Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Ch. 1: Pennsylvania Lawless

Pennsylvania Lawless Ch. 1
 
Outbreaks on the Pennsylvania Frontier says tolerance of lawless behavior stemmed from fear.

Philadelphia had greater extremes of philosophy than any other frontier.
 Violence and intimidation were an important background of religious and irreligious success. No better instance sums these Outbreaks than Muhlenberg declaring how intruders at a wedding "scoff at churches and preachers," (Journals I, 136). Fire was a preferred means of extermination in the timber. In Ephrata about 1734 "these newcomers... devoid of all fear of God... once they, without warning, set fire to the forest, in the hope of burning down the Settlement; but the fire turned, and laid in ashes the barn of a householder with all its contents; (Chronicon 66). Adam Hains attempted one night to burn down the house of Muhlenberg's son-in-law, justice of the peace Conrad Weiser, with his family in it (Wallace, 208).  Muhlenberg
 "If the head of a house should give offense to some insolent Irishman or brutal German, he may very likely find that some harm has been done to his cattle or crops during the night, since everything stands out in the open, exposed to the revenge and spite of such callous people… before he is able to summon the aid of a neighbor or the justice of the peace, the enemy may already have perpetrated the utmost damage and fled several miles away into the forest" (Muhlenberg Journals, op. cit.).


 The lawlessness of  "Pennsylvania liberty"cultivated a philosophy of irreligiousness, but the religious explained that in the new world immigrants lost their faith.  Tautology and nihilism were only the tip of the branch of liberty and license. "Even the most exemplary preachers, especially in rural districts, are often reviled, laughed at and mocked by young and old, like Jews... such outrageous coarseness and rudeness result from the excessive freedom in that country, and from the blind zeal of the many sects" (Mittelberger, 48). How then distinguish the newborns from the unborns so to speak, when one seems to speak all, for the Newborns, a religious cult, were the most religious irreligious of all.  But the much-quoted phrase that "Pennsylvania is heaven for farmers, paradise for artisans, and hell for officials and preachers" makes a  case for  broad membership to include every anticlerical spirit focused by the more spectacular sects.  Mittelberger laments:


"In Pennsylvania there exist so many varieties of doctrines and sects that it is impossible to name them all. Many people do not reveal their own particular beliefs to anyone. Furthermore there are many hundreds of adults who not only are unbaptized but who do not even want baptism. Many others pay no attention to the Sacraments and to the Holy Bible, or even to God and his Word. Some do not even believe in the existence of a true God or Devil, Heaven or Hell, Salvation or Damnation, the Resurrection of the Dead, the Last Judgment and Eternal Life, but think that everything visible is of merely natural origin. For in Pennsylvania not only is everyone allowed to believe what he wishes; he is also at liberty to express these beliefs publicly and freely" (22).

Before 1750 Muhlenberg says that the many makeshift preachers among them did "not know the fundamental truths of religion, but they affect only the outward forms and dispute about such matters as altar and table, the bread and the host, the preacher's robe and vestments, about whether to say Vater Unser or Unser Vater. This gives rise to heated religious disputes and disgraceful word battles among the common people—between husbands and wives, among neighbors, parents, children, relatives, and friends" ( I, 152). Mittelberger illustrates these heated disputes, "I knew an old German neighbor of mine very well. He had been a Lutheran. Then he rebaptized himself in running water. Some time later he circumcised himself and thereafter believed only in the Old Testament. Finally, just before he died, he baptized himself again by sprinkling water over his head" (Journals I, 84).

This religious confusion is nothing compared with the many baptisms of Conrad  Beissel  whose ritualistic mentality and isolation were so extreme that he  attempted to baptize himselfto baptize himself, "this questionable act, however, failed to convince him...yet he considered his old master...so far beneath him... that it would be too great a humiliation for his proud spirit to receive baptism at their hands." (Sachse , German Sectarians, I, 102). Beissel got over his impediment by comparing himself with Jesus, in the revival on the Pequea (1724),  remembered "that even Christ had humbled himself to be baptized by so lowly a person as John" (Sachse, 103). He had himself immersed by Peter Becker face forward three times.These exaggerations match his pride, for that cleansing from all taint lasted only until it had to be redone, that is, as Sachse, himself a Rosicrucian like Beissel, relates, Beissel in November 1724 plunged "beneath the flood, and through it again enter[ed] the material world cleansed from all taint and sin...yet his pride forbade him to humble himself, as he considered, to bow to his old master [Peter Becker] and receive the rite at his hands" (103). Of course all this must be done "apostolicwise," Sachse says. "Apostles" appeared in Pennsylvania as much and as often as they did in later Scottsdale. Aposticity dictates the autocracy of Beissel going "face forward, under the cold flood." Sachse says that "this baptism in the Pequea was the most noteworthy one in the history of the sect-people of Pennsylvania" (104). But as if he had been baptized in muddy water and had later to rewash, four years later Beissel renounced this baptism to avoid  any taint on his authority in having been baptized by a group from whom he now severed (Becker's baptists). It puts a whole new meaning on Anabaptist when Beissel was rebaptized again again, went back down to the river and got re-baptized twice. By any proper count we are now at four. First he was unbaptised backwards to wash off the former at the hands of Becker. He went under three times backwards. This was done to an accompaniment of Rosicrucian mysteries of fours and sevens that only Sachse comprehends. Then, after being unbaptized, he flipped over on his face and went down forwards. Backwards means face up in renunciation and frontwards means face down in restoration. By 1738 Beissel was enacting baptisms for the dead, (Chronicon, 122). The son of the  founder of the Baptists, Alexander Mack, was baptized in his father's stead in order to qualify him for the Celestial Virginity. These incongruent baptisms were common knowledge. In his polemic against Beissel  Christopher Sauer alludes to it when he says, "I have, without baptizing myself and letting myself be baptized four times (like him)" (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 344). They could not leave baptism alone. Anabaptists took again and again to the water. They rebaptised as a rededication, a repentence and a show of solidarity until in 1745 repeated baptisms were joined with hair cutting. The whole sisterhood was rebaptized as were ten at one time, fourteen at other, all performed by Beissel. It was "purposed it be a yearly custom" (Chronicon, 192) This occurred after the trying period when the Eckerlins had left, accused of "church-robbery" (190)

The difference between the irreligious fanatic Newborn and this Baptist lawlessness was narrow. Beissel, founder of the Ephrata Cloister, and Newborn founder, Baumann, leader of the Newborn, insisted absolutely upon their authority in every matter. Likewise, the Reformed founder, Boehm had to have his way, and his usurper Weiss, his. Each arrogated a law of their own. They said they were following God in overthrowing men. In this they were joined by Zinzendorf, the Moravian founder who had the sweetest tongue to speak of redemption, but the most autocratic command of the redeemed. He says, "'Benedict, I am giving your daughter to Eschenbach; you and your wife I am taking with me to Germany, and your estate belongs to the Saviour'" (Muhlenberg, I, 150). Thus the sects ruled the minds of their followers. Conrad Weiser went from being a Lutheran, to being celibate with Beissel, to Zinzendorf' and then back to being Lutheran through the good offices of his father-in-law, Muhlenberg whose daughter he married. When the much reconverted Indian scout left Beissel the Moravians it was because he was "compelled to protest for a considerable time against the domination of conscience, the suppression of innocent minds, against the prevailing pomp and luxury…" (Weiser, 128). When he left Zinzendorf that cult it prayed for his death! So the choices were either to subscribe to the old world church, the newer Pietists, the religious no-religion of the Newborns, or the No- religion, called the Pennsylvania religion: "It had become proverbial, respecting any one who cared not for god and his word, that 'he was of the Pennsylvanian religion'" (Spangenberg's Life of Zinzendorf, in Wallace 246).

A Pennsylvania Dada Cult Der Neugeborene

The apparent secular irreligiousness, of say a "Spinoza, Collins, Spenzer, Bayl," (Muhlenberg, I, 139) is turned into a religion by the Newborn. In May 1747 Muhlenberg observed a woman in "Oley, where practically all the inhabitants are scoffers and blasphemers. It is a place like Sodom and Gomorrah and I have preached there several times for the sake of a Lot or two who live there, but the wanton sinners only scoffed and jeered at me" (I, 146). In June 1747, "we stopped in at the home of an old man, one of the sect called Newborn…he will listen to no advice, accepts neither reason nor a higher revelation in all its parts…when he came to this country, he joined the turbulent sect" ( I, 149). Presiding at the funeral of an ex-Newborn member in 1753, Muhlenberg relates that he had "lived in a region inhabited by people who hold all kinds of curious opinions, despise preachers, churches, and sacraments without discrimination, and pride themselves in their own righteousness" (I, 357). During the service, "an old man, who called himself Newborn, stood outside, before the door, and began to preach to several people of his persuasion with noisy blustering which was intended to disturb me."
Monopolizing the term Newborn to denote a sociopath was a mockery of those pietistic people who wanted to get some emotion and integrity into their religion but instead got autocracy. This mockery was purposeful and not ironic. New born of course signifies spiritual birth, a regeneration leading to a changed life, an unworldly life, much as evangelicals say today. The Newborn hijacked the term and made it virtually opposite and antagonistic to any sane belief.  The Neugeborene however founded no later denomination. Among the host of visionaries, arriving about 1714, their founder, Baumann, began to travel from Oley into Philadelphia for dialectics against Quakers and others on the courthouse steps,  promising them he would walk on the Delaware river. He did not say whether this would be in winter, on ice. His comeuppance  from Beissel was nasty. When Baumann  visited Ephrata (c.1722). Beissel was so offended at Baumann's (rhetorical) freedom from sin that he offered his own stink as a remedy and repudiation of Baumann's sinlessness. Such was the power of his demons that Beissel  seduced other men's wives with promises of spiritual intercourse.

Derision was heaped on the Newborns however to evade the issue of the other sects malfeasance. Muhlenberg, one of the few voices of integrity (June 10, 1747), gave a contemporary explanation of Newborn theology: "this sect claims the new birth which they receive suddenly through immediate inspiration and heavenly visions through dreams and the like. When they receive the new birth in this way, then they are God and Christ Himself, can no longer sin, and are infallible. They therefore use nothing from God's Word except those passages, which taken out of context, appear to favor their false tenets. The holy sacraments are to them ridiculous and their expressions concerning them are extremely offensive" (I, 149). Heavenly visions and inner light preoccupied what Muhlenberg learned of the old man who disturbed Philip Bayer's funeral: "this was the basis of his authority: one night, many years ago, he saw a light in his room. He claimed that this light revealed to him, that he was a child of God, that the magistracy, the ministry, the Bible, sacraments, churches, schools, etc. are of the devil, that all men must be like him, etc" (I, 357-358). This all smacks of the erosion of sanity in ergot poisoning, not that it was, it being merely a societal disease like the Anabaptists eating each other in the attempt to found a theocracy in the Münster rebellion (1534-1535).

Pennsylvania Dadaist

A response to the virulent Newborn came from George Michael Weiss, the Reformed pastor who supplanted and defrocked Boehm. He issued Der In Der Americani Schen Wildnusz in 1729 in the form of a visit to the farm of a Newborn. The argument goes: "I have worked hard and that is the result, but I do not see any reason why I should thank God" (summarized by Hinke in Sachse, 157-59). "I do not need all that, for I am a New Born. I am perfectly without sin. God is in me and I am in God," (presumably quoting John 14:20), "I am in my Father, you are me and I am in you." When the narrator enumerates four ways God could be in him "the New Born then claims without hesitation that He is in him in the most perfect way, because He is perfectly sinless." There being no greater authority than himself he "answers by denying the authority of the Bible," that is, he is his own Scripture. Trumping the objective universe, in answer to the query, "How do you know that you are new born?" he answers, 'I feel it within me by a peculiar illumination of God's Spirit.'" Who can not say this at any time, from Lem's spaceman Kelvin in Solaris to every incidence on a picket line, to greater and lesser degree? Cautioned about the danger of self-deception, "the New Born answers that he has all the inner fruits, but he declares he can see no use for such outward things as have been mentioned. Especially does he object to divine worship in a church and to ministers." Finally, QED, "it is all the same whether you talk or don't talk."

 This sounds so Zen we have to ask whether it is, even if the groundswell of beliefs supporting the Newborns were a patina to justify lawless acts. Dreams, visions and inspirations give a greater context for 18th century Pennsylvania setting out to "confound men." But in the religious customs of his day Baumann and the Newborns were more Pennsylvania Dadaists than Zen Buddhists. The Dada Manifesto of the early 20th century writes large Baumann's thinking. But while Tristan Tarza proclaimed that Dadaism "expresses the knowledge of supreme egoism, in which laws wither away" (Motherwell, 78-79), both Beissel and Zinzendorf could say, "me too" (but of course there can be only one me). It is perfect solipsism: "everything one looks at is false...everyone dances to his own boom-boom." Tarza's aphorisms, the "abolition of logic…memory...unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity" (78-9) are very suitable for a zealot. To substitute "religion" for "art" in the Neu-merz manifesto of Victor Zygouov (1997) we would have a Neugeborene: "In art, Dadaism is the concept of anti-art [anti-religion]. All art that one sees is just a product of the society that created it. Because Dadaism is in opposition to all society, it is in opposition to the art which society produced as well."


The Newborn in opposition to society is in opposition to the religion society produced. The only truth being inward illumination, it is that religious conundrum of kergyma vs. truth, me vs. thee, rhema vs. logos. TThe word fragment "merz"  in Neu-merzwas was discovered by Dadaist Kurt Schwitters in a Hanover trash can. Pennsylvania prophets resemble Dadaists in that they "express the knowledge of supreme egoism, in which laws wither away." This withering of law is a common denominator, among Labadists, Rosicrusians, various Pietists, Dunkers, German Baptists, Moravians, Ephratatites, Baumann, Beissel, Zinzendorf.

Oley

Oley was the home territory of this mockery: "Many agitators appeared among the backwoods, among them Matthias Baumann from Oley who came in 1719 (sic.) to conduct revivals among the godless settlers. A visionary, he taught that his disciples were free from sin and had no need for Scripture, sacraments or marriage. Many converts flocked to even Quakers, Reformed and Lutheran" (Earnst, 48).
Mittelberger, three times references Oley and the newborn. (Philip E. Pendleton. Oley Valley Heritage. The Colonial Years: 1700-1775). 


"One of our churchmen approached a rich scoffer in Oly Township and desired to borrow some money.
The rich man said to the poor man, "Do you know who my God is?"
The poor man replied, "No."
The rich man pointed to his manure pile outside the door and said, 'there is my God; he gives me wheat and everything I need" (I, 138). 

 Wheat, of course, was the region's cash crop. Another, admonished to give thought to his death, laughed "that he had long since thought of his death and decided, as far as his soul was concerned, to enter into a swine, since he was fond of pork anyhow" (Muhlenberg, I, 138). Mittelberger's homily against Conrad Reiff and Arnold Huffnagel for their contempt and mockery of the clergy is the most detailed report of Oley (Journey to Pennsylvania, 84). In it we understand the fundamental mission of the Newborn to mock the clergy.

There Mittelberger made an example of such an "objectionable preacher," giving a Newborn parody:

"Alas, among the preachers there are also several quite irritating ones who offend many people, besides causing much annoyance to our ministers. At a gathering of young farmers from the township of Oley with whom he ministers. I will cite one example of such an objectionable preacher. His name was Alexander. At a gathering of young farmers from the township of Oley with whom he had been carousing he announced that with his sermon he would so move the people standing in front of him that all of them would begin to cry, but at the very same time all of those standing behind him would start laughing. He wagered these same young farmers a considerable sum that he would be able to do this. And on a certain agreed day he appeared at a church meeting, stationed himself in the midst of the assemblage, and began to preach with a great deal of power and emotion. When he saw that his listeners had become so moved that they began to cry, he put his hands behind him, pulled his coat-tails apart, and revealed through a pair of badly torn breeches his bare behind, which he scratched with one hand during this demonstration. At this those who were standing behind him could not help roaring with laughter; and so he won his bet. An account of this disgusting incident appeared both in the German and English newspapers of Philadelphia" (Journey, 45).

Following the riches theme, Muhlenberg says that life in Oley was "lucrative and lascivious." A third time, June 10, 1747, he visits eight miles from New Hanover. "We stopped in at the home of an old man, one of the sect called Newborn. . .he separated from the (Reformed) Church and the Lord's Supper and refused to give the oath of loyalty to the then ruling elector, for which he was examined by the consistory and imprisoned. According to his opinion he had been persecuted and expelled for the sake of Christ and the truth, but as a matter of fact he was only confirmed in his stubbornness. He will listen to no advice, accepts neither reason nor a higher revelation in all its parts, since he is weak in understanding, headstrong, and hot-tempered; and unfortunately he abuses the freedom of Pennsylvania. When he came to this country, he joined the turbulent sect of people who call themselves Newborn."

Confounding Men

With apologies to Ovid and Kafka, Matthius Baumann had his own metamorphosis during a sudden illness in 1701. In a tract written in Oley in 1723 intended for distribution in Pennsylvania he published, Ein Ruf an die Unwiedergebohrene Welt (A Call to the Unregenerate). Parts of this are preserved in the Chronicon Ephretense (1786). Baumann says hewas "translated to heaven and given the power of prophecy" (Sachse, 73). He had trances for 14 days, saw the end of the world, had an interview with the divine. "All church and sect life as it was known - clergy, sacrament, ritual, catechism, scripture, prayer, communal worship-was an abomination before God and a waste of time. The only way to salvation was through a traumatic experience of spiritual death and rebirth, which incorporated an actual interview with the heavenly Being. Those who underwent this wrenching transformation emerged saved and, from then on, forever free of and incapable of sin" (Pendleton, 106).

The Newborn believed this "perfection" was a massive internal revelation from which the "babe" could not fall. Whether the faith was Lutheran, Reformed, Moravian or anything else those faiths were sin. More traditional communities thought that "New Born beliefs more dangerous to people's souls and to the social order than those of any other sect in Pennsylvania" (Pendleton, 106). The ridicule and blasphemy the Newborn urged was first cited in the Chronicon (17). As a result of their desire to "confound men," to disrupt their religious services and rhetoric, Oley and the Newborn were joined at the hip. Oley, derived from the Lenape name, meaning "hole" or "kettle," a hollow ringed with mountains, was a caldron of prophetic thornapple.

But it continued a little. In 1753 (although the account is published in 1756), Mittelberger, three times references Oley and the newborn in his Journey. Mittelberger gives the Newborn current status, while others say they have died out by that time, including them equally in his heterogeneous catalog of "Lutherans, members of the Reformed Church, Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites or Anabaptists, Herrenhuter or Moravian Brothers, Pietists, Seventh-Day Adventists, Dunkers, Presbyterians, New-born, Freemasons, Separatists, Freethinkers, Jews, Mohammedans, Pagans, Negroes, and Indians" (Journey, 41).

Silencing the newborn

John Philip Boehm wrote of Oley in 1740 that "the worst were those who called themselves 'The New Born.' Without hesitation they declared themselves to be equal to God and greater than our Saviour; they pretended to be free (from sin)…however, after God had removed such shameless blasphemers of His name, the true Christians met and desired to establish, by the help of God, a congregation according to our true Reformed doctrine" (Life and Letters, 1740, 278-79). This refers to the founding of the Oley Reformed Church in 1736. Boehm said he had been aware of the Newborn since he was first in the country, eighteen years before, in 1722. He mentions them first in his letter of 1728 among "all sorts of errorists, as Independents, Puritans, Anabaptists, Newborn, Saturday-folks" (Life and Letters, 1728, 161).

The multiple references of Muhlenberg and Mittelberger to the later Newborn presence would seem to modify Boehm's statement that they had been silenced, as does the Old Moravian record of the Oley church in 1736 that "there were at that time all kinds of spirits in Oley, of which the Newborn were the dominant party" (cited by Hinke in Life and Letters, 110). The Moravian version of the silencing is that it came about as a direct result of Moravian efforts, namely Spangenberg's, who in 1737 "…came to Oley and there he gave such testimony regarding the meritorious death of Christ, (this language, also that of Conrad Reiff's will, suggests Conrad after became a Moravian) with such a demonstration of the Spirit, that the power of darkness received a severe blow. His first sermon was delivered in the house of Jonathan Herbein and the second in the house of Abraham Bertholet. He attacked the newborn in his discourse from the words of I John 1:7,8,9. Through this address the spirit of the Newborn was so broken that it could not gain strength again and is daily becoming weaker" (Hinke, Life and Letters, 111).

Everybody wanted a piece of the Newborn's demise. The Ephrata hermits claimed it was earlier "that from this time on [after Baumann's audience with Beissel] they lost all power to spread their seductions any farther, which finally died out with their originators" (Chronicon, 17). Thus Boehm must share Baumann with the Moravians and the Moravians with The Ephrataites. Newborn notoriety was much greater than actual numbers, as Boehm said, some partially agreed with them, swelling their ranks. We discern true believers, partial believers and in the pond that supports the lily pad, a great swell of anti-clericalism and unbelief that the Newborn focused and gave expression to.

Outlaw Outtakes on Conrad Reiff

Some of Conrad Reiff's biography in The Historical Review fell to the cutting floor. These cuttings can amplify Outbreaks of the Lawless. Reiff and Gottlieb Mittelberger were probably at one time friends of a sort. Before he left Pennsylvania in 1753 for Germany Mittelberger would have attended the funeral service of Anna   Reiff. Everyone else was there. Conrad Reiff, was. We develop the likelihood of their contact in the article. At the funeral of their mother various other contacts among the frontier brothers occurred, and also at the reading of the will of their brother George in 1759.  The conflicted Balthaser Gehr, son of Anna Reiff II and Conrad Gehr, probably attended. He had been given fiduciary and legal care of his cousin Philip Reiff, Conrad’s son, from 1786 to his death in 1815. Balthaser Gehr (cf. Pendleton, 137, 147) married the daughter of that equally wealthy neighbor of Conrad Reiff, Antony Jaeger. In 1767 Jaeger's "sons Daniel and Henry, and his son-in-law Balthaser Gehr were tried for assault and battery on the Jaegers' lifelong neighbor, miller Heinrich Kerst. A neighbor, Jacob Silvious, also stood trial for coming to Kerst's defense" (Pendleton, 147). Balthaser exercised a power of attorney for his infirm cousin, Philip Reiff, second son of Conrad, in 1786 (Pendleton, 137). Meanwhile, in more lawless outbreaks, Baltes went Oley.

The disposition of another son of Gehr, Philip, is unknown. He appears in the ledger of the Old Salford Store (c. 1766-1774) reported as, "Gehr, Philip; Conrad Gehr's son of Germantown" (John R. Tallis, The Perkiomen Region, II, 33).] Near the bottom of the will of Hans George Reiff (d. 1726), a different handwriting than the will reads, "Cunrad Gehr married Anna," (Riffe, 20) suggesting this was written after probate. Gehr was issued a patent by the land office for 34 acres in the Salfords in 1735, the same year as Garrett Clemens, Christopher Dock, Peter Wentz and Hans Reiff among others (H. W. Kriebel in The Perkiomen Region, V, 11), but Heckler speculates he possibly there was confused with Conrad Custer (Heckler, Lower Salford, I, 13). Gehr had at least two sons. Baltazar, or Baltes Gehr served in the Pennsylvania legislature. He was mentioned in his uncle's will, (George Reiff) in 1759, "my will is after my sister's son Baltes should set up his trade, my wife shall give him twenty pounds to buy tools for it" (Riffe, 28). It should be noted that Anna was not called Anna Maria as her full name is suggested to be, but merely Anna, like her mother, who signed Anna in the Landes will and on the board in the attic.

Conrad Gehr's Peccadilloes

Oley affected Conrad Reiff, brothers Peter and George and Jacob's daughter Catherine who all either lived there or owned land. Spiritually the effects of Oley were more serious upon Conrad's mother and sister (Anna and Anna Maria) through the aforesaid sister's husband Conrad Gehr. Gehr's experience of the Newborn is as important as brother-in-law Conrad's because they together flesh out the satirical Newborn beliefs and show the influence in the family. Genealogist Harry Reiff says the "family knew about Conrad's (Gehr) peccadilloes, as indicated in the will of Hans George's son, George (d.1759), who died leaving a legacy to nephew Baltazar with an admonition not to permit his father, Conrad Gehr, to have any of the legacy" (Letter of 2/13/2002). Gehr's peccadilloes were 1) that he operated a tavern in Germantown (before 1753) where Newborn blasphemy was commonplace and 2) that he had been imprisoned for fraud (Muhlenberg, I, 353). Gehr figures prominently in Muhlenberg's writing after the funeral of Conrad's mother, Anna. The daughter, Anna Maria, had been "attached to the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church," which means Muhlenberg must have heard firsthand the distress Gehr put his wife through by his behaviour. This distress doubled because at that time the mother lived with her daughter. Muhlenberg says,

"During my first years here [1742 and following] she was living with her daughter in Germantown…for the sake of her daughter the distressed old widow stayed at the former's home…she was obliged to listen to many a blasphemous utterance and witness many an offense on the part of her son-in-law, who was Reformed by birth, but in this country not only forsook the Word of God and the other means of grace, but also despised and ridiculed them" (I, 352).
Muhlenberg stipulates that the "offenses" included, that "the said man maintained a public house and it occurred to him that he might institute a so-called assembly of worship in his house on Sundays. For this purpose he associated himself with a half-educated but totally perverted Christian who was to deliver a sermon or address on physic or natural science at every meeting. The auditors were obligated to pay three pence apiece each time, and this money was to be consumed in drink after the speech" (I, 353).

New Born ideas gave a metaphysic to tavern talk, even if it sounds like Paine's Age of Reason (1795) or other enlightenment doctrines, such attitudes were early 18th century and German, the specific form that Mittelberger saw affecting Conrad Reiff. But it was not isolated from all the other revisions of order in PA from Wohlfarth and Beissel standing on the court house steps to argue which day of the week was the sabbath (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 154) to Gehr's substitution of tavern for church, science for scripture and the price of a drink for the offering. These suggest that the 1701 Blue Law of the General Court of Germantown was not being enforced, which said: "no inn-keepers on the first day called Sunday in God's service, shall hold gatherings of guests. . .on pain of whatever penalty the court of record shall inflict" (Pennypacker, Germantown, 283). Gehr was the brunt of gossip. Muhlenberg had heard further: "a trustworthy man named Georg Stoltz came to me and related the following incident. One evening he and a Swiss gentlemen were obliged to stop at the blasphemer's house and put up for the night. He went out of his way to annoy his two guests with sinful talk. Among other things he said that the context of nature is God, that the world came into existence by an accident in eternity, that the universe maintained itself, etc. What the parsons say about God, about a revealed religion, about a Saviour, and about heaven and hell, they have to say to make a living and in order to lead the masses by the nose."
Although Muhlenberg does not make the connection, such views easily mask themselves as naturalism.Gehr's satire is very much in the Newborn manner, like Conrad and those others to whom the sacraments were "ridiculous and their expressions concerning them are extremely offensive" (Muhlenberg), who uttered "such blasphemous words against our Saviour" (Boehm), who theatrically mocked preachers in parody (Mittelberger), who "despise preachers, churches and sacraments without discrimination" (Muhlenberg), who scoff that manure is life and pig the destiny of the soul. The Newborn catechism was as active in the tavern of Gehr as in the township of Oley except that Gehr went his brother-in-law one better and mixed scoff with drink.
Such tavern philosophy is reported in practically every contemporary account of the Newborn. Gehr's metaphysic implicates both brother and brother-in-law in the Newborn practice. While Boehm's summary of the sects names Puritans, Baptists and Pietists it is really the Newborn of Gehr's metaphysic that he exposes:

"Independents, Puritans, Anabaptists, Newborn, Saturday-folks, yea even the most horrible heretics, Socinians, Pietists, etc., among whom dreadful errors prevail; indeed heinous blasphemies against our great God and Savior and their own exaltation over His Majesty; for they claim that they have essential divinity in themselves; that they cannot sin…they believe there is no other heaven or hell than what is here on earth; they even deny Divine Providence, and assert that nothing needs God's blessing, but that all products of the ground and all offspring of animals and of the human race, come simply from nature, without any care on the part of God, and that prayer also is useless. (Life and Letters, (1728) 161."

Prodigal Son

While Conrad became a prodigal in joining the Newborn at midlife, he later seems to repudiate them in word and deed, which suggests that he came home. for that story you have to get the Review.

He was not a recent immigrant to Philadelphia, had lived in Skippack with his family from at least 1717, the first mention of his father's land. His brother Jacob was named in 1723 as an agent for the government. Though Reformed, his father, Hans George, was a signatory witness of the trust agreement for the Salford Mennonite Meeting House in 1725. There has been some suggestion that Conrad's mother, Anna Maria, was the educated daughter of a Dutch Reformed church minion.

His first explicit mention occurs in his father's will of 1726 where the estate was equally divided between himself and his siblings. His name next appears with his brothers, Peter and George, in their petition to Governor Gordon of April 29, 1728 where 74 "Back Inhabitors," residents along Skippack Creek, sought protection against the Indians. He was an executor (with Henry Funk and Christian Allebach) of the will of Claus Upleger, drawn up August 3, 1730: "Guardians or Executors over my wife, children and all the goods which I left behind" (Heckler, History of Franconia Township, 10-11).

About this time he began to prepare to leave Skippack for Oley, where he bought 300 acres in 1730. Remaining yet a while, he again petitioned the Assembly with his neighbors in 1731 to be "permitted to enjoy the rights and privileges of English subjects" (Riffe, 26). He is doubtless included with his brothers in the recriminations of the rival Reformed shepherds, George Michael Weiss and John Philip Boehm which preoccupied the founding of the Reformed Church in Skippack. These disputes began with Weiss's arrival in September 1727. Boehm includes them all in the phrase, "Jacob Reiff and his brothers" (Letter of 1730 in Life and Letters, 217). In these years, 1727 – 1731, Conrad probably took care of his brother Jacob's farm while Jacob was abroad, that is, from the end of 1727, with one six month respite, until September 1731 when he returned from his second voyage.

Conrad may have bought the land in Oley in anticipation of his marriage of 1733. Maybe he was tired of being of the "party of Reiff" that Boehm so incessantly argued his brother Jacob ran in Skippack, sort of an out of the frying pan into the fire thing. Maybe it was the expression of a pioneering spirit. If however he was seeking peace and quiet from religious disputes he could not have gone in a worse direction. He was one of those worldly sons that Muhlenberg disapproved. Ruminating over the matriarch Anna's obsequies in 1753 he says, "she had several married sons who are well thought of, and some of these profess the Reformed religion while others believe in nothing but the transitory riches of this earth" (Muhlenberg, I, 352).

Conrad moved to Oley in 1733 and married Anna Margaretha Kuhlwein, Mary, daughter of Philip Kuhlwein, brother-in-law of Matthias Baumann, founder of the Newborn. Kuhlwein had pioneered that area as an advance for Baumann in 1709. When Kuhlwein chose the Oley Valley as the site for the perfectionist
Neugeborene colony he and Jean LeDee were the first German-speaking settlers (Pendleton, 106). Since Baumann came to Oley at Kuhlwein's advise, it is no surprise that Kuhlwein took over leadership of the colony after Baumann's death in 1727.

We should probably assume Conrad Reiff's acceptance of Newborn beliefs, although they were pretty different from those in which he was raised. In marrying the scion's daughter, a family with no sons, he would have to inherit extensive land holdings. Marriage transported him into the bosom of the Newborn community. Thus, he immediately is identified with the twenty or so families that originally settled the north Oley valley starting about 1712 (Pendleton, 27): Baumann, Bertolet, Levan, DeTurk, Joder (Yoder), Kuhlwein, Huffnagel, Schenkel, Keim, Schneider, Hoch, Ballie, Peter, Herbein, Weber, Kersten, Aschmann, Ritter, and Kauffmann (Pendleton, 18). No one benefited more from the Newborn than he, who gained a wife, a homestead, two sons and inherited Philip Kuhlwein's estate in less than four years, ranking him among the largest landholders and candidate for richest man of Oley, far surpassing his brother Jacob down in Skippack. He had a little success in the "transitory riches."

Not only did Conrad Reiff inherit Kuhlwein's estate
upon his death in 1736 (Pendleton, 108), he seems to have inherited Baumann's as well. Comparing Pendleton's maps of the Oley Zone of 1725 with 1750, the configurations of the Baumann and Kuhlwein estates of 1725, which adjoin on a southwest axis, are roughly equivalent to the Conrad Reiff estate of 1750. In the 1750 map which indicates Conrad Reiff's holdings (the estate of Philip Kuhlwein), the two tracts seem to join, as if Baumann's estate were inherited by Kuhlwein and then that augmented section inherited by Conrad Reiff. When Baumann died in 1727 did he deed it to his brother-in-law? The two estates that became one were then inherited by Reiff in 1737. Why wouldn't he remain stanch when after Baumann's death the Yoders, John Lesher, Casper Griesemer, Gabriel Boyer, (c. 1736) founded the Oley Reformed Church ( Hinke, Life and Letters, 34)? Conrad must have seemed in 1733 a good prospect to his father-in-law for all that he, even then, intended to trust him with.

Conrad's Religion


Whatever the outcome, the reputation of Conrad Reiff was materially damaged, for the Journey was "widely read and quoted" at the time of its publication in Frankfurt in 1756. "Writers in the latter half of the eighteenth century borrowed freely from it" and "the book remained well known in the nineteenth century" (Mittleberger, Handlin and Clive, xvii). Folks back home and in subsequent generations must have wondered what happened to Conrad Reiff. But folks closer to Skippack and Germantown also wondered what happened to him, as if the geography of Oley had spiritual connotations.

The Collection

That Conrad Reiff didn't die until more than 20 years after the report of his death suggests there may be more truth to the eagles than we can literally recognize. How dramatic did it have to be? His change of heart is evidenced in a collection taken in September 1764 for the building of the Wentz Church, successor to the previously established Reiff Church.

"The Evangelic Reformed Congregation in Skippack found themselves necessitated for building of a House of Worship by Reason of the Great Distance they have to church or meeting, which is Six miles or more." Their intention, "their indispensable Duty" was so that "their Youth might be the better brought up in the Nurture of the Lord and to the Praise of His Holy Name." The fundraising efforts however had fallen short, "they find themselves obliged to apply to the Charitable Benevolence of all well disposed Christians to contribute their Mite towards the finishing of the said Meeting House according to their good Will and Abilities-Knowing that the Lord will richly reward all Such Charitable Gifts or Alms, Which are given with a Simplicit Heart" (The Perkiomen Region, I, 38). Since the first collecting tour raised only 12 pounds, 4 shillings a second effort was made outside the immediate congregation. George Alsentz, the Evangelical Reformed minister, urged (August 1764): "In as much as the generous contributions hitherto received from kind friends were far from sufficient to defray the expenditures of our church we are obliged to turn to other benefactors to find out their benevolent disposition toward our enterprise…May the God of all mercy send his richest blessing upon all benefactors, such is my wish, and in witness of the foregoing I hereunto set my hand" (4l). This tour raised 15 pounds, 9 shillings.

Three collections in all were made, the first in New Jersey, the second throughout Goshenhoppen and the third "through Frederick township to Falckner's Swamp and then up towards Oley" (44). Over 400 names are listed with the amount of their contributions. For example, from Goshenhoppen, Philip Boehm gave l shilling, Peter Miller gave l shilling, Friedrich Hilligass gave 5. In Oley, Casper Griesemer gave 7 shillings and so did Abraham Lewan, a comparatively generous gift. This tour raised 14 pounds, 7 shillings.

The two largest gifts of 10 shillings each were given by Georg Welker and Conrad Reiff (39-44). Considering the language of the subscribing petition, its references to "pious exercises," "the Nurture of the Lord " and "the Praise of His Holy Name," it is obvious that Conrad Reiff is no longer sympathetic to Newborn practices which "called the Holy Scriptures old, outworn fables, tomfoolery, and the like, and said that the parsons had to make so and so out of it in order not to lose their bread and butter"(Muhlenberg I, 139). Not only does his acceptance of such pious language witness a change, but we also discern in the gift a reaffirmation of his Reformed roots, supporting the attempt to restart the Skippack Reformed Church in a permanent structure again: "When George Alsentz first reported this congregation to the coetus in 1763, he called it Skippack, a name which was often used during its early years to identify it" (Gladfelter I, 384). The Newborn were never politic in their beliefs but "harsh and uncharitable" as Philip Bayer had been before his reconciliation (Muhlenberg I, 357).

To demonstrate how short funds were when the first church was dedicated in November 1763, the "costs of this undertaking were greater than anticipated. Moreover, they were incurred just as a depression hit the colonies following the French and Indian War" (Gladfelter I, 384). The assembly authorized a lottery to pay the debt, since "the members of the German Reformed church in the township of Worcester, in the county of Philadelphia, have erected a church and school house in the said township, the expense and costs whereof have been so great as to amount to a debt of six hundred pounds more than they are able to pay" (Gladfelter, I, 384).

To speculate, Conrad may have taken up with the Moravians since the language of his will is like the way they spoke. He appears in the Moravian archive Nov. 1, 1763 (Our Savage Neighbors, Silver, 2009, 343), "as if the Bethlehem [European] People had likewise a Hand in it" (dep. of Conrad Reiff, Nov. 1, 1763, Morav. Recs).
Notes

[Speaking of those pastors of the first Reformed Church in Pennsylvania, Boehm and Weiss, Sachse observes that it is "a strange coincidence that both Boehm and Baumann came to Pennsylvania about the same time from Lambsheim, in the Palatinate" (The German Sectarians, I, 157). Five years separated them. Hinke has Baumann arriving in Philadelphia in 1718, Sachse in 1719, but Pendleton (176) cites land office records that show Baumann already residing in the Oley Valley in 1714. Since Baumann had left Lambsheim in 1714 and Boehm did not resign his position as schoolmaster in Worms until November 22, 1715 (Hinke, 15) their paths did not cross in Lambsheim and at least his one indignity can be spared Mr. Boehm.]

If it is wondered why this sect rejected the Bible and its teachings, the text recorded above by Spangenberg (6) should be noted, that is, I John 1.8: "if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."

We don't really need to prove Conrad was a Newborn from his reputation or his speech. Interesting as it might be, it is a much bigger topic. We know he was a Newborn from his marriage and we know the Newborn mockeries of religions from testimonies from nearly every contemporary source.

when the Yoders, John Lesher, Casper Griesemer, Gabriel Boyer, (c. 1736) founded the Oley Reformed Church (Hinke, Life and Letters, 34). By 1736 however, with both leaders gone, the Newborn were on their way out.

A broader case for Newborn membership includes every spirit of anticlericalism and unbelief. As with Boehm's catalogue of sects, this seems to be focused by the more spectacular Newborns. Mittelberger laments: "In Pennsylvania there exist so many varieties of doctrines and sects that it is impossible to name them all. Many people do not reveal their own particular beliefs to anyone. Furthermore there are many hundreds of adults who not only are unbaptized but who do not even want baptism. Many others pay no attention to the Sacraments and to the Holy Bible, or even to God and his Word. Some do not even believe in the existence of a true God or Devil, Heaven or Hell, Salvation or Damnation, the Resurrection of the Dead, the Last Judgment and Eternal Life, but think that everything visible is of merely natural origin. For in Pennsylvania not only is everyone allowed to believe what he wishes; he is also at liberty to express these beliefs publicly and freely" (Journey, 22).

The reason the Newborn speak so fully for all such ideas is that they are a genera. Thus the farmer says his situation good is because "I have worked hard" and none other. "I am perfectly without sin" is the metaphysical justification. Being without sin had been the contention of Newborn founder Matthias Bauman, taught in his pamplet of ..... As the Chronicon says, "there arose about that time [1720] a people in the neighborhood of Oley" (16). Through a series of propositions Bauman ends with the notion that "with the body one cannot sin before God" (Chronicon, 17) which to the Calvinists was of course impossible. Worse that these "dangerous conclusions" (17) was their technique, "...to confound men, a work they also diligently carried on during ten years, so that their disputations at market times in Philadelphia were often heard with astonishment" (17).


All the Church folk, Lutheran, Reformed, non church sectarians say "Ishmaelites,
Laodiceans, Naturalists... Atheists, of whom the country was full... had forsaken their mother-church" Pennsylvania (Chronicon Ephratense. Translated by J. Max Hark. Lancaster: S. H. Zahm & Co. 1889, 71).

How exactly Mittelberger knew of the attack he doesn't say. Embellishment may swell the breast. A provocateur of all that had gone wrong in his eyes with the freedoms and frail order of Pennsylvania, Mittelberger would not himself know what he would write when he began the following year. Presumably he was taking notes. The funeral occurred about a year and a half before he left to return to Germany.
Conrad Reiff's change of faith occured when he moved to Oley and married Anna Margaretha Kuhlwein c. 1733, Mary, daughter of Kuhlwein pioneered the area for Baumann in 1709, chose the Oley Valley as the site for the perfectionist Neugeborene colony. Kuhlwein and Jean LeDee were the first German-speaking settlers (Pendleton, 106). Baumann came to Oley at Kuhlwein's advise but didn't last long; it is no surprise Kuhlwein took over leadership of the colony after Baumann died in 1727. In marrying the scion's daughter, a family with no sons, Conrad Reiff became a rich planter. He was the richest man in the area.
(Raymond J. Brunner. "That Ingenious Business" Pennsylvania German Organ Builders. Birdsboro, PA: The Pennsylvania German Society, 1990.
Chronicon. Abstract of the diary of the Brotherhood, which had been kept by Brother
Lamech, and continued and edited by Brother Jaebez (Agrippa) i.e. JohanPeter Miller. Brother Lamech has been identified as Jacob Gass bySeidensticker (First Century of German Printing in America, p. 117). Evans19558: "This biography of Johann Conrad Beissel, the founder of the EphrataCommunity, is the principal source of information regarding that remarkable institution. Brother Agrippa is Johann Peter Miller; and Brother Lamech's secular name is said to be Jacob Gass

ouˈgoost gôtˈlēp shpängˈənbĕrk, 1704–92, a bishop of the Moravian Church and a founder of that church in America, b. Prussia. While at the Univ. of Jena, he met Graf von Zinzendorf, and in 1730 he paid a visit to the Moravian colony, Herrnhut. In 1732, Spangenberg joined the theological faculty of the Univ. of Halle, but disagreement with the views of his superiors led to his dismissal. He became assistant to Zinzendorf and was sent by him on a mission to America in 1735. There, for a large portion of his life, Spangenberg was active in establishing settlements, churches, and schools in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. In 1744 he was made bishop. Zinzendorf died in 1760; two years later Spangenberg returned to Herrnhut, where he held a place of leadership among the Brethren. His Idea Fidei Fratrum (1779, tr. 1784) was adopted as the declaration of faith of the Moravian Church. Among his other writings is a biography of Zinzendorf. If you read around the Blake entry in Flowering Heart you will find this Zinzendorf was a freak of tantric sex.

On Baumann, by Stoudt, xvii,

Further, “Herbein was hardly alone in suspecting that the real intent of the missionary effort was make everyone into good Moravians” Pendleton, 114

“One of the authors forebears was banished from Germany because he refused to accede to the magistrate’s domination of his conscience. On 3 January 1702 he told the Court at Grankfurt-am-Main that magistrates are established merely to punish evil and encourage good. In matters of faith they have no authority. This is an American principle, for Matthias Baumann became an American….
The lives of the Reiff brothers, especially Conrad (c. 1696-1777) are a target for social equalizers. Conrad was one of the richest men in Oley, but he and his younger brother Jacob (1698-1782) of Skippack so ran afoul of contemporary piety that they are both immediately likable to the modern mind. In matters of religion the Reiff brothers, Conrad (c.1696-1777) and Jacob (1698-1782) ran afoul of contemporary piety, but they are likeable to the modern mind. Their biographies document as much about Pennsylvania religion as about either of them. This stream of events concerning battling shepherds, religion founders and feuding families was pretty much concluded between the death of their father in 1727 and their mother in 1753. The mutual offenses of religious practices was enough for several lifetimes. Of the four sons, George was a Reformed elder and Jacob could "discern good as well as evil" (I, 353), but Conrad and Peter lived in the Oley of ill repute. That tears it. Also, the husband of the only daughter of that family, Conrad Gehr,gets significant mention, for he too had "despised and ridiculed," according to Muhlenberg, the "means of grace." When we compare Muhlenberg's description of Gehr with Mittelberger's of Reiff a pattern emerges. There are odd facts that seem to run counter to patterns, much as in real life. For instance how was Conrad Reiff executor of Claus Upleger of Franconia, when he then lived in Lower Salford, and that his co-executor was Henry Funk, the Mennonite Bishop. Common sense suggests that this was some other Conrad, except there was no other. Was he acting as a translator like his brother? Obviously the relations of the community were more wide than narrow. What did Reiff and Funk have in common that Upleger chose them, unless there was some Mennonite influence on Conrad, unlikely as this seems. In any case the question makes us take more seriously than we otherwise would the note in the Sunday Eagle Magazine (January 12, 1969) of Reading, PA, that Conrad was a "Mennonite preacher."

Peter Reiff had already taken a patent on 100 acres in Oley (November 1735) when Jacob Reiff deeded 193 acres on the Little Branch to him in August of 1737. Conrad sold Peter 300 more acres in 1742, certainly the same 300 he had initially acquired in 1730. On April 17, 1745 Peter and his wife Margaret sold the 193 acre Skippack property to John Ulrich Stauffer and went to Oley. Brother George lived in Germantown, but his transactions mimic Peter's. In 1734 he owned 100 acres in Skippack and Jacob deeded him157 acres in 1740. He acquired an adjoining 84 acres from neighbor Casper Ulstar making 241, kept this tract about a year and sold it in 1741 to Jacob Shoemaker. There is no precise record of George's owning land in Oley, but he appears on the tax list of Rockland Township (Oley) in 1757 and 1759. He went a little Oley. According to James Heckler, Jacob the Elder's daughter Catharine, was a widow living in Oley "at the time of her father's death," that is, in 1782. Holy Oley!

Religious history in early Pennsylvania is dominated by feuding shepherds right out of Edmund Spenser's Colin Clout. They feud for the same reasons as their shepherd analogies, fame, boredom, spite, glory. Alliance-shifting friends are enemies and back again. It would be comical to invest their passions with our own. Quarreling is opposite golden age singing where  shepherds keep their putative flocks. They escaped the old world but found  plenty of labor and freedom without discord.

 Religious fratricides of early Pennsylvania are further supercharged by later partisans. Contemporaries who perversely held the law of grace to assassinate character are upheld by historians of the institutions they found. Religion in Pennsylvania resembles a pathology. The more they claim to be right the more wrong they are. On the other hand a pool of anti-clericalism masked much personal vengeance, which suggests a positive and a negative expression of Pietism, positive since so many sects sought spiritually an emotional base, but negative when these emotions enflamed neighbors.

II. Some Sources for the Reiff brothers of Schuippach.
There were plenty of Reiffs in trouble in 18th century Philadelphia, especially the four sons of Hans George (c.1659-172 6) and Anna Reiff (1662-1753). The greatest attention attaches to Jacob Reiff, called the Elder, brother of Peter, George, and Conrad, and Anna, but we do not feel sympathy for his plight until we realize his underdog status.
1) His lengthy defense in the Answer (September 1733) to a court complaint against him the previous year is his only extant writing, for he seems to represent himself. He however is quoted frequently in the letters of Boehm.
2) The Wills of Hans George, Conrad and George are extant, with numerous deeds, records of transactions and agreements, formal petitions, newspaper notices and accounts, church records, and tax lists.
3) The Journals of Henry Melichor Muhlenberg is an important primary source for the funeral of Anna Reiff in 1753 and of events in general in Perkiomen (1742-87). Muhlenberg lived in New Providence or Trappe, 8 miles from Skippack where the four Reiff brothers grew up. He traveled extensively in that region and beyond in his service as a pastor, frequently wrote of the common people he met, of their problems, births, baptisms and deaths with names and details. His Journal was kept mainly as a record for himself, but he writes with veracity. Muhlenberg sounds a keynote in remarks in his Journal after the funeral address he gave to a "large and distinguished assembly" on the occasion of the Reiff matriarch's death, January 8, 1753 (I, 353). These reflections are an excellent jumping off point into the labyrinth of civil and religious fratricides of that day.

Anna Reiff, widow of her husband, Hans George, who died in 1726, was one of three women at whose death Muhlenberg presided in the month of January 1753. The journal gives his private thoughts on the course and significance of her life, things he would not have said out loud. These are not the official remarks, except for the biblical text. His thoughts sum up the Reiff brothers' reputations:
"In the same month of January I was called upon to bury a ninety-year-old pious widow who fell asleep in the Lord. She lived eight miles from New Providence and was buried in the so-called Mennonite cemetery. She lived in this land for a long time.” Muhlenberg calls Jacob Reiff, his father's executor of years before, "her best and most reasonable son who cared for her as was right and proper." "At her son's request I visited her in this last home of hers and ministered to her with the Word of God and the Holy Communion."

4)
John Phillip Boehm before 1742 in his Letters (1728-1748) gives a wealth of particulars concerning Jacob Reiff, notably his calling the Philadelphia elders “church robbers.”
Continuing the meditation Muhlenberg says, "at her funeral her son, who can discern good as well as evil in others, testified with tears that she had been a pious widow, a domestic preacher, an intercessor, and a model of godliness (I, 353)." If Muhlenberg says Jacob Reiff can discern "good as well as evil" long after the many vicious allegations had passed, we take his judgment after the fact as evidence of exoneration of the many charges against his character.

5) Gottlieb Mittelberger's disgruntled record of his Journey to Pennsylvania (1756) where he had gone in 1752 to become the organist in Muhlenberg's church famously details Conrad Reiff.
George Reiff (1692-1759). The Innocent, we might christen him in contrast with his brothers, was among the elders and the early founders of the Reformed Congregation of Skippack, the first Reformed church in Pennsylvania. This itself is evidence of his concern for a more unworldly way of way of life. With other elders he signed the authorization for his brother Jacob to go Holland with Pastor Weiss to collect the ill-fated funds donated to the Reformed congregations. (Life and Letters of the Rev. John Philip Boehm, 209. He is sometimes confused with his father of the same name. Referring to Dotterer's report of the tradition that Hans Georg Reiff, arrived in Pennsylvania 'before Penn set up his government' " Boehm’s editor, Hinke, mistakes the father for the son, unless we consider the son a junior, saying in the next sentence that "in 1730 Hans Georg Reiff (d. 1726) was a member of the Reformed Church at Skippack" (21). That George had no progeny and seems at all accounts to have been a faithful and steady member of the community should not be held against him. He did sign the two petitions of 1728 and 1731 mentioned below. In 1757, two years before his death, he is taxed for owning land in Oley about eleven miles south of Reading, near Peter and Conrad. It would seem George was allied with Jacob in Muhlenberg's mind as one of the sons well thought of.

Peter Reiff (c.1694-c.1782) was a smith like his father (who however left his smith's tools to Jacob), but although he was the son of Hans George Reiff he managed to confound a generation of genealogists by founding a strain of Riffes in West Virginia. The antecedents of Daniel Boone also lived in Oley (Riffe, 29) and that association according to Riffe was the primary cause of Peter's childrens' southward descent. He did not leave a will but lived in Skippack from youth to sometime after 1745 when, having accumulated 400 acres or so in Oley near his brother Conrad, he moved there.
All three brothers, Conrad, Peter and George, appear on the tax rolls of Oley in 1757, the first year of the organization of that township (Rockland Township). Peter may have lived there some years prior, as perhaps had George. Before moving to Oley Peter was much involved in the area of his father's settlement in Skippack. His first son, Peter Jr. was born there (c. 1728). Peter Sr., with George, Conrad and 74 other inhabitants along Skippack Creek, calling themselves "Back Inhabitors," petitioned then Governor Gordon in April 29, 1728 for protection against the Indians (Riffe, 26). Likewise with George and Conrad, Peter petitioned the Assembly in 1731 to be "permitted to enjoy the rights and privileges of English subjects" (Riffe, 26). Brother Jacob did not sign any of these petitions because he took two trips to Holland etc. in those years. Three of Peter’s children were born in Rockland Township after his relocation, Jacob (1755), Henry (1756) and Daniel (1759) He started a school (c. 1750) and employed a teacher and was as well known to witness wills.
Conrad Reiff
Conrad (1696-c.1777) had two sons, Daniel and Philip, with the rank of Captain and Lieutenant respectively, who maybe fought in revolutionary battles of 1777. Conrad operated a large farm, some 970 acres by 1775, with its own sawmill and gristmill. Based on the 1767 tax assessment Pendleton says he was one of only three men "who did not have to work with their hands" (44). This tax assessment lists 20 acres of grain, a gristmill, sawmill and several tenant farms. He had taken on several indentured servants in 1745 and following. He sued the equally wealthy ironmaster Johannes Lesher in 1766.
He began the move to Oley, buying land there in 1730 and moving in 1733. His two sons Daniel (b.1736) and Philip (b.1739) are registered as being born in Philadelphia County, but at this time Philadelphia County demarked the region. He deeded 300 acres to Peter in 1742 and the two were associated after that date. When the taxes for the new township were assessed in 1759 Conrad paid more than anybody, for he had some 925 acres. There is a spiritual odyssey denoted in his beliefs. At the outset he was Reformed, lived in Skippack, signed the petition of 1728 (and 1731?) and no doubt was included in Boehm's (1730) passionate denunciation of "Jacob Reiff and his brothers" (Letters, 217).
How rich is rich?

Conrad's Organ
connects the two protagonists. Reiff willed it to his son Daniel in 1777. At that time "the organ can be considered to have been somewhat of a rarity as a home instrument. Those individuals who did own an organ were often wealthy persons of the community" (Brunner, 10). Conrad Reiff may have inherited the organ from his father-in-law Philip Kuhlwein in 1737, he certainly inherited all of his land. The organ mentioned in the will of Matthias Zimmerman in Philadelphia is of 1734. Conrad Weiser had one prior to 1760 in Tulpehocken (10). A schoolmaster and organist of Old Goschenhoppen c.1779 was paid five pounds a year. A schoolmaster-organist at Trappe, 11 pounds in 1760. Compensation could include other items such as use of the schoolhouse as living quarters, free use of church land, donations of firewood, food and clothing. An average for the middle of the eighteenth century, including playing the organ, free rent, singing at funerals and conducting the singing school was approximately 20 to 25 pounds a year. (Ingenious Bus, 44). Mittleberger got 10 pounds in his last year (43).


Be sure your sins will find you out applies to every PA figure who needs the expulpation given Hart Crane's biographers by his tale builders. More excuses were never given for a fallen, erring, suicidal poet, but he was infected with the approved muse. Of the many perquisites to exculpation even more can be forgiven if he will also die young in the throes of the if and only if at the age of 33, although Keats was more tragic at 25 years and out, and Rimbaud at 36 can be halved since it completed his poetic suicide at 21.
 


Works Cited
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T. S. Eliot. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1943.

Ernest, James E. Ephrata A history. Allentown: Schlechter's, 1963.

James Y. Heckler. History of Franconia Township. 1901. Bedminster, PA: Adams Apple Press, 1993.

The History of Harleysville and Lower Salford Township. 1886. Bedminster, PA: Adams Apple Press, 1993.

Glatfelter, Charles H. Pastors and People: German Lutheran and Reformed Churches in the Pennsylvania Field, l7l7-l793. 2 Vols. Breinigsville, PA: The Pennsylvania German Society, l980.

Mittelberger, Gottlieb. Journey To Pennsylvania. Edited and Translated by Oscar Handlin and John Clive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.

Motherwell, Robert, tr. The Dada Manifesto, in Dada Painters and Poets, NY: 1951.

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The Life and Letters of the Rev. John Philip Boehm. Edited by the Rev. William J. Hinke. Philadelphia: Sunday School Board of the Reformed Church in the United States, 1916.

Pendleton, Philip E. Oley Valley Heritage, The Colonial Years: 1700-1775. Birdsboro, PA: The Pennsylvania German Society, 1994.

Pennypacker, Samuel Whitaker. The Settlement of Germantown Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: William J. Campbell, 1899. Reprinted 1997 by Higginson Book Company, Salem, MA.

The Perkiomen Region. Vols. 1-5. Adams Apple Press, Bedminster, PA, 1994.

Reiff, Harry E. Reiff Families in America. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1986.

Riffe, Fred J. Reiff to Riffe Family in America. 1995.

Sachse, Julius Friedrich. The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, 1708-1742. 2 Vols.
Philadelphia: 1899, AMS:1971.

Wallace, Paul. Conrad Weiser: Friend of Colonist and Mohawk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945.

Weiser, C. Z. The Life of (John) Conrad Weiser. Reading, PA: Daniel Miller, 1899.

George Whitefield's Journals (1737-1741). Gainesville: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1969.