Germantown 44

We lived in one of the great historical towns of the world. But it's not famous. Anything can acquire fame from incidents like Elvis sightings or because Washington slept there or someone went berserk and killed a bunch of innocents. Those things will draw tourists. It's like going to Williamsburg or Disneyworld, I guess. Even Washington, our capital, has no credentials. In the days of the greater dynamics of the world, Washington was a swamp. Nobody went there unless they wanted to get malaria. Pilgrims went to Hollywood before Disney raised fiction to the sublime to celebrate the unreal. Williamsburg's okay, I guess, but the cobblestones and costumes were the glitzy gifts of John D. Rockefeller. Nothing of great value happened in Williamsburg but millions of tourists flock there to get in tune with America.

Not many people come to Philadelphia considering the wealth of history it has gathered up. Far fewer find their way to Germantown, called America's first suburb.

The first settlers were, as the title hints, Germans. They were Anabaptists who migrated from the Palatinate in the seventeenth century. Some of their names, Pastorius and Rittenhouse, were immortalized: street names, parks, schools. Others, Kelpius and Kunders, would disappear from popluar conversation in later years.

The natives were in decline once the Swedes and the Dutch and the English and the Germans decided this area was worth taking. The evolution of property was dependent upon strength. Whatever William Penn preached, with the advantage of the Kings Grant, would get a little lip service then be disregarded by a stampede mentality that put real-estate into enterprising hands.

The German settlers were heroically depicted in stone in Vernon Park, a green patch nicely placed near the center of things. Town planners erected a library in the park and a band-pavillion that bands abandoned before my time. In my time kids played there in the afternoons. Lovers went up there in the evenings to cuddle and smooch if all the benches on the footpaths were taken. The bands had moved to Pastorius Park in Chestnut Hill. When we went to war against Germany in 1917 polititians might have harangued from the railings of the pavillion to have the name of Germantown changed. The idea fell short but the monument was veiled for a while to remind the public who the villains were.

People who moved into Germantown after the Great War were excused from knowing about the past. That's a shame. Germans were more memory than presence. And the indians' Nation of Delawares was in exile in Oklahoma. Future guardians of the cultural remnants of those societies chopped down, tore down or mutilated evidence of the older orders and in the 'thirties there was little sentiment to preserve what was left. Progress has a price.

Ancient history was guarded by a few, people whose ancestors lived in the same big houses where they were probably born and raised. My father, born in Bethlehem, emmigrated to Germantown when he was little. My mother came from Wyndmoor, not far away but a place that didn't exist when Germantown was the suburb of the center of the new world. Some distant grandfather of the time of the battle of Germantown fought against his father's British troops. But in all the time I lived there (1935-1953) I was ignorant of the glorious past that pitted the ambitious against simpletons who thought they were happy.

The immediate concerns of the present life were enough. I had not yet been infected by romantics except for Miss Coyle and another history teacher. Their areas of history's passion were in other places and I followed them. I did love my Germantown of the present and my knowledge about the place began and ended there.

Our teachers took us to the arboretum and to Philadelphia to Betsy Ross' house, to Independence Hall (to touch the Liberty Bell), to museums to see mummies and the stars in heaven, to Washington's pew at Christ Church, and to Ben Franklin's grave in the yard.

But we didn't go to Rittenhousetown to see the old settlement and the oldest paper-mill in the new world. We didn't go into the Mennonite Church to see Tones Kunders' desk on which the first protest against slavery in the English speaking world was written almost a hundred years before George Washington sat in Christ Church. We didn't trace the movements of the Battle of Germantown at the Chew House, Cliveden. We didn't poke around in Kelpius' cave where the mystic dwelled and the indian chief Tedyuscung drank firewater to celebrate his conversion to western ways. We didn't see Wyck or Grumblethorpe or Stenton, great houses at the time of the Revolution, or the Deshler-Morris house that was once the capitol of our country.

Our teachers must have been raised in other places. They took us where the tourists went. My mother took me to the site of Charlie Ross' house. He was lured away (in 1874) by kidnappers who gave him candy. Mothers ever since told their children not to accept candy from strangers thanks to that episode. We were close to the scene of the crime and were on-guard. Kidnappers worked elsewhere after that (imitating the Ross crime), the first notorious abduction of a child for ransom.

My father was a tradesman and he helped in a restoration project at Grumblethorpe. One night at supper he told us about seeing bloodstains on the floor in that house where the British general, Agnew, lay dying after winning the Battle of Germantown, but shot during his effort. We listened wide-eyed to his account that was to us as good as any eyewitness'. Bloodstains aroused us.

He told us that Germantown was almost changed to some other name in the time of the war hysteria. He was eight years old. Coincidentally, I was eight years old when we went to war against Germany in a later time. There was no movement to change the name. The FBI kept an eye on some individuals with German names.

These things were the extent of our home-taught history. It was more than we were to learn at school about Germantown.

When I was a boy Germantown was home to about eighty-thousand people. If it wasn't part of Philadelphia it would be a city. Its main road, Germantown Avenue, was called High Street when the British were in charge. The avenue bustled with stores and shoppers crowded the avenue and the shops every day but Sunday. Blue laws were enforced on "The Sabbath." Four theatres operated in the vicinity of Germantown and Chelten Avenues. Others were in the neighborhoods.

Philadelphia was known as the city of homes. Even the poor lived in houses. Tenement "flats" were in other cities: New York, Calcutta, London. Apartments in Germantown were built for dowager ladies who couldn't be bothered with mowing the grass or shoveling snow. Rows of brick houses were built for workingmen. If a family lived in a semi-detached they were considered successful. Those in big single houses were rich. Some of the neighborhoods were rich in Victorian architecture. Architects built minor palaces for clients in others.

Two railroads passed through Germantown. The Reading Railroad ran through the east side and The Pennsylvania on the west end. Both came from central Philadelphia and both went to Chestnut Hill. Seven bus routes and four trolley car lines ran through our town to other sections of the city. Most of them ran a twenty-four hour schedule, especially during the war when factories operated all night.

In more simple times letters and post cards were often sent to Germantown, Pa. The post office eventually developed codes and in Philadelphia, Germantown was designated 44. You might get away with sending letters to friends there now, without naming town or city or state, just 19044.

"Where are you from?" Politicians would say the twenty-second ward. To insiders, that's Germantown. Catholics would say Saint Vincent de Paul or Immaculate Conception or Saint Francis of Assisi. Other Catholics would know that these churches were in Germantown. More importantly they knew what part of Germantown. Philadelphia Catholics were unique. They tended to identify geography with their parish. "Where do you live?" If the answer was Frankford or Roxborough or Oak Lane the respondant might be a Protestant.

Outsiders not attracted to history might have come in droves if enterprising types had the savvy that today's promoters exercise. Kirk and Nice were undertakers and they and their descendants have been nailing stiffs in coffins since the mid-eighteenth century when King George the Second was the boss. The hoardes have piled into tour buses for more bizarre — and less interesting, and more expensive — sorties. Tourists go to Lancaster County (PA) to stare vacantly at Amish folk and buy momentos probably made in Brooklyn or Japan.

Unquestionably the biggest influx of visitors to Germantown came on Mondays. Buses of pilgrims visited the Central Shrine of the Miraculous Medal on Chelten Avenue to participate in devotions that attracted the pious by tens of thousands. More Roman Catholics visited Germantown than any other city in the United States. Numbers have fallen off somewhat in recent years and younger Catholics, like their heathen peers, are more likely to make pilgrimages to sports arenas and rock concerts.

It seemed to me that most people who lived in Germantown worked there. Hundreds of little stores were found in the neighborhoods...almost on every block. Factories and mills were convenient to their employees who, in large measure, could walk to work and save a dime or so of car-fare.

Our first travel agents were shoe-salesmen. The avenue had a lot of shoe stores. Progressive types sold x-ray machines to some of them so salesmen and customers could look at foot bones inside new shoes. Clients could wiggle their toes in a sea of radiation.

When shoes wore out they could still be redeemed. They went to cobblers (shoemakers, and they were always nearby). They would get new heels, new soles, new laces in one piece, and a fresh coat of polish professionally applied. Shoes would have a second life and maybe a third before any thoughts appeared to throw them away. Some were inherited by younger siblings.

It seemed natural to walk to accessible places: two blocks or five, ten or twenty. Any survey answered honestly today notes that people going two blocks, or five, will drive.