#37955 Johannes Rosensteel◊
Other names for Johannes: Johannes Rosenstiel◊, Johannes Rosentiel◊.
Johannes was born Abt 1714 in Germany. He died Abt 1758.
[Rupp] lists a Johannes Rosensteel, age 19, arriving via the brigantine Richard and Elizabeth on 28 Sep 1733. It sailed from Rotterdam via Plymouth with Christopher Clymer as Master. Some genealogical compilations list his middle initial as 'H' but I suspect that is incorrect. Many passengers made a mark of an 'X' or an initial in the middle of their name, which was written by a clerk. I have not been able to find a copy of Volume II of [Strassburger] to look at the facsimiles of the original paper but his transcription in Volume I indicates that what looks like an 'H' was such a mark added in a different hand. Therefore, I would presume it is simply a mark or, perhaps, an 'H' for Hans.
We can infer his birth year from the fact that he was nineteen at the time he took the Oath of Allegiance. He appears on a census index for Philadelphia in 1733 as Johannes Rosenstiel. The original of this index is not available and, given that it includes "other sources than censuses", it may simply be a reiteration of the immigration record.
Some compiled genealogy trees state that his birthplace was Munich in Bavaria, Germany but no source information is given. This may be an inference from the "Palatines" term in the immigration record. While the term palatines technically referred only to those from the Palatinate, we have seen from other ancestors that the term was sometimes employed as a generic description of immigrants from surrounding regions, such as Alsace-Lorraine, Rhineland Germany, and even Switzerland.
Tracy McCowin's family tree has a note of interest, "Johannes served as a Lieutenant in the Colonial Army and Fought in the American Revolution." If this is true, the approximate death date of 1758 is not correct. So far, I have found no record of his service with the Continental Army unless his middle name was Martin and he used that as a call name. There is a Martin Rosenstell who served from Pennsylvania. However, Martin is listed as a private, so I doubt this is Johannes. It might possibly be his son, John Martin Rosensteel.
Johannes' journey to America was probably not a pleasant one. A brigantine is a two-masted vessel that, at that time was characterized by a square-rigged foremast and a gaff sail on the main mast. While larger than sloops, which were the most common form of transport to the New World, they were not large boats. Here is an etching of a typical ship of this type.
Johann Christoph Sauer, who was the first publisher of German-language print in Pennsylvania, wrote often about the horrible conditions of an immigrant's crossing. He said that the ships were full of vermin and the associated disease, and estimated that 2,000 passengers died in one year alone. [Mittleberger] wrote (gaps, indicated by ellipses, are mine):
In Rotterdam and Amsterdam they begin to pack the people in like herring, and since the ships insist on carrying not less than four, five, or six hundred souls, besides enormous cargoes of household utensils, chests, water casks, and provisions, many are obliged to occupy berths scarcely two feet wide by six long. ...It is not, however, till the ship has raised its anchor for the last time and started on its eight, nine, ten, eleven, or twelve weeks' sail for Philadelphia that the greatest misery is experienced. Then there are heart-rending scenes! The filth and stench of the vessels no pen could describe, while the diverse diseases, sea-sickness in every for, headaches, biliousness, constipation, dysentery, scarlet fever, scrofula, cancers, etc., caused by the miserable salt food and the vile drinking water are truly deplorable, not to speak of the deaths which occur on every side. ...
In addition to all this, one invariably meets with an actual scarcity of every kind of provisions, with hunger, thirst, frost, severe heat, an ugly wet vessel, murmurings, complaints, anxiety, loathsome contagious diseases, and other innumerable varieties of tribulations, such as lice in such numbers that they can literally be taken in quantities from the bodies of the passengers, especially the sick. Forlorn, though, as the situation is, the climax is not yet reached. That comes when, for the space of two or three days, all on board, the sick and dying as well as those in health, are tossed mercilessly to and fro, and rolled about on top of one another, the storm-tossed vessel seeming each moment as if in the next it would be engulfed by the angry, roaring waves. ...
Even those who escape sickness sometimes grow so bitterly impatient and cruel that they curse themselves and the day of their birth, and then in wild despair commence to kill those around them. Want and wickedness go hand and hand, and lead to trickery and deception of every kind. One blames another for having induced him to undertake the voyage. Husbands reproach their wives, wives their husbands, children their parents, parents their children, and friends their friends, while all denounce the cruel Newlanders whose trade it is to steal human beings. ...
The sufferings fo the poor women who are pregnant can scarcely be imagined. They rarely live through the voyage, and many a mother with her tiny babe is thrown into the water almost ere life is extinct. During a severe storm on our vessel one poor creature, owing to the trying circumstances, was unable to give birth to her child, was shoved through an opening in the ship and allowed to drop into the water, because it was not convenient to attend to her. ...
It is little wonder that so many of the passengers are seized with sickness and disease, for, in addition to all their other hardships and miseries, they have cooked food only three times a week, and this (it is always of a decidedly inferior quality, and served in very small quantities) is so filthy that the very sight of it is loathsome. Moreover, the drinking water is so black, thick, and full of worms that it makes one shudder to look at it, and even those suffering the tortures of thirst frequently find it almost impossible to swallow it.
One of the most common diseases aboard ship in those days was termed Palatine Fever, now known as typhus. One ship reported that 330 of its passengers had it. It is now extremely rare in the Western world...in fact, so rare that a vaccine is no longer commercially available, although my childhood shot record shows that I was innoculated in the 1960s. Historically, some estimates say that typhus took out 10% of the German population in the years surrounding the Thirty Years War.
Transcriptions of the church records for the births and baptisms of his children all seem to record the surname as Rosentiel. Since I don't have scans of the original records, I don't know if this is accurate or a mistranscription.
∞ Johannes married #37956 Anna Gertrude "Gertrude"◊.
Other names for Gertrude: Anna Getraht◊, Anna Getraut◊, Anna Gertrude Rosensteel◊, Anna Gertrude Rosentiel◊.
Gertrude died.
Some sources give her surname as Getraut. Some give it as Getraht. I am doubtful of both of these, believing one of two things to be true. The first possibility is that this is just a mistranscription of her middle name, which is given as Gertrude on the birth and baptismal records of some of her children. The second possibility is that this is a word indicating her marital status. Getraut is the German word for "married". It is often used in German records to indicate a married woman. So, a record that said "mit Anna Getraut" doesn't mean "with Anna Getraut", it means "married to Anna".
Until I see a source document, I've elected to list her simply as Anna Gertrude.
Children of this relationship:
| #37957 | M | i | Michael Rosensteel | (14 Mar 1741–1835) |
| #10194 | M | ii | John Andreas "Andrew" Rosensteel◊ | (10 Sep 1743–1821) |
| #37958 | M | iii | John Rosensteel | (9 Apr 1745–) |
| #37959 | F | iv | Eva Barbara Rosensteel | (17 Apr 1748–21 Jan 1752) |
| #37960 | M | v | John Martin Rosensteel | (28 Sep 1750–) |
| #37961 | M | vi | John George "George" Rosensteel | (20 Apr 1753–9 Oct 1834) |
F. J. C. Herzog, Records, Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, City of York, York County, Pennsylvania, 1733-1800, manuscript, 1919. Lineages, Inc., comp. York County, Pennsylvania, 1733-1800: Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.
Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania in 1750 and return to Germany , C. T. Eben, translator, (Philadelpia: 1898). Ref. as [Mittelberger].
Israel Daniel Rupp, A collection of upwards of 30,000 names of emigrants landed in Philadelphia, Pa. 1730-1800, (Philadelphia: Leary-Stewart, 1927). Ref. as [Rupp].
Jan Bunten, "Jan Bunten's Genealogy Home Page", compiled genealogy, (http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Estates/9347/index.html).
Janet K. Warter, "Mainly German, Swiss, Scotch-Irish Families of Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania", RootsWeb GEDCOM, (Ancestry.com WorldConnect , db=jkw2).
K. L. Baumgarten, Descendents of Johannes Rosenstiel born 1714, https://docplayer.net/52302462-Descendents-of-johannes-rosenstiel-born-1714.html. A note at the end indicates that it was compiled by "K. L. Baumgarten, a descendent[sic] of Jacob Rosensteel through his granddaughter Catherine Rosensteel, who married Thomas Waggoner, through their son William Waggoner and Clara Jesson." This Modified Register of descent appears to be drawn primarily from Robert J. Rosensteel's book, The Rosensteels of America: from Germany to Western Pennsylvania 1733-1892. Ref as [Baumgarten].
Pennsylvania, Revolutionary War Battalions and Militia Index, 1775-1783, [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012, Vol. 1, p. 194.
Ralph Beaver Strassburger, LL.D., Pennsylvania German Pioneers: A Publication of the Original Lists of Arrivals in the Port of Philadelphia from 1727 to 1808, William John Hinke, ed., (Norristown, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania German Society, 1934). Ref. as [Strassburger].
Ronald V. Jackson, Pennsylvania, Compiled Census and Census Substitutes Index, 1772-1890, Ancestry.com, [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1999.
U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s, Ancestry.com [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010, Pennsylvania; Year: 1733; Page Number: 95. Sourced originally from: Filby, P. William, ed. Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s. Farmington Hills, MI, USA: Gale Research, 2012.
Unknown, Names of Foreigners Who Took the Oath of Allegiance to the Province and State of Pennsylvania, 1727-1775, (Baltimore: Clearfield Company, Inc., 1994), originally published as Pennsylvania Archives, Volume XVII, Second Series, Harrisburg, 1890, p. 95.
Walter Allen Knittle, Early eighteenth century Palatine emigration; a British government redemptioner project to manufacture naval stores, (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1937).
Line Generation: 1
Relationship: Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather