Jacob Shook
The Man and His Legacy
By Bob Jones
Copyright 2001, Asheville NC
FORWARD, CREDITS, BIBLIOGRAPHY and FOOTNOTES
Click Here
Chapter I : The Origins of Jacob Shook
Johannes Schuck, Grandfather
of Jacob Shook, my 5th Great Grandfather, was born about 1692 probably
along the valley of the Rhine River in the Southwestern section of modern
Germany. In the years near his birth this area was the seat of the Thirty
Year's War between the Protestant countries of Europe and the Catholic powers
led by France. France at the beginning of the 18th century pushed into the
Rhineland and occupied the area known as the Palatine.
This area was heavily populated by Lutheran Germans, and soon many Protestant families that had been there for centuries were displaced by the new rulers. They lost their wealth to taxes and had their land holdings confiscated, soon once well to do families found themselves subsistence farmers in unbearable circumstances in their own land.
Then
in 1708 and 1709 came the worst winter Northern Europe could ever remember.
Driven by circumstance beyond endurance thousands of families departed their
homeland and escaped down the Rhine River in boats of all description. At
first the local authorities were happy to see them go, but as years past and
the exodus continued they became alarmed at the depopulation of the Palatine.
With restrictions in place and guards on the river the flow of refugees finally
abated, but not before an estimated 10,000 souls had fled to the Low Countries.
The majority of these unfortunates came to rest in the Netherlands. Here families lived in refugee camps that would probably be familiar to today's Palestinians. The Protestant Dutch were sympathetic to their plight and helped as much as they could, but the numbers and the need was overwhelming to the small country. Other countries joined in the effort, notably England who began transporting these families to England and even to Ireland in massive resettlement projects. Even after twenty years though, the majority of Palatines still lived in the camps, camps that had often become poverty stricken towns.
In one such town Johannes Shuck grew up, with his parents we suppose, although we don't know who they were. At some point after he grew to manhood, probably before 1715 he married a woman named Anna Maria, probably a fellow Palatine.
Whether in Holland, their "borrowed" country, or while still in Germany, they began a family. The first child, Dorothea Schuck was born in about 1716 followed by Christina Schuck, Rosina Barbara Schuck, Maria Catherina Schuck and finally a son, Johannes Georg Schuck about 1724.
In
1732 Johannes Schuck took his family away from Rotterdam in Holland and headed
for the New World. In a small ship called a "Pink" named the "John
and William", an English vessel, he crowded his family on board with
several hundred other refugees and set out upon the seas to find a new life
among thousands of Palatines who had gone to America before him in the previous
twenty years. The idea of going to America had grown more and more popular
in the years after the Quaker John Penn had first invited the Palatines to
join him in his new colony of Pennsylvania.
Even more so, as word came back from those who had gone before about the wonderful
climate, rich and cheap lands and, more than anything, religious toleration.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the destination
of the ship, and after a short stopover in England the ship set out across
the Atlantic. The crossing was to be an awful one however.
Benjamin Franklin in his published newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette for October 19, 1732 reported the plight of the John and William; "17 weeks at sea. Forty-four persons died during the voyage. Three weeks before their arrival in Philadelphia the passengers mutinied on account of ill treatment and took command of the vessel" … "upon arrival the leaders of the mutiny were imprisoned." The tortured ship and its occupants finally sailed up the Delaware River on the afternoon of October 17, 1732. Here the port authorities recorded the name of "Johannes Schook" and those of his family in the registrar’s office.
In the New World of Pennsylvania these immigrant families often settled north of Philadelphia in Northampton County in the Williams Township south of Easton. Here, in this mostly German community the family became members of the Delaware River Congregation of the Lutheran Church. The records of that congregation record the marriages of the children to other members of the expanding German communities of the area (a people mislabeled by their English neighbors as "Dutch" ).
Dorothea
married Jacob Yount, probably in Holland, and after coming to America they
stayed in Northampton County. However two sons and a daughter of that family
came to North Carolina at some point and are buried there, Rosina married
Johann Frantz Mehrbas and ended up in Springfield, PA. Maria Catharina in
1746 married Heinrich Agner or Eigner and with her sister Christina who married
Johann Wilhelm Volpreght (Fulbright) and her brother Johanne Georg
Schuck, they were to move to
North Carolina. Johannes "Hans" Georg Schuck married Elizabeth
Grub on the 8th Aug 1748 at Old Williams Church. Their first child was Johanne
Jacob Schuck, born April 19, 1749. He was followed by brothers Michael Schuck
who died in infancy, Jeremiah Schuck, George Schuck, John Schuck, Andrew,
Abraham Schuck and Frederick Schuck and sister Sybila Schuck.
The
story of how the Shook, Volpreght, Eigner and Yount families came to North
Carolina was a common one. Land had become scarce in Pennsylvania, and more
and more expensive. After the Indians were finally held at bay by the English victories in the French
and Indian War which ended in 1763 many of the settlers of the east coast
began to imagine the more open territories and opportunities to the west and
south of Pennsylvania. By 1765 a wave of emigrants had begun to move down
the trail known as the Great Wagon Road. Many of these were the sons of the
original immigrants. This "road", more like a network of rough trails
than a highway in those days stretched from Pennsylvania to the newly opened
reaches of the frontier along the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in
the Carolinas and Georgia. Here the governors of those states hoped to build
a buffer of settlers against any future incursions of the Native Americans,
and to do so offered land at spectacularly low prices and on easy terms to
those willing to move with their families to the frontier. 
Hans Schuck and his wife must have found the promise of this enticing, so sometime in the mid to late 1760s they and their big family joined with his sister's families, the Eigners and the Volpreghts to travel to these lands. In his 1767 will their father was fair with his children with the exception of Rosina Barbara to whom he left one shilling if she claimed it. Apparently he was peeved at her.
In the fashion of such pioneers of the time they probably left walking, with a small two wheeled cart pulled by a pair of oxen carrying precious few possessions. From Philadelphia westward to Wright’s Ferry on the Susquehanna then southward down the Cumberland Valley to cross the Potomac River at William's Ferry (Williamsport MD), then into Virginia they traveled. From there the pioneers traveled down the Shenandoah Valley past Winchester, a small frontier outpost and on through the previously settled Irish settlements of Augusta Co. At the present sight of Roanoke VA at the intersection with the Chiswel Road to Kentucky the families turned to the southeast and traveled along the Roanoke River then over to the Dan near modern Danville VA.
The Wagon Road led them into North Carolina and on to the friendly Germanic colony of the Moravians at Wachovia (now Winston-Salem NC). Moving on across the Yadkin they were now in the area of the "new lands". While some travelers went on to the frontiers further south this group determined to leave the road here and move upriver at the Catawba toward the foot of the Blue Ridge. Here they took up land on Lyle's Creek, north of today's Conover, NC and settled.
This was the very edge of "civilization", the far western frontier at the time. In the years just before their arrival in this virgin wilderness the Indians had been on the warpath again, and the families had been forced to take refuge in stockades and forts during the summer months for protection. Finally Militia troops routed the warring Cherokee in 1761 and 1762. The heartland of the Cherokee was overrun by British Troops from South Carolina while North Carolina militia had dealt the marauding Indians defeat at Fort Dobbs near Statesville, NC pushing them back and preventing their coming across the Blue Ridge in large numbers again until 1776. Johannes Jacob Shuck, now a young man of 20, must have heard all the stories, and although by 1769 there was a general peace with the Cherokee it is easy to imagine his concern, shared by his neighbors, for the little known Native Americans living just across the Blue Ridge less than a days walk from Lyles's Creek. While these pioneers saw the Cherokee as a potential threat to their lives and well being, these frontiersmen had little interest in the growing animosities of the colonies toward the crown of England.
From a description of these pioneering families
… "Their first job was to clear the land and build their home. Only a
few acres could be cleared per year, and
their first home was the rudest of cabins. Their food in those days was very
plain and without any variety. They were having a hard time those first fewyears.
The family's first backwoods home was a small one room log cabin with one
door and one small window and the window had no glass, just a wooden shutter.
The cabin was covered with thatch and clapboards The chimney was built of
sticks and mud. The floors were dirt. Their food, to a large extent, was the
flesh of wild animals and that without salt most of the time. Both men and
women usually wore clothes and hats made from the skins of wild beasts. Their
shoes were made from raw hides, their furniture was hand made from rough materials.
The coverings for their beds were for the most part the pelts of deer, beavers,
bears, and wolves."
"Wild animals were numerous up at the cane breaks on the Catawba River, and they could secure their meat by killing bears, deer and squirrels, but Buffalo had disappeared about ten years before. Wild fowls were plentiful, such as turkeys and quail, and also wild geese and wild pigeons in their season. The wild pigeons were so numerous in their migration season that in passing over they would at times hide the sun like a big cloud. The creeks were well stocked with fish. This would have been a veritable paradise for sportsmen, but these pioneers hunted and fished more for their food supply than for sport."
"The family planted patches of wheat which were cut with a small hand sickle, flailed from the straw, then separated from the chaff by pouring it from a platform on a windy day; and both wheat and corn were pounded into meal or ground with a small hand mill. With such crude methods of harvesting and handling wheat they could raise only small patches. Wheat bread was a rarity to he enjoyed only for breakfast on Sunday morning. Corn was the main crop and supplied bread for the family and feed for the stock. For the Germans kraut and sausage served as staples and as ties to the old world,"
"These trying conditions lasted for only a few years. It was not long until their home was enlarged and improved. Small gristmills had been built on the branches around 1760 and later larger ones on the creeks. The law of supply and demand had done its work. Men with special aptitude turned their attention to the different trades. There was soon demand for carpenters, cabinet makers, saddlers, coopers, harness makers, blacksmiths, weavers, tailors, hatters, tanners, cobblers, millwrights, millers and men of other trades in every community. Shops and small stores were soon opened. Living conditions were constantly being changed for the better. Practically all the clothes for the men women and children were made at the homes from cotton wool and flax. The seed had to be picked from the cotton by hand. This was a slow and tedious job. The task for each member of the family in the evening after supper was to pick his shoe full of seed cotton. Then the lint was carded spun and woven into cloth."
"The pioneers were men and women of
true character with some education and they had saved some money; but money
could not buy the comforts and conveniences. They were not on the market in
those years on the frontier and had to be made at home. They did not handle
much money after their first supply was exhausted, and in fact they did not
need much for practically everything they ate and wore was raised and made
at home. They did not have much of anything to sell and prices were low. The
families did have a constantly increasing number of horses, cattle, sheep
and hogs. Everybody had geese from which the down was picked to make feather
beds. It was a custom for the parents to give their daughters a feather bed
when they married."
But do not think for a moment that these folks were unhappy in these hard pioneer days. They had never known anything but hardship and privation. Here on Lyle's Creek the Schucks, Eigners and Volpreghts (Fulbright) and Younts found "elbow room" and the freedom to raise their large families as they saw fit. They were members of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, then known as South Fork, and later were founders of Bethel Lutheran Church in today's northern Catawba County.
The Americanization to the name from Schuck to Shook probably occurred during the period from 1760-1775. In those times all the government officials were English, and had a hard time with the many German names. Often the change of spelling of such names were not so much the doings of the family as it was the record keepers. In the end the families often chose to give up the battle to retain the original spelling and began slowly to use the new spelling. Even then this must have been an unpopular acceptance, as Jacob is said to often used his German spelling late in life, many, many years later.
Johanne "Hans" Georg Schuck died about 1813 in what was then Lincoln County, NC. In his 89 years he had seen much, from his crossing of the Atlantic at the age of 8 he had helped build a life for the family in Pennsylvania. With his departure down the Great Wagon Road with his family in his 45th year he had once again built a community "from scratch" with the help of his extended family of siblings and their husbands and many children. In his 59th year he had seen the birth of a new nation, after a long war in which at least two of his children served the cause of Independence, and in his old age he saw his children and grandchildren go forth to settle that new land.
FORWARD, CREDITS, BIBLIOGRAPHY and FOOTNOTES Click Here
[ All materials presented on this web site are copyrighted materials either by the author of the page or the original contributor. Use of this material in a private, noncommercial manner is allowed with proper credit, other uses must be with the written consent of the contributor. Links to this site are encouraged ]