Heinrich Studebaker Baptized 9/19/1708 in Solingen, Germany. Married c.1740 in PA to ___ Kellough. From The Studebaker Family In America, p.561 (including much reference material), copyright 1976, LOC 75-39453.
Heinrich and his wife were both killed by Indians, 3 Mar 1756 in Peters Twp, Cumberland Co, PA (now Montgomery Twp, Franklin Co, PA). Full details of this story appear in the front of book in an article entitled "The Massacre."From Pennsylvania German Pioneers, by Ralph Beaver Strassburger, LLD, edited by William John Hinke, PhD, DD, Second Printing, Vol I, II, 1727-1775, Baltimore Genealogical Publishing Co, 1966, originally published in 1934 by Penna/German Society, Norristown, Pa. 1966 Printing, p xxxiii, "Journey to Pennsylvania"
Heinrich traveled west across Pennsylvania to what was then the frontier and was in the process of purchasing his own piece of land. He met and married his wife, who was a Scot-Irish lass of beauty. He built his log cabin and began to raise a family of sturdy children. On March 3, 1756 he was proceeding to clear his fields of stumps with his eldest son Joseph helping him. The Deleware and Shawnee Indians led by Captain Jacobs and Chief Shingas attacked with ferocity and killed Heinrich before he could reach his gun. They grabbed young Joseph and proceeded to smash in the door of the cabin. They quickly took captive the family. Several days later the nearest neighbors were able to bury Heinrich after the Indians had moved on to other areas of Pennsylvania to attack.
The journey to Pennsylvania fell naturally into three parts. The first part, and by no means the easiest, was the journey down the Rhine to Rotterdam or some other port. Gottlieb Mittleberger in his "Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750" writes:
"This journey lasts from the beginning of May to the end of October, fully half a year, amid such hardships as no one is able to describe adequately with their misery. The cause is because the Rhine boats from Heilbronn to Holland have to pass by 26 custom houses, at all of which the ships are examined, which is done when it suits the convenience of the custom-house officials. In the meantime the ships with the people are detained long, so that the passengers have to spend much money. The trip down the Rhine lasts therefore four, five and even six weeks. Then the ships come to Holland, they are detained there likewise five to six weeks. Because things are very dear there, the poor people have to spend nearly all they have during that time."The second stage of the journey was from Rotterdam to one of the English ports. Most of the ships called at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. This was the favorite stopping place, as 142 ships are recorded as having sailed from Rotterdam to Cowes.
In England there was another delay of one to two weeks, when the ships were waiting either to be passed through the custom house or waiting for favorable winds. When the ships had for the last time weighed their anchors at Cowes or some other port in England, then the real misery begins with the long vouage. For from there the ships, unless they have good wind, must often sail eight, nine, ten to twelve weeks before they reach Philadephia. But even with the best wind the voyage lasts seven weeks.
The third stage of the journey, or the ocean voyage proper, was marked by much suffering and hardship. The passengers being packed densely, without food and water, were soon subject to all sorts of diseases, such as dysentery, scurvy, typhoid and smallpox. Children were the first to be attacked and died in large numbers. Mittleberger reports the deaths of 32 children on his ship. Of the heartless cruelty practiced he gives the following example:"One day, just as we have a heavy gale, a woman in our ship, who was to give birth and could not under the circumstances of the storm, was pushed through the porthole and dropped into the sea, because she was far in the rear of the ship and could not be brought forward."The terrors of disease, brought about to a large extent by poor food and lack of good drinking water, were much aggravated by frequent storms through which ships and passengers had to pass."The misery reaches the climax when a gale rages for 2 or 3 nights and days, so that everyone believes that the ship will go to the bottom with all human beings on board. In such a visitation the people cry and pray most piteously. When in such a gale, the sea surges and surges, so that the waves rise often like mountains one above the other, and often tumble over the ship, so that one fears to go down with the ship; when the ship is constantly tossed from side to side by the storm and waves, so that no one can either walk, or sit, or lie, and the closely packed people in the berths are thereby tumbled over each other, both the sick and the well--it will be readily understood that many of these people, none of whom had been prepared for hardships, suffer so terribly from them that they do not survive."
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