The hartsfield family

I.Our Hartsfield Heritage

1. Our German Heritage

In “The Hartsfield Story” I, knowing that there was a Dutch Hartesvelt family in New Amsterdam (i.e. New York, N.Y.) as early as 1653, left the question open as to whether Jurian Hartsfelder was of Dutch or German ancestry even though there was a family tradition passed on by Sarah Adeline Hartsfield, sister of Richard Morris Hartsfield, that the family was of German origin.¹ That question has now been definitively settled by Jurian’s friend Francis Daniel Pastorius who founded Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1683: Jurian’s ancestry was German.

Basing his comment on a letter of Francis Daniel Pastorius, dated March 7, 1684, a historian, William I. Hull, has written:

There were three German families in Philadelphia in October 1683, who desired to settle in Germantown: and they as well as the Krefelders drew lots for home-sites in Germantown on December 25 of that year.

In a footnote comment on this statement Hull adds:

Two of these families would appear to have been those of Jurian (or Görg) Hartzfelder, a deputy-sheriff in Pennsylvania under Governor Andros in 1676, and Jacob Schumacher, formerly of Mainz; the third was perhaps that of the German-Swiss, Jörg Wertmuller.²

Data cited in the following chapter make it obvious that Jurian (Görg) Hartsfelder was indeed one of these three Germans who were already in the Philadelphia area and who were associated with Pastorius in the settling of Germantown.

Hull makes another comment about the German connection of Görg Hartzfelder which should be noted here:

Some of the people whom he (William Penn) mentions by name, in his record of his journey of 1677, who lived in the various places which he visited in Germany, showed their deep interest in him and his colony by forming a ‘German Society’ and a ‘Frankfurt Company’ for promoting its colonization. Those who participated most largely in this work were Jacob van de Walle, Dr. Jacob Schütz, Daniel Behagel, Caspar Merian, Johanna Eleanora von Merlau and Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld, of Frankfurt; Dr. Thomas van Wijlick and Johann Lebrunn, of Wesel; Dr. Gerhard von Mastricht, of Duisburg; Johan Wilhelm Petersen, Johannes Kember, and Balthasar Jawert, of Lubeck; Görg Strauss, Abraham Hasevoet, Görg Hartzfelder, of other places in Germany; and Jan Laurentz of Rotterdam. All of these were members of one or the other two Frankfurt companies; all bought land in Pennsylvania, their total purchases amounting to 25,000 acres; and although none of them became colonists themselves, they sold their land to persons who did, and doubtless used their persuasive powers to induce these to go upon the great adventure.³

If William Penn really met a Görg Hartzfelder in Germany that Görg would have had to be a person other than the Görg who resided on the Delaware River in America as early as 1676. If Hull’s comment is correct, it could provide an interesting clue for tracing the family in Germany, but I have not found Görg Hartzfelder’s name in Penn’s description of his 1677 Journey, and this name is not on Pastorius’ list of the members of the Frankfort Company. As noted in the next chapter, the Delaware River Görg Hartzfelder’s name was on Pastorious’ 1688 map of Germantown. Hull’s inclusion of Görg Hartzfelder in this comment appears to me to be based on American sources of the sort cited in my “The Hartsfield Story,” so it may not be hard evidence that another Görg Hartzfelder in Germany became a member of the Frankfurt Company (which was organized in Germany in 1683). Conceivably, the name of Görg Hartzfelder could have been mentioned by Penn in a letter that I have not seen and which may have been read by Hull, thus leading to Hull’s inclusion of the name under the rubric “Some of the people whom he (William Penn) mentions by name, in his record of his journey of 1677, who lived in various places which he visited in Germany.”

Irrespective of whether Penn actually met a Görg Hartzfelder in Germany, his journey of 1677 did take him into the province of Baden-Württemberg in which there was a section known as Das Härtsfeld from which families bearing the name Hartfelder, with variant spellings, had moved into surrounding areas as early as 1573 (see the next section).⁴

2. The Origin of the Hartsfield Name

Although the Hartsfield name has been borne by people of diverse ancestry, especially Dutch and English, whose names may have been derived in a different manner from that of the German, Görg Hartsfelder’s name must surely echo the place of origin of his ancestors — one indicator of this being the “er” ending of his name which he habitually used and which was retained for a time by his son Godfrey.

There is in the Swabian Alb of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, an area which for centuries has borne the name “Das Härtsfeld” (the a being written with an umlaut to give it an ae sound). This area has recently been described as:

Das Härtsfeld. Most easterly part of the Swabian Alb in the territory of Baden-Württemberg joining Bavaria. Bounded in the north by the steep slope of the Alb, in the east by the meteorite-smashed hollow of the Reises, in the west by the valley of the Kocher and Brenz rivers, in the south by the Danube, the area of the territory embraces 308 square kilometers.⁵

Extending about eighteen miles from Aalen on the West through Bopfingen almost to Nördlingen on the east, its principal towns are Bopfingen and Neresheim. In Bopfingen there is a Härtsfeldstrasse (Hartsfeld Street) which leads to Härtsfeldhausen (i.e. the village of Hartsfeld) on its outskirts. A highway known as “the old Härtsfeld road” extends in a southerly direction from Bopfingen for some sixteen to eighteen miles, passing through the medieval town of Neresheim before reaching the southern border of Das Härtsfeld.

The name of this area, Das Härtsfeld, was transposed many centuries ago into the Hartfelder surname. This is shown by the Etymologisches Worterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen which has this entry:

Härtfelder, Hertfelder, or Herdtfelder are alternative spellings. A person originating from Härtsfeld or Hertfeld located in the rough countryside of the Kreis (county) of Neresheim.⁶

As far back as 1573 a Hanns Herdtfelder resided in Swäbisch Hall, a medieval town about twenty-five miles northwest of Aalen, and today Härtfelder family names, though few in number, can be found in telephone directories of Karlsruhe, Dinkelsbuhl, and other areas in the vicinity of Das Härtsfeld.

It may be reasonably surmised that the Hartsfelder surname of the German Görg Hartsfelder of the Delaware River was similarly derived from Das Härtsfeld.⁷ This Das Härtsfeld, of course, may well have given its name to various families who were not related to each other except in the sense that people who inhabit the same area for generations do tend to intermarrry, so it is an open question whether Jurian (Görg) Hartsfelder of the Delaware River was descended from the family to which the 1573 Hanns Herdtfelder belonged or whether his name was similarly, but separately derived, from Das Härtsfeld.

No document pertaining to Görg Hartsfelder of the Delaware River in America has been found prior to 1676, so, if he was not born in America he may have migrated to America from some other locality in Europe. He may or may not have lived in Das Härtsfeld in his youth, but it is reasonable to think that Das Härtsfeld was his family’s ancestral home, perhaps that of his parents; so a brief description of it may be of some interest to Hartsfield descendants.

3.