German Ancestry.—English Ancestry.—The Pennsylvania Germans.—The Quakers.—How his Forefathers came to America.—The Effect of Intermixture of Races.—The Hereditary Traits seen in his Books. The ancestry of Bayard Taylor were connected with some of the best blood of England and Germany. His grandmothers were both German, and his grandfathers both English. The German line comes from that body of emigrants, consisting of large numbers from Weimar, Jena, Cassel, G?ttingen, Hanover, and perhaps Gotha, who sailed from Bremen and Hamburg between 1730 and 1745. The continued quarrels among the dukes and princes of Germany,—the wars in progress and impending, wherein the peace of the people was incessantly disturbed,—caused a universal uneasiness among the people of those small nations. They never were quite sure of a day’s rest. If they sowed unmolested, there was a grave doubt whether some complication with France, England, or Poland might not bring foreign invaders or allies to destroy or devour the crops. The wars were so incessant, and the quarrels among the petty lords so frequent, that the people became disheartened. They[18] were weary of building for others to destroy, and of rearing sons to be sacrificed to some individual’s ambition. All those German provinces, or duchies, had to accommodate themselves to the religion of their princes, and, at times, the winds that played about the hills of the Black Forest were far less uncertain. To the fathers of these emigrants, who sought America as a haven of religious and political rest, George Fox and his Quaker disciples had taught the doctrines of “The Holy Spirit,” and, under various guises, the tenets of that belief still survived in the German heart.
Those Germans who settled in the counties of Pennsylvania, lying to the south and south-west of Philadelphia, came to this country during the disturbances in the Fatherland, caused by Augustus, Maria Theresa, Frederick, and the scores of other princes who were in power, or seeking to secure it, in the numerous states and free cities of Germany. It is no light excuse, no desire for mere wealth, no hasty search for the fountains of youth, that causes the solid, earnest, patriotic people of Saxony, Baden, or Bavaria to leave forever the home of their nativity. It is a little curious to see how these races, which so cordially and hospitably received the Quaker missionaries from England, should at last unite with them in the settlement of the New World, and, by their intermarriage, produce such offshoots of the united stock as Bayard Taylor and his cotemporaries.
The Quaker ancestry of the poet,—the Taylors[19] and the Ways,—run back through a long line of industrious men and women, more or less known in Central Pennsylvania, to the colony which William Penn sent over from England to cultivate the great land-grant, which King Charles II., of England, gave him, in consideration of his father’s services as admiral in the British navy. They, too, were driven from their homes by the incessant turmoil either of wars or religious persecutions. Their preachers had again and again been imprisoned, while some had died the death of martyrs. Even Penn himself was often in chains and in prison, for being a peaceable believer in the truth of the Quaker doctrines; but so blameless were the lives of these people, and so forgiving their Christian behavior, that the term “Quakers,” which was at first applied to them in derision, became at last a title of respect and honor. “The fear of the Lord did make us quake,” was a common expression with George Fox, the founder of the sect, and the name “Quakers” originated in sneers at that devout sentence.
It is easy to trace in the history of the State of Pennsylvania, the influence of the Quaker spirit, and its impression upon the institutions of the American nation is also strikingly apparent. But when one takes up the life of one of their descendants, and studies his habits, his style of thought, and his ideas of social and political institutions, the hereditary Quaker element, in a modified form, is detected in[20] every motion and expression. It would seem as if any reader, to whom the author is unknown, would detect at once, in any volume of Taylor’s poetry or travels, the fact that he came from Quaker stock. As will be more clearly shown in a subsequent chapter, the teachings of the Quakers, and their manner of expression by gesture and phrase, have unconsciously and charmingly crept into the bosom of his best works. It is a great boon to be born of such a physical and mental combination as that of the German soldiers, with all their coolness and bravery, and the even-tempered, God-fearing Quakers, with all their grace and wisdom. Such intermixture has given to our young nation much of its surprising enterprise and originality, and must, at last, when consolidated into a compact people, produce a nation and a race wholly unlike any other on the earth.
It is not known that any of Bayard Taylor’s ancestry were literary men, or that any of them were endowed with special genius, beyond that which was necessary to clear the forests, cultivate the soil, manage manufacturing enterprises, and carry on small mercantile establishments. Solid people, with wide common-sense, industrious hands and generous hearts, they have modestly held their way, doing their simple duty, and, Quaker-like, making no display.