THE BACK PART OF GERMANTOWN
A Reconstruction
By Hannah Benner Roach
I
That part of Philadelphia known today as Chestnut Hill, and in the early 18th century as "the hindermost part" or the "black part" of Germantown Township, includes within its boundaries the divisions of Sommerhausen and Crefeld which formed the northernmost section of the original German Township as laid out in 1684. It was not until the "front" lots, assigned to the first settlers in the German Town itself along the Indian trail which ran through the township, had been settled upon and improved, however, that any permanent improvements were made in the "back part" of the township. As a result, it was twenty years or more after the first settlement in the lower part of the township before permanent improvements were established in Sommerhausen and Crefeld. Those lots that had been cleared by then were widely scattered and numbered not more that half a dozen or so isolated holdings.
Of Dennis Kunders or Conrad, and her nearly grown sons Dennis, William, Henry and Lenart, jr. Ann Streeper’s father in law William Streeper had come to Germantown from Kaldkirchen, a village near Crefeld, Germany with the first settlers in 1683. He had married Mary Williamsen Luckens, widow of Jan Siemons, another first settler, two years later. Their first child Lenart, Ann’s husband, had died in 1727, just ten years after his father’s death in 1717, and Ann and their children were running the 84 acre farm, part of which William Streeper had purchased in 1699. Ann’s brother in law John Streeper, who lived up on the hill below the "forks," owned all the land from her farm along the Springfield lines far as the Sommerhausen line, including within its boundaries the rest of the original William Streeper purchase.
West of the Streeper property and adjoining in the Ashmead holdings was a small farm of Michael Eccard or Eckert, who had recently married Margaret Souplis, widow of Peter Dirck Keyser of Germantown. Northwest of Eckert, the land of Hans Schule or Shelly was divided in the middle by the cart road to Howell’s mill as it wound its way along the north slope of the hill between the roads to North Wales and Plymounth.
Along the Sommerhausen Crefeld line at the top of the hill and extending from Springfiled Manor to about the line of the Schutz tract, two hundred acres was held by John Streeper and Anthony Tunis, second son of Abraham. William Streeper, John’s father, and Abraham Tunis had purchased the tract jointly from Francis Daniel Pastorius in 1693, but no division of the property had been made until 1724. Pierced only by the cart road running diagonally down to the Wissa hickon, there is no evidence that this tract had been developed by 1733.
Beyond it, however, and extending to the "Rocksborrow" line were two farms, that of old John Rebenstock and his sister Sybilla, widow of Henrich Tibben. Tibben and Rebenstock had purchased the land jointly in 1702, but Tibben had died in 1713 before any formal partition of the 200-acre tract had been made. The widow and her nearly grown children Thomas, Peter, Johannes and Gerturde worked the land nearest the Schutz farm, and John Rebenstock and his son Derrick some ninety acres west of her land. In 1731 Rebenstock had sold off forty-five acres along the Wissahickon to Willem Dewees, who had build a new paper mill on the creek for his son Willem, jr.
About due west of Michael Schutz on the far side of the diagonal cart road live an old cooper, Christian Gunter, and his wife Mary, who had lived near the bend of the creek for fifteen years. With two mills close by, coopers were rarely out of work, the forests around them providing the basic material for their trade. Beyond the Guners and across the creek, George Ransberry’s widow Catherine and son John owned the land which lay between the creek and Howell’s mill road, across which was the tract John Johnson had purchased from the Ransberrys in 1723. Johnson’s wife Mary was a daughter of Nicholas Rittenhouse, whose wife Wilhelmina Dewees was a sister of old William Dewees. The Johnsons had five sons, Casper, Nicholaus, Benjamin, Joseph and William the youngest, who was only two years old.
West of the Johnson and Ransberry tracts, Marcus Fuchs or Fox lived with his daughter Elizabeth on a large tract extending from the Sommerhausen line to the Springfield Manor line. Beyond Fox, along the southwest line of the township, Mathias Kunders’ widow Barbara, daughter of Reynier Tyson, and her unmarried children held title to a large tract.
In Sommerhausen on the slope of the hill towards Germantown below the Rebenstock Tibben farms, the weaver Johannes Leist had recently bought thirty five acres west, of the Plymouth Road near the Roxborough line, from Anthony Tunis. East of the road was John Streeper’s home place which Abraham Tunis had sold to John’s father in 1725, Gertrude whose husband was Peter Johnson of Skippack, and Alice, wife of Derrick Keyser, the cordwainer.
Possibly some of these neighbors were present when in the early summer of 1733 Michael Schutz took unto himself a wife. His choice settled upon Juliana Lips, a young woman of twenty five who had arrived on the ship Adventure the previous September from Rotterdam. The young, recently ordained Lutheran preacher Johann Caspar Stoever officiated at their marriage on June 22, and entered their nuptials upon his records with the notation that both were of "Chestnut Hill." The following March, Stoever baptized their twin daughters Margaretha Elisabetha and Maria Barbara, born six weeks earlier. However, when Michael’s son Jacob was born in February 1739, Stoever was making his rounds in Chester County and was not able to baptize the child.
In the years between Michael’s marriage and the birth of his son six years later, the neighborhood saw several changes take place. Marcus Fox’s daughter Elizabeth married Adolph Young, a bookbinder in Philadelphia, and they removed to the city. Fox in 1734 sold his plantation to young Thomas Carvell of Cheltenham, son of the man from whom Fox had purchased it in 1728, and set himself up as an Indian trader. His first wife Hannah having died, young Cornelius Nice took as his second wife Susanna Kraus, a young Schwenkfelder who had come with her widowed mother Anna and brothers and sisters to Philadelphia in the fall of 1733.
Mathias Kunder’s widow Barbara in 1737 made over her late husband’s plantation to their son Cornelius, who had married Priscilla Bolton five years before. Word got around the neighborhood that Hon Rebenstock "in justice to Henry Tibben’s children" had finally made a partition of the lands he had held jointly with Tibben, and had formally conveyed to Thomas Tibben, the eldest son, the land the Tibben family had worked for so many years. Hans Shelly sold his land, and in 1738 Benjamin Howell added the twenty five acres to his own holdings.
Late in 1741, the Moravian leader Count Zinzendorf came to germantown where he stayed with Hon Bechtel, pastor of the church that the people of the Reformed faith in that section had built facing the Market Square only a few years before. Perhaps through old Willem Dewees, or the Rebenstocks and Tibbens who were also of the Reformed faith, Michael Schutz’s curiosity about Zinzendorf’s proposed union of faiths may have been sufficiently aroused to warrant making the tedious journey down to the village to hear the learned County hold forth upon the subject.
During the next few years the most exciting local events were probably the numerous weddings which took place in the neighboring families. Following well established precedent, and setting the pace for the younger people, John Streeper’s widow Elizabeth in 1742 married Magdalena, George’s daughter, and soon after Garret Dewees, Willem’s son, wed her daughter Agnes Streeper. In 1743 the widow Ann Streeper’s son William married Mary Dawes, daughter of Isaac of Springfield, and next year William Streeper’s brother Lenart was married to Rebecca Groethause, daughter of John, also of Springfield. Both William and Lenart Streeper in 1743 had made over to their brother Dennis their rights in their father’s farm, so that upon their marriages William, a blacksmith, settled in Cheltenham and Lenart across the Springfield line in Whitemarsh.
About 1741 young John Barge married elizabeth Miller, thought to be the daughter of George Mueller and his wife Anna Sybilla Levering, and in 1743 Christopher Yeakle joined the ranks of the newly married men, taking for his bride Maria Schultz.
At the time the Rebenstock executors disposed of their land, the Tibben family elected to unload its holdings. Since the widow Sybilla Tibben and her two eldest sons Thomas and Peter had now all died, and Gertrude, the daughter, had married Alexander Tibeterver and moved away, John Tibben, the remaining son, and his wife Ann felt it inadvisabe to hold the land any longer. In February 1748 they sold their share to John Kubeler or Keebler and moved down to the Stelfelt place on the northeast side of the Plymouth Road between Benjamin Howells’ and Dewees’ mill lands.
Early in 1762 John and Ann Tibben moved to Springfield Township after selling their farm to George Edelman, a mason by trade. Son of Peter Edelman of the Northern Liberties, George already had been married twice. His first wife Anna Dage, whom he had married in 1753, had died a few years after their marriage and in 1760 he had married Anna Miller.
A month after the Kerpers had settled in their new home, Conrad Sweitzer, who in 1761 had bought a place on Second Street near Cable Lane, made over the Former Tibben farm to his two sons by his first wife, Simon and Ludwig Switzer, both weavers.Ludwig and his bride Anna Kratz, daughter of John Valentin Kratz and his wife Anna Clemens of Salford Township, had been staying Skippack since their marriage. Simon, after his marriage in 1770 to Julius Kerper’s niece Barbara Shunk, daughter of Francis and Elizabeth Reimer Shunk of Providence, bought out his brother’s share in the homestead, and Ludwig moved to Warwick Township in Bucks County.