But why wasn’t her son happier to be reunited with his family?
When she had first walked down the gangplank of the Charming Nancy over a week ago now, she thought that at long last, hardship and suffering lay behind her. And there had been such suffering, both from outside the church and within her home. She had left behind a grave in Ixheim, of her second son, Johann. She and Jacob and Felix were reunited, and then . . . behind her came the ship’s carpenter with their Anna. He held out the red Mutza to Jacob and announced the most shocking words she’d ever heard in her life: he was their missing son, her firstborn, Hans.
How did she feel, watching her son stride toward her? She wanted to weep, rejoice, fall upon her face and thank the God of heaven that her missing son had returned to her. Anna reached out and grabbed the infant held in Dorothea’s arms as Bairn, this tall ship’s carpenter whom she didn’t know at all yet felt she always knew, grasped her and held her close to him.
Dorothea could not release him, not for the longest while. Her boy! He was not dead but alive. Bairn pulled himself back, holding her hands in his. Then he straightened to his full height—oh my, he was taller than Jacob! The two men looked at each other, Jacob with tears streaming down his face, down his beard, down to the dock. Jacob held up the red Mutza, whispering over and over, “Meiner Sohn. Meiner Sohn.” Then they embraced, father and son.
Dorothea’s heart had never been so full. Never.
But today, it felt empty again.
Their son seemed to want to remain a stranger to them. He insisted they call him Bairn, not his birth name of Hans. He stumbled over their language. He seemed cautious of their beliefs and customs. She noticed how he held himself back during morning and evening devotions. She heard Felix ask him why he didn’t pray, and he said that Jacob said enough prayers for everyone.
The comment struck like an arrow through her heart. Why did her son feel so isolated from them?
He couldn’t seem to find his place among them. He lived among them, but he had not truly accepted them. They had welcomed him in every way she knew, yet still he kept himself aloof.
And he had yet to call her his mother. He avoided the words. Last evening, he had told Felix to “take an extra blanket to your mother.” Not “our mother.” She heard that slight yet significant choice of words. She heard.
The wind gusted and she shivered, feeling the cold surround her. She gripped her arms tighter, as if she were trying to hold herself together, to keep the wind from pulling her apart. Maria often warned her that if she wasn’t careful, melancholy would do her in, she would reach that terrible place where she no longer cared about anything. She believed that of herself. Melancholy was always hovering nearby, eager to claim her, to exaggerate her fears.
It was true that Dorothea was frightened about what lay ahead in the wilderness. She recognized the logic of her son’s rationale—they would be utterly vulnerable in the frontier. But Jacob had told her the Indians caused little concern. Just the opposite, he said. One Indian, in particular, had become his friend and helper. “One morning,” he said, “I spotted a deer in the forest. Before I could get a clear shot with my rifle, the deer fell down. Just collapsed! When I investigated, I found an arrow was imbedded in its side. I looked up and saw an Indian. He offered the deer to me.”
The Indian remained with him over the summer, helping him build the cabin that would house the church for the winter. He was always alone, that Indian, Jacob said. He did not speak English and Jacob did not speak his language, but somehow they communicated.
Where was the tribe of that Indian? Dorothea wondered. Why was he alone? Would they come looking for him?
She wanted to accept her husband’s bold assurances, but the thought of encountering natives terrified her. On the ship, Felix had relayed horrific stories of scalpings and raids and kidnappings from talk among the sailors. When she tried to tell Jacob about her concerns, he dismissed them with a wave of his hand. He thought she was overprotective in the best of times, but now he felt she insulted him by implying that he hadn’t planned and provided well for the church. For his family.
Tonight, despite the brisk wind, she had told Jacob she was going to walk the baby to sleep outside where it was quiet. The truth was she needed to get out of the Charming Nancy and its stale air, away from him, from everyone. She walked down the docks, gently rocking the baby in her arms, watching anchored ships loll to and fro on the river.
This sweet little babe’s mother had died in childbirth on the ocean voyage and Dorothea had adopted him, without Jacob’s knowledge. It was the only time in life she had done something of her own accord, not caring whether he would bless her choice or not.
She walked a distance along the docks, then turned to find the ship’s carpenter, her son, Hans, standing a few feet away. He had come to find her and it made her heart soar.
“That babe you hold so tenderly. You see him as your own, don’t you?”
He spoke haltingly, thinking carefully about his words, but he did attempt to use his first language with her. She liked hearing it from him much better than the clipped, cultured tones of his Scottish English.
“You love him as you loved Johann. As you love Felix.”
Her eyes hungrily absorbed the details of his face. She could not get enough of him. “And you, Hans. You are loved. Do you doubt that?” How do you explain maternal love to a man who has never married or loved a child?
He looked at her with a slightly perplexed expression. “You say you loved me, yet you let your husband take a mere boy to the New World. I was not much older than Felix is now.”
She lowered her gaze; the question needed a thoughtful answer. How could she make him understand? “Your father promised me he would take care of you. I trusted him.”
“And yet you were wrong. He was wrong.” He bent down and yanked off his boot, then his sock, and lifted his pant leg over his ankle. There were scars, horrible scars.
Dorothea’s legs suddenly turned to mush. She could feel her heartbeat pounding in her ears and looked for a place to sit down, but there was none.
Her precious son. What had happened to him?
She looked down at the sleeping babe in her arms. This tall man standing in front of her had once been like this babe. She remembered the first time she had held her firstborn, when he was only minutes old, placed gently in her arms by the midwife. She remembered examining those little feet and tiny toes, astounded at the miracle of life. Those feet were once so small, so beautiful, so perfect. And now those same ankles were riddled with hideous red scars.
“They’re from shackles.” He was talking in a raw, hoarse voice now. “They’re from the man I was sold to, off the ship as an indentured servant, though he considered me not as a servant but as a slave. He shackled me each evening so I wouldn’t run off.” He rolled down his pant leg and let out a harsh laugh. “And yet where would I have run to? T’ whom? I spoke no English. I had no money.” Her son’s eyes gleamed with calculation, as he looked at her in the fading sunlight. “But I learned. To survive in this world, I learned how to make my own way. And I stopped lookin’ backward. I stopped hopin’ my father would come for me.”
He was just a young boy when all this happened, hardly older than Felix. Just a boy. She wanted to take him in her arms and tell him that she hadn’t known, hadn’t known. “Your father was told you had died on the ship.”
“And Jacob Bauer did not question it. He did not look for any evidence. He naïvely took the word of evildoers.”
“He might have been naïve to accept their word, but he would never have left you had he thought you were still alive.” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. “You must believe that, Hans. Your father . . . he was heartbroken when he returned to Germany. He blamed himself.”
“And do y’ still trust his judgment? After all he’s done? To you, to me. He is a man who does not listen t’ others. I’ve sailed with many men like him. I’ve witnessed catastrophic results when the cap
tain of a ship does not listen to reason.” He stooped down to yank his boot on. “He was wrong then. He is wrong still. These plans of his—he encourages them at great risk. Why do y’ still think he should be trusted with the lives of others?”
She noticed a change in his voice as his boot went on. It went flat and cold, as if the boot covered up the hurt boy who lived somewhere deep within him.
“Do you think it wise to go north toward the frontier where there is no protection for those who are vulnerable?”
No protection from the Indians, he meant. “Of course I trust your father’s judgment.” But she had lost some of her assuredness and her trembling voice revealed it. “He has only our best interest at heart.”
Her son was not looking at her. In desperation she reached out and caught his hand, then held it tenderly against her. “Forgive him, Hans. He is just a man.”
“Bairn. Call me Bairn.” His eyes flicked toward her, then settled on the ground. “Aye, he is just a man. But a man whose choices affect so many others.”
She had no more answers and no more excuses.
His lips curved in a polite smile that did not reach his eyes. “Let’s hope yer right.”
Dorothea watched her son walk away with that hard, confident way of his. It had never struck her before this moment how much he had grown up to be the image of his father. The sun-tipped hair, the startling gray eyes. Tall and lean. Always so sure of himself. Always so tough.
No one ever contradicted Jacob Bauer . . . except for Hans. Even as a small boy, he had challenged his father, questioned him, corrected him. So unlike her. She had always felt powerless before her husband.
She didn’t know where Hans got his courage to stand up to his father. Nor did she know how he had the courage to survive the difficult years after he’d been isolated—no, speak the truth, Dorothea—he’d been cruelly abandoned. She had never really understood her firstborn, the way his mind worked, in the way she understood Johann’s or Felix’s. Despite all those years as his mother, she’d never really known her son. But how she had admired him! And depended on him.
Because the main reason she had relented to Jacob’s decision to take their son to the New World was that she had more confidence in the judgment and wisdom of her eleven-year-old boy than in her husband. She thought that if Hans went along, Jacob would be safe.
She was the one who had it wrong.
Philadelphia
October 17, 1737
One look at Bairn’s face convinced Anna that something had gone very wrong. The men had just returned from spending the day in queue in the portico of the Court House, as they had been each day since they had arrived in Port Philadelphia, excepting Sunday.
“Where is Jacob?” Christian Müller asked.
“He’s gone to Germantown to purchase tools,” Anna said. “He left after you went to the Court House this morning. He said to go ahead and have supper without him.”
As Christian and the other men went up the gangplank to the ship, Bairn remained on the dock.
“What’s happened?” Anna asked.
“I dinnae know how your people can be so naïve.” Bairn’s grip tightened on his hat, fingers crushing the brim, but he worked to keep his face impassive as his frustration over this immigration situation grew.
My people. The use of that pronoun rankled her. When would he acknowledge them as his people too?
“There’s dozens and dozens of immigrants comin’ in from the ships. They’re all eager to naturalize and settle on their land before winter rolls in.”
She had seen the small boats rowing to the docks, filled with German men, had seen them escorted up Second Street to the Court House. She expected the immigration process would be a slow one.
“Finally, Christian, Isaac and Peter, Simon, Josef—finally, their patience was rewarded and their turn had come up.” He leaned against the rock wall. “The way it works is that a clerk reads the Oath of Allegiance to the new immigrants in English, section by section, and the immigrants repeat it in their garbled way. Most don’t understand it, anyway. Just sayin’ it aloud satisfies the clerk. The clerks consider Germans to be ignorant men.” He crossed one ankle over the other and studied the top of his boot. “Each man signs his name, or puts an X beside his name if he’s illiterate, as most are. And that is that. Immigrants no longer, they’re free to live in the New World with their families, free t’ worship or not worship in the way they see fit.”
Yes, Anna knew all that from Jacob’s description of his own immigration process, over a year ago. “Has it changed?”
“Today, young Felix came along, sent by his father so that he would not wander the streets of Philadelphia. The laddie understood English well enough that he was able to translate the oath t’ Christian Müller and the others. When the men realized that they were declarin’ allegiance to the King of England, they stopped in their tracks. They asked Felix to repeat the oath, which he did. Then the men huddled together for a conference the way they do, and when it was over, they said they could not, in good conscience, declare such an oath. They gave up their spot in line—which had taken days to get—and made their way back here.”
Anna closed her eyes. “I fear the men will not bend,” she said softly.
“Aye.” Bairn let out a deep sigh of exasperation. “Nor will the Court House. So what if they have to say a few words of allegiance t’ the King? ’Tis small inconvenience for what they gain.”
“A small inconvenience?” Anna said. “Bairn, it is no small thing. An oath—it is a vow. A promise made before God.
“We had few rights in Germany,” she tried to explain. “We could not own land, we could not build houses. Our worship was not allowed in public places. Because the men refused to join the military, they had to pay a special tax. Any marriage was not recognized by the state church. Why, we couldn’t even hold funeral services for our loved ones. Your own brother Johann was given a hasty burial, hidden from the authorities. Despite all that our people endured, we did not give up. God has blessed us and provided for us. How can we go against Him now?”
“If these stubborn men of Ixheim dinnae budge, they cannae be allowed to leave Port Philadelphia. They’ll be sent back to Germany.”
Late that evening, Jacob returned from Germantown. The men, as well as Maria and Anna, gathered outside to talk by a central fire because the children had gone to sleep. When Jacob heard they had returned from the Court House without success, he was astounded. “This should have taken one afternoon, not five days. Now, six! Last year, I walked into the Court House, signed my name, and was free to go.”
“Did you say anything?” Christian said. “Did you lift your hand in response to the clerk?”
“Jacob,” Isaac said, “did you not realize what you were doing?”
“I . . . did not speak the language. I did not know.” At that point, Jacob went silent.
“Jacob, had we known this,” Christian said, “if we had been made aware that is what we would have to encounter, we would not have come.” In as kind a way as he could, for he was a gentle man, Christian alluded to Jacob that he had misled them by his impulsiveness, by his ignorance. It was a humiliating moment for the proud bishop.
Bairn tried to reason with his father, with Christian, Josef, with Isaac. He tried to point out that the oath was merely a way for the Provincial Council to assure itself that foreigners would agree to abide by the rules and regulations of the English government. That they truly were free to worship as they wanted.
The Amish men did not see an oath to be as simple as that. To them, it was as if they had taken God off His throne and put the King of England in His place. To them, an oath was sacrilege. Christian shook his head sadly. “No, we cannot. To swear an oath would be blasphemy against the Lord. If He wants us to be here in this New World, He will find a way.”
But these delays were costing valuable time. Anna could see the lines of anxiety deepen in Jacob’s face. And then he made an announcement. “The Ba
uer family is going on ahead to the land. Tomorrow morning.”
“What about us?” Christian asked.
“The rest of you will no doubt find a way to solve this problem, then you can join us.”
Bairn rose to his full height, six feet six inches, towering over the others, taller than his own father. “I will stay behind with the rest.” He said he would see to it that they found a solution to the naturalization process. Once that was done, he would purchase horses and wagons to carry their trunks and barrels. And then they would journey up the Schuylkill River to arrive at the settlement.
Felix asked if he could remain behind with Bairn, to keep practicing his English. To everyone’s surprise, Jacob Bauer made no objection.
That night as the baby slept in Dorothea’s arms, Jacob slipped onto the pallet to lie beside her. She shifted the baby and settled him between them. Jacob lay flat on his back, one arm bent under his head.
“We are going to leave tomorrow at sunup,” he said, his voice oddly gentle.
Dorothea blinked at this, for as she looked around the room, no one was making any motion to pack. “Have you told Christian? Maria will want to start packing.”
“They’re not ready to start out. Just you and I will head out tomorrow. I didn’t anticipate the immigration process to take so long. I need to return to the land and finish the hay mowing while the weather holds.”
Her senses reeled at this announcement. “You’re leaving them?” She knew he was growing frustrated over the delays, but leaving them here? It didn’t seem right. Her shock gave way to indignation. “We should wait so that we all leave together.”
A warning look flittered over Jacob’s face. “We’ll only be separated for a short time. A few days. A week at the most. Hans has assured me he will see it through. Then, they’ll join us.”
She closed her eyes in frustration. Why must Jacob always forge ahead of the others, neglecting common sense? Hadn’t he ever learned his lessons? Other than Anna and Hans, no one spoke English. They couldn’t make their way without help. Besides, she couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from her Hans, her son.
The Newcomer Page 3