The Link Family
Foreword:
Lester King’s grandmother on the paternal side was a descendant of the Link Family. The first of the Links of whom we have found knowledge of record is Hans Link the First, born about 1370 in Germany. The King family is directly associated with John Jacob Link who is found in the St Lorenz Church record born October 20, 1682 in Grossgartach, Germany. He immigrated to America in 1733.Why John Jacob Link Left Germany and Immigrated to America?
I hear the tread of pioneers, of nations yet to be.
The first low wash of waves where soon shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here are plastic, yet and warm.
The chaos of a mighty world is rounding into form. [i]
What was the motivating force which compelled John Jacob Link (Hans Jacob Linckh) to leave his birthplace and the land of his ancestors at Grossgartach near Heilbron, Germany and undertake such a hazardous journey so clouded with the worst forebodings as a trip across the ocean to America in 1733? His wife Ana Magdalena Neuwirth was born nearby in the town of Biberach where her grandfather Bernard Neuwirth was the mayor of the town. John Jacob was fifty years of age and his wife forty-one. People of these ages were usually not daring enough for such an uncertain risk across a trackless ocean and into the wild frontier life beset with constant attacks by savages. The answer lies in the culminating factors of almost constant warfare, the constant drain of taxation imposed by their royal rulers to keep up with the grandeur of the court of Louis XII in Versailles in France, the incessant struggle of the Catholic element against the Protestants, and not the least that the entire valleys of the Rhine, the Nekar and the Main rivers had been set aflame by the fiery speeches of William Penn preaching the new religion (Quaker) of brotherly love, the glories and the abundance of freedom and the fountain of youth that washed away the years and made the old young again. At age fifty, John Jacob was well familiar with the years through which his ancestors had struggled. Years filled with oppression and taxation by petty but powerful rulers, years filled with bloody religious strife, the incessant pillaging by armies of conquest, the years filled with the sights of their land laid waste many times by the sword by day and the torch by night. All these were conductive in the Links decision to leave their homeland.
But John Jacob Link did not stand alone. Many of his fellowmen had gone before. For twenty years messages had been trickling back into the community telling of the wonders in the land of William Penn and of the widespread land on the frontier north of Philadelphia where the colony of Womelsdorf had been established. Located in the Tulpenhocken territory, it stretched eastward in to the established colony of Oley, where there was a direct ‘high street’ into Philadelphia (still the main road going through the town to this day). {While there was nothing but praise for settling in Pennsylvania there was condemnation for settling in the realm of New York. England had practiced the boldest deception and intrigues upon the early immigrants who were landed on Governor’s Island and later transferred to Livingston Manor a 6,000 acre tract on the east of the Hudson and to another 6,000 acre tract of pine trees directly opposite on the west side of the Hudson was soon broadcast back to Germany from where the immigrants had fled. As a result, the German immigration into New York State came to an early grave.} (note: The writing in between the {} is directly transcribed from Edna’s writing. I have read this time and time again and cannot make heads or tails of it. All of my research shows that Livingston was a fruitful place where many German Palatines prospered. I cannot find where the English were ‘deceptive’, I’m very curious what this means) But as despair was sweeping of the homeland and the thunderhead of war was gathering again overhead, there was a tidal wave of hope of such magnitude that no one could possibly resist it. The pacifist William Penn, looked upon in England as being ‘cracked’, was touting up and down in Germany, pleading with the greatest eloquence in the German tongue, the tenets of the new Quaker religion. With his new religion as the cure for all the ills, he impregnated his convincing pamphlets with the glorious life which awaited all who would settle in Pennsylvania. The more of the promised blessings Penn poured out, the more eagerly the prospective immigrants craved more. With bitter hears against their rulers and with the abundant life dominating their dreams, the Link family immigrated to America.
John Jacob Link is the pivotal person in this history and he is one of the greatest. He brought his family and its name from a war torn land to freedom. John Jacob, with his wife Ana Megdalena, and their four children, made it to Philadelphia on August 28, 1733. They left Grossgartach, Germany, sailed down the Rhine to Rotterdam where they boarded the English ship ‘Hope’. They traveled to Cowes, England and then across the Atlantic. John Jacob was the first Link on record in America sans one. John Jacob was able to pay their passage and had funds left over with which to purchase a farm. John Jacob’s coming was important to him in that he could provide opportunity for his young children in a land free from the unscrupulous ambitions of the secular and clerical nobles and the war and pillage that they had suffered in their fatherland. The Link family continued to flourish and grow in America. During the third generation, Elizabeth Link, daughter of John Adam Link married Henry Stoner in Fredrick County, Maryland. They had two children Elizabeth and John. This John Stoner was born March 12, 1774 in Fredrick County, Maryland. Following the death of his wife, John and his family migrated to Ohio settling near Tiffin in Seneca County, Ohio. There their son John met and married Elizabeth Baltzell. After a marriage of only five years, John died on January 28, 1827 in Seneca County, Ohio. After John’s death, his wife Elizabeth, daughter Susanna and son John moved to Iowa County, Iowa. There Susanna met and married William Cromwell at Ladora, Iowa. According to records, they made their home in Henry County, Iowa where their daughter Mary Cromwell was born on July 21, 1846. She married Philip King (Lester King’s Grandfather) October 10, 1886. This statement of marriage is in conflict with other records which we know to be authentic. The only explanation which we can assume is that Mary Cromwell had returned to Seneca County, Ohio where her parents had lived before coming to Iowa. Other records show the date of their marriage to Philip King to be the same as above but occurring in Seneca County, Ohio. It states that they remained in Ohio until March of 1882 when they came to Iowa County, Iowa settling near Marengo.
