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South Germany, Bavaria, suffered greatly by the Thirty Years War;
a dispute over the throne precipitated the most devastating conflict
Europe had known since the Middle Ages. Plundering armies crossed
and re-crossed Bavaria; industry and trade were crippled; she lost
three fourths of the population, and the remainder were crushed with
taxes; the solid middle classes were wiped out. In the final peace
Switzerland, Holland, and Alsace, and other territories left the
Empire. Religious conflict between the newly formed Lutheran
Doctrines and the Catholic Church created even more burdens. So it
was, that into such conditions John Heter’s father was born; born
probably into the middle class, the farmers.
But, wisely his father, early in John’s childhood, determined to
seek a better environment for his family; gathered together all that
he could and headed northward. Into his ox-drawn cart he loaded his
tools and meager household items, his wife and children. Several
weeks later they reached their destination in the Schleswig-Holstein
region; here it was that John grew to manhood and married.
This account identifies the faith of the Heter family as Lutheran. And it
speaks of Johannes (John) Heter’s interest in
a great new colony of Germans across the seas ... far away from the
strife and turmoil he had endured so long, a place where his sons might
find peace, opportunity, and the right to their own convictions ... a
place called Penn’s Woods, where land grants were open to those who, in
a primitive pioneering way, would carve new homes from the wilderness.
Penn’s Woods, or Pennsylvania, was founded by William Penn, whose father,
Admiral William Penn, had been owed about £16,000 by King Charles II of
England. The younger Penn, a Quaker, accepted as payment 40,000 square miles
of land in America.
His plan was to make a home in the wilderness for the Quakers who were being
persecuted for their religious beliefs. In 1681 Penn sent his cousin, William
Markham, to take possession of the new lands. Markham bought from the Indians
a tract of land from the Delaware River to the Blue Mountains, paying for it
in kettles, guns, powder, beer, and beads. Included in the sale was the land
which became Berks County, Pennsylvania.
William Penn’s mother was a German which may account for his trip to
Germany with George Fox, founder of the Quaker sect, who preached about
the Quaker doctrines there and invited all those who were oppressed to
join the “holy experiment” in Pennsylvania. Some persecuted German
Mennonites had already founded Germantown. The first German settlers
to reach Berks County arrived in Oley in 1712 and chose the Manatawny
Creek area. About ten years later, other Germans, including Conrad
Weiser, came to western Berks from New York and settled near
Tulpehocken in the vicinity of Womelsdorf. By 1752 the Germans were
far more numerous than all the other settlers combined.
Source: www.timevoyagers.com/bookstore/penna/berkshist.htm
Thomas Marion Heter suggests that the older Heter boys hired out as deck
hands, while the younger boys were bound to a man who paid their passage money
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