Category: Family (Page 4 of 4)

In 1767, George Heinrich Crist married Elizabeth “Betsey” Collings, sister to my fifth great grandfather, William Elston Collings.

George was the third of six sons of Johanne Nicolaus Heinrich, the original author of the account book from which I have been quoting, one of five brothers who traveled to America from Germany.

In 1778, Nicolaus reported that he was setting aside the account book as “it hurts to bad to write in it.” He may have been suffering from arthritis or from age (he was 62) or he may have been speaking of both physical and emotional pain, as life had been hard on him and his family.

Son George, who took over the writing of the account book after returning from service in the Revolutionary War, reports a few months later about an event: “… Pa was not well enough to take a part. His leg wound and the hard work he had to do while we was gone to war took its toll on him and Ma too.”

On February 12, 1783, five years after Nicolaus gave up the writing of the account book, George wrote: “We buried our parents today. Ma died the day before Pa…they died with pneumonia. What a loss and we will feel it for a long, long time.”

Thankfully, George was a good steward of the family account book, so we have a continued fair account of the Crist family, now directly related to my own Collings family as a result of George’s marriage to Betsey Collings.

In May of 1778, George wrote that: “Me and Nicholas and Henry want to explore the land in Kaintuck that Daniel Boone keeps talking of. He says there is thousands of acres of land waiting to be claimed. Plenty of wild game and wild horses and that the land will grow anything. The Indians are worse there but we think with enough men it would be safe enough.”

I’m sure in the passage above that George referred to himself and his brother Nicholas. I believe Henry to be George’s nephew, his brother Nicholas’ son.

This Henry was quite the character and he deserves a little sidebar in the story of the Crists and their relationship to my family, the Collings and the Richeys. At the time of George’s account book entry, his nephew Henry would have been 14 or 15 years old.

We have to be careful in our study of genealogy when trying to guess or attribute motive to our ancestors. We don’t really know why they chose to travel to the areas they did or why they settled in the areas they did or even why they undertook some of the adventures in which they found themselves.

On May 26, 1778, George reported: “Henry, Moore, Spears, Brown, Patton, Graham, Sanders, Green, Thomas, Shaw and about six others went to a meeting and after it was over they decided to go to Kaintuck. Daniel Boone says that ‘A man that stays in the valley always wonders what is on the other side of the mountain, he can guess but never knows for sure.’ So they decided to see for their self.”

We know what brought them to the area around what was to become Bullitt Co. Kentucky…salt.

To understand this, you must understand that in those days, food preservation, mainly the preservation of game, was vital to the survival of the settlers. And in those days, that meant salt was nearly worth its weight in gold.

Bullitt’s Lick was part of a concentration of salt, ranging from Bardstown Junction, Kentucky in the south, to across the Salt River to just north of present-day Fairdale, Kentucky, along the eastern side of the “Knobs” of the region. The salty streams drew deer, buffalo and other desirable game to obtain the salt they required in their diet, and hunters learned that not only were those spots great hunting grounds, but they could boil away the water to produce the great quantities of salt needed to preserve meat for storing through the winter.

Transporting salt over the mountains from the east was difficult and expensive. Being able to produce salt on the spot where hunting was most successful ensured the salt licks of Kentucky would become the new hot spot for speculators and entrepreneurs.

First came the surveyors, then the agents grabbing up all the land around the creeks and streams, then the actual workers who leased land to set up the saltworks.

Salt was extracted by boiling water in 100 pound kettles above a trench of fire. As the water evaporated from the heat, salt crystals resulted. Eventually, salt produced in and around the area was sold and shipped into the Illinois and Tennessee Territories and sent downriver to New Orleans.

Henry Crist, while still in his teens, saw the possibilities when he and his father first came to the Kentucky Territory. At that early age he became a land scout or “land locator” for a wealthy man named Jacob Myers, who eventually laid claim to most of the Kentucky Territory. As a result of his work for Myers, Henry obtained rights to some of the land he scouted.

At the age of about 20, Henry and a man named Solomon Spears bought out another man’s claim at the site called Long Lick.

In 1788, while supplying that claim, Henry and Solomon encountered a large band of Indians and fought for their lives in the Battle of the Kettles.

Next week, I’ll tell you that story.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll remember I’ve been following the adventures of a family named Crist who came to America in 1738. This family is closely tied with my own ancestors, the Collings family and I managed to find some very interesting accounts of life in those early days of our country based on the writings of Johann Nicolaus Crist who was given an account book by his father at the time Nicolaus and his brothers left for America.

When I last shared his adventures with you, Nicolaus had just returned from the Battle of Fort Necessity also known as the Battle of Great Meadows, where he received a very serious wound that nearly cost him his leg.

The leg wound that Nicolaus sustained affected his ability to work for the rest of his life and in his journal entry of August 5, 1754 he said, “I am lucky to have my sons.”

Nicolaus and Catherine had six sons and lost one infant daughter, obviously a painful loss as Nicolaus celebrated the marriages of three of his sons on May 7, 1763 by stating “Catherine and me finally got the daughters we never had (when) three of our sons was married yesterday. John Jacob married Regenah Cartmell, Nicholas Heinrich Jr. married Sarah Cartmell and Philip Henry married Rachel Cartmell. Rev. Henrie Dreher performed the wedding ceremony in the same Lutheran Church where Ana Catherin and me married.”

My Collings family enters the story as Nicolaus wrote on March 5, 1767: “Our fourth son George Heinrich married Elizabeth Collings today in the Lutheran Church where we got married. She was fifteen years of age today. Rev. Henrie Dreher performed the wedding Ceremony. Me and Elizabeth’s Pa, William Edward Collings growed up together and come to America on the same ship. He married Anne Elizabeth Nowlin a cousin to my Catherin. We had a feast, danced to good German music and played games all day.”

There are some aspects of this entry I don’t understand…William Edward Collings is shown in most of my research as having been born in America of English heritage. Still there is no doubt his daughter Elizabeth married George Crist and we have also been able to document that William Edward Collings was in fact married to Anne Elizabeth Nowlin.

History and genealogical study can be a very interesting and puzzling pastime!

Nicolaus and Catherin’s remaining two sons were married in 1769.

Life seemed good for the families, but harder times were ahead. December 24, 1776, Nicolaus wrote: I guess that I am more scared now than I was coming across the ocean to America. We have six sons in Washington’s Continental Army. Catherin and me are doing the best we can to take care of our daughters and grandchildren. Everyone is working hard from day break until dark trying to keep things going. We have seen bad times but it is worse now. Our food that we have stored is low. It seems that every one around us is in bad shape. The only thing that we can do is pray that it will get better and soon be over. Me and Catherin are so tired and scared, not for ourselves but for our loved ones.

The Revolutionary War was a heroic fight by a young nation to win freedom from England, but it was a hard time for those whose day to day life was affected not only by the shortage of goods from the outside world, but the fact their very farms and fields became the battlefields of the war.

All six of the Crist sons likely entered the war as militia, which was something like our National Guard is today, not fulltime soldiers, but citizen soldiers who took up arms to supplement regular army forces to defend home and country. Militia usually committed to two-year enlistments.

In the days of the Revolutionary War, communication was impossible, and Nicolaus and Catherin endured the hardships of supporting themselves and the families of their sons as best they could without knowing the fate of their boys. Catherin worked to teach the grandchildren because they recognized education was important. In the words of Nicolaus, “They need to learn to read and write and arithmetic so bad. If they live through all this.”

By early 1778, his old war injury, the stress and strain of the current war and the uncertainty about the fate of his family was wearing hard on Nicolaus. At age 62, “I am putting my Account Book up. It hurts to bad to write in it. Some of our neighbors have lost sons in the war. Catherin lost her parents in 1749 and June 1750 I got word from Germany that my parents had died in February that year with pneumonia and we lost our little daughter and all that hurt. But our sons that we have raised all these years, I truly do not know. We do not know if our sons are dead or alive. They could be somewhere wounded in the cold with no shelter. We do have a shelter and fire to keep us warm and dry and food to eat. It has been so cold with sleet and rain and snow. It is so hard on their wives and children not knowing if they will see them again or not. The only thing that we can do is pray that they will be sent home to us safe and not be wounded and mangled for life that the day will be soon.”

Thankfully, Nicolaus’ prayers for his family were answered. All six of his sons returned to their families, and his fourth son George, husband to my ancestor, Elizabeth Collings, took up the duties of writing in the Account Book, so the adventures of the Crist family along with my Collings family could continue to be passed down through the generations.

Stay tuned for more adventures!

You may remember a few weeks ago I introduced you to five young men, the Crist brothers who left their home in Germany in 1738 and traveled to America.

I “met” these young men while doing some genealogical research into my family and a significant historical event in which the Collings branch of my family played a major part. More about that later. For now, I want to tell you a little more about the Crist family.

Remember, Nicolaus Heinrich Crist kept an “account book” given to him by his father when he left for the New World. Nicolaus wanted to tell about their trip “so if we die they will know who we are,” which I found very touching. The boys did not die, they reached America after a long and arduous journey.

Here’s where I begin to have problems in my research. Crist named his brothers and he also listed several other young men who traveled with them, saying “There’s fifteen of us that knows each other we have labored – fought and laughed together all our lives.” One of the names he listed was William Edward Collings.

William Edward Collings is my 6^th great grandfather, and I knew from other research that the Crist family and the Collings family had a long history together, but this record does not match with what I know.

My William Edward Collings was reportedly born in Somerset Co., PA in 1724. His father’s name was Zebulon and he was also born in America, so the account of William Edward Collings coming to America with the Crist boys confuses me, and I’m still working on that.

The facts I can confirm are this…the Crist boys did come to America and Nicolaus Heinrich did keep an account book that proves to be correct in many other details, so we’re going to follow this thread. Our families did come together at some point, because Nicolaus’ son George married William Edward Collings’ granddaughter, Elizabeth, called Betsy, and that we can confirm. The inconsistencies are what make genealogy so fascinating!

Throughout ensuing years, the same names keep cropping up in our family history even as these pioneers moved from landing spot into Pennsylvania/Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana. Crist, Collings, Richey, Cauffman, Biggs, etc. Throughout history, groups of people tended to live together, struggle together, fight together and stay together as they traveled to new parts of the country.

Setting aside how these families got to know each other, they all ended up (or began their new beginnings) in an area of the new world that is very confusing. There is a place on our modern map of America where Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia sort of touch. Back in the 1700’s the boundaries in that area were very fluid and one might have ancestors living in Pennsylvania one year and Virginia the next without ever physically moving. The names of counties sometimes got moved with the boundaries…sometimes new counties were created from old counties that disappeared completely.

This is the area where my Collings branch and the Crist family became neighbors, strong friends and eventually family. They lived in this area through the troubled years leading up to the Revolutionary War and the men of both families fought from here in the French & Indian War and later for the independence of the colonies.

Once again, the account book of Nicolaus Heinrich records the action. After arriving in America on September 15, 1738, by November 24 of that same year, he writes: “I saw and talked to my wife to be today. She is more beautiful than my mother if that is possible. Did not tell her that she was going to be my wife.”

Just three months after arriving in this new world, on Christmas Day of that year, the Crist brothers were invited by Sir John Henry Nowlin, Esq. to share in a Christmas feast and at that time Nicolaus asked Sir John for the hand of his daughter Catherine in marriage. Sir John responded favorably and with a hearty handshake the deal was done. The young couple married on January 25, 1739.

By October 29, 1739, the 23-year-old Nicolaus and 19-year-old Catherine had started their family by welcoming their first son, John Jacob.

Over the next few years, the couple added five more sons, lost a daughter at birth, and suffered the tragedy of Catherine’s mother, father, two brothers and a sister drowning when the raft they were taking down river to visit family broke apart in rough water. In Germany, Nicolaus’ parents both died of pneumonia.

In 1754, Nicolaus went to fight in the French Indian War and came home wounded. He wrote: “I came home today. I was wounded in the leg at the Battle of Great Meadows [aka Battle of Fort Necessity]. I am lucky to have my sons. It looks like I might lose my leg, it is real bad.”

He did not lose his leg, but suffered from that serious injury for the rest of his life.

In 1767, one of their sons, George Heinrich, married Elizabeth Collings who was the sister of my 5^th great grandfather William Elston Collings, son of William Edward Collings.

By 1776, all six of Nicolaus and Catherine’s sons were fighting in the Revolutionary War.

Stay tuned. It only gets more exciting and yes, there will be drama and tragedy.

Sailing vessels such as this brought many to America in the 17th and 18th century.

On March 1, 1738, all five brothers of the Crist family, boarded a ship in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and set sail for America.

We can’t know for sure why they left Germany although we do know that in the 1700’s thousands of Germans traveled to America for both economic and religious reasons. In addition, there was a fair amount of real commercial wheeling and dealing going on.

Earlier settlers were traveling back to Europe to purchase supplies and goods for resale in America. Ship owners and captains, anxious to keep their ships full and in constant use, would promise these merchants (who became known as “newlanders”) free passage and/or shipping if they recruited passengers for the trip back across the Atlantic. From 1735 to 1737 the numbers of Germans traveling to America increased from 268 to over 1500. Business was booming and in 1738 the numbers continued to grow.

The Crist brothers, John Jacob (24), Nicolaus Heinrich (22), Peter Ludwick (20), Philip Henrie (18), and Michael Jorge (17) may have set off for America for the adventure of it or they may have gone for riches and glory. The reasons for emigration in those days were as varied as the number of emigrants.

We’re lucky, though, that the Crist family had a real sense of the magnitude of their decision and journey. Before they left their home in Germany, their father Jorge Nichlaus Crist gave them each an account book, and son Nicolaus kept a detailed account of their days at sea. In fact, he kept his account book all his life turning it over to his son in later years, and while the Crist family are not  direct descendents of my family, they are related by marriage. This account book has given my family some insight into our history while recording some very historic times and events.

On March 2, 1738, Nichlaus wrote of their second day at sea: “It was cold and dark last night – so many became ill – it was stormy – high winds and heavy rains. The vessel was rocky.”

The routes the ships took to America were varied. Many of the Germans left from Rotterdam, Amsterdam and stopped off at some port in England to further provision and pick up any other travelers before setting off across the open ocean.

On May 10, 1738, the journal reads: “The vessel smells of stench. We are stopping for supplies tomorrow. I hope they will stop long enough to clean and air the vessel.”

Two months on the ship and they had not even really started across the Atlantic. Do you begin to get a picture of what travelers to America endured? Well, read on…

May 14, 1738: “I am going to write in my account book about me so if we die they will know who we are. There’s fifteen of us that knows each other we have labored – fought and laughed together all our lives. Now it looks like we will cry and likely die together.”

He lists his brothers and eight of the others who are traveling with them, then says of his parents, Jorge Nichlaus and Anna Crist, “…I wish they was here, they would know what to do and it would be better.”

On the 14^th of May, the ship set out to cross the Atlantic.

August 12, 1738: “I wish I was home. Peter and Philip and Michael does too but John Jacob thinks because he is oldest that he can not show his real feelings. We are all sick, Michael is real sick but we can not do anything to help him.”

August 28, 1738: “It is so hot during the day and the smell is terrible. Every body has dysentery. We have lost many lives. I wonder if we will make it to America.”

September 15, 1738: “We landed in America yesterday. It felt so good to set, walk and lay on the dirt in the land that we had all dreamed of being able to live to see. Our prayers was answered. I cried myself to sleep as did many others. The air smelled and tasted so good. I only know one thing that I do not ever want to get on another ship for the rest of my life.”

Their journey took five and a half months. The journal gives us just the barest idea of what these young men endured to come here. Estimates of the deaths that occurred during the wave of emigrants traveling in 1738 range from 1,800 to 2,000 souls, victims to various diseases, such as typhus, or starvation, or shipwreck.

I have more of this journal and as I said earlier, it plays some part in the history of my family, so you can expect to meet up with some other members of the Crist family in future posts.