"There were quite a number of farmers in the County who were known as ‘Pennsylvania Dutch.’ Some of them still spoke German and it was natural that they should be attracted to my Father. Among them was the Fulmer family who lived on a farm on the Watauga River about three miles from our farm.”
More from the history of my great-great-grandfather's family in Tennessee.
Herman and Sofie and Jacob and Helen spoke German because they were born in Bavaria – Helen just 15 miles from her future husband, Jacob about 40 miles in the opposite direction. Bonds of kinship and proximity established in the Old Country have survived and supported waves of migration since ancient times, and the Jews of the antebellum South were no exception to this rule.
Their families were small-town folk. About 30 generations earlier some of Helen’s ancestors had moved from Lucca, in Tuscany (Rome’s Jewish community pre-dated the birth of Christ; the family name, Kalonymos, suggests an interlude in Greece) to the Rhine valley, where as noted scholars they were to my knowledge* the only branch of the extended family tree to achieve any particular worldly accomplishment (beyond surviving plagues and Crusades and wars and expulsions and massacres and the general difficulty of pre-modern life).
The youngest of 12 children, Herman left home in 1846, at age 17, to join his sister Elise in Richmond; Sofie and Jacob were already there, against the wishes of his father. Herman Americanized the family name from Kahn to Cone and spent a few years knocking around Virginia, trying to start a career. By the time he and Jacob rolled into Jonesborough they had opened and closed a boarding house in Lunenburg County and then failed again in Richmond, presumably learning something about business along the way.
The Fulmers were great friends to their new neighbors. Like the German settlers of Guilford and Alamance counties (you can find gravestones inscribed in German at the old Friedens Church cemetery) they had come down the Shenandoah wagon road from Pennsylvania. John Fulmer, the father, had moved to Tennessee at age 12, around 1805, and remembered a frontier life we can hardly imagine. He fought in the Creek War in Alabama and could point out the spot where the last buffalo was killed near Jonesboro.
Sam Adler: "When he was a young man he would build a flat boat in the Winter and when the Spring freshets came he loaded the boat with the product of his farm, such as Bacon, Flour, Buckwheat, Cabbage, Potatoes, etc. and float down the Watauga to the Holston and then to Ross' Landing as he called the present city of Chattanooga. Sometimes he would have to take his boat as far as the Mussell (sic) Shoals where he could always sell the boat. At this time the Tennessee River was used to market the product of East Tennessee, Boats could be taken through the Shoals, but never brought back, He made many trips and with one exception he would walk back to his farm. My brother Morris asked him why he undertook such hardships and he replied that it was the only way he could earn money to pay his taxes.”
*I’m trying to be as precise as possible, but even the basics can get fuzzy. Sofie’s name is sometimes spelled Sophie, Jacob’s with a K, Helen was referred to in some records as Helena or Ellen. A genealogy website puts the Kahn family in Altenstadt, Hesse instead of Altenstadt, Neu-Ulm, although religious and school records make it clear that the family was established in the latter, in the Iller valley (Herman’s report card says his “mental gifts” were judged “medium” but his attendance was “industrious” and he was a good athlete, an excellent reader, and rated high for Generally Useful Knowledge and Moral Conduct). Where possible I have verified facts and recollections, and where things are hazy I will try to point that out. Corrections are welcome.
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