THE IMMIGRANTS

The immigrant ancestors came from the village of Maisprach, Baselland, Switzerland, to the port of Philadelphia in the British Colony of Pennsylvania in America in the year 1749, arriving on the ship “Crown.”

They were a small family — father, mother, and three children:

JOHANN, called HANS KUMMLER, was born in Maisprach, Canton of Basel, Switzerland, on June 24, 1708. He married ANNA MARIA GRIEDER on January 3, 1735. According to the Buus (a village not far from Maisprach) parish records, Anna Maria Grieder was born in 1715, the daughter of Emanuel Grieder and Eva Schaub.

Their children were:

1. Johannes Kummler, born April 26, 1739;
2. HANS JACOB KUMMLER, born July 1,1742;
3. Anna Maria Kummler, born January 10, 1745.

Hans Kummler / Kumler, with his wife Anna Maria and their three children, left their home in Maisprach, Canton of Basel, Switzerland, and emigrated to America on “the ship Crown, Michael James master from Rotterdam and last from Cowes in England,” arriving at the Port of Philadelphia in August of 1749 and being registered in Philadelphia on August 30, 1749 with the other passengers of that ship. In the ship’s list only the father, Hans Kummler, is named, with his name written in old script as “Hans Cumler.” This name has sometimes been misread in other published sources because the initial “C” can be misread as a “G.”

The signature of Hans Cumler/Kumler on the list of the ship “Crown,” 1749

It is doubtful that members of this little emigrant family had ever gone more than thirty miles from home, if that far, in their entire lives up to 1749. That they would decide to take the long boat trip down the Rhine River to Rotterdam in Holland, and there board a ship to cross the vast sea to the unknown land of America, is truly remarkable, and there must have been good reasons for such a remarkable step. We can only suppose what some of them might have been.

1749 was a particularly bad year in the Canton of Basel. The political authorities required more and more involuntary labor from the people, who hardly had time to take care of their own affairs, and often could not even afford to pay the miller for bread. In the midst of those hard times four men appeared who had actually been to the New World, and everyone must have listened eagerly to their tales of how different life was there. People discussed it with their neighbors, husbands with wives, and a fervor for emigration spread over the region. People, even boys and girls engaged in making lace, began asking the authorities for permission to emigrate.

The authorities were not pleased, and saw this excitement for emigration as a kind of fever that had to be stopped. Perhaps the best way to do that was to get rid of the men who had been to the New World and were encouraging this problem, and to get rid of those who had been seriously infected with the idea as well. The returnees from the New World were expelled, and and it was decided that those people who had applied for emigration before March 22, 1749, would be allowed to leave so they could see how foolish they had been. But those leaving had to give up all rights of property and inheritance, and were forbidden to set foot in the Canton again. They had to pay a manumission and emigration tax, with only those who had nothing but the household things they were taking along with them excused from payment. They were forced to burn all the bridges behind them to the life they had known, and to go to whatever fate awaited them in the outside world. A few did not apply in time, but left anyway, without asking permission.

On May 8, 1749, emigrants boarded four ships on the Rhine and began the long journey downriver to Rotterdam, where they would take passage on seagoing vessels for the dangerous voyage across the ocean to the New World.

Listed among those who emigrated in 1749 from the village of Maisprach
were:

Hans Kumler/Kummler, 40 years of age;
Anna Maria Grieder, his wife;
Three children:
Johannes, ten years old; baptized April 26, 1739;
Hans Jacob, seven years old; baptized July 1, 1742;
Anna, four years old; baptized January 10, 1745.

On August 30th of 1749 this little family completed the long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and arrived in Philadelphia to begin a new life in a new world.

The Kumlers arrived in the New World on a Wednesday, and on the same day they were taken to the courthouse where, before “the Honorable James Hamilton, Esquire, Governor, and Joshua Maddox, Esquire,” these “foreigners did this day take the usual qualifications to the Goverment,” meaning that the immigrants swore allegiance, as required by the colonial authorities, to the British monarch George II.

Hans Kummler/Kumler had settled with his family in Brecknock Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, by the year 1759, where he died prior to the year 1769 (probably 1768 or early spring 1769). A census of Berks County in 1767 lists:

“Komler, Hans, joiner [carpenter/furniture maker]: 40 acres, 1
horse, 2 cattle.”

The Brecknock Township, Berks County tax assessments list for December 12, 1765, has:
“Kumler, Hans”

and for March 28, 1768,
“Komler, Hans–40 acres total, 8 clear, 1 corn, 2 horses, no cattle or
sheep.”

It is likely that this simple, unshaped stone at Muddy Creek Reformed Church Cemetery (the church is now Peace United Church of Christ) , with the letters “HK” on it, may mark his grave:

Stone marker in Muddy Creek Reformed Church Cemetery, East Cocalico Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, that likely marks the grave of the forefather of the American Kumler/Coomler/Cumbler family, Hans Cumler/Kumler/Komler/Kummler of Maisprach, Switzerland