Muttenz History

Emigration

Information drawn from the book entitled 'Lists of Swiss Emigrants in the 18th Century to the American Colonies', compiled by Dr. Albert Faust and Gains M. Brumbaugh, edited in 1986 in Baltimore by the Genealogical Publishing Co.

It is necessary to bring before our minds the attitude of the European governments toward emigration in the eighteenth century. The old tradition was, that emigration was a crime, and punishable as such, equivalent to desertion, a deliberate shirking of one's obvious duty to the fatherland. There were economic reasons for this policy. The loss of sturdy people such as belonged to the emigrating class, meant so many hands less for the farms and trades, so many soldiers less for the protection of the country.

Each government, especially in Central Europe, with the instinct of preservation, jealously guarded its population against leaving its borders. Martin Luther read into the thirty-seventh psalm the duty to remain in the fatherland and make an honest living therein. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tried to prohibit emigration by law.

Thus we find in Switzerland that during the most critical emigration period, between 1734 and 1750, decrees or mandates were issued against emigration every few years. The populous Protestant Cantons Bern, Zurich and Basel were most affected, and of these Zurich proceeded most energetically against the so-called 'emigration fever', preventing property sales by those wishing to leave, and proclaiming punishments for agents and distributors of literature. This was followed shortly after by the mandate of January 29, 1735, which added sterner measures, deprivation of citizenship and landrights forever, penalties for purchasers of emigrant property and severe punishment of agitators. Basel did not act as promptly, being obliged by her location to keep the gateway open. But as soon as they felt the dangerous force, they attempted by the same methods as Zürich to stem the rising tide.

In 1740 there was once more a considerable number of applicants and among them fewer poor and paupers than in 1738. They were examined by the deputies to whom henceforth all matters of emigration were referred. The applicants complained of lack of sufficient work and a decrease of their property in spite of their utmost efforts. Times were rather hard and it was scarcely possible for them to find means to pay the 8 percent interest which they had to give to their 'honorable' creditors. Since ruin was staring them in the face, they wished to seek homes and sustenance in another part of the world while they still had some property left.

The emigrants from Muttenz were firmly resolved to go, so firmly that even the agent Hans Spring, who was enlisting emigrants for Carolina, could not divert them from their purpose. The Council consented to the emigration of all who had applied up to March 16. Those who had less than 100 pounds were released from the payment of dues as they had been in 1736, but the others did not obtain any material reduction in the computation of their ten percent tax and had to pay five pounds for the manumission of each of their children.

The following members of the Spänhauer family sailed from England on May 5, 1740 on board the 'Friendship', arriving in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, in August:

Elsbeth had to pay the following taxes prior to their departure :

Those who sailed for Philadelphia this time had a very bad passage. Nearly sixty people from the Canton of Basle died, mostly of hunger. For they had a very rough voyage with storm so that they lost their provisions and cooking-kettles.

There was no emigration of any consequence from Basel to the Colonies during 1742-48.

The news that nearly 60 of those who had started from Basel for Pennsylvania in 1740 had perished on the voyage or immediately afterward must have had a depressing effect which may have been intensified by the ghastly account of another voyage on which the survivors were said to have cooked and eaten the dead bodies of their starved comrades.

In the latter part of 1748, Heinrich Spänhauer sailed for Europe to collect the inheritance which his grandfather had left to his mother.

In March 1749, the Council of Basel ordered Heinrich to leave the Canton within 48 hours. He went to Bern to get some papers legalized by the British Ambassador, was accused by the government of soliciting emigrants and stayed for a while at Muttenz and Pratteln without permission, for which these two villages had to suffer.

Hieron d'Annone, the pastor of Muttenz, makes the following statement:
May 8, 1749, many people from the Canton of Basel, among them also 66 persons from Muttenz, with whom I have had much to talk and to do, left by water (i.e. on the Rhine) for the New-land. The government disliked to see it, and remonstrances have not been lacking, but because most of them were needy and 'abel gesittet' (of bad behavior) people, it was easier to get over their loss.'
March 28 he had said of Stefan Spänhauer that he had a good name. March 22, it was resolved that all who had applied up to the time, numbering 382 with their families, would be permitted to go 'in order that they might see how foolishly they had acted'. They should however not only forfeit their land-right and not set foot again upon the soil of the Canton under heavy penalties, but also leave eventual inheritances of theirs to the discretion 'of the government, and get out of the country as soon as they had settled their affairs.

Several circumstances conspired to make the year 1749 the principal year of emigration from Basel to the Colonies. Hard times and frequent and ill-arranged compulsory service, statute-labors, caused the poor people, who form the great majority of the emigrants of the year, to think that they could nowhere be worse off than at home, and at the same time the presence of three former countrymen from Pennsylvania, among them Heinrich Spänhauer, brought the alluring prospects of the New-Land palpably before their eyes. Those who left departed about May 8 and went down the Rhine in four ships. On the sea voyage they went in two ships in one of which 5 adults and 16 children died of the sea sickness. In Pennsylvania they went to join their countrymen with whom they were acquainted, as far as they had not first to work out their passage money.

From those who came over in 1749 are the following Spänhauers from Muttenz:

In 1819, the son of Hans Jakob Spänhauer (1770-1812) + Maria Lüdin

Daniel Spänhauer, 1799, emigrated to America to join his mother, now married to Georg Jauslin. 'He lived for some years in St. Louis, MO. From there he went to New Orleans, LA, together with a friend from near Muttenz. There, Daniel took fever and died in 1824 or 25. He never married.' (Extract from a letter of Fritz Spaenhauer, Muttenz, dated March 6 1868).

In horse-drawn carriages like this one, only larger, Emigrants traveled from Muttenz to the place of embarkation in Basel.

Embarkation in Basel

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