“From These Roots We Came”

The “Pietist” movements from Germany played an important part in our ancestry in the late 1600’s and the early 1700’s. These movements attempted to inspire individuals to practice a spiritual life which was more personal than that of their parish churches. The Lutherans, like the Catholics from which they emerged at the time of the Reformation, had become highly ritualistic, with a hierarchical clergy that made most religious decisions for their parishioners. The clergy basically decided one’s relationship to God through their own religious value system and the established orthodoxy of the church.

Independent thinkers were not tolerated by the Church. One of our own ancestors, Johann Jacob Zimmerman (Ahn 1272, Generation 11), a free-thinking philosopher, scientist, and Lutheran minister; accused the Lutheran Church of being the “Anti-Christ”. He, and another of the radical Pietists, Ludwig Brunnquell (follower of Rosicrucianism) went as far as to call the established Church a “Babylonian Whore”. This didn’t set very well with the religious establishment and shortly thereafter, Johann was dismissed from his pastorate for unorthodoxy and subsequently exiled. He had never been shy or reticent about his views, for he openly expressed his theological and mystical views from the pulpit and in his published books and writings. He was the Lutheran minister at the church at Bietigheim from 1671 to 1684 and he was serving here when he was deposed from the ministry.

There has been much written about Johann Jacob Zimmerman and for good reason. He accomplished quite a bit in his forty-nine years on earth. He was born in the Duchy of Wurtenburg in 1642. At the age of nineteen he was taken into the service of the Duke of Wurtenburg, and sent to the University of Tuebingen, graduating three years later (1664) at twenty-two years of age with a Master of Philosophy. He immediately became an instructor of Arithmetic. He also studied astrology and astronomy which at that time were a combined “science”. Johann was later honored by the Royal Society for Astrological Science for his academic contributions to astrological studies. He was the author of at least eighteen published works on theology and astronomy.

After his dismissal from the clergy in 1684, he became Professor of Mathematics at Heidelberg University. Unfortunately for him, his radical religious and philosophical views got him in trouble again. He and his friend Ludwig Brunnquell continued to disseminate the philosophical writings of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) whose basic belief, contrary to the teaching of Lutheran doctrine, was a pantheistic one. It was said that Zimmerman attributed to the writings of Boehme a “theopneustic” quality (i.e. inspired by the Holy Ghost), and that was why he was dismissed from his university position as a mathematician.

Johann Jacob, drawing from his theological and astrological training, came to the conclusion that the world was going to end in the fall of 1694. In his apocalyptic thinking, he determined that Jesus was coming back to earth in the New World, specifically Philadelphia. He had no problem convincing others of his belief. Due to his unquestionable skill as an astronomer, he was convinced that the coming new age, their version of the Millennium, was foretold in the heavens.

Zimmerman formed a small group called the Chapter of Perfection, composed mostly of young men, who felt that it was necessary to prepare themselves and other’s for Christ’s coming.

“Probably around 1692, the Chapter of Perfection received an anonymous offer of free land in Pennsylvania and free passage there. America was regarded by the young Pietists to be a land untainted by the sins of European decadence, and the ordained place to await the final drama of mankind”. (quote from http://www.middletonpress.com/html/kelpius.html “About Johannes Kelpius”)

The offer supposedly came from a Dutch Quaker who wished to remain anonymous. This anonymous benefactor, through his own wealth, and money gathered from his friends, provided 2,400 acres in Germantown for their use and arranged to pay the group’s passage to the New World.

In 1693 they left for Rotterdam, Holland where they were to proceed on to Pennsylvania. In the group was Zimmerman’s wife (the former Maria Margaretha Schall, Ahn 1273), their daughter Maria Margaretha, and three sons, Philip Christian, Matthaeus, and Jakob Christian (Ahn 636, Generation 10); whose granddaughter, Mary Zimmerman (Ahn 159, Generation , would be the first Zimmerman to enter into our ancestral line. Before they were able to leave for the New World, Johann Jacob Zimmerman died, leaving the care of the group to one of his youngest followers, Johannes Kelpius.

At the age of twenty, Johannes Kelpius had already been a follower of Pietism for several years. He was born in 1673 in Transylvania (present day Romania and the home of “Count Dracula”), and at the age of eleven, when his father died, he was sent by three patrons to Germany to complete his education. It was during this period that he heard Johann Jacob Zimmerman lecturing and became one of the followers of his teaching.

The journey to Philadelphia was less than uneventful, to say the least. On the first leg of their journey, they left Rotterdam (August, 1693) and went to London. They remained there for six months. In February, 1694, they went down the Thames River to Graves End and embarked on the ship “Sarah Maria”. The ship ran aground on the 16th. No one answered their signals for distress and they prayed for help. Shortly thereafter, the waves broke it loose from its grounding.

Patience in those days was more than a virtue; it was a necessity. On the 21st they arrived at Deal and had to wait two weeks for a convoy. Ships did not sail alone due to open sea hostilities from other nations. They finally sailed from Plymouth, England on the 18th of April, 1694. It had already been eight months since they left Rotterdam.

The convoy ran into a hostile French frigate with twenty-four guns (the Sarah Maria only had fourteen cannons), and a merchant ship with six guns. This was on the 10th of May, roughly three weeks into the Atlantic crossing. Four hours after the battle begun, the convoy had defeated the attackers and taken one ship with twenty-four Frenchmen prisoners.

On the 12th day of June they begin to see the American coasts, and two days later, landed at Bohemia Manor (Cecil County, Maryland), and finally arrived in Philadelphia on June 23rd, 1694. From there they made their way to Germantown (today only a mere neighborhood of Philadelphia) by foot.

The Rosicrucians consider this group to be the first Rosicrucian group in America. They consider Johann Jacob Zimmerman’s Chapter of Perfection as the precursor to all Rosicrucian groups in America. It is uncertain as to whether Zimmerman consciously was following the tenants of the Rosicrucians, but they claim him as one of their own. In a section on Rosicrucians at http://www.answers.com/topic/rosicrucians, we find the following passage which shows the culmination of this pilgrimage.

“The group settled on Wissahickon Creek in what is today the Germantown section of Philadelphia, and there erected a cubic house with 40 foot sides and American’s first astrological observatory on its roof. They believed that by observation of the heavens, they would be able to discern the first signs of Christ’s anticipated arrival. Kelpius died in 1708, and soon thereafter, Christ having not returned, the group disintegrated. It became the basis of the continuing magic (or powwow) tradition in southeastern Pennsylvania”

The descendants of Johann Jacob Zimmerman, intermarried with other immigrants, and began the ancestral mixture that we now celebrate as our unique heritage. As in most families, only some of the descendants followed closely Johann Jacob Zimmerman’s teaching, but all of us, even to this day, benefit from the daring and perseverance of these disciplined individuals who gave up everything they had known to start with a new beginning in a new world. The religious fervor which maintained and sustained them has influenced succeeding generations beyond what most of us can imagine. We are what we are because of what our ancestors were.

© 2008 by E. Lamar Ross and Infopreneur Publishers, LLC.