CS 71 .P29 1903 Copy 1 SOME ACCOUNT OF DETTMAR BASSE AND THE PASSAVANT FAMILY AND THEIR ARRIVAL IN AMERICA (By ZELIE JENNINGS, Their Grand-daughter.) i SOME ACCOUNT OF DETTMAR BASSE AND THE PASSAVANT FAMILY AND THEIR ARRIVAL IN AMERICA (By ZELIE JENNINGS, Their Grand-daughter.) 3 '3 / / ^.. ^-^^it.-«>-TLA--.vC .^ Zelie Basse, afterwards married to Phillip Louis Passavant, was born 20th of November, 1786, in the free cit}^ of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany. She was the eldest child of Dettmar Frederick William Basse, baptized, as it is re- corded, the 6th of April, 1762, in Iserlohn, province of Westphalia, Prussia, and of Sophia Wilhelmina Kellner, his wife. It is presumed Dettmar Basse came to Frankfort (Frankfort-am Mein) to visit his two half sisters, Mrs Reis and Mrs. Zickwolf, who were married and had their residence there, when he met the beautiful WiUielmina Kellner. He was handsome, with very attractive manners. An only son, he had inherited a larjj^e fortune, for those days, and on the third of January the marriage took place, his bride being sixteen years of age at the time. They were the parents of two sons and two daughters, who lived to old age, several children • having died in infancy. When his daughter Zelie was about six years old, Dettmar Basse re- ceived a diplomatic appointment which led him to the city of Paris, France. What was exactly the nature of his appointment, or what he was expected to do, I am not informed, but he re- mained in Paris ten years. Dettmar Basse had received tlie coniplimeiitarv title of Court Coun- cilor from the Klector of Hesse Cassel, for having lent him a large sum of money to free prisoners of war during the wars of Napoleon. He also gave a sum of money to the city of Frankf for the same purpose. Toward the end of tiis residence in Paris, Dettmar Basse had the mis- fortune to lose his wife, who died of a fever on the i.Sthof November, 1800. My grandmother, Zelie Basse, received every advantage of education in Paris, and was ever ready to improve all her ad vantages. She spoke and wrote English, French and German. She had a good mind and was well informed and accomplished. She had been bap- tized Frederica Wilhelmina, but in her childhood she had written a little story in which the princi- pal character was "Zelie." Her parents were so much ])leased with it that they began to call her "Zelie," and always continued it. In the early part of the nineteenth century there were many estates offered for sale in France, either by persons impoverished through the revolution, or confiscated by the government. Dettmar Basse, \\\u) was of a speculative disposition, and of s(Mncwhat visionary temperament, purchased a beautiful estate called "Vilgenie," near Paris, that had once belonged to the Princess of Conde', with a fine chateau surrounded by six hundred acres of Land, enclosed in a ston'^ wall. He soon found himself in debt, and to retrieve his for- tunes he established a ribbon factory, which was not successful. He was obliged to sell his estate to satisfy his creditors, and he then sought America as the scenes of new hopes and fortunes, where he —2— arrived in the year 1801. His children had been sent back to German)^ the younger ones to school, and his daughter Zelie went to her native Frankfort, to live in the house of her uncle, Wil- ' " n Metzler, who was a man of wealth, and the i3urgomaster of the city. He had an only child, a daughter, of her own age, her cousin Carolina, to whom she became very much attached, and there she spent five happy years. In A.merica my great-grandfather, Dettmar Basse, .raveled quite extensively in the eastern United States. He was a man of fine appearance, pol- ished manners, and most agreeable conversation, speaking English fluently. He made many ac- quaintances in the cities before traveling west- ward to Pittsburgh to seek a location for a new home. That place was then the utmost limits of civilization in this part of the country, and much land was offered for sale cheaply. Dettmar Basse bought ten thousand acres from the Gov- ernment, some twenty-five or thirty miles from Pittsburg, in the valley of the Connoquenessing, Butler County, Pa. Dettmar Basse admired the country, and the wild forests, and many visions fioated through his imagination, of the time when he would live here, the master of a fine mansion, and an estate, surrounded by his chil- dren; but his letters to his daughter Zelie, in Frankfort, which alluded to these hopes, only filled her with dread; as she has herself told me she had no wish to forsake her German friends, and the comforts of life with them, for the wilds of America. Yet with courage she resolved that her duty and obedience must lead her to do —3 — so, if ever she was called upon. For some time, the first summer, Dettmar Basse lived in a tent, and though accustomed to the luxuries of Europe, enjoyed the novelty of his life there; and to some man who had asked him what he had been in Europe, he jestingly replied that he had been "Pastry cook to the King of Prussia." In a year or two he began to erect his house, a fine mansion for its day, with a good Irish car- penter named O'Neil as chief workman. But t\ie progress was necessarily slow; in those days work was not assisted by machinery, as at pres- ent. The house stood on an eminence overlook- ing the Connoquenessing and was named "Bassenheim," or Basse's home, in English. I should say here that though Dettmar Basse had but a remnant of his own fortune when he came to America, he always enjoyed a comfortable though not large income from his wife's estate. She had been a wise woman when she made her will, and knowing her husband's propensity for spending money with poor results, she so settled it that he could not use any of the principal dur- ing his lifetime, but only the interest of her money, and at his death it was to go to her chil- dren. The future proved the wisdom and fore- sight of her actions, though her husband was much disappointed at the time, as he was then in debt. In the year 1805 there came to America from Wirteniberg. Germany, a socialist society, organ- ized and founded by George Rapp In religious belief they were Second Adventists. They —4— found their way to the then far West in search of a home, and bought two tliousand acres from Dettmar Basse in the valley of the Con;.oque- nessing, Butler county, Pa., and built a town that is now called "Old Harmony." Their legal title was that of the Harmony Society. They brought cultivation of the land, manufactures, and trade to the neighborhood, which was a great improvement. In the year 1815, for vari- ous reasons, they removed to the Wabash, in Indiana, and built New Harmony, which was afterwards sold to Robert Owen and Fanny Wright, the Scotch Socialists, and the Society of George Rapp returned to Pennsylvania in 1825 and built the town of Economy, in Beaver county. In 1806 Dettmar Basse thought it was time to return to Germany for his older children, his daughter Zelie, who was twenty, and his son Charles, who was eighteen years old. Accordingly, he set out on a long journey, so diiTerent from what it is at the present day. The journey over the mountains to Philadelphia was generally made on horseback by gentlemen, and six weeks was considered a short enough time for the voy- age across the ocean. In due time he arrived in Frankfort and found that his daughter Zelie was engaged to be married. He could not make any objection to her choice; a person so amiable, noble and in all respects wortny as my grand- father, Phillip Louis Passavant, could seldom be found. But my great-grandfat her resolved to take his daughter with him, and he was a man accustomed to be obeyed. Dettmar Basse de- —5— ' clared that to have his sanction to the marriage her husband must accompany his daughter to America. It was a great trial for them both to leave Germany, and my grandmother was in deep dis- itress at parting from her dear cousin Carolina (afterwards Mrs. Kessler), her uncle and aunt, and all her friends, and, as the future proved, forever. My grandparents were married one week before they left Frankfort — a marriage begun with so many tears on all sides, but the chief source of their happiness for forty-seven years. My greai-grandfarther, Dettmar Basse, his oldest son, Charles; his son-in-law, Phillip Louis Passavant; his daughter Zelie, and her maid, set sail fron Antwerp and arrived in Phildelphia in September, 1807. The Passavant family had long been estab- lished in Frankfort, Germany, but were of French descent. In the year 1594 as the family record declares, Claude de Passavant, with his wife and child, left his native province of Bur- gundy, in France. He had been educated in Germany and had imbibed the doctrines of the reformation, and returning, found his home no longer congenial, and vSacrificing his noble title and all prospective honours or estate, emigrated to Basel, in Switzerland. One hundred years later another member of the Swiss Passavant fam- ily (they had dropped the"de" from their name because Switzerland was a republic) emigrated to Frankfort-on-the-Main, in Germany, where —6— they became numerous, though part of the fam- ily remained in Switzerland, and their descend- ants are to be found there, and many of the name are also to be found in Europe and America, though the original French family has become extinct. The meaning of the name in French, "To pass before," was derived from the family coat of arms, which is a soldier carrying a banner or standard before the army. In 1846 my uncle, William A. Passavant, visited Switzerland and made the acquaintance of the Passavant family there, especially Miss Henrietta Passavant, with whom he sometimes corresponded. She had pre- pared for him a family tree, and a history of the family, written in French. It may be consulted at the home of the Passavants, in Zelienople. But to return to my great-grandfather, Dettmar Basse, and his family. When they had arrived in Philadelphia, then a more important city than New York, they found it very pleasant to linger there a while after their long sea voyage. Dettmar Basse introduced his daughter to his many friends and he seemed in no haste to seek his Western home. But as the season was advancing, they were obliged to set out. A large spring wagon had been prepared in which to travel, and there was also a compartment arranged behind, in which to carry two fine sheep that my great- grandfather had imported from the flocks of the Grand Duke of Baden. At that time there was great excitement in the country about raising fine wool and improving the coarser wool by the -7- introduction of Merino sheep. It was thought that fortunes could be made in this industry, something like in the gold and oil excitements of later days. These precious sheep arrived safely at their destination, and one of them was after- ward sold for one thousand dollars. The heavy baggage of the family, which consisted of no less than seventy boxes, was brought over the mountains by the great Conestoga wagons, drawn by four or six horses, with small bells attached to their heads, which were necessary to give warning of their approach over the rough and narrow roads. All the goods between Philadel- phia and Pittsburgh were conveyed in this way at that time. The Basse family brought many articles that they had in their house in Paris, such as fine china, pictures, ornaments, and household linen; even a large secretary was brought, beauti- fully inlaid with brass and different shades of wood. It still stands in the library at Zelienople, as good, apparently, as it was one hundred years ago. I have in my possession two tablecloths that are at the present time one hundred and thirty years old. They wf re part of the outfit of my grandfather Passavant's motlier, when she married, marked with her maiden name. As it was the custom of German ladies to get great quantities of linen when they married, she still had so much that she gave, her son part of it wlien he was married, and came to America, and as they were very large thev were seldom used and show no signs of wearing out. — &— When my g^reat-grandfather Basse and family arrived in Pittsburgh, which was then but a large village, it was already the middle of Novem- ber. In Allegheny there stood onl)'' one house on the shore of the river, occupied by the Robin- son family, who kept the ferry on -the Allegheny river, and from whom Robinson street is tiamed. When the travelers had crossed the river- there came up such a furious snow storm, the first of the season, that it was impossible to proceed. The Robinson family were very unwilling to keep them, but Mr. Basse urged that he had brought his daughter from Europe, and should she now be turned out perhaps to die from exposure? And they finally consented to exercise their hospitality for the night. The nearest place which they had hoped to reach that evening was the tavern of Mrs. Burns, sixteen miles farther, whose estab- lishment consisted of three or four cabins, one the reception room, a kitchen and bed rooms, Mrs. Burns was a warm-hearted Irish woman, a good cook, with her chicken and flannel cakes, always ready with which to entertain strangers. Dettmar Basse was her frequent patron and a favorite, and long she continued to entertain guests in the same place, though in a better house when he had ceased to be one of them. At last the family arrived at the end of their journey and took up their abode at Bassenheim (Basse's home). This was quite a fine-looking house, built in a picturesque style, and standing on an elevation overlooking the Connoquenessing, but —9— the house was not even finished yet, and had very Httle to make it comfortable, and though it ha 1 some adornments, which they had brought from Europe, it had not the necessary furniture which could not easily be procured at the time. It was also very difficult to find provisions for the table, except some of the most common and coarsest food, and scarcely that. The first winter was very gloomy, and my grandmother spent much time in writing letters to her friends in Germany, when she could not always restrain her tears. Still she was a woman of courage and determina- tion, and she was resolved to make the best of circumstances. She had her husband with her, to whom she was much attached, and who had left his country for her sake, and she endeavored to make her home as happy as possible for him and for herself. In about a year my grand- parents removed to a house of their own in the village of Zelienople, about half a mile from Bassenheim. A village had begun to grow up on the estate of my great-grandfather Basse, which he called Zelienople, 'Zelie" for his daugh- ter, with the Greek word "polis," meaning city. The name Zelie is pronounced in French as if the e was a, and so my grandmother's name was always pronounced. In the early spring, Dettmar Basse found it necessary to go to Butler, the newly laid out county town, on some business. When there, lie was introduced at the house of a friend to a very beautiful young widow, who was their vis- itor, named Mrs. Israel. She was somewhat — lO — indispose!, and he \v \s asked to prescribe for her. He had brou^^ht some simple medicines from Europe, which lie sometimes gave to his neic^h- bors, and so was often cadled "Doctor." Dettmar Basse invited the lady to visit his daughter at Bassenheim, winch she did, but, as my grand- mother said, she soon saw that it was chiefly on his own account that he desired the visit. The consequence was that in August, 1808, my grandmother was invited to ride on horseback, over fifty miles, to her father's wedding, with the beautiful widow^ in Washington, Pennsylvania. The lady's maiden tiame had been Reddick. On this occasion the late Mrs. Eliza Shields, the mother of the Shields family of Sewickley, gave a reception to the bride. She afterwards re- moved to the lands inherited from her father, Daniel Leet, from whom Leetsdale is named, in the valley of Sewickley, on the Ohio. My grandmother returned from the wedding, feeling, as she told me, that her own great sacrifice, in coming to this countiy, because she thought her father was so lonely and desolate, was in a meas- ure useless. But the second Mrs. Basse lived only a little longer than a year, and died of con- sumption. She left a little boy, by her first mar riage. whom my great-grandfather, Basse car- ried on horseback before him, all the way to Philadelphia, to leave him in charge of some relatives there. Dettmar Basse was very anxious that his son Charles should settle in this country permanently, — II- and for this purpose be thought it best that he should marry an American. Charles was a very bright and attractive young man, and his father proposed that he should endeavor to win the heiress, Elizabeth O'Hara (afterwards Mrs. Harmar Denny). Her fatfeer was his friend and owned much of the land in Pittsburgh and vi- cinity, and was the father of the future Mrs. Schenley, But Charles had no idea of marrying any one at that time. In a year or two he was sent to Germany on business for his father, where he was charmed with a beautiful and lovely young lady of noble birth, whom he suc- ceeded in marrying, and refused to return to America, much to the displeasure of his father. Charles Basse never did see America again, though he lived to be over eighty years of age. He was the father of four sons nnd one daughter. Only one son is now living and one grandchild. This son is William Basse, a Lutheran clergy- man in Frankfort'On-the-Main, Germany, who has one son. But to go back to the fortunes of my great- grandfather, Dettmar Basse. He discovered iron ore upon his land, and he thought that noth- ing would make his estate more valuable and bring settlers than to establish an iron furnace. He did not understand anything whatever about the manufacture of iron, himself. He went to the East and brought managers to conduct the establishment of the furnace and the whole busi- ness of making iron; but when it was made it — 12- had to be haukd over the rough road twenty- five miles, to Pittsburgh, as a market, and there was no water power that could carry it nearer. All this work did not pay expenses, and in a few years he found himself in debt, and even cheated by one of his agents. In the meantime he had married for the third time, a lady from New Jer- sey, Miss Anna Rogers, with whose brother he had business relations. She was one year younger than his oldest daughter, Mrs. Zelie Passavant; but Dettmar Basse was comparatively- young yet, and was very handsome. It was somewhere about this period, but what year I am unable to say. that his two younger children arrived from Germany, his daughter Sophia, and his y(^ungest son, Sully. But they had not long to remain, for his affairs had reached such a state that to free himself from debt he was obliged to sell Bassenheim and all the remainder of his property, much to his grief and disap- pointment. He had too visionary and sanguine a temperament, without proper judgment, which had again brought him into trouble. In the year 1818 he left Bassenheim forever and resolved to re- tire to Germany for the rest of his life. And now the wisdom of his wife's arrangement of her will was proved. He had always an assured income from this source; if he had had any of the prin- cipal it would have been swallowed up long ago, and he would have been dependent on his chil- dren. He resolved to take a new route to the seashore and see as much of the country as pos- —13— sible before he left it. He had a boat fitted up as a habitation for himself, his wife, daughter and son, and two men to direct it, with which he expected to float down the Ohio river to New Orleans and sail for Europe from there. This was accomplished after some months. The delay was caused chiefly by his stopping for some time with his old friend, George Rapp, and the Har- mony Society, then seitled at New Harmony, on the Wabash, in Indiana. They received him with much pleasure' and hospitality, and insisted upon an extended visit. Upon leaving them he presented Mr, Rapp, in recognition of his kind- ness, with several pictures and pieces of chuia, notably the carved ivories representing "Ruben's taking down of Christ from the cross" and an- other religious subject. They are very beautiful, and hang in the parlor at Economy on each side of the mirror between the windows. My grand- aunt Sophia (afterwards Mrs. Ehrmann) lias often spoken to me of this journey down the Mis- sissippi, and of sering Indians in many places. Sometimes the inhabitants came down to the shore, thinking the boat with its long stove-pipe chimneys might be those of a steamboat. Steam was an experiment yet, and had not reached the western waters. In German^' my great-grandfather Basse did not reside in Frankfort again, his old home, but went to live in Mannheim, not far from beautiful Heidelberg. There he died on the 19th of June, 1836. After his death his widow retutued to her —14— native country. She outlived him many years and resided in Chicago, where she married again, late in life. I have a ring which she gave me, with my great-grandfather's hair in it, placed in a singular style, to look like an eye, and sur- rounded with pearls. Sully Basse settled in Frankfort, where he married and had a family. He died at eighty years of age, and has two daughters living, who have families, and also some grandchildren bearing his name. After some years, Sophia Basse returned to this coun- try and was married at Zelienople to Clement Ehrmann, a gentleman whose acquaintance she had made in Germany She resided in Beaver county, Penna., and died 1870, being survived by one son, Dettmar Louis Ehrmann, When Dettmar Basse, her father, had left with her sister and brother, my grandmother Passavant was left lonely and without relatives, though she had her husband, and children, of whom she had three at this time. Always energetic and very indus- trious, she found plenty of work in training and educating her children and looking after the ways of her household. She was an affectionate and devoted mother, and took every occasion to imorove surrounding events for the moral advan- tage of her children, showing the good or evil influence cf different actions in common life. She was very fond of the garden and spent much time upon her plants and flowers. Bassenheim had been sold to Mr. Daniel Beltzhoover, of Pitts- burgh, the father of the Beltzhoover family of —15— that city. My grandmother formed an intimacy with Mrs. Beltzhoover, whom she found a very lovely woman, but after a few years Mrs. Arra- bella Beltzhoover passed away, the victim of con- sumption, and was buried on the estate. Mr. Beltzhoover married again, and in a few years Bassenheim was sold the second time, in 1831, to Mr. Saunders, a gentleman from the East, who established there a manual labor school. About the year 1842 the house was destroyed by fire. There was no longer a school there at the time. I have a picture of Bassenheim painted, in India ink, which I copied from a painting by Aunt Virginia Passavant, which she had copied from one taken from the house itself, by Mis.s Harriet Preble, sister of Mrs. Barlow. A piece of land belonging to the original tract of Dettmar Basse, and at the time belonging to my grandfather Passavant, had been sold to Mr. G. H. Muller, a German gentleman wno was at the time engaged in business in Havana, Cuba. He wished to settle upon it his father-in-law, Mr. Caspar Muller. and family, who was at the same time his uncle. This gentleman was from Ham- berg, Germany, and had been a merchant in Baltimore, but had met with some reverses dur- ing the war with England. They were persons of cultivation and refinement and my grandmother greatly enjoyed their association .for many years. A handsome stone house was built, called "Benvenue," on a hill overlooking the valley of the Connoquenessing and the village of Zelien- —16— ople. In later years Mr. Muller retired there himself. There were two young ladies in the family who were well accomplished in music, playing on the piano and harp. One of them, Miss Melusina, was soon married to Mr. John Henry Hopkins, who was born in Ireland, but came to this country when four years old. and afterwards became a distinguished clergy- man and almost the founder of Trinity church, Pittsburgh, and bishop of Vermont. But at this time he had begun his career in life as a clerk and manager of my great-grandfather Basse's iron furnace. The iron business was then a rising industry in the west, and Mr. Hopkins had p'-epared himself for it, though circumstances atter wards led him to change his vocation. His life has been written by his son. I have heard my grandmother say that she never had known a man with such a variety of talents, for music, painting, poetry, as well as a natural eloquence of speech. Sometime about the year 1823, my grandfather, Phillip Louis Passavant, visited Europe to see once more his aged parents. My grandmother could not accompany him, being the mother of five young children, and a journey to Europe being a great undertaking in those days. When my grandparents first came to this country they had always hoped that something might permit them to return to Europe again, as their permanent home, and this hope had helped them to bear with greater patience their depriva- tions and loneliness here. But as time passed —17— oil, all Germany and Europe was bein^ harassed by the wars of Napoleon Bonaparte. Commerce was ruined, and my grandfather Passavant's father, who was an importing merchant dealing with France, had lost much money. Yet my grandparents often said that the only letter they had ever known to be lost was one which invited them to Frankfort, and offered my grandfather a position there. They did not know of it until long afterwards, when it was too late to accept, and they concluded that Providence never designed them to return, and perhaps it was better for their children to remain here. My grandmother carefully educated her two daugh- ters at home, keeping them at their lessons at regular hours. They were well acquainted with English, French and German, speaking them readily. At fifteen, my mother, whose name was Emma Marie Wilhelmina (always called Emma in her family), after being for a short time at school in Pittsburgh, where she was under the care of her mother's intimate friend, Mrs. Neville B. Craig, was sent to the Misses TurnbuU's school in Baltimore, partly that she should know some- thing of the world, and see other girls. There she was a diligent pupil, and was admired for her amiability and sweet quaintness of manners, and a slight French accent in her speech, which was considered attractive by her friends, but which she lost in after years. At the age of twenty Emma Passavant was married to Samuel Carna- han Jennings, a Presbyterian minister. She — 18— was the mother of four daughters and two sons. All are now living but one son. M}^ grand- mother's second daughter was baptized Sophia Carolina Virginia, and called "Virginia" in the family. She was eight vears younger than her sister, was highly accomplished, very well in- formed, and had a fine mind. I have in my possession a letter written by her when she was a child of seven years of age, without any assist- ance from any one, written to her sister, who was ill and away from home, and is quite re- markable in its style and sentiments for a child of her age. Virginia Passavant attended a school in Pittsburgh, established by Dr. Lacy, an Episcopal clergyman, on the outskirts of the city, at a place called Lacyville at that time, but now the site of the Passavant Memorial Hos- Hospital. Virginia Passavant was known not only for her intellectual abilities, but for her true piety and general excellence of character. Stie was deeply lamented, for at the age of twenty- five she died of a fever at Zelienople in 1844. Philip Dettmar was the name of my grand- parents' oldest son. He spent a year in visiting his relatives in Germany, and was so much pleased with his visit that he declared he would make a forture in this country and go to Europe to reside. But his hopes were soon blasted. In about a year after his return he died in Pitts- l)urgh in September, 1839, after a few days' ill- ness with a fever, which affected his brain. He was associated with his brother, Charles Sidney, —19— in the wholesale grocery bashiess, but after his death his brother, disheartened and discouraged, gave up the business and retired to his father's house in Zelienople, where he was the stay and comfort of his parents during the rest of their lives,'his mother outliving his father nearly twenty years. Sidney Passavant was married after some years to Jane Randolph, whose grand- father, Mr. Henry Buhl, had been a near neigh- bor of the Passavant family, and though born in Zelienople, she had been brought up by an aunt in Detroit. They were the parents of a son and daughter. Charles Sidney has his father's name; he is married and has two sons. Emma Virginia, the daughter, lives with her widowed mother, in the old home at Zelienople. It is often the custom to give several names to chil- dren in Germany, and the name next to the surname is the name by which they are addressed generally. But my grandmother seems to have selected the one she fancied best, and she gave the name of William Alfred to her youngest son, who was always called William. This son be- came a Lutheran clergyman. He was born in 182 1 and died of pneumonia in June, 1894; about six weeks before his older brother, Charles Sid- ney, also passed away. He was very acceptable as a preacher, and was much esteemed and ad- mired. He gave up his parish in Pittsburgh in order to devote his time to the founding of hos- pitals and orphan asylums, in which he was much interested, though he alwa3's still found -20 — some place that needed his pulpit ministrations. He introduced the order of Lutheran Dea- conesses into this country, founded by Dr. Flied- ner at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, Germany. He was remarkably successful in collecting i>ioney for his various charitable institutions, rnd hi in- teresting many persons in their establishment. Hospitals were founded in Pittsburgh, Mil- waukee and Chicago; also orphan asylums at Zelienople and near the city of New York. He seemed to inspire great confidence everywhere in his charitable work and he was on the whole very successful in finding suitable persons to manage the details of his various benevolent in- stitutions, though the order (>f Deaconesses did not increase very rapidly in this country. His death, which occurred in June, 1894, was deeply mourned by all who had known him, and by those who had felt the benefit of his labors. His son, his father's , namesake, also a Lutheran clergyman, succeeded to the superintendence of the institutions his father had established, and was very successful. He outlived his father but seven years, dying very suddenly in July, 1901, at a country home in the mountains near Union- town, Fayette county, where the family had been living for some years in the summer. Of niv uncle's family remaining there is his widow, whose rnaiden name was Eliza Walter, of Haltimore, and four sons and one daughter, Mrs. Z.-lie Emerson (a widow), of Jackson, Michigan. Tans all the children of my grandparents, Philip — 21 — Louis Passavant and Zelie Basse, his wife, have departed this life, and also some of their grand- children. My grandfather, Philip Louis Passavant, was noted for his honor and perfect uprightness of character in all his dealings with his fellowmen, and there was something so genial and amiable in his noble countenance and manners that he was universally beloved by all who knew him. He spoke English without any perceptible accent, having been sent as a youth to England to acquire the language. He was fond of books, of art, and all the refinements of cultivated life to which he had been accustomed in Europe. Yet his life was one of much self sacrifice, borne with cheerfulness and patience, and compensated for by the .society of those he loved best. Though he was never a wealthy man, especially as wealth is considered now, his hand was always open to the needy. Yet he was seldom or never imposed upon. My grandfather Passavant was born in the city of Frankfort, Germany, in ryyy, and died at his home in Zelienople after a few davs' illness in April, 1852. My grandmother, who was ten vears younger, outlived him nearly twenty years. She was well suited to be a pioneer, by her energy, perseverance and in- dustry. She spent no time mourning for past comforts or advantages, but spent the time making the best of the present. She spurned undue self-indulgence and indolence herself, and brought up her children with the same habits. — 22 — My grandmother's last 3'ears were years of much pain and partial blindness, borne with patience and submission to the will of God. She had al- ways been an expert knitter, and often read and knitted at the same time, with a book or paper spread out before her. Only occasionally looking at her work, her fingers could fly like machinery, and as long as she could see she always had her dozen pairs of stockings ready for the orphans every winter. In the last days of the year eighteen hundred and seventy-one she departed this life at the age of eighty-five years. In this sketch of my grandmother Passavant. and those nearly connected with her, I have called upon my own memory, and that of my mother and my grand aunt, Sophia Ehrmann, my grandmother's only sister, for facts which they have related to me, and in which I always took an interest and retained readily. My grandmother herself, when I was about fourteen years old, gave me a short account of her early life, and her coming to this country, which I have never forgotten, and which I have en- deavored to preserve for her descendants in these pages. I shall be sorry if I have failed to present allher virtues with the clearness and vividness which they deserve, but hoping that her example may be followed as my best wishes for my readers, I lay down my pen. Your affectionate sister, aunt or cousin, ZELIE JENNINGS. »9o3 _23_ FEB 17 1913 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 021 392 055 8