Jacob Shook

The Man and His Legacy

By Bob Jones

Copyright 2001, Asheville NC
BIBLIOGRAPHY and FOOTNOTES

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" ).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY and FOOTNOTES