Excursus: "What Did You Do During the Revolutionary War, Grandpa?"

I thought it might be interesting to recount how some of our ancestors responded to the various wars in the times that they lived. Since we haven't talked about the Shoofly Pie segment of our history for quite some time, let's go there first.
 

Shoofly Pie

Jacob Hertzler was the first of the Amish Mennonite Hertzlers to land in the New World—"new" to them, at least. He and his family landed in Philadelphia in 1749 and settled in Bern Township, Berks County, PA, just northwest of Reading, PA, well before the American Revolution.

One of the distinctives of the Amish Mennonites was that they refused the bear the sword, whether in peacetime or wartime. So what did Jacob Hertzler and his sons do during the American Revolution?

The Pennsylvania Revolutionary War Militia listings for Bern Township, Berks County, show that a Captain Shraedel/Shartle (the orthography varies) was in charge of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Company in 1777. The listing of men in his company (you have to scroll down a piece to find Capt. Shradles, as it is spelled here) includes a Jacob Hertzler and two Christian Hertzlers. Our Jacob had a son Christian, but I'm not sure where the second Christian on the list comes from. Given that the last name is misspelled on the second Christian, the possibility of a copyist error comes to mind.

Further down the same listing of the groups of men from Bern Township eligible to serve is Captain Boder's company. Captain Boder's name is given as "Soder" in the aforementioned Pennsylvania Revolutionary War Militia listings. The list of men whom Capt. Boder might have commanded includes John Hertzler and John Hertzler, Jr. We presume that John Hertzler was the eldest son of our Jacob.

So here we have at least four Hertzlers who were on the list of men eligible to serve in the fledgling American army. But did they ever serve?

The existence of our ancestors' names on these lists doesn't mean that they fought in the Revolutionary War; rather, these militia listings were simply the names of those men in those districts who were deemed of age to fight. Whether they were ever actually summoned to serve is another matter entirely. One possibility would be to look amongst the names of those receiving pensions for military service, but in all honesty, the resistance to military service amongst the Amish Mennonites was not only deeply ingrained as a way of thinking, it was ingrained and reinforced as a way of living: serving in the military jeopardized your standing in church and community. Jacob Hertzler would never have been able to continue as bishop had he served in the military; similarly, his sons would almost certainly have been separated from church and community had they served. The fact that they all remained in good standing in their church and community does witness against the likelihood that they served in the military.

There is a family anecdote about this willingness of Amish men to stand against serving in the Revolutionary Army and it includes the name of Jacob's son, John Hertzler. Here is a recent retelling from the Pequea Bruderschaft Library Newsletter, Vol. 15 #3, Third Qtr., 2007:

"Christian Schmucker was severely tried, and imprisoned with a number of Amish brethren, for refusing military service [in the Revolutionary War--ed.], on account of their religious convictions. They were sentenced to be shot, and a day was set for the execution. A meeting was held in the Reading [Pa.] prison to administer the Lord's supper to the condemned brethren. The execution was never carried into effect. Through the leading of a kind Providence, friends interfered, particularly Henry Hertzlell, pastor of the German Reformed church, who appealed to the authorities in behalf of those who had fled from Europe to escape military service and who could not now be expected to do what their conscience forbade them to do in Europe. The appeal was heard and the peace-loving prisoners were set free. Among those released were John Hertzler, Jacob and Stephen Kauffman, Jacob Mast and Christian Zook. A family story tells how old mother Schmucker and her grandson were scorned by the town boys of Reading by throwing stones at them while taking meals to the condemned brethren in prison...." [emphasis added]

MacMaster, Horst, and Ulle sought to establish the documentation behind this story when writing their Conscience in Crisis: Mennonites and Other Peace Churches in America, 1739-1789, but came away with only one of the more plaintive footnotes a historian could write. While the main text (p. 465) says drily "...records of treason trials from Berks County have not survived.", that text is footnoted. The footnote reads:

"Unfortunately the records of the Berks County Court of Quarter Sessions and Oyer and Terminer cannot be located for any earlier date than the February 1780 term of the court, although they were deposited with the Berks County Historical Society many years ago complete from 1773 through 1781..." (fn. 19)

 And they laid down their pens and they wept.

Cheesy Grits

So far as the Cheesy Grits side of the ledger is concerned, we so far have evidence of only one ancestor who was present before the American Revolution: John G. Thorne, who was born in New York in 1765 and died in Charleston, SC, in 1820. We have no clear evidence of what he might have been up to during the Revolutionary War. All we have so far is the listing of a former Loyalist named John Thorne who landed in South Carolina in 1782. We have not yet established that this is our John G. Thorne, although it does rather conveniently solve the problem of how our John G. Thorne got from New York to South Carolina.  The closest we have to corroboration is his epitaph, which places his arrival in Charleston at around 1785.


Sources: Richard K. MacMaster, Samuel L. Horst, Robert F. Ulle, Conscience in Crisis: Mennonites and Other Peace Churches in America, 1739-1789; Interpretation and Documents. (Herald Press: 1979)

Clifford Neal Smith, Deserters and Disbanded Soldiers from British, German, and Loyalist Military Units in the South, 1792. (British-American Genealogical Research Monograph, 10.) McNeal, AZ: Westland Publications, 1991. 26p.