancial administration of Württemberg and the four authorized administrators of the Scheuff elin’s man fi efdom in 1833. Th e contract was fi rst signed in Kirchheim unter Teck on January 24 th and then in Weilheim an der Teck on February 19 th , 1833. “Th e owner of the fi ef on behalf of all four administrators of the fi ef.”

Signed by Ludwig Scheufelen and Christian Scheufelen. [Weilheim an der Teck – City Archive – WB 643]. [1505]

Th e Grandchildren of Hannah and Jacob (3)

Henry Maunsell Schieff elin (1808–1890) Henry was the fi rst son of Henry Hamilton Schieff elin and Maria Th eresa Bradhurst.

Henry Maunsell Schieff elin married Sarah Louisa Wagstaff (1816–1858) in 1835. Th e couple had no children.

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After his first wife’s death, Henry married Sarah Minerva Kendall (1834–1921) from Augus-ta, ME, in 1859. They had two daughters: Frances, nicknamed Fanny, and Mary, nicknamed Minnie. They had two other children who both died in 1863.

The family lived in a luxuriously furnished five-story house in Manhattan on 665 Fifth Av-enue between East 52nd and East 53rd Street and kept a country home in Greek Revival style, called Ashton, in Yonkers, NY. They had well-known neighbors on Fifth Avenue, such as Sam-uel Untermyer, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Levi Parsons Morton. On the other side of Fifth Avenue, between West 52nd and West 53rd Street, there were the houses of William Kissam Vanderbilt and his niece, Maria Louisa Shepard, who married William Jay Schieffelin in 1891. Burton Welles’s photographs in 1911 show Fifth Avenue when it was still a residential street, just before the transition to commerce and skyscrapers started.

Fig. 72. East Fifth Avenue in 1911 (photograph by Burton Welles). On the right between

East 52 nd and East 53 rd Street was house No. 665 of Mrs. H.M. Schieffelin. The sequence of buildings was: No. 665 Mrs. H.M. Schieffelin – No. 675 Samuel Untermyer – No. 675

Cornelius Vanderbilt – No. 685 Criterion Club. [30]

Fig. 73. West Fifth Avenue in 1911 (photograph by Burton Welles). The opposite side seen from

Mrs. H.M. Schieffelin’s house between West 52 nd and West 53 rd Street. The sequence of buildings was: West 52 nd St. – William Kissam Vanderbilt – W.K. Vanderbilt Jr. – Brewster & Co.,

Automobiles and Carriages – St. Thomas Episcopal Church. [31]

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Henry Maunsell had a summer residence in Rhode Island, probably the same house on Har-rison Avenue at Newport, RI, which Henry Maunsell’s younger brother Eugene Schieffelin inhabited in his later years.

Fanny played the piano and Minnie could sing well. The family organized music evenings for their neighborhood on Fifth Avenue.

Henry Maunsell supported the colonization movement in Liberia on the west coast of Af-rica. In the mid-1860s he was in contact with President Warner of Liberia and acted as consul general in Liberia. He donated money for a scientific excursion there and was chairman of the New York Colonization Society. Several black emigrants from the USA wanted to resettle in Africa. Some of them, who also suffered discrimination in the northern states, sailed from Baltimore to Monrovia, Liberia on the so-called Liberia Package. Henry Maunsell donated to a school in Liberia that is still called Schieffelin School or Schieffelin Camp today. He had the idea of recruiting black students for Liberia College and supported emigration to Liberia. The American Colonization Society (ACS) was an association of Evangelicals and Quakers who aimed to abolish slavery in America and give African Americans a chance to return to Africa. It was claimed that the ACS wanted to bring African Americans to Africa to prevent a slave rebellion, but it soon became apparent that most African Americans wanted to remain in America as equal citizens.

In summer 1876, Henry Maunsell, together with his wife Sarah Minerva and their two daughters Fanny and Minnie, took a cultural trip to Ireland, Scotland, and England. London was their primary destination, where they booked rooms in the heart of Mayfair and went shopping in London’s best shops.

They crossed the Atlantic with Cunard Line’s steamship Bothnia, setting off on stormy seas. Fanny got seasick and was afflicted with frequent headaches on journey there. Sarah Minerva had taken a box of Laudanum with her, a medicine containing opium. Whenever her daughter Fanny was plagued by a headache, she gave her opium. Supposedly Fanny was an opium addict for all of her life, the only known case of drug addiction within the Schieffelin family. It is likely that Sarah Minerva knew that Laudanum contained opium, given their connections to Schieffelin & Co.

Safely returned to Manhattan, the winter social season was in full force, and at one of the parties Fanny was introduced to the Columbia law student Ernest Crosby. The two married, and they moved to Alexandria, where Ernest Crosby was appointed judge over the Mixed Tri-bunals. Henry Maunsell visited Alexandria as part of a trip to Liberia, where he served as Consul General, and died during this visit.

Sarah Minerva Schieffelin returned to her house in 665 Fifth Avenue where she lived with her younger daughter Minnie, until Minnie died some years later, unmarried. In her later years, and recently widowed, Sarah Minerva bought the Grasmere estate from Lewis Howard

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Livingston’s cousin in 1894. She chose Grasmere for its beautiful mature locust trees. The won-derful estate was first built for Janet Livingston and her husband General Montgomery on 600 acres of parkland in 1775. Sarah Minerva enlarged the red brick estate to 33 rooms, made a large entry hall and added the marble front piazza. The estate was intended for her daughter Fanny and her son-in-law Ernest Crosby to relocate from Manhattan to the Hudson River Valley.

Fig. 74. Entrance Gate to Grasmere estate in Rhinebeck, NY (view to the east). The red brick property is in the middle of a large landscape park. [23] Samuel Bradhurst Schieffelin (1811–1900)

Samuel Bradhurst was the second son of Henry Hamilton and Maria Theresa Bradhurst. Samuel Bradhurst was named after Dr. Samuel Bradhurst, the father of Maria Theresa. The Bradhurst family owned 100 acres of land north of Rooka Hall in Manhattanville. Samuel Bradhurst was born in Manhattan and attended private school. Samuel Bradhurst Schieffelin married Lucretia Hazard (1816–1899) in 1835. The couple lived in Manhattan and had three children: William Henry, Alice, and Mary Theresa.

Samuel Bradhurst joined Schieffelin’s pharmaceutical business at a very early age, which was at this point being run by his father Henry Hamilton. From 1849, Samuel Bradhurst led Schieffelin together with his three younger brothers, James Lawrence, Sidney Augustus, and Bradhurst, under the name Schieffelin Brothers & Co. This name existed from 1849 to 1865.

The economic environment was favorable around 1850. After the war with Mexico, the USA had been able to enlarge their country, with Texas and California joining the country’s

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territory. Telegraphy made it possible to communicate from coast to coast, and railway lines were under construction to connect both coasts. In between, there was a huge country with plentiful resources, waiting to be populated. Trade between New York City on the East Coast and cities inland had started to change. Before 1850, merchants from Pittsburgh and other inner cities came to Manhattan in the spring, where they made bulk purchases for the whole year. After 1850, merchants ordered the goods that they needed by telegraph, and they were dispatched immediately by rail. This in turn revolutionized the suppliers in Manhattan. Pre-viously, they were generally wholesalers with a wide range of goods, intended to accommodate a broad range of needs. After 1850, suppliers began to specialize in one line of business or one product group, because buyers were now able to send several orders to different suppliers.

The first World’s Fair in America was held in 1853 at Crystal Palace in New York City. The first transatlantic cable was installed around this time, and direct communication with Eu-rope also made transatlantic trade easier. The famous American clipper ships made it possible to cross the Atlantic from Manhattan to Liverpool in just thirteen days, and the steam ships soon brought further improvement. In 1853, however, another financial crisis began to brew in the USA, which hit the New York banks in October 1857. A renewed religious consciousness emerged from this crisis. Perhaps it was precisely this upturn in religion that influenced Samu-el Bradhurst, who would distinguish himself through his religious writings. The opening of the Astor Library in 1854, a noble library on Astor Place for the economic education of merchants, was welcomed.

The Schieffelin company grew steadily, taking on new partners in 1853. In 1854, because of their expansion, a new move was necessary. Schieffelin commissioned the construction of a six-story brick building as their new trading house, located at 170 & 172 William Street on the corner of Beekman Street. The building included a fireproof basement, a novelty at the time. This move to a larger building enabled the introduction of a range of new products and marked Schieffelin as one of the first drugstores in America with a high and consistent rate of growth. In 1859, the management was expanded again. Samuel Bradhurst’s son, William Henry, along with two other partners were appointed to the board. The discovery of petroleum in America in the mid-19th century also offered a new business opportunity; Schieffelin established an office in Titusville, PA, and was the first trading company to sell petroleum in New York State.

The slave problem in the southern states led to the American Civil War in 1861, which last-ed until 1865. Economic development slowed during this period. Schieffelin had maintained many business relationships with the southern states, but the Civil War interrupted goods deliveries and many customers reneged on outstanding invoices. Schieffelin was nevertheless quick to recover after the war. In 1865, all four Schieffelin brothers retired and handed over the management of the company to William Henry Schieffelin, the end of the Schieffelin Brothers & Co era. The company name was changed to W. H. Schieffelin & Co, which existed from 1865

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to 1894. William Henry ran the company with three partners. After his retirement, Samuel Bradhurst devoted himself entirely to his religious works. He printed his books in large runs and sold them cheaply, at fixed prices, and some of his writings were even translated to other languages. He published eight books:

• Message to Ruling Elders, their Office and their Duties (1859)

• The Foundations of History: A Series of First Things (1863)

• Milk for Babes: A Bible Catechism (1874)

• Children’s Bread: A Bible Catechism (1874)

• Words to Christian Teachers (1877)

• Music in our Churches (1881)

• The Church in Ephesus and the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches (1884)

• People’s Hymn Book (1887) Sidney Augustus Schieffelin (1818–1894)

Sidney was the fifth son of Henry Hamilton and Maria Theresa Bradhurst. He was born in Manhattan and lived in Geneva, NY. Sidney Augustus Schieffelin married Harriet Anderson Schuyler (1836–1882) from Belleville, NJ, in 1858.

Harriet was the granddaughter of John Arent Schuyler from New Barbadoes, NY, and Cath-erine Van Rensselaer. She was the great-granddaughter of Robert Van Rensselaer. The Schuy-ler family came to America from Amsterdam, Netherlands, as early as the 17th century. The Schuyler family is closely related to the Van Rensselaer, Livingston, and Roosevelt families through multiple marriages. The preferred residence of the Schuyler family was Rensselaerwy-ck, NY, today Albany, NY.

The couple had five children: Caroline, Alice, Henry Hamilton, Harriet Augusta and Schuyler. Clinton Emanuel Del Pela Schieffelin (1823–1884) Clinton was the first son of Jacob (4) and Elizabeth Brard. He was born in New York City. Clinton Schieffelin married Jane Walker (1829–1916) in Tioga, PA, in 1845. Jane was born in Dublin, Ireland. The couple had eight children: Edward, Albert Eugene, Elizabeth Jane, Char-lotte, Effingham, Charles Lyons, Theodore, and Jay.

When Clinton was just two years old, his family moved to Mexico City for one year. His fa-ther, Jacob (4), was active in the pharmaceutical trade there. The family didn’t feel comfortable

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in Mexico, however, and returned to Manhattan, before moving some years later to Tioga, PA, where they had a farm.

When gold was discovered in California in 1849, many of the country’s young men were tempted into the search. Clinton, like his father Jacob (4), was infected with the Gold Rush. Clinton planned to get rich quick and then bring his family to California. With his brother-in-law, Joe Walker, he travelled the lands. They took the steamship Pioneer via Cape Horn through the Strait of Magellan to California. Clinton arrived in San Francisco on August 20th, 1852.

The entrance to the bay, later spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge, was promising. News of finds in the Rogue River valley took Clinton to southern Oregon. In 1853, he bought a plot of land along the Rogue River, and in 1856, Clinton’s wife Jane and their children followed him to Oregon.

Clinton led a restless life in the vastness of the western United States, a kind of life inherited from his father, Jacob (4), and that would be passed onto his sons, Edward Lawrence (2) and Albert Eugene. Bradhurst Schieffelin (1824–1909)

Bradhurst was the seventh son of Henry Hamilton and Maria Theresa Bradhurst. He was born in New York City. Bradhurst Schieffelin’s first marriage was to Elenor McGinn (born 1828). The couple had one daughter: Laura Gertrude.

Bradhurst worked with his brothers at Schieffelin Brothers & Co at 170 William Street. In 1860, they pioneered the sale of petroleum in America. Bradhurst was the driving force behind the sale of petroleum, pushing to make it commercially available for the first time. In 1865, the management of the company was handed over to William Henry Schieffelin (Bradhurst’s nephew), but Bradhurst remained active in the company until 1877. Because of his eccentric and novel ideas, he continued to receive an annual salary even after leaving the company in 1877.

Bradhurst was a keen political activist. He was committed to more egalitarian voting rights, and during the American Civil War he organized a committee of well-known personalities to support President Lincoln. During the financial crisis in the wake of the Civil War, he became involved in social welfare, financing food and blankets for thousands of impoverished peo-ple. He also founded the Bread and Shelter Society, which settled middle class people in rural areas where they could provide for themselves. Bradhurst, with the help of Roscoe Conkling, submitted a petition to the Congress to prevent public funds from being used for religious in-stitutions, and he supported the People’s Party. He was convinced that a republic would not be

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able to survive if its assets lay in the hands of the few, and as such favored a limited inheritance of assets. In 1883, he was nominated by the People’s Party of the 10th District in New York as a candidate for the office of senator. Bradhurst lost a fortune financially supporting the commu-nist publishing house Metropolitan Publishing Company, which later went bankrupt. From 1884, Bradhurst made headlines again and again, embroiled in a variety of mishaps. In his private life, too, happiness seemed to have escaped him. He was arrested for allegedly failing to pay the wedding expenses of his third wedding, to Lucy Cady Dodge. The newspapers pounced on the opportunity to write about how a member of one of New York’s wealthiest families was unable to pay for his own wedding.

Bradhurst and Lucy lived in Bradhurst’s villa in North Long Branch, south of New York City, in Richmond, SI. Bradhurst likely invested his entire fortune in charitable and “communist” projects, and his brothers and nephews from Schieffelin & Co were certainly not amused with the attendant scandals. His salary was reduced to a quarter and was not to be increased again until he separated from Lucy. We don’t know if he stayed with her, or if she stayed with him. Eugene Schieffelin (1827–1906) Eugene was the eighth son of Henry Hamilton and Maria Theresa Bradhurst. Eugene Schieffe-lin married Catherine Tonnelé Hall (1829–1910) from Manhattan in 1858. The couple lived in Newport, RI, and had no children. And yet, some say that one need only look to the sky to see Eugene’s manifold descendants.

Eugene was said to be a quiet, inconspicuous man. While his relatives led adventurous and exciting lives, making headlines, doing business, and giving interviews in the New York Times, Eugene worked for his family’s pharmaceutical company, attended meetings of the New York Zoological Society, and read Shakespeare. This combination, innocuous though it may seem, led Eugene down a dangerous path.

With mounting globalization in the 19th century, Europeans began to transport animals and plants across continents, frequently for economic reasons. In the Caribbean, tropical plants were introduced from other parts of the British and French Empires. The Société zoologique d’acclimatation was founded in Paris in 1854. This organization urged the government to im-port foreign animals, foodstuffs and to better control pests. In 1877, the American Acclimati-zation Society was founded in the USA, inspired by the Parisian example.

Eugene joined the association and soon became its chairman. As a fervent admirer of Shake-speare, he was apparently eager to introduce all the different bird species featured in Shake-speare’s plays to the USA. William Cullen Bryant was an admirer of the Schieffelins. He wrote the poem “The Old-World Sparrow” after spending an evening with Eugene and his nephew William

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Henry. William Henry is said to have released some sparrows in his yard that very night, encour-aged, allegedly, by Eugene. Soon after, the sparrows seemed no longer welcome in the New World. In 1881, another poet composed an anti-poem, ending with the line: “This Old-World sparrow is a terrible fraud”. Eugene, apparently, had not understand Shakespeare correctly.

In Henry IV, a starling with the ability to speak drives the king to madness. On March 6th, 1890, Eugene released 80 European starlings into Central Park, in homage of this play. These starlings not only survived, but thrived, beginning to spread throughout the continent. Star-lings appeared on the Mississippi in 1928, and in California in 1942. Today, they number ap-proximately 200 million across the whole of America. They often occur in flocks of up to mil-lions of birds and cause great damage to agriculture; a cloud of starlings can devour countless tons of potatoes in a single day. They also carry a variety of dangerous diseases. Farmers have tried everything to expel the birds, but ever without success. In 1960, an airliner crashed short-ly after takeoff in Boston, as it had flown into a cloud of 10,000 starlings, promptly blocking its engines. The American government sounded the alarm in 1898, and passed the Lacey Act in 1900, in an attempt to control the import of potentially dangerous and invasive species, but it was too late for the starlings. One wonders what Shakespeare would say today –

Eugene later lived at Hartshorn Cottage on Harrison Avenue, a popular villa settlement in Newport, RI.

Little is known about Catherine Tonnelé Hall. Catherine was the second daughter of Valentine Gill Hall (1797–1880) and Susan Tonnelé Hall (1806–1884). She was the sister of Valentine Gill Hall, Jr. (1834–1880), the sister-in-law of Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall (1843–1919) and thus the aunt of Anna Rebecca Hall Roosevelt (1863–1892). Anna Rebecca Hall Roosevelt and her hus-band Elliott Bulloch Roosevelt (1860–1894) both died young, in 1892 and 1894. Their daughter, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), First Lady of the 32nd President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), was thus raised by her grandmother Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall. Elliott Bulloch Roosevelt was the younger brother of the 26th President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919).

The Schieffelins have never been more closely linked to US politics than these ties with the Roosevelt family at the beginning of the 20th century. George Richard Schieffelin (1836–1910)

George Richard was the first son of Richard Lawrence Schieffelin and Margaret Helen McKay. George Richard, like his father, studied law at Columbia College in Manhattan, graduating in

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1855. One of his teachers was Augustus Schell, a lawyer, politician, and collector of the Port of New York. George Richard spent three years studying under Schell in his office, before branch-ing into his own business, becoming a well-known New York lawyer. George Richard Schief-felin married Julie Matilda Delaplaine (1841–1915) in 1866. Julie (French for Julia) was the granddaughter of the merchant John Ferris Delaplaine (1786–1854) and daughter of Isaac Cla-son Delaplaine (1817–1866). Isaac was a Democratic congressman in the House of Representa-tives. The Huguenot de la Plaine family came from Bressuire, Poitou-Charentes, southeast of Nantes in France. Nicholas de la Plaine had fled to New York in 1657. The name Delaplaine was described as a “guarantee for beauty, brains, birth and values”.

The couple had five children: Julia Florence, Margaret Helen, Matilda Constance, Sarah Dorothy, and George Richard Delaplaine. Two of their daughters married the Ismay brothers from England.

George was active in many areas. He was a member of the Society of the War of 1812, sec-retary of the New York Historical Society, member of the Colonial Order and churchman at St. Mary’s church.

Before the railway on Long Island reached the eastern towns in 1870, Southampton was a small, idyllic area situated on a pristine, dreamlike beach. Some old whaler families lived there, but whaling was no longer lucrative enough to pursue, leaving the area in need of other sources of income. George Richard first visited Southampton for sporting reasons. The area was known for its wild ducks, and duck shooting was a popular pastime. George Richard took the four-hour ride on the post coach from Manhattan to Southampton. He was so impressed by the beauty of the place and its seaside location that he soon acquired some plots of land, which later became a noble villa. In 1880, George became one of the founders of the New Southampton, Long Island holiday resort. His parents had built the Bonnie Brae (“Pleasant Hill”) holiday home south of Southampton, which George had inherited and later sold to his sister Helen Margaret in 1893. George was president of the Village Improvement Society, which was responsible for the development and maintenance of the holiday village. He was active in the St. Andrew’s Dune Church community and president of the Southampton Club. The villa colony in Southampton was able to retain its sporting charm for a long time, in part as its pio-neers mainly came from the upper middle class and were bankers, lawyers and doctors.

George Richard and Julie Matilda were buried at the Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan. Helen Margaret Schieffelin Chisolm (1841–1896) Helen was the first daughter of Richard Lawrence Schieffelin and Margaret Helen McKay. Helen Margaret Schieffelin married William Irving Graham, who died in 1871. She had two

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daughters from this marriage. Her second marriage was to Alexander Robert Chisolm (1834–1910) in 1875. The couple had one son: Richard.

The family lived at 48th Street in Manhattan and Morristown, NJ. In 1893, Helen bought the holiday home Bonnie Brae in Southampton from her brother George Richard, her sec-ond country house. They used to live in the Chisolms’ country house in Morristown, NJ. The Schieffelin’s country residence near the “Pond,” i. e., Lake Agawam on Long Island, fell into disuse from 1890 onwards, perhaps because of the greater distance from Manhattan.

Colonel Alexander Robert Chisolm was an officer of the Southern Confederation and a con-fidential friend of General Beauregard. Alexander was born in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1834. At the age of two, he and his sister lost their father. Two years later their mother died after she was thrown from a horse on a trip to New York. The orphans grew up with an aunt in New York City.

At the age of eighteen, Alexander and his sister returned to South Carolina to accept their inheritance, which consisted of a cotton plantation and 250 slaves. Alexander enjoyed work as a plantation owner and occasionally travelled to Europe in some seasons. In 1861, Alexander Chisolm of South Carolina was asked to make his slaves available for the construction of a fortification on Morris Island. Over the years, Alexander became the confidant of General Beauregard and wrote down his notes and orders. Alexander was present at the negotiations with General Johnston and Sherman in Greensboro, NC, and participated in the Battle of Fort Sumter and the Battle of Shiloh. After the war, Alexander travelled to Washington, DC, where he met with President Johnson and requested his pardon as a first officer of the Confederacy. He sold his plantation in Beaufort and started working as a shipbroker in Charleston. In New York, he was the commander of the Confederate Veterans Camp.

The 3rd Generation after Jacob (3) Schieffelin

William Henry Schieffelin (1836–1895) William Henry was the first son of Samuel Bradhurst Schieffelin (1811–1900) and Lucretia Hazard Schieffelin (1816–1899). William Henry Schieffelin married Mary Jay (1845–1916) in 1863.

The couple had five children: Eleanor Jay, William Jay, Samuel Bradhurst, John Jay and Geoffrey.

The family lived at 242 East 15th Street on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan and visited the Jays’ Estate in Bedford, NY, during the summer months. Mary and William Henry’s wedding took place in Bedford, NY (at today’s John Jay Homestead).

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Fig. 75. Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan today. View to the south to St. George’s

Episcopal church. The residence of William Henry and Mary Jay Schieffelin was at the eastern end of this wonderful little city park. [27]

Mary Jay was the third generation of John Jay (1) and Sarah Livingston Jay, the third daughter of John Jay (2) and Eleanor Kingsland Field. Her ancestors came from the Jay, Hazard and Bur-ling families, making her distantly related to Hannah Lawrence, who also descended from the Burlings. Mary’s father worked in the U.S. diplomatic service. Her siblings also had interesting marriages: Eleanor Jay was married to Henry Grafton Chapman, Jr., William Jay was married to Lucie Oelrichs and Anna Jay was married to Hans Luther von Schweinitz. The grandson of Anna Jay, Adam von Trott zu Solz, was a resistance fighter against National Socialism, and he was a member of the Kreisau Circle (he was sentenced to death by the Nazi regime in Ber-lin-Plötzensee after the failed 20th July plot in 1944.)

William Henry Schieffelin joined the Schieffelin company in 1860 at the age of 24. He was the 4th generation in a direct line of succession to Jacob (3). The company address was now 170 to 172 William Street, on the corner of Beekman Street in Manhattan. During the American Civil War in 1862, William Henry Schieffelin was drafted to the front with his 7th New York Regiment. In Baltimore he left his regiment, commissioned to recruit men for military service as major of the 1st New York Mounted Rifles. With a troop under his command of more than 400 men, he served from 1863 to 1864 under generals Wool and Longstreet during the siege of

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Suffolk, VA. During this one-year assignment there were battles almost every day. Despite this, William Henry remained on the board of Schieffelin during his military service.

After the Civil War had ended, a long period of economic prosperity began. In 1865, William Henry’s father Samuel Bradhurst retired from the company. Samuel had managed the compa-ny together with his three brothers from 1849 to 1865. In the same year, William’s grandfather Henry Hamilton had died. William Henry took over the leadership of Schieffelin, the largest pharmaceutical trading company in the USA at that time. He initially ran the company with three partners, including William Newton (2) Clark. William Newton (2) Clark was a cousin of William Henry, the son of Mary Theresa Schieffelin Clark. The company was renamed W. H. Schieffelin & Co, a name which existed from 1865 to 1894. In 1875, Schieffelin once again took over a competitor, A. B. Sands & Co, purchasing their stock. In 1880, under the leadership of William Henry, two further business partners were admitted. In the 1880s, Schieffelin was the first and exclusive distributor of the following pharmaceuticals in America: Phenacetine, Salol, Sulfonal, Aristol, Veronal, Heroin and Aspirin.

Fig. 76. Advertising Label for Peppermint Oil by W. H. Schieffelin & Co in 1870. [29]

Under the direction of William Henry, Schieffelin set up a laboratory for chemical and phar-maceutical substances in 1882. The lab was one of the most modern in the United States at that time, with some apparatuses and machines invented especially by Schieffelin’s employees. The chemical substances and plants that the lab used were supplied from all over the world. The lab-oratory was first located on a site in Manhattan, but this was later to be converted into a public park. Schieffelin thus decided to construct a new, modern building elsewhere, and bought a

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plot of land north of the Harlem River. The three-story laboratory buildings were built around 1894 on Southern Boulevard, St. Ann’s Avenue and Bond Street in Manhattan. The roof trims were decorated with the lettering “Drug Mills – W. H. Schieffelin & Co – Laboratory.”

In 1890, William Henry admitted his son William Jay Schieffelin and his cousin Henry Schieffelin Clark (born 1862) to the company. Henry Schieffelin Clark was the son of William Newton (2) Clark. W. H. Schieffelin & Co was the first company to introduce synthetic medi-cines in America. Schieffelin had obtained the right to sell heroin and aspirin in the USA from the German pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer, formerly called “Farbenfabriken”. Schieffe-lin employed well-trained chemists and contributed to scientific journals, all while maintain-ing sales companies in Chicago, San Francisco, and London.

In 1894, Schieffelin celebrated its centenary. The company gave out a commemorative publication in honor of their long tradition: “Schieffelin & Co: One Hundred Years in Busi-ness. 1794–1894”. This outlined broadly the development of chemistry and pharmacy in the 19th century and showed how much progress research and development had made, which to a large degree resulted from Schieffelin’s important contributions.

William Henry was a member of the parish of St. George’s church on Stuyvesant Square and in various clubs. He was president of Fisher Island Sportsman’s and a member of the Union League Club.

William Henry and Mary Jay Schieffelin were both buried in Bedfort, NY, indicating a close relationship with the Jay family.

Fig. 77. John Jay Homestead in Katonah, Westchester County, NY in 1961. John Jay (1) had built this country residence as his retirement home. The house was later inhabited by subsequent generations of the Jay family. [26]

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Mary Theresa Bradhurst Schieffelin Dodge (1840–1910)

Mary was the second daughter of Samuel Bradhurst Schieffelin and Lucretia Hazard Schieffe-lin. She lived in Manhattan. Mary Theresa Bradhurst Schieffelin was married to Charles Cleve-land Dodge (1841–1910) and had two children: Charles Stuart and Mary Ethel.

Charles Cleveland Dodge was a brigade general in the American Civil War. Their son Charles Stuart was a board member of Schieffelin & Co and worked closely with his cousin William Jay Schieffelin (1866–1955). Charles Stuart rowed the Yale team to victory against Harvard in 1884 and completed his studies at Yale in 1885. Charles Stuart was a cousin of Cleveland E. Dodge, vice president of the Phelps Dodge Corporation.

Charles Stuart Dodge was married to Flora Bigelow and had two children: Lucie in Katonah, NY, and John in London, England. The couple divorced, and Flora Bigelow married a second time in England, which resulted in a relationship to Winston Churchill. Their daughter, Lucie Bigelow Dodge Rosen, stayed in New York, while their son, John Bigelow Dodge, grew up in England.

John Bigelow Dodge (1894–1960), grandson of Mary Theresa, became a British citizen and took part in both World Wars for England. In World War I, he was commissioned by Chur-chill to participate in an elite unit at the Gallipoli Campaign on the Bosporus, where he was wounded. In World War II, he was sent to war as a major in 1939 and was captured by the Germans in 1940. John was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he broke out during the Great Escape but was captured again after one month. At the end of World War II, high German military officials in Berlin asked him to act as envoy for peace negotiations with England and America. John was released and could travel via Switzerland to England. He met Winston Churchill, but Churchill refused the Germans’ offer. John spent the rest of his life as a politician in London.

Lucie Bigelow Dodge Rosen (1890–1968), granddaughter of Mary Theresa, had been mar-ried since 1914 to the Jewish Berlin-born lawyer and investment banker Walter Tower Rosen (1876–1951). Walter was the youngest graduate of his year at Harvard University in 1901 and a virtuoso pianist. Lucie was also a musician. She played the Theremin, an innovative electronic musical instrument. The couple lived in a townhouse at 35 West 54th Street, the Rockefeller Block in Manhattan. In 1929, Lucie suggested that a “little place on the country would be nice” for their summers. Ten years later, their summer domicile Caramoor was finished.

The couple had one son and one daughter: Walter Bigelow Rosen (1915–1944) and Anne Bigelow Stern (1917–2009).

Lucie and Walter founded the Caramoor Summer Music Festival in Katonah, NY. In 1945 they established the festival in memory of their son Walter, who had died in World War II, and donated their villa and Mediterranean-style park to serve as its grounds. The park contains the

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Rosen House, a Spanish courtyard and a Venetian theatre with a tent roof. The lively festival hosts Bel Canto Opera, orchestral music and jazz annually.

Walter Bigelow Rosen, great-grandson of Mary Theresa, died in England during a military operation in 1944. Walter was a student at Harvard University from 1933 to 1937 and studied law at Yale University from 1938. When he enrolled in the Air Force in 1941, he stated that he was an “aviation student”; it is possible he had already received flight training at Yale, because he had already completed 200 hours of flight. In 1943, Walter was regarded as a “pilot spe-cial group”, and he was transferred to England for bombing operations. In August 1944, the 158 Squadron had their first operation, to attack a German V-1 cruise missile storage area at Bois de Cassan near Paris. The four-engine Halifax heavy bomber returned from its mission over Kiel to Lissett in England at 2 a.m. on August 17th, 1944. It was the crew’s first operation over German airspace, together with 23 other bombers. The German air defense, unnoticed by the pilot, had damaged the hydraulic system of the bomber when the plane dropped its heavy cargo over the submarine port of Kiel. The landing gear no longer worked properly, and the airplane exploded shortly after touching down on the runway, resulting in Walter’s death. Edward Lawrence (2) Schieffelin (1847–1907)

Edward was the first son of Clinton Emanuel Schieffelin and Jane L. Walker. He was born in Tioga, PA.

His father Clinton had set off for the West and bought a farm in the Rogue River valley in southern Oregon. When Edward was ten years old, he moved with his mother and his siblings from Pennsylvania to Oregon.

Edward had no interest in agriculture or livestock. Instead, he ventured to the mountains, eager to make discoveries. He was seen wandering over hills and through gorges with a hoe, a shovel, and a gold pan. He sifted through sand deposits in the Rogue River valley in search of precious metals and dug for ore layers in the mountains. At the age of thirteen, he knew every stone near the farm. He built a water slide to lead the water of the river to a layer of earth that was easier to inspect, but he was only to be disappointed. Edward read books about famous gold mines, and at the age of seventeen he set out alone as a gold digger. He gained mining experience in Nevada and learned to follow an ore vein both on the surface and underground. At the age of twenty-one, he wrote in his diary in 1869:

Edward searched the Surprise Valley in Nevada and the Salt Lake District in Utah. In the cold-est season of the year, Edward moved through Idaho. He soon found he had had quite enough of wading randomly along muddy riverbanks and moved on to the Grand Canyon and Texas, before he fell seriously ill and had to return home to his parents’ farm in the Rogue Valley. After three weeks he was cured, and after borrowing money from his father he set off again, this time to Arizona, Death Valley and California. In 1876, Edward was described by a friend as follows:

Edward is also said to have worn the fur of a grizzly bear. Another friend described Edward this way:

Edward was far from the picture of a greedy, ruthless gold prospector, and was rather a wild man of nature and a gentleman. He was perhaps something of an American Heracles: tall, strong, heavy, clothed in skins, his long rifle on his shoulder, and always on the search for the gold of the earth. For the glory of his parents, he crossed the whole country again and again and returned to the farm in the Rogue River valley after his work was done.

The gold search was a laborious business: for fourteen long years Edward found no luck. In January 1877 he once again set off for Arizona. After searching unsuccessfully in the Grand Canyon, he joined a group of scouts patrolling the Apache area of southern Arizona. Edward joined the army as an Indian Scout to fight against the Apache. He guarded the San Pedro Riv-er area, a few kilometers from Geronimo, and operated from Camp Huachuca. The area was dangerous. The Chiricahua Apache were fearless, and their chief Cochise was camped only a few miles away. Several prospectors had already been killed by the Apache, and the Arizona Scouts stayed away from the area. Edward was repeatedly warned against exploring the area alone. When Edward’s comrade in the army, Al Sieber, learned of his plan to search for ore in the area, he told him:

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Edward didn’t give up. He had crossed the deserts of Nevada and Arizona in blazing heat and snow. He was half dried up, burned by the sun and frozen by the cold nights. He didn’t mind any of that. He wasn’t afraid of being killed by the Apache, either. He felt safe because he could read their tracks. He was only thirty miles from the Mexican border when he spotted a strange geological formation. He struck the black ore with his pickaxe and shoveled away the upper layer of earth: a strand of almost pure silver. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was incredible, he had found his treasure! Edward later described the find:

He stacked a few stones on top of each other to mark the spot and to find the place again lat-er. Edward reported his discovery and called the mine “Tombstone”. Later, Edward met his brother Albert and Richard Gird, who was considered an expert in rock sampling and worked as a mining engineer in a mine at Signal, AZ. Edward gave Gird three of his stone samples for analysis. Since it was foreign rock material, they had to remove the silver from the rock using a new technique. A few days later, Gird told Edward that he estimated the silver content of the samples at 9,000 dollars silver per ton of rock.

Now Edward, Albert and Richard were in a hurry. They drove back to Tombstone with a horse-drawn carriage and with the necessary equipment. They chose the fastest route, which ran through Apache territory, but they were well armed. When they spent the night at Ed-ward’s former camping site on the San Pedro River, they were attacked by Chiricahuas. The attack lasted several hours, but Edward, Albert and Richard were equipped with the latest magazine rifles. The Apache slowly withdrew because they knew that “the white man loads his rifle in the morning and can shoot all day long”. The horses of the three men, however, were startled by the commotion, and fled to the other side of the river to graze. Edward swam across to retrieve them. A scout patrol from Fort Huachuca approached the area and expelled the Chiricahuas for good, giving the three prospectors the time to explore this otherwise dangerous area at their leisure. Their excavations were not particularly successful at first, but a breakthrough came when Edward suddenly found a lump of silver ore. Albert called him “Lucky Cuss”, which one of the richest mines in the area was later dubbed. All the mines were named after their conversations: Contention, Tough Nut, Lucky Cuss, Goodenough, Graveyard.

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Fig. 78. An old south shaft ore quarry, the face of Tough Nut mine, part of the town of

Tombstone, AZ, around 1880. Dragoon mountains, with Cochise stronghold in background. [14] Frances “Fanny” Kendall Schieffelin Crosby (1860–1925) Fanny was the first daughter of Henry Maunsell Schieffelin and Sarah Minerva Kendall Schief-felin. Fanny Kendall Schieffelin married Ernest Howard Crosby (1856–1907) from Baltimore, MD, in 1881. The couple had one daughter and one son: Margaret Eleanor and Maunsell.

Fanny and Ernest got to know each other in Manhattan when they were both very young. Their parents tried to curb their intention to marry, but without avail; it was a love marriage, and both partners came from long-established and respected families.

Ernest Crosby’s family came were Puritans from England and had arrived in Massachusetts in 1636. Ernest was a descendant of William Floyd, a signatory to the Declaration of Indepen-dence. Ernest’s father, Howard Crosby, grew up in the Crosby’s Manhattan residence at Rudgers Place, East 19th Street. The Crosby’s residence in Lower Manhattan was modeled on a Regency house in London and was at that time one of Manhattan’s largest private house. Ernest’s father was a classicist with expertise in ancient Greece, and travelled Egypt, Turkey, Palestine, and Europe. He was the Professor of Greek at the City University of New York, and later became a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Together with his son Ernest, Howard Crosby frequently walked the streets of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where drunkards were wanting to gath-er. Together they concluded that such misuse of alcohol constituted a “crime against God and

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Man”. They sought to punish its illegal sale, with Howard founding the “Society for the Preven-tion of Crime”. Ernest shared his father’s concerns about the poor and the destitute.

Ernest had studied law at Columbia Law School and was considered handsome. After four years of waiting, Fanny and Ernst married in 1881. The young couple first lived with the Schief-felin parents in the back of their house on 665 Fifth Avenue, with the Social Register listing the residence of both families there in 1887. During the first years of their marriage, Fanny and Ernest lived close to both of their families, frequently visiting the Crosby’s residence on East 19th Street and the Schieffelin summer house on Rhode Island. Ernest practiced law, and suc-cessfully applied to the New York State Assembly in Albany, NY, where he succeeded Theodor Roosevelt. For this position he was required to frequently travel from Manhattan to Albany by train, where he saw the many factories growing near the banks of the Hudson River. He was concerned about child workers in these factories and sought thus to introduce bills to the state assembly to prohibit the hiring of children workers.

It was suspected that Sarah Minerva Schieffelin considered her son-in-law Ernest a traitor to their class because of his progressive views on child labor, immigrants, and environmental protection. Ernest was a reformer, author, and supporter of Georgism, an economic theory aimed at a fairer distribution of wealth and singular taxation of land ownership (an economic model that, interestingly, the Scheuffelins in Swabia partially lived in accordance with across multiple centuries; they only had to pay taxes for their land, and the fiefdom rotated in the family, so the poorer members also had a chance at land and good income).

Fanny’s parents were clearly concerned about Ernest’s progressive ideas. They wrote Presi-dent Benjamin Harrison a letter, an acquaintance of theirs, asking whether there was a foreign country where Ernest could serve. In 1889, President Harrison nominated Ernest as judge on the Mixed Tribunals in Alexandria, Egypt. Ernest accepted the position, and left America to-gether with Fanny and their five- and two-year-old children, Eleanor and Maunsell.

Fanny’s mother, Sarah Minerva, also accompanied them to Alexandria, helping the family settle into the large house. Upon returning to Manhattan, she persuaded her husband, Henry Maunsell, to visit Alexandria for a holiday. Two weeks after their arrival, Henry Maunsell Schief-felin died suddenly and without illness at the age of 81. Sarah Minerva returned to Manhattan immediately. Some years later, in 1894, Fanny and the children returned to 665 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. That same year, Sarah Minerva bought the Grasmere estate close to Rhinebeck, NY, in the Hudson River Valley. She wanted her daughter to live there with her family.

Ernest resigned from the international court in Alexandria. Before returning to Manhattan, he travelled alone to meet the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy in Moscow. He wanted to discuss his thoughts and feelings regarding the plight of the working class with Tolstoy. The Tolstoys invited Ernest to their house outside Moscow, where Ernest spent some days talking about the pressing world issues. Back in Manhattan, Ernest was brimming with ideas for how to improve

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people’s lives, from as grand notions as international peace and non-violent resistance against oppression to vegetarianism and playgrounds for children. He wrote several books:

• Captain Jinks, Hero

• Swords and Plowshares

• Tolstoy and His Message

• Garrison, the Non-Resistant

• The Meat Fetish: Two Essays on Vegetarianism

These books made waves. Captain Jinks, Hero (1902), the best anti-imperialist novel of the period, was publicly criticized by President Harrison. This did not sway Ernest, however, who joined the Manhattan Single Tax Club and founded the Social Welfare Club. The Schieffelins were not amused when Ernest welcomed the Russian writer Maxim Gorky into their home. Fanny’s mother, Sarah Minerva, thought the best solution would be for Fanny and Ernest to relocate permanently to the Grasmere estate, far away from Manhattan. Fanny and Ernest agreed, moving to the nine-hundred-acre property ninety miles north of Manhattan. They made various improvements to the house, and Sarah Minerva visited them during the summer months. Grasmere estate was always dependent on Sarah Minerva’s money.

Fanny and Ernest’s children, Eleanor and Maunsell, grow up in the countryside with their Hudson River neighbor families, the Delanos, the Roosevelts and the Livingstons. Maunsell was friends with Franklin Roosevelt and Clinton Abbott and became an ornithologist. Eleanor was gifted in the art of foreign languages from an early age. Fanny allegedly told her mother that Eleanor “will want to live in Europe. She should marry a duke”. This suspicion would come true: Margaret Eleanor Crosby married William Vanneck, 5th Baron of Huntingfield, a British conservative politician, the Governor of Victoria (1934–1939) and Administrator of Australia. In her later years, Eleanor relocated to London with her children. Julia Florence Schieffelin Ismay (1871–1963)

Julia was the second daughter of George Richard Schieffelin and Julie Matilda Delaplaine Schieffelin. She was born in New York and died in Kensington, London, England. Her name combines the names of her mother and her aunt. Julia Florence Schieffelin married Joseph Bruce Ismay (1862–1937) from Liverpool, England, in 1888. The family initially resided on East 49thStreet in Manhattan. Around 1910, they moved to 15th Hill Street in London.

Julia and Bruce had a daughter and two sons. The first two children were born in Manhattan: Margaret and Henry. A further son was born in Liverpool, England: George.

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In 1887, Bruce spent some time with friends in Manhattan and on Long Island, while his parents journeyed to Egypt, India, Burma, and Ceylon. It was on Long Island that he met Julia Florence in the house of her aunt, Florence Delaplaine. Julia was known as the “Belle of New York” and “a charming girl with real brown hair, beautiful eyes and a singularly winsome manner”. The couple were eager to marry. Julia’s father was a little more cautious, and moved to slow down their engagement, making it a condition that Julia and Bruce should wait for a year, and that the couple should always live in America. Bruce readily agreed, though they would later break this latter condition when they moved to England.

Joseph Bruce Ismay inherited the White Star Line shipping company from his father and acted as its chairman. The White Star Line owned the RMS Titanic, and Bruce was on board the ship during its maiden voyage. The investigative commissions in Washington and London both concluded that he played a key role in helping women and children into the lifeboats. He boarded the last lifeboat, seeing that there were a few seats still free. The final lifeboat was low-ered twenty minutes before the Titanic vanished beneath the waves and managed to reach the rescue ship Carpathia. There were too few lifeboats on the Titanic for its more than 2,200 pas-sengers, and most of the lifeboats were not filled. There were many questions that needed to be answered in the aftermath: Who decided on the route, Captain Smith, or Bruce Ismay? Why were there so few lifeboats on the ship? Why did the closest ship not react to the distress rockets fired by the Titanic? A newspaper punned on Bruce’s name, writing “J. Brute Ismay”, and he was almost thought of as a murderer. He resigned from the board of the White Star Line. Julia Florence had not travelled on the Titanic and was allegedly never allowed to ask her husband about the catastrophe.

Fig. 79. One of the last pictures of the RMS Titanic in Cork harbor (Ireland) before the ship left for New York City on April 11 th , 1912. [40]

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Laura was the second daughter of Edward Girard Schieffelin and Mary Monroe Somerville Schieffelin. She was born in Wellsboro, PA. Laura Grace Schieffelin married William Hale Wilbur (1888–1979) in Paris, France in 1923. The couple had a daughter and a son: Mary Schieffelin Wilbur (born in 1925) and William Hale Wilbur, Jr. (1926–1950).

The Schieffelin Wilbur family moved frequently for work. They lived in Boston, MA, Fort Leavenworth, KS, Washington, DC, Hawaii and Fort Myers, FL, among others. The later Gen-eral Wilbur studied briefly in Haverford, PA, and graduated from the US Military Academy in West Point, NY, in 1912. William was a lieutenant in World War I. He attended the French military school in Saint-Cyr on the Cote d’Azur, where he was a classmate of Charles de Gaulle. From 1922 to 1924, William attended the Ecole Speciale de Guerre in Paris. It was in Paris that William met and married Laura Grace Schieffelin. The couple returned to the USA after their marriage, where William became a professor of military science at Boston University. He had military assignments in Washington, DC, and Hawaii, and during World War II.

During World War II, William was involved in the Allied invasion of northwest Africa and was jointly responsible for the liberation of Casablanca from Vichy French troops. The mission was delicate and required diplomatic skill. Via Casablanca it was possible for the Americans to stab Rommel and his troops in the back, and they made plans to expel the German forces from Africa entirely. The German troops were 3,000 kilometers east of Casablanca when General Patton commissioned his French-speaking Colonel Wilbur, driving a jeep with a white flag on it, to present their options to the Vichy French forces. Two months later, William received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the USA’s highest military award, for his efforts. It was conferred to him personally by President Roosevelt during the Casablanca Conference in 1943. Fig. 80. President Roosevelt conferring the Congressional Medal of Honor to William Hale

Wilbur during the Casablanca Conference in 1943. Roosevelt later described the conference as the “unconditional surrender meeting”. [41]

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After the war, William worked for the War Department, analyzing the political, economic, and social situations in Germany, Japan, and Korea. His documents served as a basis for the reconstruction strategies of these destroyed countries. In Japan he managed the new American investments. William also worked as an author and published “The Making of George Wash-ington” in 1970. George Washington was his great idol. This book is considered among the best biographies of the young Washington.

The only son of Laura and William, William Hale Wilbur, Jr. was also trained at West Point. He left the Academy in 1949 to serve in the Korean War. In 1950, suffering serious wounds at Tabudong in Korea, he lost his life, a great family tragedy. William, Sr. supported the presidential candidate Eisenhower in 1952 and thus the withdrawal of American troops from Korea.

The 4th Generation after Jacob (3) Schieffelin

William Jay Schieffelin (1866–1955) William Jay was the first son of William Henry Schieffelin and Mary Jay Schieffelin. William Jay Schieffelin married Maria Louisa Shepard (1870–1948) in 1891. The wedding of Maria Lou-isa and William was a highly social event and reflected the splendor of the Gilded Age. The couple had nine children: William Jay, Margaret Louisa, Mary Jay, John Jay, Louise, Bayard, Elliott, Barbara, and Henry.

William’s mother was the daughter of John Jay (2) (1817–1894), who was the grandson of John Jay (1) (1745–1829). William Jay Schieffelin was thus the fourth generation of John Jay (1)’s descendants.

John Jay (1) was a Continental Congressman, President of the Second Continental Congress, US Diplomat, US Supreme Court’s First Chief Justice and New York Governor. John Jay (1) was head of the Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies when he became the found-ing father of American counterintelligence, helping to unravel a British plot to kidnap and kill George Washington in New York during the American Revolutionary War in 1776.

Along with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, John Jay (1) was one of the principal authors of The Federalist during the ratification of the United States Constitution in New York in 1788. Together with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, he negotiated the Treaty of Paris with the British government after the American War of Independence. His biography filled volumes, with his importance for the development of the young nation enormous, a Founding Father of the United States.

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Maria Louisa Shepard was the eldest daughter of Elliott Fitch Shepard (1833–1893) and Mar-garet Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard (1845–1924). The residence of the Shepards was in Scarbor-ough-on-Hudson, NY, north of Manhattan. Their house was a popular residence for family members of several generations and was in an illustrious neighborhood. Elliott Fitch Shepard was a Colonel and organized the 51st Regiment of New York. After his military service he worked as a lawyer, banker, and owned a newspaper. Elliott’s father was president of the Na-tional Bank Note Company. Elliott has been criticized for rejecting President Lincoln’s offer to promote him to brigadier general during the American Civil War and was also criticized for improper care of his finances; his father-in-law was very careful to ensure that Elliott didn’t spend too much of the Vanderbilt fortune. Elliott was nevertheless a diligent man and he be-longed to several clubs and organizations.

Maria Louisa’s mother, Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt, was the eldest daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) and Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt (1821–1896). Marga-ret Louisa was a philanthropist and funded the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and a YWCA hotel, which was named “Margaret Louisa Home for Protestant Women.” Margaret Louisa also built Woodlea, better known as Sleepy Hollow Country Club, a 140 room Renaissance Revival style mansion in Scarborough-on-Hudson, one of the largest privately owned houses in the US at that time. Woodlea’s architecture was inspired by Kimberley Hall in England. The American Homes and Gardens magazine described the mansion as follows:

Through the wedding of William Jay and Maria Louisa, strands of the Jay, Lawrence, Schief-felin, Shepard and Vanderbilt families merged. This distinguished family background made it possible for them to live a life of luxury, freedom and philanthropy. Their wedding on Feb-ruary 5th, 1891, was the most esteemed social event of the year. It took place at the Fifth Av-enue Presbyterian Church. Before the wedding celebration, all 600 guests met for breakfast in the grand picture gallery of William Vanderbilt’s double villa at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street. Among the rich collection of wedding gifts was a silver service for 24 people from Mrs. Vander-bilt, silver cutlery from President Benjamin Harrison and the First Lady, and a fully furnished townhouse in Manhattan, the gift of the bridal mother. The townhouse was located west of Fifth Avenue on 57thStreet, in an excellent location and neighborhood, near the southeastern corner of Central Park, and the couple lived there for several years.

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Fifth Avenue began to change in character in the 1890s, however, with wealthy families choosing new housing further north to escape the increase of hotels, shops and offices. The bridal mother was quick to jump in again, however, providing a new home. In 1898, Margaret Shepard bought two houses: No. 5 & 7 East 66thStreet, adjacent to Ulysses S. Grant’s former apartment at No. 3. Margaret Shepard commissioned architect Richard Howland Hunt to construct a grand residence from the two houses. The architect did not disappoint. The construction work was completed about two years later, revealing an imposing house in the style of the French Renaissance, sometimes also called the Car-touche style. The house resembled a Parisian townhouse and was worthy of the lineage of its new inhabitants. Both facade and interior were richly decorated. The ground floor had three, high round-arched windows. On the first floor there was a library and a ball room which stretched along the entire length of the house. The rooms were enclosed on both sides by large open fireplaces, the decorations of which were made by the stonemason Karl Bitter, who was also working on the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few hundred meters away on Fifth Avenue. Caryatids supported the mantelpiece, the ceilings were adorned with stucco, and the living room with its chandeliers and decorated wing doors looked positively regal.

The house served not only as a residence, but as a crucial setting for lavish conversations in New York’s high society. One such event took place on December 5th, 1909, when Louise Vanderbilt Schieffelin, the daughter of Maria Louisa and William, was to be introduced into society. A host of upper-class ladies supported Maria Louisa and provided the entertainment for the evening.

Life on 5 East 66th Street did not just revolve around glamorous conversations, however. Wil-liam Jay and Maria Louisa were liberal philanthropists with social views ahead of their time. The House of Schieffelins thus served as an important meeting place for the associations and committees in which they were involved.

A country estate also belonged to the townhouse. Islecote House, the Schieffelins’ summer house, was located at Pointe d’Acadie on the Vanderbilt estate in Bar Harbour, ME. The house was designed in 1902 by the architect Longfellow and was large enough to accommodate the ten-person family. The property also had stables for the family’s ten horses, matching the age of the children, with the youngest riding a pony. In 1921, the Vanderbilts sold their entire es-tate, and the Schieffelins moved their country estate a few kilometers. William Jay had already rented some land on a half-island opposite Bar Harbour in 1912, which he then bought. He called the new country estate Tranquility Farm. Today the peninsula bears the name Schieffe-lin Point. It rises into Flanders Bay and is located near the towns of Ashville, ME and Goulds-boro, ME.

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Fig. 81. Mount Desert Island, Acadia National Park, Maine. View from Baker Island to the north. On the very right side of the picture is the entrance to the Mount Desert Narrows and Flanders Bay, where the Schieffelin Point peninsula is located. [28]

William Jay loved the forests and pristine countryside of his new estate more than the jet-set-ting life in Bar Harbour. The big house offered wonderful views of Mount Desert Island to the southwest, and the family loved the nature, enjoying hunting, fishing, horse riding, firewood splitting and sailing.

Fig. 82. The Schieffelin family sailing with friends in Flanders Bay.

[16] Courtesy of Ellsworth American.

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It was better for the kids not to grow up in Bar Harbour society, and Tranquility Farm was a paradise. Here there were cows, horses, pigs, a duck pond, vegetable gardens, orchards, pas-tures, hiking trails, deep forests, an icehouse, and a water tower. The family later extended the grounds with a jetty, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.

Fig. 83. “Pa & Ma and the Nine. 1923.” William Jay and Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffelin and their nine children, Tranquility Farm on Schieffelin Point Peninsula, Maine.

[17] Courtesy of Ellsworth American.

In 1925, the Schieffelin family again followed the trend of wealthy Manhattan families leaving their private homes at Fifth Avenue for large apartments further northeast. Maria Louisa and William moved to 620 Park Avenue, where they lived until they died. The modern skyscraper was located just a few blocks from their old home on 5 East 66th Street. They left the house on 5 East 66thStreet to one of their daughters. Their daughter Louise Vanderbilt Schieffelin mar-ried in 1925 and moved to 125 East 24th Street.

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The Schieffelins used their status to carry out many social and philanthropic activities. The list of their posts and functions was extensive. Maria Louisa was a member of the Indian Rights Association and director of the New York City YWCA. William Jay could best be described as a republican, a diaconal Christian, a reformer and a supporter of minorities.

William attended Trinity School in Manhattan. He received further education at the Tivoli Columbia School of Mines, where he graduated as Ph.B. and member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1887. He then studied for two years at the University of Munich with Professor von Baeyer and received his Ph.D. in chemistry cum laude in 1889. William spoke German and closely observed how the German Empire was developing politically. Back in Manhattan, William had been a partner in Schieffelin & Co since 1890, its vice president since 1903 and its president since 1906. He managed Schieffelin & Co in the 5th generation after Jacob (3).

Schieffelin & Co celebrated its 134th birthday in 1927. The company was the oldest pharma-ceutical wholesaler in the USA and had an excellent reputation as one of the best laboratories for medical products. During its 134 years of business, Schieffelin had moved only four times within Manhattan. In 1794 the first company headquarters was established at 195 Pearl Street. In 1829 they moved to Maiden Line. In 1841 they expanded to 104 to 106 John Street. In 1854 they moved to 170 William Street, at the corner to Beekman Street. And in 1927 they expanded again to a seven-story fireproof building between 3rd and 4th Avenue in Manhattan. During prohibition in the USA, Schieffelin was officially allowed to import alcohol for medical purpos-es. Schieffelin expanded a business division for “medical liqueur”, where it legally offered Moët & Chandon champagne as well as Hennessy cognac.

William Jay Schieffelin’s business activities also extended to committee work, as President of the National Wholesale Druggists Association and as Vice President of the American Pharma-ceutical Association. He carried out his ecclesiastical activities as a churchman in St. George’s Church on Stuyvesant Square from 1896 to 1906, he was manager of the American Bible So-ciety, and he was president of the American Church Missionary Society. William Jay’s social commitment extended to many associations and institutions:

• President of the Laity League

• Chairman of the Social Service Committee of Men and Religion

• President of the American Leprosy Missions

• President of the Huguenot Society of America

• Board of Trustees of the Hampton Institute

• Board of Trustees of Tuskegee

• President of the Armstrong Association

• Colonel of the 396th Harlem Regiment

• Chairman of the Colored Men’s Department of YMCA

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• President of the Citizens’ Union

• President of the New York Federation of Churches

• President of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage

• President of the Serbian Child Welfare Association

• Chairman of the Christian Committee to Boycott Nazi Germany

William Jay started to advocate for Manhattan’s citizens very early, in combination with his work for the church and for women’s rights. Already in 1882 he participated in the founda-tion of the City Reform Club aiming for better municipal policy. The club received prominent support from Theodore Roosevelt. In 1911 William Jay published a commentary on Astor’s engagement in the New York Times. John Jacob Astor IV wanted to quickly remarry in August 1911 and offered various churches money for a short-term wedding, bypassing the usual dead-lines. He had just been divorced at the age of 47 and wanted to marry a woman almost 30 years younger. A variety of episcopal priests openly expressed their hostility, and William Jay tried to explain in his article why the churches refused and why the proper religious ceremony of marriage was desirable.

In 1912, John Jacob Astor IV and his new wife were on their way back from their honeymoon on the RMS Titanic. He died in the disaster after helping his pregnant wife get on a lifeboat.

In 1914, William Jay gave a speech at the Women’s Political Union’s Suffrage Show on Fifth Avenue. He said it was not only right but also sensible to give women the right to vote. Political affairs are nothing more than “budgeting”.

William Jay strongly supported women’s enfranchisement. He also sharply criticized the out-dated requirement that female teachers shouldn’t have children.

In New York, the women not only wanted to be able to vote, but they also wanted to learn to swim. This is what the swimming suffragettes campaigned for after the shipwreck of the

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“General Slocum” in the East River, in which almost a thousand women and children drowned in 1904.

The organization Volunteer Christian Committee to Boycott Nazi Germany (VCC) was found-ed in November 1938. There was a preliminary survey in Manhattan as to whether such an or-ganization should be set up. There were voices saying that America should not get involved in European affairs and that a boycott would be the beginning of a war with Germany. Shortly after the Reichskristallnacht , the Night of Broken Glass, the VCC was established. It was officially an-nounced in January 1939 after collecting donations for its initiation. The VCC was an organiza-tion of several hundred personalities from the fields of education, science, church and economy. William Jay Schieffelin took over the chairmanship of the organization. The first meeting of sixty VCC members took place in William Jay’s home at Park Avenue. The VCC’s aim was to restrict trade with Germany to hinder their armament, both before and during World War II. From 1940 on, the VCC cooperated with the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee.

In 1944, William Jay was involved in the founding of the Council for a Democratic Germa-ny. He was mentioned in a letter from Reinhold Niebuhr. The Council tried to outline how a democratic Germany might be built out of the rubble of World War II.

William Jay’s scientific activities extended to being a Fellow of the London Chemical Society, as well as a member of the American Chemical Society and the Society of Chemical Industry.

The Huguenot Society of America was founded in Manhattan in 1883. Their first president was John Jay (2). The society preserves the history and culture of the fugitive Huguenots from France and stands for religious freedom. The Jays came from France. Auguste Jay (1665–1751), the grandfather of John Jay (1), came from La Rochelle and fled from there to New York. Anne Marie Bayard Jay (1670–1726), the grandmother of John Jay (1), was part of the first generation of arrivals in New York. Her father was born in Holland, but also travelled from France. The son of Auguste and Anne, Peter Jay (1704–1782), was born in New Rochelle, NY. The name “Jay” appears again and again in the Schieffelin family. The name “Bayard” also reoccurred, as the first name of Bayard Schieffelin, a son of William Jay Schieffelin (1).

The son of John Jay (1), William Jay (1789–1858), had the same social ideas and views as his father and his older brother. He was a lawyer, an active opponent of slavery, an anti-war activist and co-founder of the American Bible Society. Peter Augustus Jay (1776–1843) gave a speech in 1821 to the New York State Parliament where he pleaded for the introduction of the right to vote for free African Americans. The grandson of John Jay (1), John Jay (2), was a US minister and an opponent of slavery.

In 1906, Congress formed a committee to clarify why the United States had a problem with addictive substances in pharmaceutical products, and how this problem could be avoided. William Jay was summoned as an expert before Congress to contribute to the clarification. The statements of William Jay and other experts led to a tightening of drug laws in the USA.

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Although he did not believe that cannabis was as dangerous as cocaine, he recommended clas-sification in the same hazard category. Regarding cannabis, William said:

From 1908 to 1909, the tariff hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives took place. Regarding cocaine, William Jay wrote the following letter to the Republican congressman S. E. Payne (“Schieffelin & Co., New York City, wish the manufacture of cocaine confined to this country”):

William Jay was an active Protestant Episcopalian in the church of St. George on Stuyvesant Square. He was chairman of the Social Gospel Movement, which was a Christian mission aimed at fighting evil in everyday life. The movement was specially designed for men who were not only pious, but also wanted to actively do good. William Jay read from the Bible during the service and gave lectures, such as “A man’s duty to his city”.

During the Spanish-American War in 1898, William Jay served as a volunteer captain and regimental adjutant of the 12th Regiment of the National Guard. In World War I, he was Colonel of the 369th Infantry. The 15th Regiment was a colored unit. These first African American and Afro-Puerto Rican units had white officers. The black units were desperately needed. Black men were supposed to prove themselves through military service. White soldiers, however, refused to fight alongside them. The black units were very welcome in France. They served in the American Expeditionary Forces. The 15th Regiment was called “Black Rattlers” or “Man of Bronze” by the French. The Germans called the regiment the “Harlem Hellfighters”. Some of these soldiers received American awards, and one of them was the first American to receive the French Croix de Guerre.

William Jay was a Republican of the “Lincoln School”. He was a particular advocate for the rights and social progress of African Americans. As president of the Armstrong Association and chairman of the Tuskegee Institute, William Jay worked closely with Booker T. Washing-ton to raise funds for Tuskegee College in Alabama. They intended to build more technical schools for African Americans in the south of the USA. The work of the institute also included the recruitment of African Americans for military service. Booker T. Washington was the first head of Tuskegee University in Alabama from 1881. Tuskegee provided technical and in-dustrial training for African Americans. B. T. Washington maintained a network of wealthy philanthropists who donated money to Tuskegee, including A. Carnegie and J. D. Rockefel-ler. The Tuskegee Institute hosted a fundraising meeting at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan in 1906, attended by many wealthy celebrities. Carnegie Hall was fully booked. The aim was to raise 2,000,000 dollars in donations for Tuskegee. Four lectures were held at the event, by J. H. Choate, R. C. Odgen, Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington. Mark Twain’s speech was later published as the “Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary Lecture” in his book “My Secret Au-tobiography”. The event was opened by William Jay Schieffelin. William explained the pur-pose of the donation drive, asked for support of B. T. Washington’s plan, and introduced the

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speakers. The importance of education for minority groups was a particular focus of the talks, alongside the greater burden that the Northern United States should take on in contributing to their financing.

Mark Twain spoke about the widespread double standards of American morality, private Christian morality, and public Christian morality. Their exemplary private morality the American would live for 363 days a year, but on those two other days – to the tax office and to the polls – they would show a very different kind of public morality.

William Jay was aware that mending racial inequality required patience. In 1925, he com-mented that progress was already being made. In 1932, William Jay defended nine black teen-agers accused of raping two white women in Alabama. He wanted to make sure they got a fair trial. And the black mathematician William Schieffelin Claytor (who mentored Katherine Johnson, the famous NASA scientist) adopted the name “Schieffelin” out of gratitude for Wil-liam Jay’s commitment to the African American cause.

The Schieffelin Institute of Health Research & Leprosy Center in Karigiri, India was named after William Jay for financing the buildings when he was President of the American Leprosy Missions. The large leprosy center between the cities of Bangalore and Chennai in South India was opened in 1955.

As a political reformer, William Jay was appointed Municipal Civil Service Commissioner in 1896. He swore his oath of office at City Hall on November 15th, 1896. As vice president of the New York Society for Good Morals, styled as an informal kind of morality police, he set a liberal agenda. According to William Jay, liberal books should be available in bookstores, such as D. H. Lawrence’s erotic novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and non-fiction works on contracep-tion or birth control. He also saw morality and customs as the task of the church. He accused the Church of having paid too little attention to the character of people and asking too little of their parishioners. In a speech to a gathering of Presbyterians, he demanded that they do social service, attend to their neighborhoods and local areas, work against immorality, and fight against evil trends such as sweatshops. In 1918, shortly before the end of World War I, the Schieffelin family sold a 103 Acre property with buildings in the East Bronx to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Association.

William Jay was naturally disgusted by the increasing corruption under New York mayor Jimmy Walker’s administration. When news broke of the murder of a witness in an active investigation, William Jay organized the Committee of One Thousand to remove Walker from office. After Roosevelt was re-elected president, the committee managed to push Walker to resign.

William Jay managed to preserve his Christian convictions from the widespread influence of eugenics during his time. For him, the morality of a society behaved like a closed, physical system, which is subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy constantly increases

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if the system does not receive regulating energy from outside, and its nature tends to be dis-organized and chaotic. William Jay sought to bring moral energy into the society through Christian intentions and belief. In doing so, he accepted that he would live a not entirely comfortable life.

William Jay died on April 29th, 1955, six years after his wife Maria Louisa. Both were buried in the Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island, New Dorp, NY. Margaret Eleanor Crosby – Lady Huntingfield – Baroness Huntingfield of Heveningham Hall (1884–1943)

Margaret Eleanor was the first daughter of Fanny Kendall Schieffelin and Ernest Howard Cros-by. She was born in Manhattan and later lived in England and Victoria, Australia.

Margaret Eleanor Crosby married William Charles Arcedeckne Vanneck, 5th Baron Hunt-ingfield of Heveningham Hall in 1912. The couple had two daughters and two sons: Sarah Carola, Gerard Charles, Anne Margaret Theodosia, and Peter.

Margaret Eleanor learned languages very fast as a child. When she was a young girl, she pointed to an owl in a picture book and announced “Hibou”. Eleanor said her daily prayers in three languages. She travelled to India in 1911 and attended the Coronation Durbar in Delhi. There she met Captain Vanneck, who was stationed with his regiment in India. Margaret El-eanor and William Vanneck married in December 1912 at St George’s Church in London. In 1914, William Vanneck returned disabled from India to England. In 1915, he succeeded his uncle as Baron Huntingfield. After years in politics and trade, Vanneck was announced State governor of Victoria, Australia. The family lived in Melbourne, Australia from 1934 to 1939. Margaret Eleanor initiated many social projects there, developing a “particular interest in safe-guarding childhood”.

In 1936, Margaret Eleanor founded the University Women’s College at the University of Mel-bourne, and Melbourne’s oldest Kindergarten bears the name Lady Huntingfield. A scholar-ship for social work students at the University of Melbourne still exists today.

She sought progressive solutions to social problems, engaging members of the Melbourne District Nursing Society and Aftercare Hospital in 1939 on the topic of hospital overcrowding:

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She loved her life in Melbourne and felt some sadness on her departure on the RMS Mooltan in 1939 back to England.

Margaret Eleanor died in 1943 in London, soon after her home was bombed during a Ger-man airstrike in World War II. Maunsell Schieffelin Crosby (1887–1931)

Maunsell was the first son of Fanny Kendall Schieffelin Crosby and Ernest Howard Crosby. He was born in Manhattan and lived most of his life on the Grasmere estate close to Rhinebeck, NY. The Schieffelins bought the land and buildings at Grasmere from the Livingston family in 1893. They bred various varieties of European cattle and cultivated a wide crop of vegetables and fruit. Maunsell inherited the farm and worked as a farmer. He cultivated cereals and su-pervised their experimental dairy industry. Maunsell’s passion at Grasmere was bird watching. He would often take guests on bird excursions.

Maunsell was tutored privately in Grasmere, before he attended Morristown Beard School in Morristown, NJ, in 1904. At this school he began to develop an interest in ornithology and published his first experiences in bird observation. He made many friends at school, including the later poet John Hall Wheelock. The two young men applied to Harvard University to-gether, were easily accepted and shared a room there. In 1908, Maunsell graduated from Har-vard with a bachelor’s degree. During his years at Harvard, Maunsell made friends with many well-known artists, among them John Butler Yeats, Van Wyck Brooks, Edward Sheldon, and Maxwell Perkins. All these friends Maunsell happily hosted at Grasmere, where they enjoyed the nature surrounding of the spacious estate. On the other side, these friends introduced Maunsell to the literary and artistic life of New York City and Boston. Yeats later wrote about Maunsell and his wife Elizabeth.

At Harvard, Maunsell was a member of the Harvard Crimson team. He was one of its fastest runners and won many races. In 1906, a young woman from Boston, his future wife Elizabeth, was watching him compete in a two-mile race. The young lady had already met him several months before at a range of parties. Maunsell won the race and she congratu-lated him.

After completing his studies, Maunsell travelled to Europe for several months. He journeyed through England, France, Holland, Germany, and the Balkans. Maunsell began his military service in 1912 in the 10th New York Infantry Division, and finished in 1917 as a Captain in

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the Quartermaster Corps. During his military service, Maunsell served in Governor Charles Seymour Whitman’s unit.

Maunsell was ornithologist, like his uncle Eugene Schieffelin. In the 1920s, he undertook an expedition to Central and South America and researched over 500 bird species, mainly in Panama, that were previously unknown in the USA.

Maunsell Schieffelin Crosby married Elizabeth Coolidge (1889–1960) from Boston, MA in 1908. The couple had two children: Maunsell Howard and Helen Elizabeth.

The marriage did not last, and they divorced in 1916, in part allegedly because of Maunsell’s doubt of the paternity of his daughter Helen. Maunsell later withdrew this suspicion when he recognized similarities in Helen’s features. He is supposed to have tried to then make up for this misjudgment.

Helen married Lewis McCabe in 1937, and she had three daughters. Helen also got divorced in 1953. The family problems were later described by the psychologist Susan Schieffelin McCabe Gillotti (Susan Gillotti) in her book “Woman of Privilege”.

Elizabeth Coolidge’s father, Albert Leighton Coolidge, was a boot and shoe manufacturer in Boston, and was director of the Central National Bank. The family was well established and prosperous, and yet in 1891, quite unexpectedly, Albert Coolidge committed suicide. Elizabeth was not yet two years old. She grew up with her mother and her ten-year older sister Bertha.

In 1906, while Maunsell studied at Harvard, he and Elizabeth would often meet in Boston. They also met in Grasmere, NY, in the grand house and 898-acre estate of Maunsell’s grand-mother, Sarah Minerva Schieffelin, and in the Schieffelin’s house on 665 Fifth Avenue. Eliza-beth’s mother wasn’t happy about her relationship with Maunsell. She was from Boston and thought that New Yorkers were “undercivilized” and considered Maunsell’s life “rural”. She said “Maunsell is a nice young man, but Boston-New York marriages don’t work”.

In September 1906, Elizabeth travelled with her mother and sister to Germany. There, Eliza-beth was sent to Miss Wilson’s School for a year to learn housekeeping and how to manage do-mestic staff. Elizabeth was quite unhappy during this year and thought often about Maunsell.

In January 1907, Maunsell was hit by a series of unfortunate events. His mother Fanny devel-oped a kidney ailment and required treatment in a clinic. His father Ernest Crosby joined Fan-ny for her operation at John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, MD. After the surgery, Fanny was in great pain and was sedated with opium. Ernest caught the flu while he was there and died three day later in the same clinic. In her opioid delirium Fanny called Maunsell at Harvard for help. It must have been quite the shock to return to Grasmere with a deceased father and a heavily medicated mother. What was perhaps worse was Fanny’s need to erase all reminders of Ernest after her recovery.

Maunsell tried to focus on his studies at Harvard. When Elizabeth came back to Boston at the end of 1907, however, she and Maunsell resumed their love affair. They became engaged

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in 1908 and wanted to marry soon, in large part because Elizabeth became pregnant in April 1908. The couple had already sent out invitations for a great wedding ceremony but changed their plans in May, opting to marry already in June instead. Maunsell finished his studies at Harvard and then they left immediately for a honeymoon in Europe.

In September 1908, Elizabeth and Maunsell landed back in Manhattan and headed straight to Grasmere. Elizabeth expected a warm welcome from her mother-in-law, but Fanny was frosty, and Maunsell received only a small allowance from his mother for personal expenses. Tensions only continued to grow between Fanny and the young couple.

In January 1909, Maunsell Howard Crosby, son of Elizabeth and Maunsell, was born at Grasmere.

In the same year, John Butler Yeats visited Maunsell and his young family in Grasmere. He wrote to his daughter in Dublin:

Fanny and the Schieffelin grandma Sarah Minerva expected that the young family should live in Grasmere permanently. But Elizabeth could not cope with her mother-in-law, nor with the responsibilities of managing such a huge estate. She longed to live in Manhattan, for the peo-ple, for those chance encounters at clubs, to work as an actress. The marriage of Elizabeth and Maunsell rapidly worsened.

In summer 1901, one year after his first visit, John Butler Yeats again visited Grasmere and wrote to his daughter:

Maunsell and Elizabeth separated soon after the birth of their daughter Helen Elizabeth Cros-by in 1911, and finally divorced in 1916. After the divorce, Elizabeth married two more times,

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divorcing each time. Elizabeth lived with her little daughter in a small apartment in Manhat-tan and earned her own money, while Maunsell remained in Grasmere with their son.

In 1912, the three-year-old Maunsell Howard suddenly died in Grasmere, probably from a ruptured appendix. The death of young Howard was rife again with drama. Elizabeth suspect-ed that Fanny had poisoned the boy and wanted to perform an autopsy. No poison was found, however, and Elizabeth stormed out of Grasmere, never to return.

Back in Manhattan, Elizabeth was under observation. Fanny suspected that Elizabeth was consorting with other men, including well-known members of the Harvard Club and friends of Maunsell, and hired detectives to try and expose her. None of her suspicions could ever be proven, but Fanny was sure that Elizabeth had had many affairs with other men.

During the beginning of their time in Grasmere, Maunsell and Elizabeth were close friends with Margaret “Daisy” Suckley. Margaret Suckley lived in Wilderstein, Rhinebeck, NY, and was a neighbor. Margaret was President Roosevelt’s confidante at the Presidential Library in Hyde Park, NY.

In 1925, Maunsell had grown worried about Helen’s school grades. Helen lived with her mother in less than lavish conditions, and Maunsell was keen to do something for his daughter. He convinced Elizabeth to send Helen to Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, CT. Maunsell had to promise to cover all school and party expenses. In summer 1927, Maunsell and Helen trav-elled to England to visit Helen’s aunt Eleanor and her cousins at Heveningham Hall in Suffolk (“still today one of the loveliest Palladian houses in England”). They spent a pleasant summer with Eleanor’s family and visited London and Paris for museums and shopping. In July 1925, Helen sent a letter to her mother:

Back in America, Helen visited her father in Grasmere more and more, before finally deciding to change to her father’s side of the family. Maunsell became her legal guardian and told her: “Never be like your mother”. In 1929, Helen finished Ethel Walker’s school and was expected to study at Bryn Mawr, but she preferred Smith College in Northampton, MA. She loved the city and the campus. As a senior she studied at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Maunsell was close friends with Franklin Delano Roosevelt when they both lived in Hyde Park, NY. They were neighbors and shared an interest in ornithology and would often go bird watching together in the Hudson River Valley. Maunsell had a cabin with a fireplace in the

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woods near Grasmere. There the two youngsters spent hours observing the birds, Franklin spellbound and Maunsell meticulously keeping a diary of their observations. These diaries are now preserved in the FDR Presidential Library.

In 1924, Franklin went on vacation to Florida. His legs have been paralyzed from polio since 1920, and in the warm waters of Florida, he hoped to rehabilitate them. Swimming was part of his polio therapy. He also loved boating. Together with his friend John Lawrence he bought a houseboat in 1923, which they called Larooco (an abbreviation for “Lawrence, Roosevelt & Company”). On the Larooco he undertook fishing tours, bathing excursions and bird-watch-ing trips for weeks at a time, always in company of friends, gin, and whiskey. In the logbook of the Larooco Franklin recorded many of the events of these adventurous boat trips.

In February 1925, Franklin wrote that he regretted that Maunsell had already left, because he had wanted to spend more time with his friend.

Fig. 84. Florida 1924. The paralyzed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his boat Larooco.

Maunsell can be seen in the picture on the right. [19]

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Fig. 85. Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Maunsell Schieffelin Crosby, and Frances de Rham. Franklin’s legs were too weak to carry him because of polio.

But Maunsell was strong enough to carry both, with Roosevelt leaning on his shoulders, to the best places on the beach. [18]

Maunsell died from pneumonia in winter 1931, two days before his 44th birthday. His daughter Helen inherited the Grasmere estate, but without direct access to any funds that would cover the maintenance costs of the huge property. All Maunsell’s capital was administered by an old Harvard friend of Maunsell. From his Schieffelin ancestors Maunsell owned two office build-ings in Manhattan’s Garment District, which were leased to clothing manufacturers. Even these rental contracts were transferred to the management of Maunsell’s friend. Maunsell had laid down this procedure precisely in his will, to make sure Elizabeth did not receive anything.

Maunsell’s daughter Helen tried her best to keep Grasmere but had to finally give it up in 1954. Helen sold the estate, with the help of her aunt Eleanor, to Louise Clews Vanneck, and thus back to the Livingston family. The Schieffelins and Crosbys had been in possession of Grasmere estate for sixty years, or four generations. The next owner, Louise Clews, grew up in France. She renovated Grasmere estate and opened it up for the entertainment of foreign friends and relatives. Since 1987, Grasmere estate has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. George McKay Schieffelin (1905–1988) George was the first son of George Richard Delaplaine Schieffelin and Louise Scribner Schief-felin. He lived in New York. George McKay Schieffelin married Louise Winterbotham (1906–1979) in 1929. The couple had two sons: George Richard and John Winterbotham.

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George served in World War II from 1942 to 1945 as a commander in the U.S. Navy. German submarines were a constant problem for America’s supply ships during the war. George was a pilot who flew against submarines and trained other pilots to do so.

George went to St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH. St. Paul’s School, sometimes called “Big Red,” is an episcopal boarding school. It preaches hierarchical, meritocratic thinking and re-quires young people to acquire status through talent, diligence, and diverse cultural and so-cial experiences. It is a typical prep school that prepares students for studies at one of the Ivy League universities of Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. The Scribner family had a long tradition of Princeton graduates, which George continued, graduating in 1928. That same year he began to work for Scribner’s publishing house in Manhattan, working up to management level. In 1967, he organized an exhibition at Princeton. He presented documents from Scribner’s publishing archive, including original correspondence from R. Kipling, H. James, W. Faulkner, T. Wolfe, E. Hemingway, and F.S. Fitzgerald. From 1970 to 1977 George was on the board of the pub-lishing house.

Louise Winterbotham Schieffelin was the daughter of Joseph Winterbotham, Jr. of Chicago, IL. The Winterbotham family originally came from Northern England. Members of the Win-terbotham and Scribner families were cryptographic specialists who were involved in decod-ing Enigma codes used by German submarines.

The 5th Generation after Jacob (3) Schieffelin

William Jay (2) Schieffelin (1891–1985) William Jay (2) was the first son of William Jay (1) Schieffelin and Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffelin. He was born in Manhattan.

William Jay (2) Schieffelin married Annette Markoe (1897–1997) of NYC in 1918. The wed-ding took place in the chapel of St. George’s Church at Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan. The Markoes’ house on 12 West 54th Street hosted the reception. The couple had two children: Ann Louise and William Jay.

The family lived at different points at 1220 Park Avenue, Upper East Side Manhattan, Sleepy Hollow, NY, the Shepards’ estate in Scarborough-on-Hudson, NY, and Ashville, ME, on the Schieffelin Point Peninsula.

William Jay (2) went to Miss Chapin’s kindergarten and then to Bovee School and Groton School. Groton School in Groton, MA is a private, episcopal boarding school for grades eight through twelve. Although luxuriously equipped and built in the purest New England style on a huge park site, the school pursued a spartan education. Groton was originally a boys’

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school. The boys were to be educated according to the model of “muscular Christianity”, which included cold showers and cold baths. The school changed considerably over the years, accepting African American students as early as 1950, and starting mixed education in 1975. Groton School is a typical prep school. Traditionally, students at Groton are prepared to study at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. The Schieffelins typically moved onto Yale University after attending Groton School. Groton has raised many well-known graduates, including F.D. Roo-sevelt and other members of the Roosevelt family. The school is proud to have produced two US presidents.

Many “East Coast” Schieffelins attended Groton School, but it also has a strange and tan-gential connection to Edward Lawrence (2) Schieffelin, the founder of the Tombstone Mine in Arizona. A young episcopal priest by the name of Endicott Peabody, educated in Cam-bridge, England, came to Tombstone in Arizona. The desert shooting at the OK Corral be-tween cowboys and sheriffs had taken place only a few months earlier, and the young priest found Tombstone “too uncomfortable to die here”. The well-behaved Englishman, however, managed to build the first episcopal church in Tombstone and to coax the rough miners and cowboys into the church on Sundays. With this done, he returned to the East Coast to finish his studies. Peabody prepared for his church appointment with a brief teaching position: He would start a new ecclesiastical school, modelled on Eton and Cheltenham in England, and it would be named the Groton School. The campus was to be built on lush farmland, with views as far as the Wachusett and Monadnock mountains. Peabody wanted to convey the iron principles of his Christian faith to the entrepreneurial sons of the Gilded Age. The familial atmosphere at the Groton boarding school also offered cordiality, however, and it was said that Mrs. Peabody bid the little boys good night each evening with a kiss on the forehead. The Groton School became a quick success, and Peabody served as its director for over 50 years.

After Groton School, William went to Yale University and graduated in 1914. At Yale he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. From 1914 to 1916, William served as a recruiter in the New York Cavalry. From 1916 to 1918 he was First Lieutenant at the 12th New York Infantry at the Mexican border and in 1918 at the Fifth Field Artillery of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France. William Jay was First Lieutenant of the Second Division in Verdun and Captain in the battles of Chateau-Thierry and Bois de Belleau. Chateau-Thierry was one of the first actions that the AEF undertook under General Pershing. A total of 300,000 American soldiers were deployed on the Marne river. The German spring offensive of 1918 brought heavy losses to the American troops, but their advance toward Paris could be stopped. After his return to the USA in 1918, William served briefly as an instructor at Camp Jackson. William Jay (2) was strongly influenced by his time in the military, during which he suffered terrible experiences in Verdun and at the Marne.

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At Schieffelin & Co and in the pharmaceutical industry in Manhattan, William Jay was al-legedly referred to as “Captain Schieffelin”. He had a strong interest in military history books, and his library was stocked with a collection inherited from his grandfather William Henry Schieffelin. William Henry was a major in the American Civil War cavalry. William Jay likely got along well with his younger brother John Jay, who was a lieutenant in the Navy Air Force. Like his father, William Jay (2) Schieffelin was involved in many institutions and associations. Among others, he was: member of the Board of Tuskegee University and NAACP, President of the National Wholesale Druggists’ Association, Chairman of the Yale Alumni Fund, Member of the Board of St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan, Chairman of the Tax Commission of the New York Chamber of Commerce, Director of the Y.M.C.A. in NYC, Asset Manager of Carn-egie Endowment for International Peace and founding member of the National Association of Beverage Importers.

Annette was the daughter of James Wright Markoe. Her father was a doctor and friend of J. P. Morgan, Jr. In 1920, Annette’s father was killed in St. George’s Church at Stuyvesant Square by an assassin who was hired to kill J.P. Morgan.

William Jay worked for Schieffelin & Co since 1914. He was trained by Schieffelin in 1914 in administration, laboratory, and sales, to become acquainted with all aspects of the company. From 1922 to 1952 he was CEO and from 1952 to 1962 he stayed on as a member of the board. During prohibition in the USA, Schieffelin could import alcoholic products for medical pur-poses. From 1962 to 1985, William Jay was honorary director at Schieffelin. It was said that even at the age of 94, William still had an office at Schieffelin and went to work every day. This office was at 16 Cooper Square in Manhattan. Schieffelin became a subsidiary of Moët-Hen-nessy S. A. from France in 1981. Margaret Louisa Schieffelin Osborn (1893–1982)

Margaret was the first daughter of William Jay Schieffelin (1) and Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffelin. Margaret Louisa Schieffelin married Frederick Henry Osborn (1889–1981) in 1913. The wedding took place at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. The reception took place at Margaret’s parents’ house on 5 East 66thStreet. The couple had five children: Fred-erick, John Jay, Margery, Alice, Virginia, and Cynthia.

Margaret and Frederick’s grandson, John Jay Osborn (2), is a graduate of Harvard Univer-sity and Harvard Law School and is the author of the bestselling novel “The Paper Case”. The Schieffelin Osborn family lived on 123 East 73rd Street in Manhattan and later at their country estate in Garrison, NY. Frederick Henry Osborn was a great grandson of William Earl Dodge. He graduated at Princeton University. During World War I, he volunteered at the Red Cross

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and was at the front in France. Aft er the war, he worked briefl y at Wall Street and then as a researcher at the American Museum of Natural Science. Frederick published the books “Th e Future of Human Heredity” and “Population: An International Dilemma”. Frederick was a member of the American Eugenics Society and founded the Offi ce for Population Research in Princeton. He forwarded the thesis that the intelligence of a human being depends far more on their environment than on their race. In 1940, President Roosevelt appointed Frederick to the chair of the Civilian Committee on Selective Service. Th e family had to leave their be-loved home on 123 East 73rd Street and move to Washington, DC. By the end of World War II, Frederick was a decorated general. He worked in the UN Atomic Energy Commission and the Commission for Conventional Armaments.

Margaret was an independent woman. During World War I she was Chairman of the Na-tional Land Army, where she collected data on the compensation of farm workers. She worked on a farm herself to fully understand the situation. In 1937, Margaret and her daughter hosted a discussion on “Education for Democracy” at their house.

Fig. 86. Arriving at Woodlea, Scarborough-on-Hudson, NY. From left to right:

Louise Vanderbilt, Margaret Louisa, Elliott, and Bayard Schieff elin. [20]

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Mary Jay Schieffelin was the third child of William Jay Schieffelin and Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffelin. She was born in New York City on January 5th, 1896.

Mary lived all her life in New York City, and her childhood was peaceful and happy. The family visited Bar Harbour, Maine, in the summers, staying in one of the Vanderbilt cottages there. They moved to 5 East 66thStreet when Mary was about six years old. She was named after her paternal grandmother, Mary Jay, the grandmother whom Mary grew closest to.

After superlative completion of her education at the Spence School for girls in 1914, Mary be-came a debutante, thoroughly enjoying the steady rounds of dances, tea parties and house par-ties. She was a lively young lady and aroused much interest. As war began to loom in Europe, however, with many of the men in her close society beginning to sign up, she did not hasten to marry, as many of her friends did, but wondered instead how she could help. She figured out that if she became a librarian she could go overseas with the YMCA, working in one of their R&R centers in France. She did just that, and it became one of the most dear experiences of her life.

Back in New York, Mary Jay Schieffelin enjoyed great popularity. She met the son of a realtor, ten years her senior and a World War I veteran, Charles Stelle Brown, Jr., who worked with his father in real estate assessment. They married in 1924 and had three children: Charles, Shep-ard, and Mary. They continued to live a social, city life in New York, as she had all her life, in a handsome apartment on East 80th Street.

Mary was President of the National Junior League. Having developed both interest and con-tacts in social work and public health, she helped establish the National Organization of Public Health Nursing and the Visiting Nurse Service in New York City. She presided over both or-ganizations on their boards of directors, and was also the President of the Board of Trustees of the Spence School. Despite all this, she never had a paying job, though this was customary for women of her background.

Summers were happily spent sailing and playing tennis and golf at Tranquility Farm in Ash-ville, Maine (later called Gouldsboro). She liked to travel and journeyed to Turkey and all over Europe. The second World War put an end to that particular hobby, and prompted a need to learn how to cook. Characteristically, while hating to cook, she managed to do it with style and (most of the time) with humor.

As time went by, Mary became more interested in religion, and became an elder of the Mad-ison Avenue Presbyterian Church which she and her family had always attended. Finally, after the children had left home, she and Charlie moved to Katonah, the suburb of the city in which John Jay had built his country estate. They loved being in the countryside at last, and it was there that she eventually died, aged 79.

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Charles was a graduate of the Groton School and served as a major during World War I.

Their daughter Dr. Mary Lathrop Brown Cox Golden was a child psychologist in Brooklyn. She studied at Barnard College and completed a Ph.D. in psychology at the City University of New York. John Jay (4) Schieffelin (1897–1987)

John Jay (4) was the second son of William Jay Schieffelin and Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffe-lin. He was born in Scarborough-on-Hudson, NY, in the Shepard’s estate. He lived in Manhat-tan from a young age, at 1000 Madison Avenue.

John Jay (4) Schieffelin married Eleanor Curtis Beggs (born 1899) from Pittsburgh, PA, in 1923. The couple had three children: Eleanor Jay, Joseph, and Sally Ann. The marriage was not a congenial one, and they divorced eight years later, in 1931.

John Jay (4) remarried a year later in 1932 with Lois Lindon Smith (1911–2007) from Boston, MA. The couple had one son: John Jay (5).

John Jay (4) lived with his family on Succabone Road in Bedford, NY, close to the John Jay Homestead and the Rippowam School.

John Jay (4) was awarded the Navy Cross as a lieutenant and pilot in World War I for suc-cessfully damaging German submarines in the North Sea, alongside several other honors. The Navy Air Force was stationed at Felixstowe and Killingholme, England. John was a member of the Yale Naval Aviation Group, a group of ambitious Yale University students who fore-saw the need for air support for the U.S. Navy, and who invested their collective engineering knowledge and money into a novel sea-flight team. In 1916, the group convinced the American Congress to start the Naval Reserve Flying Corps. The documentary “The Millionaires’ Unit” was released in 2017 to mark the centenary of this heroic unit.

The North Sea around Great Britain’s coast was a popular hunting ground for the three hun-dred Imperial German submarines during World War I. The submarines were initially only used against supply convoys bound for the United Kingdom and as a countermeasure to the naval blockade of Germany. But on May 7th, 1915, the ocean liner RMS Lusitania, the largest passenger ship at the time and comparable to the RMS Titanic, was destroyed by a single Ger-man submarine torpedo off of the south coast of Ireland. A few days before the ship’s departure in New York, the German embassy in Washington, DC warned in a newspaper article that such an attack might occur to “vessels flying the flag of Great Britain”, but the warning was not heeded. Many prominent Americans were among the victims, leading to a notable shift in American public opinion against Germany. Among the 1,200 victims was Alfred Vander-bilt, cousin of Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffelin, “last seen fastening a life vest onto a woman

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holding a baby”. The United States demanded an immediate stop to unrestricted submarine warfare, and Germany ostensibly obliged. In January 1917, however, Germany resumed sub-marine warfare, triggering the United States to enter World War I in April 1917. Submarines were considered a sneaky, vicious, and dishonorable weapon.

In December 1917, John Jay (4) came to Liverpool in England and stayed in England un-til December 1918. John flew two successful attacks against German submarines in 1918. On July 9th, 1918, he attacked and severely damaged a submarine, forcing it to surface where it was later sunk by a British destroyer. On July 19th, 1918, he flew through stormy winds along the east coast of England, around Whitby. A gust hit his plane and bent the suspension of his bombs, forcing him to drop half of the load. When he saw a submarine appear, he immediately launched an attack. One of his bombs exploded under the stern of the submarine. The boat protruded diagonally out of the water, and John could see the propulsion propellers above the water surface. He navigated a destroyer into the area to finish the job, but as far as is known, the German submarine managed to return to its base heavily damaged.

After the war, John graduated from Yale University. He joined the Yale rowers and emerged victorious against Princeton and Cornell in 1920. John worked for some time as a manager for an insurance company.

During World War II, John rejoined the Navy as a coach for new recruits. As Admiral of the Reserve, he received an award for his outstanding coaching, and he went on to found the John Jay Schieffelin Award for Excellence in Teaching. From 1963 to 1966, John served as Director of the English-Speaking Union.

John Jay (4) was a noble representative of the Schieffelin family. We don’t know if he was satisfied with his lot; his first marriage and his divorce likely cost him both strength and pres-tige. It is possible that he felt himself in the shadow of his older brother William Jay (2), who resembled him in many respects. Whatever the case, the whole family appeared in crisis at the end of the 1920s.

Through his military service in the Naval Aviation Group during World War I, John Jay (4) achieved the highest military fame within the family. A newspaper article showed him in uni-form, together with his father William Jay (1) and his brother William Jay (2). Louise Vanderbilt Schieffelin Hewitt (1901–1926)

Louise was the third daughter of William Jay Schieffelin and Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffelin. She was born in Bar Harbour, ME and lived in Manhattan.

Louise Vanderbilt Schieffelin’s marriage with Abram Stevens Hewitt, Jr. (1902–1987) was

“one of the social events of the year” in 1924. The couple had two children: Mary and Edward.

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Abram’s ancestors were Peter Cooper and U.S. Congressman and New York City mayor Abram Stevens Hewitt. Abram, Sr. was a lawyer and a democratic congressman. He was elected mayor of New York City in opposition to Roosevelt.

Louise and Abram’s daughter Mary Ashley Cooper Hewitt Harshman graduated from Ben-nington College in 1947 and was an active student in The Art Students League. Their son Edward Ringwood Hewitt, Jr. completed his geology studies at Harvard College and the University of Texas. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II before working as a geologist. He was a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and of The Cooper Union for Ad-vancement of Science and Art. He also served in the Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown, CT.

The marital bliss of Louise and Abram didn’t last long. After the birth of her second child, Louise suffered a nervous breakdown. She was treated at the Austen Riggs Center in Stock-bridge, MA. The modern therapy center for psychosomatic medicine and therapeutic psychol-ogy had a good reputation. Dr. Rigg believed feelings required constant observation and should be controlled by practical activities. Around a hundred patients were accommodated for six weeks on the beautiful property in Stockbridge, MA, where they practiced weaving, painting, handicrafts, and play. Rigg’s therapeutic approach had similarities to psychoanalysis, though he was a sharp critic of Freud and his emphasis on the sexual causes for neuroses. Rigg’s system was a broader and more integrating ego psychology. Rigg was also said to be influenced by the mental hygiene movement.

Louise wanted to spend the Christmas season with her family and travelled with her nurse to The Beechwood, her home on 125 East 24thStreet in Manhattan. The beautiful brick house at Madison Square Park was a kind of residential hotel. It had six floors, each inhabited by personalities who did not, or at least not yet, want to take care of their own household man-agement. The entrance was a sandstone portico into which a beech tree was carved, hence the name Beechwood. The facade had Romanesque retro window pairs on the ground floor and cornices decorated with birds, leaves and bizarre faces.

On Wednesday the 8th of December 1926, the Hewitts were in the theater. The next day Lou-ise told her husband Abram that she needed to run some Christmas errands. When her guard-ian briefly left the room, Louise jumped out of the window on the 6th floor, falling to her death.

Louise was buried in the Vanderbilt private section, New Dorp, Staten Island, on the Schief-felin plot next to the Vanderbilt Mausoleum. Bayard Schieffelin (1903–1989)

Bayard was the third son of William Jay Schieffelin and Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffelin. He was born in Manhattan and grew up in the house on 5 East 66th Street. His first name, Bayard,

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reminds of John Jay’s grandparents. The Bayard family were Huguenots who had fled from France, first to the Netherlands, and then to New Amsterdam in America.

Bayard Schieffelin married Virginia Langdon Loomis (1908–1994) from New York in 1934. The couple had four children: Edward Loomis, Barbara Jay, Olivia Langdon, and Nancy Jay.

Virginia Langdon Loomis was the daughter of Edward Eugene Loomis (1864–1937) and Julia Olivia Langdon Loomis (1871–1948). She was the granddaughter of Charles Jervis Langdon (1849–1916). Charles Jervis came from a wealthy coal merchant family in Elmira, NY. His fa-ther wanted to make a great European trip with him but decided instead to send Charles on the journey with an obscure newspaper reporter named Mark Twain. The journey was a round trip on the Mediterranean Sea with the American steamship USS Quaker City. Mark was supposed to send travelogues to Charles’ father. The two travelers became friends, and the reports were published as a book entitled “Innocents Abroad”, Mark Twain’s breakthrough as a writer. The journey seems to indeed have been innocent. When Charles had shown Mark a mini portrait of his sister Olivia while they were in Izmir, Turkey, Mark immediately fell in love, from then on dreaming only of Olivia. Olivia Langdon Clemens (1845–1904) later became the wife of Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain. Olivia’s father initially refused the wedding, but he “was persuaded, that it would be fine”.

The Bayard and Virginia Schieffelin family lived in their home in Short Hills, NJ and in Ashville, ME. The house in Short Hills was built in the Dutch colonial style. Bayard graduated from Groton School and from Yale University in 1926. He worked for various banks and in-vestment firms. In 1930, Virginia and Bayard created the Langdon Schieffelin Fund for Bryn Mawr College. The fund should be used as financial support for the students and for faculty salaries. The fund was set up by the Langdon and Schieffelin families as thanks for the fam-ily members that had studied there: Julia Langdon Loomis (Virginia’s mother), graduated in 1898, Ida Langdon, 1905, Barbara Schieffelin Bosanquet, 1927, Virginia Loomis Schieffelin, 1930, and Barbara Jay Schieffelin Powell, 1962. Bayard and Virginia likely became acquainted around Bryn Mawr College.

From 1939, Bayard worked on the finance board of Schieffelin & Co. During World War II he worked at the War Department in Washington, DC, and received the Legion of Merit award. After the war, he was a director of the Cargo Marine Coal & Shipping Company. Bayard was director of the New York Public Library from 1950 to 1968. In 1953, the family went on an extensive voyage to France by ship. In the 1960s, Bayard was Trustee Vice President of Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey. Robert College is an elite school founded in 1863 on the Bosporus, which belongs to the American Protestant missionary schools and universities. Comparable institutions are the University of Beirut in Lebanon and the University of Cairo in Egypt. The Friends of Robert College and the American College for Girls celebrated their 100th anniversa-ry at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan.

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Bayard has written a book about the family estate in Maine: “Memorandum on the History of Tranquility Farm, 1909–1975”. He lived most of his life in Manhattan, and apparently craved the outdoors. Bayard has been described as “slim, elegant, casual and modest”. He remained humorous and always helpful into his old age. Elliott Fitch Shepard Schieffelin (1905–1988)

Elliott was the fourth son of William Jay Schieffelin and Maria Louisa Shepard Schieffelin. He was born in Bar Harbour, ME, and grew up in Manhattan and Ashville, ME. He later moved around California, living in Laguna Niguel south of Los Angeles, in Pasadena and in Yucca Valley.

Elliott attended the Bovee School in Manhattan and the Groton School before studying at Yale University like his brothers. He was a member of Knickerbocker Greys. In Yale he was involved in many activities: Elliott sang in the choir of the Apollo Glee Club, played theatre and tennis, and belonged to the Groton Club and Alpha Delta Phi. His parents had moved to the new 620 Park Avenue apartment in 1926, the same year his sister Louise threw herself out of the window of The Beechwood, and the year that he graduated from Yale. The family was clearly in upheaval, and perhaps Elliott simply wanted to escape all the troubles when he de-cided to move to Los Angeles in 1927, to start his master’s degree at USC in sunny California.

Elliott Fitch Shepard Schieffelin married Anne Elizabeth Wellborn (1905–2011) from New Orleans, LA in 1931. The wedding took place in Los Angeles, CA. The couple had two children: Elise and Richard Elliott.

Elise was born in Paris during their honeymoon, while Elliott was still a student. Anne at-tended the Marlborough School in Los Angeles, CA. She loved travelling, especially to Western Europe. After finishing school, she spent some years with her mother in France and Italy and learned many languages. At USC she met Elliott Shepard Schieffelin, whom she married in 1931. The couple divorced in 1940, and in the 1960s Anne resumed her art history studies at USC.

Elliott had failed to complete his USC degree and was divorced when he joined the California National Guard in 1941. At the end of World War II, he was released from the army as a corporal. During his time with the military, he traveled around the Pacific: to Hawaii, San Pedro Harbor, Sol-omon Islands, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea, Philippines and back to San Francisco, CA. Barbara Schieffelin Bosanquet (1906–1987) Barbara was the fourth daughter of William Jay Schieffelin and Maria Louisa Shepard Schief-felin. She was born in Manhattan and lived with her husband in Alnwick, England. Barbara

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graduated from Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, PA. Barbara Schieffelin married Charles Ion Carr Bosanquet (1903–1986) in 1931.

The wedding was described in The Times (London) as “An international marriage of more than usual interest”. The Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church was filled with the most fa-mous names in New York society. The house of Margaret Louise Schieffelin Osborn, Barbara’s sister, served as a reception. The entire house was decorated with pink ferns, white carnations and forsythia.

The couple had four children: Deborah Lucy, Katherine Mary, Barbara Clare, and Charles Jay.Charles was born in Athens, Greece. His father was director of The British School in Athens from 1900 to 1906 and was professor of classical archaeology at the University of Liverpool. Charles became Rector of King’s College in Newcastle, England, in 1952, and Vice-Chancel-lor of Newcastle University in 1963. He invited Martin Luther King, Jr. to the university and awarded him an honorary doctorate in civil law. Henry Schieffelin (1908–1984)

Henry Schieffelin, the ninth and final child of William Jay Schieffelin and Maria Louisa Shep-ard Schieffelin, was born on November 7th, 1908.

Henry attended Groton School where he was active in dramatics. He was described as “cheery and easy-going, warm-hearted, generous, impulsive, irrepressible, honest and truthful”. He loved visiting Tranquility Farm in Maine, where he created “fairy houses” in the woods and hid toys for his young nieces and nephews. He later entered Antioch College.

At age nineteen he had a psychotic break and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was hospitalized under the care of Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan, in Baltimore, Maryland. The fam-ily later learned that Henry was gay, and the social stigma around homosexuality played an undoubtably major role in his suffering. For most of the rest of his life he was a patient at the Brattleboro Retreat in Vermont.

The 6th Generation after Jacob (3) Schieffelin

William Jay (3) Schieffelin (1922–1989) William was the first son of William Jay (2) Schieffelin and Annette Markoe Schieffelin. He graduated Groton School in 1941, and Yale University in 1945. At Yale, he was a member of

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Beta Theta Phi. William served in the army as an artillery officer in the China Burma India Theater.

William Jay (3) Schieffelin married Joy Williams Proctor (1923–2001) from NYC in 1947. Joy was the daughter of William Ross Proctor of Pittstown, NJ and Eldred, NY. William Ross Proctor was a partner at the New York stock trading company Abbott, Proctor & Paine. Joy volunteered at the American Red Cross during World War II. The Proctors had a country house, Sand Pond, on one of the lakes east of Eldred, NY, which was frequently used for sports and family activities in the 1950s. Joy was on the board of the Presbyterian Church of Mount Kisco, NY.

The couple had six children: Hope, James, Peter Jay, Timothy, Andrew, and Michael.

In 1948 William became an employee of Schieffelin & Co. In 1949 he became Vice President of the Schieffelin pharmaceutical laboratories. From 1962, William was Chairman and CEO of Schieffelin. In the 1970s, William resigned as CEO of Schieffelin. In 1981, after 187 years of successful, pathbreaking independence, Schieffelin was sold to Moët-Hennessy S.A. from France. At the time, about two thirds of Schieffelin’s sales were already Moët-Hennessy prod-ucts. The company gradually withdrew from the pharmaceutical business after their acqui-sition and became a wine and spirits importer. If we assume the founding date of Schieffelin to be 1781, when Effingham Lawrence founded his pharmacy shop at Queens Street, and into whose business Jacob (3) Schieffelin entered in 1794, then there was exactly 200 years of Law-rence & Schieffelin in Manhattan, a remarkable stretch of time to survive and thrive in the volatile business world of Manhattan. After Schieffelin lost their independence under Wil-liam’s leadership, it became a subsidiary of LVMH Moët-Hennessy-Louis Vuitton. The new address of Schieffelin & Somerset Co, as the company was then called, was 2 Park Avenue on the 17th floor. In 1983, William withdrew completely from the operational business and served as a consultant for Schieffelin & Somerset Co until 1986.

William was Director of the New York Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Commerce and Industry Association in New York, Director of the New York Board of Trade and member of the French American Chamber of Commerce and the British American Chamber of Com-merce. William was also a member of the American Pharmaceutical Society, the American-It-aly Society, the Tuskegee Institute, Columbia College of Pharmacy, Rippowam Cisqua School, La Maison Française and the Northern Westchester Hospital Center in Mount Kisco, NY.

In 1975, William bought Darlington Castle in Bedford, NY. The castle is situated on a hill with beautiful views on the countryside, only impaired somewhat by a radio antenna with high transmission power in the immediate vicinity. While Joy had health concerns, she couldn’t convince William to give up Darlington Castle.

William Jay (3) was the last to follow the path that had now become classic for the Schief-felins: preparation school in Groton, MA, studies at Yale University, military service as an

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officer, management of the pharmaceutical company Schieffelin, and social commitment in charitable organizations. William Jay (3)’s accentuation lies in taking over some parts from the Jay’s French tasks, and a reduction in church involvement. The fact that he sent his children to the Rippowam-Cisqua school, a kind of reformed pedagogical school, indicates a moderniza-tion of the Schieffelin traditions.

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