My family, together with thousands of others, participated directly in one of the great population movements of history: the dispersal of the Palatinates from the Rhine Valley of Germany to Pennsylvania and the westward migration of these people across North America.

These stories are about one of the Palatinate families, the Silvuses. Some spelled it Silvius, Silvis, Sylvis and Silveous--some didn’t know how it was spelled and left it up to census takers, court house recorders, and other family members who spelled it phonetically.

William Penn had promised cheap land and had made treaties with various wandering tribes of Indians. He had been given his grant by the British royal family in payment of a debt. It comprised much of the eastern half of Pennsylvania. The first struggle of Henry Silvius #1 in the new world, after arriving on the Queen Elizabeth in Philadelphia in 1738, was to get some of this land and to establish a farm upon it, once it had been cleared and the Indian Wars were over. One, Conrad Sylvus, settled directly on lands that were set aside as an Indian Tract Manor on the Lehigh River above Philadelphia, according to tax records. One of our ancestors, Nicholas Silvius #12 was kidnapped by the Indians and taken to Canada. Hal Sipe’s book, Indian Wars, tells how the Indians kidnapped an Anna Silvis near the present Walls Station, Pennsylania, and how they loved her red hair and had braided it and put a big buckle on the end, and had parted with her reluctantly. The Indians usually treated the children well and gave them to families who had lost children to disease and injury. In 1761 Nicholas and a neighbor's son, Frederick Boyer/Beyer, were returned by the Indians to Philadelphia after years of captivity.  A notice was put in Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette that their parents could come and pick them up at the court house. Nicholas Silvius was taken in 1755. Young Fred, who was captured in June 1757, had seen his father scalped before his very eyes on the day he was captured, and it is said he never saw his mother again, but in court documents it shows that she survived and eventually remarried. One of Frederick's sisters married an Indian and lived happily with them. This Boyer family and the Silviuses lived near Fort Allen on the Aguashicola Creek beyond the Blue Mountains.   This is a wild, dramatic area near the Appalachian Trail and the present town of Palmerton, Carbon County, Pennsylvania. The Indians used the Lehigh Gap to get through from the New England area to grazing and hunting lands farther south. So this was truly a key area to them and not something they were willing to give up easily. A year after his return by the Indians, Nicholas joined the troops of Captain John Wetherhold in the French and Indian Wars. By the time the Revolutionary War began, he was a very experienced fighter and was an Ensign--the highest rank of any Silvus up to the Civil War.

By the end of the 1700s, the family of Nicholas #12, and several other of his relatives and cousins, had joined the great German migration from Northampton County to Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. These families did not all go over the mountains in one single year. The first one to appear on tax records in Westmoreland County was John Silvius #4 who was there as early as 1783. It is believed that he was a younger brother of our immigrant ancestor, Johann Henrich #1. A few years later, he appeared with his youthful sons, Leonard, Jacob, and Peter. They were blacksmiths. Eventually some nephews and cousins joined them. Among them was the family of Nicholas Silvius, Senior #12. He had not been in western Pennsylvania too many years before he died in 1802. His three grown sons each received a plantation from his estate. One son, Henry #63, had a family of 11 children and died leaving them in dire circumstances. Another was Jonas #65 who had an even larger family with two sets of twins.

The third son was Nicholas Jr #62 who came up missing around the time of the War of 1812. His wife Elizabeth heard that he had gone to Marietta, Ohio, so she decided to follow him even though Isaac, her youngest, was a babe in arms. She got a mule and went to Pittsburgh with nine of her ten children and floated down the Ohio on a flat boat to Marietta where she came upon one Nicholas Silvus. He promptly disappeared again leaving the lots he had recently purchased to be auctioned at a sheriff’s sale. He was never seen nor heard from again.

Henry #63 who died leaving the 11 children had one son named Nicholas #349 who also was a hard luck kind of guy. He married Maria Mott and as his earnings decreased his family grew in opposite proportions! One of his sons was William H Sylvus #349b, a founder of one of the earliest labor unions in America. His father wandered all over the country making wagons and he (William) was apprenticed out to a local politician who taught him to read and write. He became an ardent Whig and then a Socialist. Eventually he found work in the iron foundries of Pennsylvania. At that time there were no safety rules and the conditions were deplorable. They worked 12-hour days usually six days a week. He saw these injustices and decided to do something about them. He became an orator, spokesman, and strategic planner for the working men of his day. Just as he was at his zenith he took sick and died suddenly in Philadelphia. Some political leaders had suggested that he would be a probable vice presidential candidate in the next election. He was friends with such notables as Susan Anthony and his death made headlines all over the world…condolences were received from Lenin and many others. He died a poor but honest man--he had never taken money for his union work and so his family was eventually provided for by the Iron Moulder’s Union.

In the late 1880s some of the Silviuses who had gone to western Pa were making their mark in the world. Many were ordinary farmers, businessmen, lawyers, and merchants. One in particular, William Arents Silvius, was doing experiments and amassing an auspicious collection of various species of plants. He was an attorney who had a hobby that made him famous: naming, labeling and studying various grass plants of the American Southwest. He is in Who was Who in American Science.

During the later days of the nineteenth century, some of the family had migrated to Rock Island area of western Illinois. One of the sons of this family became a local sheriff of some note and the other became a land speculator and railroad champion. His name was Richard Shippen Silvis #686. Eventually a town there in the Moline--Davenport--Rock Island area was named for him. It is still on the map: Silvis, Illinois.

In the following pages are a few stories, vignettes, news articles and memories submitted by various Silvius family members. The numbers by the names tie individuals to a chart of the Silviuses in America by Mary Cole.

Judy Bedford