Verum Exemplar Epist. ab
Ecclesia Scoticana ad Synod. Reform. Lithuaniensem. [Kgl. St. Archiv,
Konigsberg. The name Chien occurs amongst the Scots in Poland, so that
the above named student would have been a "Scoto-Polonus."
How zealously the Scots
attended the German Presbyterian Churches of St Peter and Paul and of St
Elizabeth at Danzig, and how eagerly they availed themselves of their
ordinances is shown in the Church registers and books which have been kept
and preserved uninterruptedly since the year 1573, that is to say
only about fifty years after the introduction of the doctrines of the
Reformation. [According to Simon Grunau it was the son of a Scot from
Nurnberg, with the name of Matz Konigk, a councillor and very eloquent,
that first brought the message of Luther and his books into the town of
Dantzke. Grunau, III., 115. But Grunau is not an authority of the first
order.] In the marriage registers we find between the years
1573 and 1699 over one hundred Scottish names, from Jacob Burges who
marries Anne, Simon Lang’s widow (1573) to D. Nichols, who marries Anne
Merivale a hundred years later. In the lists of baptisms from 1590 to
1632, about seventy Scottish names occur, amongst them Mackomtosh,
Cochran, Skoda, Hewell and Grieve, names that we do not find elsewhere.
In the fifty years dating
from 1631 to 1681, finally close on sixty Scotsmen and Scotswomen were
buried in St Elizabeth’s alone, a great many also in the Church of St
Peter and Paul, two or three in the Church of St Mary (Frauenkirche) and
three in St Johann’s. Of one Daniel Beer, it says, "a Scot of ninety-five
buried in the Churchyard of St Barbara," another whose name from Fergus
became "Vergiss" seventy-two years old, was buried in the Churchyard of
Corpus Christi. The notes, short as they are, very often are extremely
interesting. Of Edward Kincaid we read that he was a late "Feldpreger"(Army
Chaplain) in the army of the Swedish General Baner (1641); another,
Jacobus Ross, is described as a late lieutenant and an innkeeper; the name
of Johann Cant is accompanied by the following note: "a Scottish
lieutenant who died on his way through Danzig fifty-six years old" (1652).
[Another Cant or Kant, Andreas, was a tanner and dwelt in Petershagen, a
part of Danzig. In 1661 he is described as a ‘musketeer under Sergeant
Major Goltz in the army of the Elector of Brandenburg."] Gertrud Uphagen
is described as Lieutenant Jacob Stuart’s "housewife" (1658), Catherine
Watson, seventy-seven years old, as the "Scotch" Catherine (1639), and of
Alexander Watson we are told that he was "a Scottish youth of twenty-four
who was wounded on the walls of Schöneck."
Besides these entries we
have the more enduring records of numerous tombstones and mural tablets,
many of them adorned with their proud Scottish coats-of-arms, in the two
Churches of St Peter, St Elizabeth and St Mary at Danzig.
Danzig, always ready to
receive the sea-tossed Scots in the shelter of her harbour, has now
granted them a last safe anchorage.
The Scottish traveller, who
gets into ecstasies of delight at the sight of the foreign Campo Santos
under the brighter sky of Italy, would do well to remember that here also
far in the "rude North," forgotten and lonely, is a Campo Santo intimately
connected with the life-history of his own people: the true Campo Santo of
the Scot abroad.
On those Scots in Germany
eminent in the walks of life we have now to make a few remarks. To the
notices given concerning Alexander Alesius, the celebrated Scottish
Reformer, we may add that when he threw up his professorship at Frankfurt
on the Oder, so poor seem to have been his circumstances that Johann
Friedrich, the Duke of Saxony, had to provide forty ducats as travelling
money for him; [Corpus Reform., II. 885.] that his name occurs
written on the fly leaf of a Latin Bible (1549) belonging to the German
reformer Scribonius and that his chief work was his Lectures on St Paul’s
epistles to the Romans.
There is another Scottish
professor at Frankfurt mentioned with the name of Johann Walter Leslie,
who died in 1679. He wrote various theological works;
whilst on the Roman Catholic side mention must be made of William
Johnston, who was a Jesuit and taught Philosophy and Theology at Grätz
in Austria. He died in 1609. [He wrote among other works an Epitome
Historiae Sleidani and a Commentary on Isaiah.]
Other descendants of the
Scots took to the Law. To complete our list given elsewhere we may mention
the names of Christof Pathon or Patton who was a lawyer at Elbing in 1648,
and of John Immanuel Hamilton, the son of the above named clergyman, who
became an advocate and professor of Philosophy at Halle University and
died as a judge at Stargard in Pomerania in the year 1728. Another
Pomeranian solicitor, John Mitzel (Mitchel) was born in 1642, at Stralsund,
and went as a lawyer to Rostock after having finished his University
course at Helmstádt. In 1670 he became Professor of Jurisprudence at
Königsberg, where he died in 1677.
To the famous Scottish
doctors of medicine must be added the name of John Patterson, who was
Imperial Physician, and lived in the small town of Eperies in Hungaria, in
the latter half of the XVIth. Century.
In the walks of Science and
Natural History the Forsters, father and son, were eminent. Their
ancestor, George Forster, emigrated, together with the swarm of his
countrymen, about the year 1642, when he settled at Neuenburg, in Eastern
Prussia, as a merchant. His son Adam removed to Dirschau not far from
Danzig, where he also obtained citizenship. A grandson of his, George
Reinhold, became famous as the companion of Cook, with whom he sailed
round the world from 1772 to 1775. He was a man of a very unsettled
disposition, and quite incapable of adapting himself to the exigencies of
life. After having been a clergyman at Nassenhuben, a village with a
Presbyterian Church near Danzig, he turned to the study of Natural History
and made a scientific journey, by order of the Empress Katherine, through
the Colonies of the Government of Saratow (1765). A year later we find him
in England supporting himself as a teacher of German and Natural History
at Warrington. After his voyage with Cook, he ruined his chances with the
English Government by allowing his son, who had accompanied him, to
publish a diary of his travels, in contravention of the Government order
forbidding any printed publication except its own official report. The D.L.
of Oxford was the only reward he reaped for his scientific researches
during his voyage. It was only by the generous act of Frederick the Second
of Prussia that he escaped imprisonment for debt. In 1780 he was appointed
Professor of Natural History at Halle, where he died in 1798. He
understood seventeen languages and stood in the first rank of the
Zoological and Botanical scholars of the day.
His son, Johann George
Adam, accompanied his father as a botanist, though he was then only
seventeen years old. He then studied at Paris and in Holland. Being of the
same roaming disposition as his father, he was for a short time Professor
at Kassel, but changed this pleasant place for Vilna in Russia. A Russian
voyage of discovery to the Northern Regions of the Pacific Ocean was
abandoned on account of a war with the Turks (1787). In his disappointment
Forster accepted the offer of a librarianship at Mayence. Here in very
rigid Roman Catholic surroundings his cosmopolitan views as a Republican
were strengthened. He joined a Republican Club, of the town, then in the
hands of the French, was sent to France in 1793 to advocate the French
occupation of the left border of the Rhine and spoke and wrote much in
favour of his political ideals. But, having seen Paris his was a rude
awakening. Moreover, the German army retook Mayence in 1793 and
Forster was thus rendered homeless. His plan of visiting India was cut
short by his death in 1794. He belongs to the classics of German style and
is a model of clear and spirited diction, whilst he was among the first to
rouse the feeling for the beauties of outward nature, a merit which has
been warmly acknowledged by Humboldt.
Other Scottish
families still existing in Germany are the Barclays. We have seen that a
great number of them settled in Rostock in the XVIth. Century. They all
descended from one Peter Barclay who immigrated from Scotland and
became a burgess in 1657, as a silk merchant. His eldest son called
himself Joannes Barclay "de Tolli." [The Russian General of the same name,
who became Field-marshal and Prince (1761-1818), is said to belong to the
same stock.] Peter’s other son Ludwig was the clergyman.
Descendants of his on the female side are still alive.
Of the Spaldings in
Mecklenburg who have now spread over the whole of Northern Germany and of
the services they rendered to their adopted country in the calling of arms
and in the learned professions, we have already spoken. The third Scottish
family that settled in Mecklenburg were the Gertners (Gardiner).
John Gardiner from Brechin in Scotland was made a burgess of Schwerin
on the 19th of July 1623. His son was enrolled in 1647 and afterwards rose
to the dignity of "Rathsherr" (councillor).
The Muttrays at
Memel, of which family descendants are still living at Danzig and
elsewhere, trace their origin to Thomas Muttray who is said to have
accompanied James II. to France in the year 1688. He afterwards came to
Memel when the King of France did not prove the liberal supporter of the
adherents of the fugitive British prince, he was expected to be.
The Simpsons,
another Scottish family in Memel, which spread from there all over
Prussia, came originally from Cupar Angus in Forfar. An old birth brief,
dated 1680, is issued there. It seems that they first settled at a small
place about twenty miles north of Memel called Heiligen Aa, ["Aa" means
water. "Heilig" is "sacred."] from a river Aa which emptying
itself into the Baltic at the same time formed the boundary between
Kurland and Szamaiten. Besides the Simpsons, tradition mentions the names
of Muttray, Douglas and Melville as settlers. They traded with the produce
of Szamaiten, corn and flax, which they chiefly sold to Danzig. The
inhabitants of Memel, feeling themselves aggrieved at this proceeding,
lodged a complaint with the Crown of Poland, at that time exercising
supremacy over the Duchy of Prussia; and effected an interdict of King
Vladislaus, dated February 6th, 1639, by which all trading across the
Heilige Aa was strictly prohibited. His captains received orders to burn
the place. To this day, there is a fishing village called Heiligenaa on
the borders of Curland, but the harbour has long ago been choked with
sand. Simpson and the other Scots fled to Memel, where they soon held
positions of influence and trust. The Simpsons trace their descent from
one Andrew Simpson, whose son, Jacob, was married to Barbara Young, a
descendant of Magister Will. Young of the Ruthven family and of Catharine
Bruce (Robert Bruce). They are related by intermarriage to the Macleans,
Muttrays and Stoddarts.
The Macleans also are
numerous in Prussia; some of them call themselves "of Coll" from the
island of that name in the Hebrides group; others hail from Banff; on a
tombstone in the churchyard of St Salvator at Danzig, the home of Maria
MacLean, who died seventy years old in
1806, is given as Duart in Scotland,
which is on the island of Mull. This is all the more interesting as among
the many thousands of Scotsmen emigrating to Prussia and Poland in the
centuries spoken of, very few from the far West and of Celtic blood are to
be found. [The Scots were known in Prussia for their fair hair; a dark
Scot is immediately called "de swarte Schotte."
As to Baron Gibsone,
the proprietor of the large Neustadt estates which he left to the husbands
of his nieces, the Counts Keyserling, [See Scots in Germany.]
he caused his nephews John and Alexander Gibsone to come over from
Scotland to Danzig in order to take up his business, as we have seen. Of
these the second, Alexander, did a large export trade of grain under the
style of "Gibsone and Co." He took for partners other two young Scotsmen,
Marshall and Stoddart, of whom the latter, after Gibsone’s death, carried
on the business, leaving it to his son Francis Blair Stoddart, [There are
Stoddarts or Stodderts in Danzig in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, but a connection between these and the present bearer of the
name cannot be established. The other of the Stoddart who came to Danzig
in 1832, served in the English Navy against Napoleon and died as
Vice-Admiral. Originally, the family hailed from Peebleshire, and
Selkirkshire, where they owned property of Williamhope on the Tweed and
Hartwoodburn. Many members of this old family are buried in St Mary’s
aisle by the shore of "lone St. Mary’s silent lake," or in the venerable
graveyard by the manse of Yarrow.] who is the present owner of this
well-known house. Alexander died unmarried. His elder brother John,
generally called Baron Gibsone, who was at the same time the elder brother
of Sir James Gibsone Craig of Riccarton, lived at Potsdam, was a member of
the Prussian Court, and as such accompanied King Frederick William III on
his flight to Konigsberg in 1807. He instructed the Crown Prince, later on
King Frederick William IV, in the English language. Like his brother
Alexander, he was an active member of the "Tugendbund," a secret
association for the rousing of the nation against Napoleon. Later in life
he resided some time at Rome, and to judge by his correspondence with
Wilhelm von Humboldt, then Prussian ambassador at Naples, appears to have
been something of a political agent for Prussia. He died only fifty-three
years old and is buried in the old churchyard of Potsdam, along with his
daughter, Cecilia, who outlived him more than sixty years, and was a
friend of Alexander von Humboldt and the famous Mendelssohn family in
Berlin. Of his sons, the eldest, William, and the youngest Gustavus Adolph
died unmarried. William went back to Great Britain, established a
mercantile house at Liverpool, and was appointed German Consul there.
After having given up business, he travelled a good deal and died very
aged at Scone, in Perthshire. His younger brother, Gustavus Adolph, was an
officer in the British navy, was sent home an invalid from India and died
on the Hamburg roadstead, where his father had gone to meet him.
John’s second son,
Alexander, remained at Danzig and took to ship owning under the firm of
Alex. Gibsone & Co. about the year 1820. He was greatly esteemed by his
fellow-citizens, who conferred on him their highest honours appointing him
president of the Chamber of Commerce and of the Town Council.
Of his three sons, the
eldest, Alexander, was a student who finally settled at Nuremberg where he
worked for many years voluntarily at the great Museum Germanicum; the
third son, Thomas, an officer in the East Indian navy, died in India,
twenty-three years old at the time of the mutiny. The second son, John,
who alone of the brothers is alive, inherited his father’s business in
1853, and enlarged it considerably, so that he was known as one of the
largest shipowners in the Baltic. Being also entrusted with a good many
honorary offices by his fellow-citizens, he now chiefly devotes his time
to the building of labourers’ cottages, being honorary secretary of the
so-called "Abegg Stiftung," a legacy left for this purpose in 1870.
As neither Mr Gibsone nor
Mr Stoddart has any direct heirs bred to the business, the mercantile firm
of Gibsone, so well-known in Danzig for several hundred years, is doomed
with their demise to disappear.
Casting back a look over
the vast numbers of Scotsmen in Prussia in the seventeenth century, far
exceeding the thirty thousand mentioned by Lithgow, [Scots in Germany,
p. 32.] and noting their gradual assimilation and absorption,
we do not wonder at the statement of the anonymous English Merchant, and
Resident in Danzig, of the eighteenth century, that one third of that city
was of Scottish blood, nor at the other statement of the German scholar of
the nineteenth, who attributes the stubbornness and the shrewdness of the
Eastern Prussian to the influx of the Scots.
Let us rather hope that
some of the higher qualities of the Scots also: their tenacity of purpose,
their sense of duty, their great charitableness, their saving disposition
and their general trustworthiness contributed something towards shaping
the character of the inhabitants of these remote German Provinces;
provinces, that may no longer now be looked upon with that stolid
indifference or cheerful ignorance which is generally vouchsafed abroad to
German geography and ethnology, but must be considered as the Canada and
the Australia of the seventeenth century, into which much of the best
strength and blood of Scotland has been poured, if to less glorious
advantage, still not all in vain and always to the incentive interest and
delight—let us hope—of the student of this phase of exterior Scottish
history.
