Family Tree Maker's Genealogy Site: Genealogy Report: Descendants of Mathias Schleiermacher

[ Home Page | First Page | Previous Page | Next Page | Last Page ]

Descendants of Mathias Schleiermacher

Generation No. 1

1. MATHIAS¹ SCHLEIERMACHER was born Abt. 1685 in Hesse Cassel, Strasburg, Germany ¹, and died November 25, 1762 in Gap, Lancaster Co , Pa.¹. He married CATHERINE SCIEBELL February 1725/26 in Germany¹. She was born WFT Est. 1691-1707 in Germany¹, and died in Lancaster Co, Pa.¹.

Notes for MATHIAS SCHLEIERMACHER:
Mathias emigrated from Strausberg, Germany about 1710. He was born and lived in Hess Castle. In America he settled on what is called the "London Lands", a tract of one thousand acres in Strasburg; supposedly named by him; he was at the time surrrounded by Indians. He had two brothers, one of whom was a clergyman and settled in the Emperor's Dominion, high up in Germany. He was appointed Secretary of Legation from that Government to the Court of St. James. Afterwards was Charge d'Affairs and there conducted the marriage of President John Adams. While minister to the Court of St. James he resided with one of his descendants. His oldest son was the Governor of an unknown island.

Mathias' other brother was a Mayor in the King of Prussia's full regiment and afterwards it is probabe, that his son was one of the officers (a Major) in the Hession Troops, as a soldier of that name was confined as prisoner of war in the Lancaster Jail.

The "London Lands" descended to Mathias' four sons: John, Henry , Mathias and Daniel. John paid 800 pounds for 346 acres in 1761

Notes for Mathias Slaymaker:
[Althouse.FTW]

More About Mathias Slaymaker:
Emigration: Abt. 1710
Naturalization: 1729

From: althouse@phxlink.net
Subject: Slaymaker/Schliermacher
Date: Sunday, April 18, 1999 12:16 PM

Sorry, it has taken me so long to get back to you. The book I have is "History of the Slaymaker Family" Compiled by Henry Cochran Slaymaker 1909, Revised by Clyde L. Groff and Samuel R. Slaymaker II 1969. All I have is xeroxed pages of the parts relevant to my line which my Grandfather made. I'm afraid I can't find this book myself (my grandfather passed away a few years ago). My grandfather lived in central PA, and I'm sure he found it locally. If you find it, let me know!

The introductory material (page 7) has this to say about the Lawrence line: "The updating of a book of this kind, first printed sixty years ago, could result in a very large volume. Since the only heir of Lawrence Slaymaker, Anna Barbara Slaymaker, married George Lefever, no special effort was made to update this part of the book. Likewise with the descendants of Barbara Slaymaker, married to Heironimus Eckman. However, we preserved the information in the 1909 book so that interested descendants have a base for updating these lines."

Of course, this doesn't mean the 1909 version didn't have plenty of interesting information. If you send me your regular mail address, I would be happy to send you copies of what I have (about 14 pages -- only about the first three or four being directly relevant to your line).

SOURCE: Genforum Website.

Posted by: kathy crouse Date: December 18, 1999 at 05:56:53
In Reply to: Mathias Slaymaker/Schleiermacher by Robert S. McComsey of 6

My limited research on Latter Day Saints site and in a Lancaster County History book (volume 1 of many)and a Paradise Pa. book, shows Matthias Slaymaker to have lived in a log house (still lived in though expanded). I have driven past this house. It is on the right as you go north from Rt. 30 on Vintage Rd. My research shows that I am descended from his daughter Anna Barbara who married Hieronimus Eckman. I have read also that this is the same Slaymaker family as that of "White Chimneys", a large family home on Rt. 30 in the Gap, Pa. area.
Kathy (Pleger) Crouse

SOURCE:: Joyce Minton <joyceminton@quixnet.net>

Mathias lived in the city of Strasbourg, then part of the German empire in the province of Alsace. "Mattheis Schleiermacher" is listed as a Swiss - German settler in Lancaster Co. Mathias, Catharine, Lawrence and Anna Barbara immigrated to Pennsylvania about 1710.

Only one slaymaker family settled in colonial Pennsylvania. The land office records in Harrisburg show that a Mathias Slaymaker received a tract of land in Strasburg township, Chester co, along the present day Strasburg-Gap road, the old Conestoga rd. Mathias Slaymaker is listed with German-Swiss settlers who applied for naturalization in the year 1729.

Mathias Slaymaker was born in Hesse Kassel in Germany. He moved to the city of Strasbourg, then part of the German Empire in the province of Alsace. Mathias & his family immigrated to the American colonies about 1710. His land, 1,000 acres, was purchased from an English company called the London Company. "London land" is situated in present day paradise township in the peck valley of Lancaster Co., Pa. The Pequea Valley settlement of 1710 was the first permanent settlement in that part of Chester Co. which was in 1729 to comprise Lancaster co. Along with the well-known French Huguenot family of Madam Ferree, Mathias and his wife, Catherine, were the original settlers. It has been said that Mathias named Strasburg Township for his Alaskan home.

Mathias built a log house close to a large spring on land that he & his sons cleared for farming. Alexander Harris' "History of Lancaster Co. ", (1872), reports that "Mathias Slaymaker had an excellent German education & in person was remarkable for his almost gigantic stature and great strength, as were his sons, which qualities in those primitive times commanded them to their neighbors and won the respect of the Indians who were then numerous in the neighborhood. He died at an advanced age and lies buried at the old Leacock Presbyterian Church in Leacock township, which has been the burying ground of almost all his numerous descendants of six generations."

Mathias was active in building both the Pequea and Leacock Presbyterian Churches. Communion with his British compatriots was probably responsible for the anglicizing of the name from "Schleiermacher" to "Slaymaker".

Life magazine features an article on the Slaymakers & white chimneys (family home) in their August 25, 1967 issue.

Lancaster County Genealogy Project Biography Board

Slaymaker

Posted By: Carol Eddleman <deddle@ix.netcom.com>
Date: November 12 2001

SLAYMAKER. Among the old and honored families of Lancaster county, there are a few which have become particularly conspicuous on account of their identification with the progress and development of their localities, and their peculiar fitness for the positions of trust and responsibility in which they have been placed by their fellow-citizens. Such in a marked degree is the case in the Slaymaker family.

In its German orthography the name was spelled Schleurmacher, and was one held in high esteem in its native land. When Mathias Schleurmacher, or Slaymaker, left Germany to find wider opportunities in the New World, his immediate family in Strasburg, were people of position and eminence, one being a clergyman of repute, and another a diplomatist of celebrity, being at that time secretary of Legation from the German government, to the Court of St. James, afterward becoming Charge d'affairs to the same place. Mathias was also a man of judgment and foresight, and when he reached America in 1710, he made a wise selection of land in the State of Pennsylvania. His purchase was 1000 acres from the London Co., and its location was in what was then known as the London Lands, then situated in Strasburg, now Paradise township. Building his log cabin near a beautiful spring of clear, pure water, he settled down to an agricultural life, clearing up his land as quickly as possible, the whole of it being at that time but a wilderness. Being a man of gigantic size, he compelled the respect and admiration of his savage neighbors, who were ever impressed by physical strength, while his honesty and kindness in dealing with the Indians won for him their respect and friendship, a matter of no little moment in that unsettled region. Mathias Slaymaker not only gave the name to Strasburg, but he liberally contributed to the county's improvement, cleared lands, made roads, built school houses and encouraged religious movements, filling out to the utmost our idea of a useful and noble life. He was permitted a long career, and the work he did laid the foundations upon which his family and fellow-citizens have since builded. His remains lie in the old cemetery of the Presbyterian Church, in Leacock township, where many of the family rest. The five sons of Mathias Slaymaker were: John, Lawrence, Mathias, Henry and Daniel; while his daughters were: Margaret and Barbara. All record of Lawrence disappeared after he joined a band of pioneers and went to the West. Mathias purchased that portion of the original 1,000 acres which, in 1832, belonged to his great-grandsons, John M. and Nathan E., the latter of whom was for many years the secretary and treasurer of the Lancaster County Mutual Insurance Co. John, son of Mathias the settler, was the father of the late Capt. John Slaymaker of Paradise township, and he became a soldier in Braddock's army at the age of twenty-two years, participating in the disastrous battle of Braddock's Field, later becoming a captain in the Revolutionary army. After the close of that war he returned to his home in Lancaster county, and ended his long term of public service as commissioner of this county, his death occurring in 1798, at the age of sixty-five years.

SCHLEIERMACHER-FERREE CONNECTION:

In 1685, when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which granted religious freedom, he sent soldiers to all towns and villages to kill the Protestants and confiscate their properties. Daniel and Marie escaped to Germany where their daughter, Mary Catherine was born. It is believed that Daniel died while the family lived in Strasbourg. Details of his death are lacking; One report says he was slain during the insurrection in France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.2 He may have died before 1708 in Lindau, Bavaria. After Daniel died, his wife assumed her maiden name for safety.

The family moved from Strasbourg to a safer area in Lindau Bavaria where they heard of a "new Moses", William Penn, who was selling his rich land in the New World cheaply, title to which would ensure owners political asylum and freedom of opportunity and religion. March 10, 1708, Mary Ferree and her seven children, along with a young couple they had befriended in Strasbourg, Mathias and Catherine Schleiermacher, were pass ported by the Bavarian Civil Service to immigrate "via Holland and England to the Island of Pennsylvania to reside there." Final clearance came on May l0 from the pastor and deacons of the Reformed Walloon Church, who described them as professors of "the Pure Reformed Religion ... without having given cause for scandal that has come to our knowledge."

The little band traversed the Palatinate's burned-out landscape toward the riot of spires and masts that marked the maritime metropolis of Rotterdam. After sailing on a bark to London, they settled in a Palatine colony in Spitalfields.

"Being people of substance, the Ferree-Schleiermachers formed the nucleus around which poorer transients gathered. Through Penn agents, Madame Ferree was their spokesman to, and in dickering with, William Penn. He asked that she be brought to his London residence for an interview. The cultured and indomitable widow so impressed the proprietor that he petitioned the sovereign herself for an audience. This occurred on August 27, 1708."4 "It was obvious that England's Queen Anne took pleasure in the company of women of accomplishment, for after one sitting, she granted Madame Ferree a patent of naturalization, covering all fifty-four of the persons in the Ferree-Schleiermacher entourage. Permission for the group to colonize in America was granted in the same instrument."

"Mathias Schleiermacher and Mary Ferree's holdings comprised roughly four thousand acres from agent Martin Kendig's large share of Penn's 1710 land grant in the Pequea Valley. Possession could not be effected until the surveyor general of the province finished subdividing. Payment was then to be made to agent Kendig. Martin Kendig, like other Penn agent-servants, was a middleman for the proprietor. Penn dispensed with the work of getting settlers by allowing agents to take a commission on any portions of their own grants sold. The only injunctions laid down were those that could be expected; customers had to be "Godly" and able to come across with the money."

"Since surveying would take two years, it was decided that the Ferree-Schleiermacher group would cross the Atlantic and proceed up the Hudson River to a Huguenot colony at Esopus. When surveying was completed in Pennsylvania, they could descend to their Promised Lands."

"In early September, 1708, safely aboard the ship Lyon, the Pool of London, with its forest of masts, slipped back into the city's sooty mists, behind the Ferree-Schleiermachers and their band. The encircling horizon now became green-blue ocean for six weeks of hard biscuits, salted fish, pickled pork, scents of pitch and brine, squeaks and groans of straining rigging.

"When the ship Lyon entered the Hudson River the immigrants experienced deeply felt emotions of thanksgiving. After the Reverend Josiah Kochesthal led the group in prayer, they embraced. With laughs and tears they probably commented on the familiar Rhine-like appearance of the Hudson's steep wooded hills. They must have been thankful that they made it to Esopus before the river froze and rejoiced to settle down in the log cabins of their hosts before the first snow fell."

For two years these immigrants waited at Esopus. In 1710 word reached them that their Pequea Valley lands had been surveyed. When the ice was melted in early spring, they set sail downriver to the ocean, but this time only to coast along the shoreline to the mouth of the Delaware and up the river to Philadelphia.

When Mary Ferree and her friends put into Philadelphia, they found bustling markets with dairy cattle, sheep, oxen, and horses; descendants of the original Swedish stock. From full-to-the-rafters stores they bought hardware, smoked meat, and flour. Maps of their holdings were prepared in the office of Penn's secretary, James Logan. The Pequea Valley comprised the western extremity of Chester County and was referred to as Conestoga Township. The valley was watered by two small, southwesterly-flowing rivers, the Pequea and, a few miles to its west, the Conestoga. Both emptied into the Susquehanna River.

Penn's west road had been extended through Chester County to the Gap in the Hills. Here it crossed the trading road running south to New Castle. By 1710 the west road from Philadelphia was being pushed southwesterly to the Susquehanna. It was called the Great Conestoga Road. It was over this dirt path that the Ferree-Schleiermacher caravan of wagons bumped west on a summer's day in 1710.

Reports of the settlers' arrival have it that Madame Ferree stepped in front of the others to meet the first deerskin-clad native, who stated that he would take them to their lands. Mary Ferree's family was among the first 5,000 of 150,000 Huguenots to arrive in America. Madame Anna Marie De Warrembere Ferree was the founder of the Pequea Valley, PA Huguenot colony in 1712 in Lancaster Co. One of her first actions was to vest in trustees a piece of land for a cemetery and she is buried in the SE corner.

Slaremaker, Mathias
Date: Sept 22, 1744 Residence: Strasburg Twp.
Land Record ID: 40974
Description: Grantor Book-Page: B-171
Property: 200 acres in Strasburg Township.
Remarks: DEED

More About MATHIAS SCHLEIERMACHER:
Burial: Old Leacock Church Cemetery, Leacock Twp, Lancaster Co., PA

Notes for CATHERINE SCIEBELL:
Slaremaker, Catharine
Date: Sept 22, 1744 Residence: Strasburg Twp.
Land Record ID: 40974
Description: Grantor's wife Book-Page: B-171
Property: 200 acres in Strasburg Township.
Remarks: DEED

Children of MATHIAS SCHLEIERMACHER and CATHERINE SCIEBELL are:

2.	i.	MARGARET² SLAYMAKER, b. 1722, Pequea Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; d. Bef. April 03, 1795, Piney Creek. Frederick County, Maryland.
3.	ii.	LAWRENCE SLAYMAKER, b. Abt. 1724, Germany; d. March 15, 1746/47, Lancaster Co., Pa..
4.	iii.	ANNA BARBARA SLAYMAKER, b. February 26, 1724/25, Strasburg Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; d. August 19, 1796, Bart Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
5.	iv.	MATHIAS SLAYMAKER, JR., b. Bet. 1728 - 1730, Leacock, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; d. January 09, 1804, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
6.	v.	JOHN S. SLAYMAKER, SR., b. June 1730, Strasburg Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; d. March 27, 1796, Leacock, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
7.	vi.	HENRY SLAYMAKER, b. August 1734, Strasburg Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; d. September 25, 1785, Leacock, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
8.	vii.	DANIEL SLAYMAKER, b. Abt. 1736, Lancaster Co., Pa.; d. 1799, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

[ Home Page | First Page | Previous Page | Next Page | Last Page ]