The Germanic Origin Of The Flagler Family Of Dutchess County

The Alter and Apse of the Jacob Church and the Font where the "first" Fleglers were baptized. Urphar am Main.

THE GERMANIC ORIGIN OF THE FLAGLER FAMILY OF DUTCHESS COUNTY

by Robert Pierce

Information available to the writer of this account leads to the belief that the name Flagler, or one of its forty variations, first appeared in the early 15th Century in Franconia, a Province in south-west Germany. The date is apocryphal, one authority giving it as early as 1412, others as

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considerably later. In any event, some comment may be in order concerning the difficulty of determining with exactitude the genesis of a family having no claim to land holdings or to social recognition in the community. Sir John Bernard Burke, English peerage authority, acknowledged the problem of establishing the accurate continuities of lineages when in 1883 he wrote: "It must be confessed that many of the most distinguished Houses have passed away . . . The present House of Lords cannot claim among its members a single male descendant of any one of the Barons who were chosen to enforce Magna Charta, or any one of the Peers who are known to have fought at Agincourt."

This conclusion by the Ulster-King-of-Arms, after years devoted to the study of family archives, documents, and pedigrees in a country whose genealogical records are generally conceded to be superior to those to be found elsewhere, gives an idea of the obstacles encountered in similar ventures within the Continent of Europe. Altho afflicted by invasion and internal conflicts, England, as an island, enjoyed an isolation favoring the fixity of her peoples. Here, the dislocation and destruction of family records of prince, of peer, and of the common man suffered to a lesser degree than in other lands. Even then, the lower social classes, engaged in the serious business of being born, married, and buried, kept few if any records at all. The British historian, L. G. Pine writes: "It is safe to say that no one is going to trace his family in the Middle Ages unless they were notables as landowners, or wealthy, or, of course, were royalty."

Germany as a whole fared no better than England, and in many respect not nearly so well. For nearly 2000 years she had been the site of incessant conflict where contending armies ranged over the land; pillage, famine, and pestilence becoming the heritage of every generation. In the dark forests of the Rhineland the legions of Caesar strove with semi-barbaric hoards of Teutons; a thousand years later the Franks and Charlemagne fought the Saxons; and in 1688 French troops systematically made the countryside a desert. The inhabitants, says Ellis in his Story of the Greatest Nations, were compelled to destroy their homes, plough down their growing crops, and leave the country. Graves, he writes, were broken open and French soldiers played tenpins with the ancient bones and skulls of German emperors.

There is small wonder then that a country so ravaged became divided in religious matters and partitioned into numerous states, and offered no opportunity for the centralization of documents and records, with the result that every city and town attempted to keep its own archives. Local parish registers were not maintained until the period 1530-50, and written, says one historian, in poor Latin and partly in German on pages "rather pale." As for wills, it is said that they were so haphazard as to defy interpretation.

In the center of the Province of Franconia near the confluence of the Tauber and Main Rivers, whose combined waters flow westward to the Rhine, is a tiny hamlet called Urphar. This is the place which, with a large degree of certainty, we can call the first home of the Fleglers (Flag-

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lers). It is a spot of natural beauty and historic lore. To the east is Wurzburg, medieval university city and "home" of the Rontgen (X) Ray; to the south lies the legend-ha,unted forest of "Oden Wald"; and forty miles to the northwest lies the City of Frankfort (ford of the Franks), named by Charlemagne at the time of his retreat from pursuing Saxons. Farther west across the Rhine is the ancient City of Mainz, called Mayence the Golden, whose noble cathedral, begun in 978, was six times destroyed or partially destroyed by fires. Among its splendid tombs and sepulchers is that of Charlemagne's young and beautiful wife, Fastrada. What Dr. Samuel Johnson said of Italy may with equal truth be said of the environs of Urphar: "He who has not see this country is always conscious of his own inferiority."

Save for its historic ambience little Urphar is charming but unimportant. But it contains a jewel of unsurpassed religious and architectural distinction — "die Jakobskirche" or Jacob's Church, a place of worship for many generations of Fleglers. Untouched by the carnage of centuries of warfare the church has remained in its present form since the year 1500, making it one of the oldest of German churches. At first Roman Catholic by faith, its congregation since 1600 has been Lutheran. This tiny chapel ( its overall size is only 50 by 150 feet) is built of native stone and stands on the foundations of a much older edifice dating from the year 400 A.D., when for strategic purposes it overlooked a Roman military road and was accordingly designated a "Wehrkerche" or "Defense Church." One enteFs the sanctuary a,t the base of the massive Roman choir-tower which dominates the scene and the adjoining graveyard surrounded by a low stone wall.

Treasures housed within the church include an ancient marble font, a Gothic rose window, a crucifix dating from the year 1350, wall paintings of a, vintage earlier than 1300, a predella of the year 1340, and a choir loft built in the early 17th Century. The parish register in Latin script sets forth in varying degrees of legibility the birth, marriage, and death dates of early and late parishioners, including many under diverse spellings of the name Flagler. Recent photographs show the churchyard well-kept, with monuments, crosses, and headstones arranged in orderly fashion. The writer is told that not a few of these, despite age and deterioration, are readable for names and dates of those interred. Here, as in the parish registers, are to be discerned, however faintly, the misty tracings of early Flaglers and their descendants.

The name Flegler seems to have arisen in connection with internecine quarrels betweema Count Gunther of Schwarzburg and his cousin Frederick I, called the "Warlike", over territories claimed by each in the Electorate of Thuringia, a state northeast of Franconia. In 1412 hostility between the parties broke into an armed confrontation which came to be known as the "Flegler-Krieg" or Flegler War. The derivation of the name of the conflict is curious and crucial in attempting to discover the source of the surname Flagler, and how at this point it first came to be used, and later adopted, by certain persons of this community.

Count Gunther, it seems, succeeded in taking over to his side impoverished nobles who, in turn, hired and mobilized "husky and unmar-

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ried youths of stainless character." This aggregation, largely recruited from local communities, consisted of threshers, lumber-jacks, wood-cutters, charcoal-burners, farriers, and farm-hands. The latter group used in their agrarian tasks a tool for threshing wheat and other cereal grains called a flail (flegel in German), which was soon discovered to be a rather deadly weapon when used in close-range combat. Hence the components of the army, particularly the flail-wielders in the front lines, came to be known as "fleglers", in Latin the "flegeli."

Now it is to be remembered that surnames were for most people nonexistent before the 14th Century. J. R. Dolan in his English Ancestral Names writes: "Our family names grew naturally out of the daily lives of our ancestors . . . and were not acquired thru a law. No royal edict ever ordered the people to assume a, name . . . those of occupational origin generally stayed with an individual to a much greater extent than address, relationship, or nicknames." So, at the time of the Flegler War, when we first come upon the use of surnames, it is understandable that many of Count Gunther's flailers accepted or adopted Flegler as their family names.

The Flagler War as a contest of arms appears to have been insignificant and indecisive, and a truce was soon effected between the quarreling nobles. The combatants went their respective ways, among whom, says a commentator, were "courageous and decorated leaders with the new name of Flegler." Many of the young veterans being invited to settle down and cultivate lands in Thuringia did this, particularly in the region of Allstedt and Frankenhausen. In so doing they became to all intent and purposes bondmen, with little trace of liberty and no freedom of movement. Indeed, if a resident wished to emigrate into another state or province, or even move from one village to another within the same county, he was obliged to pay a high emigration tax to a bureauracy called the Princely Pay-Office — officials who harvested and hoarded revenues and taxes of all kinds, and what was more important did their own bookkeeping to the detriment of the taxpayer. It is of interest to know that for genealogical purposes the Morman Church after World War Two made photostatic copies of many Pay-Office registers in the vicinity of Wertheim, showing the names and vital statistics of persons who lived there 250 to 400 years ago.

A hundred years pass, and in the spring of 1525 a theologian revolutionary, and radical reformer by the name of Thomas Muntzer organized and lead Thuringian peasants in what was called the "Peasants' War" — in essence a revolt against oppressions which degenerated into anarchy and much bloodshed. By some historians the rebellion is said to have been encouraged by Martin Luther's famous plea for the "Liberty of a Christian Man", an imputation vehemently denied by Luther.

At this time in the district of Allstedt there lived a youth by the name of John Flegler, a descendant presumably of an ex-soldier of that name who had settled in this region at the close of the "Flegler War." Young Flegler had become• fa,cinated by the preachings and liturgical reforms of Muntzer, and in time became his passionate follower and a

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radical spiritualist. He was registered in a Covenant-Roll of Devotees as a disciple of the fanatic parson, and by title was designated ( according to the archives at Allstedt) as a "standard bearer", a function of an ecclesiastical nature.

The rebellion or revolt was wholly disastrous for the peasants and reformers, and after the decisive Battle of Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525, in which the flail as a weapon again appeared, there followed a period of pitiless brutality. Muntzer was captured and executed and his troops were dispersed with enormous loss of life. Some small bands managed to escape the massacre, many fleeing southwards thru the Thuringian forests. Among these fortunate few was John Flegler, who, hoping to find a remnant of friendly fellow-believers went first to Nuremberg. Here he was quickly given to understand that his presence was fraught with the danger of imminent capture, imprisonment and death. So Flegler with a few refugee friends again resumed flight to the south and west. His course led him down the Main River, and in 1526 he arrived at the Town of Urphar in the County of Wertheim. Here, under the protection of the reigning count, a kindly man of compassion for the woes of the miserable migrants, Flegler decided to settle down. In time he married the daughter of a Urphar resident; and it is from this union that the Flegler pedigree in the region of Urphar can be definitely traced.

Fleglers, in addition to John, took part in the Battle of Frankenhausen in one camp or the other, and then fanned out into many parts of the country. The patronymic (spelled in so many ways) is encountered therefore in sections of Germany far removed from the Rhine valley, indeed as far east as the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. A woman, now living in Mt. Vernon, New York, born in Budapest, Hungary, has traced several generations of her Flagler paternal ancestors, who, originating in Saarbruken, Germany, left their native land about 400 years ago, going eastwards at a date which closely coincides with the dispersal of Fleglers after the Peasants' War.

As everyone knows, valorous deeds and notable achievements in battle were commonly rewarded by the bestowal of honors in the form of armorial devices to the combatants. Augmenting of existing arms and newly designed coat-of-arms were formally given to those deserving the distinction. As early as 1532 such a grant of arms was accorded in Baveria to a soldier by the name of Pflacher, one of the variations of the name Flegler. J. B. Rietsta,p in his Armorial General describes the arms in simple terms as a "silver fish on a shield of gold and blue." Rolland's Illustrated Armorial records a grant of similar nature to a person of like name, but showing in this case two silver fish on blue and gold backgrounds with "bends dancetty" in opposite quarters of the shield. Still again, J. Siebmacher's Arms Book displays a more elaborate coat-of-arms awarded to one Flegel, a chief magistrate in Posen.

The late Helen Wilkinson Reynolds ( a name not unknown in Dutchess County) conducted research in the field of heraldry in New York City and Washington, D.C. archives; and, altho possibly motivated to a degree because of her relationship to the Dutchess County Flagler family',

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came up with heraldic drawings and a descriptive holograph similar to those mentioned above.

There is a hiatus in the continuity of the Flegler lineage of nearly a century before the name of a descendant of John Flegler again appears in the records of the Urphar community. Shortly after the start of the 17th Century we find the name "Veit Flegler of Urphar, born 1622. His wife's name is not recorded. But their son, called "Hans Flegler of Urphar", was born about 1645. He, when grown, married for his second wife the widow Margarete Goetz, born 1650. She appears to have been a native of Wenkheim, a village eight miles south-east of Hans' birthplace. Then in turn was born Veit's grandson, Zacharra, or Zacharius, baptized in the Jacob's Church 8 October 1676. A correspondent in Stuttgart mentions an earlier grandson of Veit by the name of Zacharius who was born in 1674 but died the following year. Zacharius, he says, was a rare na,me in Germany at the time, and is supposed to have been given to both infants in honor of their godfather, Zacharia Collman, a schoolmaster from Strasbourg in the Alsa,ce region of France.

Zacharius Flegler who was born 7 October 1676 became a soldier as a youth and served in the army from 1694 to 1700, doing garrison duties in various military posts. At one of these he met and married a girl whose name cannot be found, a circumstance that is explained by the fact that few vital records of this kind were kept on military bases. However, the name of their first child is shown in the church parish list as Philip Solomon Flegler and as baptized in the Jacob's Church 15 August 1701. The register states the name of the child's father but not that of his mother, a fact that further emphasizes the probability that she was a native of a town other than Urphar and possibly of another province than Franconia. In 1705 a second son, Simon, was born: and in 1708 a daughter, altho neither child's name was recorded in the Urphar church records.

History has never for long permitted the fertile lands of Franconia to remain in quietude or its industrious peoples to enjoy the efforts of their labor or the blessings of peace. Caesar, Chalemagne, Gustavus Adolphus, kings and princelings of greater and lesser degrees strode over them relentlessly — all contributing to a litany of Germany's sufferings and to a syndrome of her ailments.

And then in 1684 came the War of the Palatinate which was to last for twenty-eight years. The origin of the name is derived from the title of its ruler, a judicial officer called a Palatine. The Palatinate of the Rhine covered a territory of 3500 square miles, lying on both sides of the river, with its capital the City of Heidelberg. Into this vast area marched the invading armies of King Louis XIV of France, leaving death, ruin, and despair in their wake. The French commander, Montdas, tt . . . announced to nearly one half-million of human beings says that Macaulay: he granted them three days of grace, and that within that time they must shift for themselves. Soon the roads and fields which then lay deep in snow were blackened by innumerable men, women, and children flying from their homes. Many died of cold and hunger, but enough survived to fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalid beggars, who had

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once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers." Among these were the Fleglers of Urphar, ousted from home and land in a general exodus known as the Palatine emigration.

Historians differ as to the exact cause. Some hold that it was due to the rigorous persecution of the Protestants, who largely peopled the area, by the Catholic armies of the "Sun King"; others attributed it to the dismal prospect of restoring the once rich and fertile land now laid waste and denuded by the enemy. Another version is that the incredible artic winter of 1708, cruel beyond anything known in a century, blighted the entire region of the Rhine Valley and added immeasurably to the misery of its people. R. N. Bain, writing for the Cambridge Modern History says that: "In January of 1709 wine and spirits froze in solid blocks of ice, birds on the wing fell dead, and siliva congealed in its fall from the mouth to the ground." A final cause, perhaps, was that of the extremely heavy taxation levied by petty rulers who wished to emulate the splendors of Versailles in their own courts.

In a,ny event, Zacharius Flegler and his little family were caught in the general holocaust, and like thousands of similarly afflicted fugitives, departed with their scanty belongings and moved, usually by night, down the Rhine to its mouth at the "German Ocean". From thence they crossed by land to Holland, seeking temporary asylum in Rotterdam. Here their sorry plight elicited assistance, at least temporarily, in the form of food, clothing, and small amounts of money, chiefly thru the courage, efforts, and devotion of one, the Reverend Joshua Kocherthal, who is given credit for arranging passage for the Palatines first to England and then to America.

In truth, the Flegler family may have fared all along the route somewhat better than most of their friends and associates. Mr. Erich Langguth, German genealogist and archivist, has said that his research on the subject of the emigration leads him to believe that Zacharius Flegler may have been a man of importance, and that he left his home in Franconia because, in the ruin of the country-side, he saw little or no opportunity for advancement of any kind. Langguth concludes thus in view of the stringent edicts against moving about, of which J. R. Dolan ( supra) writes: "Politically, economically, and socially a man was tied as firmly to his village as tho he was chained to a post." Flegler, therefore, must have had some "pull" and influence to have been able with a family to have gotten out of Germany. The only way it could have been done, Langguth thinks, was for Flegler to have paid to the Princely Pay-Office a large sum of money for the privilege of departure.

Whatever may have been its pecuniary condition, the Flegler family, consisting of father, mother, son, Philip Solomon age eight, Simon age four, and a daughter age one, left Rotterdam, and, crossing the Channel, arrived at Saint Catherine, a district of London on 6 May 1709.

For a time under the benign aegis of Anne Smart, the English soverign, the refugees found safety and shelter in what today would be called a "tent city." Queen Anne, corpulent and dropsical, devoted to the Church of England and therefore by faith a Protestant, welcomed the German im-

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migrants of all kinds. Instances abound of rer kindness and consideration for them despite her ill-health, a recalcitrant Parliament, and a marriage whose fruits were a mournful series of infant funerals.

Having thus established after a fashion the provenance of the Flagler family in Germany, we leave as another story the subsequent misfortunes and sufferings of Zacharius Flegler and his family in its course to the shores of America.

AUTHORITIES AND SOURCES CONSULTED

J. B. Burke

L. G. Pine

E. S. Ellis

J. R. Dolan

P. Smith

T. B. Macaulay R. N. Blain

Erich Langguth Helen W. Reynolds Dr. Adolf Flegler The Rev. R. S. Sheffer

W. A. Knittle

L. D. MacWethy S. H. Cobb Peerage Story of the Peerage Story of the Greatest Nations English Ancestral Names Life of Martin Luther

History of England Cambridge Modern History Archivist, Stuttgart, Germany Dutchess County Historian Genealogist, Stuttgart Lake Wales, Florida The Palatine Emigration Book of Names

Story of the Palatines Encyclopedia Britannica

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Gazebo between #19 and #23 Garfield Place

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