The HartsfieldFamily
of
Marcus Hook, YeDelaware River, 1676,
and
Germantown, Pa., Gloucester County, N.J.,
Lenoir and Wake Counties, N.C., and
Butler County, Alabama
Originally published as Part II of
Yeldell and Hartsfield Families of Colonial Philadelphia,
The Carolinas and Alabama, and TheWeaver Family of
Butler and Wilcox Counties, Alabama (1993)
Revised May 1996
Oliver C. Weaver Jr.
1229 Greensboro Road W.
Birmingham, Alabama 35208
Dedicated
to the Memory of
My Perennially Optimistic Father
Oliver Cornelius Weaver, Senior
(1885-1961)
Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth; and when they sing praises of family, and say that someone is a gentleman because he can show seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks their sentiments only betray a dull and narrow vision in those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and Barbarians, innumerable. And when people pride themselves on having a pedigree of twenty-five ancestors, which goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot understand their poverty of ideas. Why are they unable to calculate that Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was such as fortune made him, and he had a fiftieth and so on? He amuses himself with the notion that they cannot count, and thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of their senseless vanity.
–A remark of Socrates in Plato’s Theatetus
Foreword (March, 1996)
I.Our Hartsfield Heritage
A.Our German Heritage
B.The Origin of the Hartsfield Name
C.Das Härtsfeld in the Seventeenth Century
II.The Hartsfield Story
A.Jurian Hartsfielder of Ye River of Delaware–Husbandman
B.Jurian Hartsfelder and His Germantown Connection
C.Margaret Hartsfelder and Humphrey Edwards
D.Sons of Jurian and Margaret Hartsfelder
1)Adam Hadfield (Hartsfelder?) of Germantown
a)Anglicization of German Names
b)Descendants of Adam Hadfield
i)John Hatfield
ii)Edward Hatfield (Hartsfield)
(a)A Gwynedd Monthly Meeting Connection
(b)Edward Hatfield and A Laicon Family Connection
(c)A Summary Note
iii)George Hatfield
iv)(?) Andreas Hartzfelder (See below)......
2)Andreas Hartzfelder
3)Godfrey Hartsfelder
a)A Concluding Note on Some of Godfrey Hartsfield’s Descendants in North Carolina
III.The Hartsfield Tract in Pennsylvania
Foreword (March, 1996)[1]
In 1972, after many years of research, I wrote a brief family history of Jurian Hartsfielder (Görg Hartzfelder) and his descendants from 1676 down to John Hartsfield, a Revolutionary War soldier (Rev. War Pension File No. 4482) of Wheat Swamp, Dobbs (now Lenoir) County, North Carolina. This brief family history was published in Nell Clover, Hartsfields of America (1972) with the title “The Hartsfield Story With A Few Notes on Allied Hatfield Families.” It was republished in Sidney J. Hartsfield, Sr.’sHartsfields of Tallahassee and Their Relatives (1988), and it was included as Part II, Chapter XI, in my YELDELL and HARTSFIELD FAMILIES of Colonial Philadelphia.the Carolinas and Alabama, and The WEAVER FAMILY of Butler and Wilcox Counties. Alabama (1993), unchanged except for corrections of typographical errors and changes in footnote numbering.
A recently discovered deed called to my attention by Dr. Galen R. Hatfield[2] of Elliott City, Maryland, provides documentary proof that Godfrey Hartsfelder was a son of Jurian Hartsfelder (Görg Hartsfelder), a relationship that I had inferred, but could not prove in 1972 or 1993. Additional data discovered by Galen clears up some questions about Jurian’s land transactions which I had had to leave unanswered; and, more interestingly, necessitates some changes in my description of Görg Hartsfelder’s family—i.e., previously unknown to me, an Adam Hadfield of Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1711, was most probably a son of Görg Hartsfelder. The Edward Hatfield and George Hatfield, whom I had tentatively identified as sons of Jurian Hartsfelder now appear to be sons of Adam Hadfield (Hatfield, Hartsfelder?); and they were most probably grandsons, not sons, of Jurian Hartsfelder (Görg Hartsfelder). Andreas Hartzfelder of Germantown in 1702, whom I had also thought to be a son of Jurian, may or may not also have been a son of Adam Hatfield (Hartsfelder?).
With this new information at hand, I am now revising my “The Hartsfield Story” and republishing it along with a few other revisions of the full history of the Hartsfield family that I published in 1993.
Data sent to me by Dr. Galen R. Hatfield is included in a bookhe plans to publish in the near future, The Hatfield Ancestry. Hatfield descendants will find this a most interesting and informative book, and Hartsfield descendants who want a broader perspective on collateral family lines will also find it of much interest. I am happy that my research has made substantial contributions to later Hartsfield-Hatfield research, and I am especially pleased that Galen’s work modifies and supplements mine.
It is with great pleasure that I make the changes in my “The Hartsfield Story” necessitated by Galen’s research.
I cannot here name the scores of other Hartsfield correspondents who for three decades have shared with me the amenities of ancestor collecting. I have tried to give full credit to them in footnotes. Here, however, I do want to express again a few sentiments included in the Preface to my larger book from which this Part II is taken. The Reverend Elizabeth A. Hartsfield of Lexington, Ky., and Prof. Ralph S. Collins of Maryville, Tenn., have been most helpful; and I am especially indebted to many persons now deceased, notably Virginia (Carlton) Duggan of Moultrie, Ga., Irene (Bogart) Winton, of Beaumont, Tex., and Troy Anderson of Houston, Tex.
After forty-five years as Professor of Philosophy on the Faculty of Birmingham-Southern College, I retired in 1988 in order to write three family histories. Most of my two-week summer vacation time for the past thirty years has been devoted to archival research gathering data for these family histories. During this time Laura Ross (Moore) Weaver, who has now been my wife and companion for fifty-nine years, has time and again chauffeured me from courthouse to courthouse and from state archives to state archives; and she has been most helpful in the editing of this book. I am grateful for her indulgence, encouragement and assistance.
1
I.Our Hartsfield Heritage
A.Our German Heritage
In “The Hartsfield Story” I, knowing that there was a Dutch Hartesvelt family in New Amsterdam (i.e. New York, N.Y.) as early as 1653, left the question open as to whether Jurian Hartsfelder was of Dutch or German ancestry even though there was a family tradition passed on by Sarah Adeline Hartsfield, sister of Richard Morris Hartsfield, that the family was of German origin.[3] That question has now been definitively settled by Jurian’s friend Francis Daniel Pastorius who founded Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1683: Jurian’s ancestry was German.
Basing his comment on a letter of Francis Daniel Pastorius, dated March 7, 1684, a historian, William I. Hull, has written:
There were three German families in Philadelphia inOctober 1683, who desired to settle in Germantown: and they as well as the Krefelders drew lots for home-sites in Germantown on December 25 of that year.
In a footnote comment on this statement Hull adds:
Two of these families would appear to have been those of Jurian (or Görg) Hartzfelder, a deputy-sheriff in Pennsylvania under Governor Andros in 1676, and Jacob Schumacher, formerly of Mainz; the third was perhaps that of the German-Swiss, Jörg Wertmuller.[4]
Data cited in the following chapter make it obvious that Jurian (Görg) Hartsfelder was indeed one of these three Germans who were already in the Philadelphia area and who were associated with Pastorius in the settling of Germantown.
Hull makes another comment about the German connection of Görg Hartzfelder which should be noted here:
Some of the people whom he (William Penn) mentions by name, in his record of his journey of 1677, who lived in the various places which he visited in Germany, showed their deep interest in him and his colony by forming a ‘German Society’ and a ‘Frankfurt Company’ for promoting its colonization. Those who participated most largely in this work were Jacob van de Walle, Dr. Jacob Schütz, Daniel Behagel, Caspar Merian, Johanna Eleanora von Merlau and Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld, of Frankfurt; Dr. Thomas van Wijlick and Johann Lebrunn, of Wesel; Dr. Gerhard von Mastricht, of Duisburg; Johan Wilhelm Petersen, Johannes Kember, and Balthasar Jawert, of Lubeck; Görg Strauss, Abraham Hasevoet, Görg Hartzfelder, of other places in Germany; and Jan Laurentz of Rotterdam. All of these were members of one or the other two Frankfurt companies; all bought land in Pennsylvania, their total purchases amounting to 25,000 acres; and although none of them became colonists themselves, they sold their land to persons who did, and doubtless used their persuasive powers to induce these to go upon the great adventure.[5]
If William Penn really met a Görg Hartzfelder in Germany that Görg would have had to be a person other than the Görg who resided on the Delaware River in America as early as 1676. If Hull’s comment is correct, it could provide an interesting clue for tracing the family in Germany, but I have not found Görg Hartzfelder’s name in Penn’s description of his 1677 Journey, and this name is not onPastorius’ list of the members of the Frankfort Company. As noted in the next chapter, the Delaware River Görg Hartzfelder’s name was on Pastorious’ 1688 map of Germantown. Hull’s inclusion of Görg Hartzfelder in this comment appears to me to be based on American sources of the sort cited in my “The Hartsfield Story,” so it may not be hard evidence that another Görg Hartzfelder in Germany became a member of the Frankfurt Company (which was organized in Germany in 1683). Conceivably, the name of Görg Hartzfelder could have been mentioned by Penn in a letter that I have not seen and which may have been read by Hull, thus leading to Hull’s inclusion of the name under the rubric “Some of the people whom he (William Penn) mentions by name, in his record of his journey of 1677, who lived in various places which he visited in Germany.”
Irrespective of whether Penn actually met a Görg Hartzfelder in Germany, his journey of 1677 did take him into the province of Baden-Württemberg in which there was a section known as Das Härtsfeld from which families bearing the name Hartfelder, with variant spellings, had moved into surrounding areas as early as 1573 (see the next section).[6]
B.The Origin of the Hartsfield Name
Although the Hartsfield name has been borne by people of diverse ancestry, especially Dutch and English, whose names may have been derived in a different manner from that of the German, Görg Hartsfelder’s name must surely echo the place of origin of his ancestors—one indicator of this being the “er” ending of his name which he habitually used and which was retained for a time by his son Godfrey.
There is in the Swabian Alb of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, an area which for centuries has borne the name “Das Härtsfeld” (the a being written with an umlaut to give it an ae sound). This area has recently been described as:
Das Härtsfeld. Most easterly part of the Swabian Alb in the territory of Baden-Württemberg joining Bavaria. Bounded in the north by the steep slope of the Alb, in the east by the meteorite-smashed hollow of the Reises, in the west by the valley of the Kocher and Brenz rivers, in the south by the Danube, the area of the territory embraces 308 square kilometers.[7]
Extending about eighteen miles from Aalen on the West through Bopfingen almost to Nördlingen on the east, its principal towns are Bopfingen and Neresheim. In Bopfingen there is a Härtsfeldstrasse (Hartsfeld Street) which leads to Härtsfeldhausen (i.e. the village of Hartsfeld) on its outskirts. A highway known as “the old Härtsfeld road” extends in a southerly direction from Bopfingen for some sixteen to eighteen miles, passing through the medieval town of Neresheim before reaching the southern border of Das Härtsfeld.
The name of this area, Das Härtsfeld, was transposed many centuries ago into the Hartfelder surname. This is shown by the Etymologisches Worterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen which has this entry:
Härtfelder, Hertfelder, or Herdtfelder are alternative spellings. A person originating from Härtsfeld or Hertfeld located in the rough countryside of the Kreis (county) of Neresheim.[8]
As far back as 1573 a Hanns Herdtfelder resided in Swäbisch Hall, a medieval town about twenty-five miles northwest of Aalen, and today Härtfelder family names, though few in number, can be found in telephone directories of Karlsruhe, Dinkelsbuhl, and other areas in the vicinity of Das Härtsfeld.
It may be reasonably surmised that the Hartsfelder surname of the German Görg Hartsfelder of the Delaware River was similarly derived from Das Härtsfeld.[9] This Das Härtsfeld, of course, may well have given its name to various families who were not related to each other except in the sense that people who inhabit the same area for generations do tend to intermarrry, so it is an open question whether Jurian (Görg) Hartsfelder of the Delaware River was descended from the family to which the 1573 Hanns Herdtfelder belonged or whether his name was similarly, but separately derived, from Das Härtsfeld.
No document pertaining to Görg Hartsfelder of the Delaware River in America has been found prior to 1676, so, if he was not born in America he may have migrated to America from some other locality in Europe. He may or may not have lived in Das Härtsfeld in his youth, but it is reasonable to think that Das Härtsfeld was his family’s ancestral home, perhaps that of his parents; so a brief description of it may be of some interest to Hartsfield descendants.
C.Das Härtsfeld in the Seventeenth Century
“This land is rough, hard, threatening and unfriendly; has no wine production and little water, so much so that one must collect rain and snow in cisterns. But it produces much corn and other fruit, oxen, horses, sheep. It has much timber.” So Sebastian Munster’s Cosmographia of 1628 described “das Hertenfeld,” the name with which the humanist teacher Ladislaus Suntheim had replaced the Latin name Campidurus in recognition of the hardness (stony character) of its natural condition; for to him also this most easterly region of the Swabian Alb between the Kocher, Brenz, Reis and Albtrauf was viewed as a “rough, treacherous, rocky, threatening ground.” Its name is its omen—there it remains; even though some doubt whether the name Hartsfeld was derived from “hart” [stony].[10]
This physical description of the Hartsfeld, which was writtena generation or two before the time of Görg Hartsfelder, suggests that physical conditions made it a tough place for survival. This threatening character of the place is reflected in an old German proverb: “He who does not obey father and mother must go to the Hartsfeld.”[11]
Human events, notably the Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648, made it even tougher, prompting its inhabitants to move out to other parts of Europe and to America. This war, in which Lutherans led by the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus were pitted against the Roman Catholic Emperor, devastated the Härtsfeld. In 1629, the Emperor’s troops moved through the Härtsfeld seizing food, horses, wagons—anything and everything they wanted. They moved out before Protestant forces under Gustavus Adolphus took over the area and did the same thing. Both sides impressed men into their armies and attracted camp followers—men, women, and children, who followed the armies as they moved through victory and defeat into other areas. Through death in battle, starvation, disease, and flight the Härtsfeld lost more than half of its population. Engelhardt’s Neresheim und das Härtsfeldvividly portrays these conditions:
The Thirty Years War dealt roughly with the Härtsfeld. Already at the beginning of the War the Kaiser’s troops had exacted heavy payments. Gold lost its value and the inn-keeper took down his sign. With it came misery, distress, hunger. Everywhere one sought for the blame for this misfortune. They found it, in accord with the fancies of the time, in witchcraft. 1629 brought to Neresheim a true witch hunt. From February to October twenty-four persons were brought to Wallerstein, there painfully examined, found guilty and tortured. The wife of a master potter and their eighteen year old daughter were the first. “One must be put to rubble, otherwise the entire state may go there,” so wrote the chronicler.
In 1633/34 Swedish troops terrorized the territory. People were so upset from hunger that they no longer appeared to be men. Like carrion they tore away at everything they could find and eat; they took away dogs and cats, and they searched for grass and roots. The summer of 1634, however, brought passion to its highest point. This occurred in the annihilating fire of the battle ofNördlingen. The Swedes fled through the Härtsfeld woods and overran the villages. Following close behind were the Croatians to Neresheim, Elchingen, Ohmenheim, Auernheim, Dischingen and the most distant parts of Härtsfeld. In the general confusion all were destroyed who stood in the way. The “Bloody Night of Neresheim” on 29 September, 1634, cost the lives of more than 200 burgers (citizens). The entire area was wrecked, Eschenbaut and Talheim would arise no more. In others there now lived only a few frightened, crazed people. Their destitution was indescribable. In mouseholes they grubbed for grain. The Härtsfeld being “ground to dust and clay, armed men came no more.” Violence and immorality were universal. Many a one had only a dungeon for a home after he had sold his possessions for a ridiculously small sum. At the end of the War the Härtsfeld looked like the scene of a fire. After this terror life returned only gradually.