Der Lotos Club E-Book

Michael Scheufele

• Herausgeber: wbg Academic
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 222

Beschreibung

Die Schieffelins gehören zur "geheimen Aristokratie" in den USA, die über Generationen engagierte, progressive, exzentrische und philanthropische Persönlichkeiten hervorbrachten. Lange vor den ersten Auswanderern waren die Scheuffelins in Süddeutschland als Händler und Künstler bekannt. Das Buch beschreibt die einmalige deutsch-amerikanische Familiengeschichte von 1400 bis heute.

Leseprobe

Michael Scheufele

Der Lotos Club

Die Geschichte der Familie Schieffelin

Impressum

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnd.d-nb.deabrufbar

wbg academic ist ein Imprint der wbg© 2019 by wbg (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), DarmstadtDie Herausgabe des Werkes wurde durch dieVereinsmitglieder der wbg ermöglicht.Satz und eBook: Satzweiss.com Print, Web, Software GmbH

Besuchen Sie uns im Internet: www.wbg-wissenverbindet.de

ISBN 978-3-534-40150-5

Elektronisch sind folgende Ausgaben erhältlich:eBook (PDF): 978-3-534-40152-9eBook (epub): 978-3-534-40151-2

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Innentitel

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Informationen zum Buch

Informationen zum Autor

Impressum

Inhalt

Vorwort

Preface

The Schieffelin Legacy in America

Teil I: Die Jahre 1400 - 1700

Teil II: Die Jahre 1700 - 1800

Das wechselhafte Leben des Jacob (3) Schieffelin

Rooka Hall und Manhattanville

Teil III: Die Jahre 1800 - 1950

Die Kinder von Hannah und Jacob (3)

Henry Hamilton Schieffelin (1783 - 1865)

Jacob (4) Schieffelin (1793 - 1880)

Richard Lawrence Schieffelin (1801 - 1889)

Die Enkelkinder von Hannah und Jacob (3)

Henry Maunsell Schieffelin (1808 - 1890)

Samuel Bradhurst Schieffelin (1811 - 1900)

Exkurs: Scheufelen in Württemberg.

Sidney Augustus Schieffelin (1818 - 1894)

Clinton Emanuel Del Pela Schieffelin (1823 - 1884)

Bradhurst Schieffelin (1824 - 1909)

Eugene Schieffelin (1827 - 1906)

George Richard Schieffelin (1836 - 1910)

Helen Margaret Schieffelin Chisolm (1841 - 1896)

Die 3. Generation nach Jacob (3) Schieffelin

William Henry Schieffelin (1836 - 1895)

Mary Theresa Bradhurst Schieffelin Dodge (1840 - 1910)

Edward Lawrence (2) Schieffelin (1847 - 1907)

Fanny Kendall Schieffelin Crosby (1860 - 1925)

Schuyler Schieffelin (1866 - 1935)

Margaret Helen Schieffelin Trevor (1870 - ??)

Julia Florence Schieffelin Ismay (1871 - 1963)

George Richard Delaplaine Schieffelin (1884 - ??)

Laura Grace Schieffelin Wilbur (1897 - 1982)

Charles Miller Schieffelin (1849 - ??)

Die 4. Generation nach Jacob (3) Schieffelin

William Jay Schieffelin (1866 - 1955)

Maunsell Schieffelin Crosby (1887 - 1931)

Margaret Estelle Trevor Pardee (1893 - 1990)

George McKay Schieffelin (1905 - 1988)

Cooper Schieffelin (1910 - 1974)

Die 5. Generation nach Jacob (3) Schieffelin

William Jay (2) Schieffelin (1891 - 1985)

Margaret Louisa Schieffelin Osborn (1893 - 1982)

John Jay (4) Schieffelin (1897 - 1987)

Louise Vanderbilt Schieffelin Hewitt (1901 - 1926)

Bayard Hawes Schieffelin (1903 - 1989)

Elliott Fitch Shepard Schieffelin (1905 - 1988)

Barbara Schieffelin Bosanquet (1906 - 1987)

John Winterbotham Schieffelin (1932 - 2002)

Julia Cooper Schieffelin (1943 - 2011)

Die 6. Generation nach Jacob (3) Schieffelin

William Jay (3) Schieffelin (1922 - 1989)

Quellennachweise

Abbildungsverzeichnis

Archive

Weblinks

Organisationen, Clubs, Libraries, etc.

Zeitungen, Zeitschriften, News, Blogs, Family Pages, etc.

Legacy Seiten

Museen, Organisationen

Wikipedia

Schulen

Universitäten

Literaturverzeichnis

Eingang 5 East 66th Street in Manhattan, ab 1900 Wohnhaus der Familie Maria Louisa Shepard und William Jay Schieffelin. [1]

Vorwort

Die Familie Schieffelin ist in den USA nicht "vom Tellerwäscher zum Millionär" aufgestiegen. Sie gehört nicht zu den glanzvollen Aufsteigern des New Money, sondern zur alten "geheimen Aristokratie", die mit feinem Understatement seit Gründung der USA über alle Generationen engagierte, progressive und philanthropische Persönlichkeiten hervorbrachte.

Die Räumlichkeiten des literarischen Lotos Club befinden sich in der 5 East 66th Street in Manhattan. Dieses Haus ließ Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard um 1900 für die Familie ihrer Tochter Maria Louisa als Beaux Arts Stadthaus erbauen. Maria Louisa und William Jay Schieffelin bewohnten das Haus mit ihren 9 Kindern für einige Jahrzehnte. Die Lotos-Esser der Odyssee gelten als entspannt und harmonisch in einem Land, das dem Elysium gleicht. Substanzen wie Lotos, Manna und Soma finden wir allerdings nicht im Portfolio der pharmazeutischen Produkte von Schieffelin & Co, über 200 Jahre führender Pharmaka-Händler der USA. Das Ithaka der Familie Schieffelin war die Tranquility Farm beim Schieffelin Point auf einer Halbinsel in Maine.

Der Auswanderer Jakob Scheuffelin hatte im 18. Jahrhundert Weilheim an der Teck nicht aus wirtschaftlicher, politischer oder religiöser Not heraus verlassen, sondern aus Neugier und dem Wunsch nach freieren und besseren Lebensbedingungen, die er in den prosperierenden Kolonien Amerikas finden wollte. Die Familie Schieffelin hatte bereits vor den ersten Auswanderern als Familie Scheuffelin eine lange Geschichte in Süddeutschland und der Schweiz gehabt.

Die Geschichte der Schieffelins von 1400 bis heute soll im Folgenden realitätsnah und umfassend wiedergegeben werden. Der Autor hat versucht, Lücken plausibel durch eigene Erzählungen zu schließen.

Auf die Veröffentlichung der Biographien von aktuell lebenden Familienmitglieder in der 6., 7., 8. und 9. Generation nach Jacob (3) Schieffelin wurde aus rechtlichen Gründen verzichtet.

Die dargestellten Biographien umfassen in der Regel Personen, die den Namen "Schieffelin" tragen oder Personen aus deren näherem Umfeld. Das Namens-System der USA ist, insbesondere im Falle vieler Nachkommen, auf den Erhalt aller ursprünglichen Namen ausgelegt.

Das Buch gliedert sich grob in drei Teile: Familie "Scheuffelin" im deutschsprachigen Raum von 1400 bis 1700, die Auswanderer-Generationen zwischen 1700 und 1800 als freie Erzählung und die Einzelbiographien der Nachkommen von Jacob (3) Schieffelin in den USA von 1800 bis ca. 1950.

Der Einheitlichkeit wegen wird bei Personen im deutschen Sprachraum der Name "Scheuffelin" verwendet. Die amerikanische Linie verwendete durchgehend die Schreibweise "Schieffelin".

Mein Dank gilt insbesondere den reichhaltigen Quellen, den Personen und Einrichtungen, die Fotos zur Verfügung gestellt haben, dem Hauptstaatsarchiv Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart (Judith Bolsinger, Katharina Maiworm), dem Stadtarchiv Weilheim an der Teck (Gabriele Mühlnickel-Heybach), dem Stadtarchiv Nördlingen (Dr. Sponsel), meinem Onkel Karl Scheufele, der mir Einsicht in seine Stammbaum-Aufzeichnungen gewährte, dem Ev.-Lutherischen Pfarramt in Auhausen, Google™ und meinem bewährten Erstleser Dr. Jörg Noller.

Mein ganz besonderer Dank gilt Barbara Schieffelin Powell und Julia Schieffelin Powell für ihre Unterstützung des Projekts und das englische Vorwort, welches das Buch eröffnet und eine kurze Zusammenfassung der Familiengeschichte enthält.

Michael Scheufele

Preface

As a descendant of Jacob Schieffelin whose father emigrated to America in the 18th century, I am delighted to write this preface to Michael Scheufele’s book, which will be a useful vehicle for understanding the Schieffelin family in Germany. This preface sketches the path of Schieffelins after Jacob came to America. The material has been adapted from a forthcoming brief history of the Schieffelins in America by my husband Arthur G. Powell and myself.

– Barbara Schieffelin Powell

The Schieffelin Legacy in America

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired a well-executed altar panel, The Visitation, by the German Renaissance artist Hans Schäufelein (ca. 1480 - ca. 1540). Schäufelein was one of the most gifted pupils of Albrecht Dürer, painter and printmaker generally regarded as the greatest German artist of his time. Hans was also one of the first Schieffelin ancestors (the spellings differed a bit in earlier times) about whom concrete knowledge exists. He lived and worked in the Bavarian town of Nördlingen.

Two hundred years after Schäufelein’s painting was finished, his direct descendant, Jacob Schieffelin (the first of three early Jacobs), still lived in Nördlingen. Jacob I traveled to the New World to seek his fortune but returned to Germany. His son Jacob II sailed to Philadelphia and stayed. His son, the third Jacob Schieffelin, was born in Philadelphia in 1757 and remained permanently in North America until his death in 1835. He lived a long and productive life as one of the early Republic’s leading business entrepreneurs. Jacob III became in effect the Schieffelin family’s American founding father.

Jacob III’s work and name, passed down through generations of the drug business he helped found in 1794, created a strong sense of family identity and continuity. “Schieffelin” came to mean not merely a name on a genealogy chart but a proud family institution—tangible bricks, people, products, innovation, reputation and public service sustained across time. Like Schäufelein’s art, the company named Schieffelin was concrete, visible and pathbreaking. Its centennial history published in 1894 celebrated a hundred years “always under the name of Schieffelin and always with members descended in a direct line from the founder.” By the twentieth century it was among the very oldest companies in the United States.

Jacob Schieffelin III’s career demonstrated how an energetic and creative entrepreneur could achieve business success in post-Revolutionary New York City. Jacob had fought conspicuously on the Loyalist side, helping to fund provisions for British troops in Canada. He had been captured and imprisoned by the Americans. But Jacob was hardly an ideological supporter of British rule. His German heritage gave him a certain freedom of political and geographical movement; he easily switched sides according to where business opportunities seemed most promising. After he escaped from American captivity in 1780, he returned to British New York where he was billeted in the home of the Quaker merchant John Lawrence. The Lawrence clan was pacifist but leaned toward the American cause.

Jacob promptly fell in love with Lawrence’s daughter, Hannah, described at the time as a “noted beauty and popular poetess.” Hannah was no pacifist but strongly pro-American. Her incendiary anti-royalist verse might have gotten her hanged if she had ever been caught. Their 1780 marriage made New Yorkers forget Jacob’s former British sympathies. It also supplied him with useful business connections to various Lawrences, especially his brother-in-law John. With John he created in 1794 the wholesale drug-importing and shipping firm that soon would bear his name alone, Schieffelin & Company. The firm endured for seven generations until the late 20th century.

Although the drug business is Jacob’s best-known legacy, he initiated many other major projects, including a real estate venture to develop the neighborhood of Manhattanville in New York City as a planned community. He also sold land for Alexander Hamilton to build his family home. Jacob died in 1835, a prosperous and respected member of the New York business community. Over the decades, the Schieffelin company grew and relocated, but always remained physically near the warehouses and docks of lower Manhattan.

Meanwhile the entrepreneurial bug bit many of Jacob III’s children and their descendants. A son, also named Jacob, for example, moved to Pennsylvania on land his father had bought as an investment and forged a successful international business career. Jacob IV’s colorful grandson “Ed” Schieffelin (1847-1897) spent a lifetime wandering the American West as a prospector, miner and “character.” His silver discoveries at what he named Tombstone, Arizona, made him rich and famous in the 1870s. After his somewhat mysterious death at age 49, he was buried just outside Tombstone in miner’s clothing alongside his pick and canteen. The town and his tombstone remain tourist attractions today.

Eugene Schieffelin (1827-1906), the son of Jacob IV’s brother Henry Hamilton Schieffelin, was equally colorful. He rivaled Ed in fame and surpassed him in eccentricity. Driven by the curious desire to introduce into America all species of birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays, Eugene in 1890 released a flock of imported starlings in New York’s Central Park, with enormous consequences for much of the North American continent. The starlings multiplied rapidly to become what is generally regarded as an invasive pest that tends to displace some indigenous, useful birds.

Eugene’s father, Henry Hamilton Schieffelin, succeeded Jacob III as head of Schieffelin & Company for 35 years. The father lacked the son’s weirdness but possessed the business acumen which kept the Schieffelin name prominent in New York over the nineteenth century. Another of Henry’s sons, Samuel Bradhurst Schieffelin followed his father as senior partner. Upon Samuel’s retirement in 1865, the family business passed to his only son, William Henry Schieffelin. The latter ran the company until his death in 1895. William Henry was the father of William Jay Schieffelin, my grandfather known as Pop, who took over until the 1920s.

The three decades after 1880 were momentous for both the country and the company. The pharmaceutical industry was not only expanding greatly but being transformed by the rise of scientific chemistry in America. William Henry Schieffelin built a small laboratory in 1882 to manufacture finished drugs for distribution to retailers. This approach was very different from the prior one of owning large warehouses just to store imported chemicals and other products prior to distribution. The oldest son, William Jay Schieffelin, my grandfather, was brought up to believe that the new scientific chemistry held the future of the wholesale drug industry. His father encouraged him to make chemistry his future career.

And at the beginning he did just that. Young Willie Schieffelin studied chemistry as an undergraduate at the Columbia School of Mines, the applied science branch of Columbia University. Like many future scientists and scholars of his generation he then traveled to Germany to learn what the Old World could teach the New about research. He received his chemistry Ph.D. in 1889 at age 23 from the lab of Professor Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Munich. Willie published several chemistry research papers after he joined the family business in 1890. Science would soon transform the pharmaceutical industry, and the Schieffelin company seemed well positioned to be a leader in that transformation.

By the mid-19th century the name Schieffelin had come to represent successful business entrepreneurship in New York City. The family had emerged respected, wealthy, and well-known in commercial circles. William Henry’s branch of the Schieffelin family would now become linked to families far better-known in national social, political and financial circles through two marriages 28 years apart.

In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, William Henry Schieffelin married Mary Jay (1846–1916). Mary was a great-granddaughter of John Jay, one of the nation’s most prominent Founding Fathers and the first Chief Justice of the United States. John Jay had been dead for 34 years in 1863, but his place among the revolutionary generation of Founding Fathers was secure.

Jay had twice been Governor of New York and had written some of the famous Federalist Papers which provided intellectual background for Constitutional debates. He had drafted the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, and later the Jay Treaty of 1794 which avoided war with England.

As the years passed, the slavery question grew in prominence. Jay and his descendants became prominent actors in that national drama. Jay was a slaveholder. But he also opposed slavery and freed his own slaves well before he died. He early endorsed a “gradualist” approach toward slavery’s eventual elimination. In 1799 slavery in New York State was abolished by the legislature; but the law took effect only in 1827. The New York decision, however, had the effect of closely associating Jay’s name and later life with the antislavery cause.

His son, Judge William Jay (1789-1858), devoted essentially his entire adult life to the promotion of emancipation. William Jay’s son John Jay II (1817-1894) was the leading activist lawyer defending fugitive slaves in New York during the 1840s and 1850s and also a tireless crusader against racism in the Episcopal church.

John Jay II lived until 1894 as a patriot-statesman whose interest in good government and African-American progress kept the Jay name in the public eye. One of the founders of the Republican Party, John Jay II later served as United States Minister to Austria-Hungary between 1869 and 1875. While in Vienna Mary’s sister, Anna Jay, re-established the family’s German connection by marrying the German diplomat Lothar von Schweinitz. Anna’s grandson from that marriage was Adam von Trott zu Solz (1909-1944), a German Rhodes Scholar, diplomat and aristocrat. Adam’s participation in the ill-fated July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler cost him his life but created a 20th century hero.

Mary Jay was John Jay II’s daughter. From early childhood she was exposed to antislavery ideas through her father, grandfather and great grandfather. She was a close blood relation of those Jays most active in the antislavery cause. Frederick Douglass, the prominent escaped slave and public intellectual, wrote in 1859 that “Abolitionism seems hereditary in the family.”

The Civil War had been raging for two and one-half years when Mary Jay married William Henry Schieffelin in October 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued nine months earlier—in effect changing the North’s main war aim from preserving the union to eradicating slavery.

William and Mary’s son was William Jay Schieffelin, my grandfather. Young Willie Schieffelin grew up deeply influenced by this rich heritage. From his Schieffelin ancestors he acquired intense loyalty to the family and the family business. From the Jay line he acquired an urgent sense to fight for large moral causes. Pop was perhaps the first Schieffelin to grow up possessing the two strong family traditions of reform and public service.

Another significant family merger occurred on February 6, 1891 when young William Jay Schieffelin, now equipped with an abolitionist middle name and a science doctorate, married Maria Louisa Shepard, in New York City. Called Granny Lou by her descendants, Maria Louisa was the daughter of Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard, who was the oldest daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt. Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard was called “Grandmama” by the Schieffelins.

William Henry was the son of the famous billionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commodore. Perhaps the most successful of all the Vanderbilts save the Commodore, he had doubled his father’s fortune through building the New York Central Railroad. He died in 1885, six years before his eldest granddaughter married young Schieffelin.

Pop was 24 when he married. The young Schieffelin was now firmly linked with three prominent American success stories: the business prowess of the Schieffelins that had gone on for over a century; the patriotic and reform endeavors of the Jays from Revolutionary through Civil War times; and now the unparalleled Gilded Age wealth of the Vanderbilts. His life possibilities, impressive at birth, were now greatly magnified. Pop entered the family business in 1890 as its specialist in chemistry. A research lab was created for him later in the 1890s. This work competed for his time with the new opportunities for his interests in political and social reform opened up by his wife’s money and social position. Over the years he sought, without complete success, to balance these pressures. He became president of Schieffelin & Company in 1906. But over the years he clearly derived the greater satisfaction from his good works, which combined a Jay background with Vanderbilt resources, than he did by converting a wholesale drug company into a 20th century scientific enterprise. His grandfather John Jay II had advised him as a young man, “Willie, lend a hand.” That stuck as a kind of life challenge.

Schieffelin & Company survived for a time but drifted some from its core pharmaceutical mission.

In 1962 the firm abandoned its drug business almost entirely, and in 1980 was acquired by a much larger French conglomerate. Renamed LVMH Moët-Hennessy in 1987, that conglomerate styled itself as “the world leader in luxury.” Except for keeping the name Schieffelin on liquor bottles for a few more years, a marketing gambit to emphasize continuity and quality, Schieffelin & Company ceased to exist.

William Jay Schieffelin’s historical significance today rests primarily on the causes he championed and the funds he raised in support of them. He lent his name to many projects, chaired many fundraisers, initiated many initiatives. The central theme in all of them was political and social reform in New York, the nation, and eventually overseas. He was a progressive, moderate Republican of a sort that had nearly vanished from the land by the end of the twentieth century. He remembered well the advice of his Jay grandfather to lend a hand.

In New York he helped found the (still existing) Citizens Union in 1897, one of the first good government member organizations serving as a watchdog for the public interest and a check on the growing Tammany political machine. As its president over many decades he supported investigations to root out corruption in the city. His most famous civic reform triumph was helping in the 1930’s to end the political career of New York’s charming but corrupt Mayor Jimmy Walker. His first battle with City Hall was a successful campaign in 1890 to prevent Central Park from being cut into sections and distributed through franchises. He campaigned for women’s suffrage and against sweat shops. He anticipated the dangers of Hitler before Hitler took power and later gave money to postwar Czechoslovakia when it was surrounded by the Iron Curtain. A lifelong concern over the plight of lepers led him to help found the American Leprosy Mission and the Schieffelin Leprosy Research and Training Center in Karigiri, India.

His preeminent passion was promoting civil rights and advancing opportunities for African-Americans. The Jay family’s antislavery tradition ran deep and was a source of great Schieffelin pride. His grandfather had harbored fugitive slaves in violation of federal law. He led a New York organization dedicated to improving the economic circumstances of African-Americans migrating from the South, a forerunner of the National Urban League. Schieffelin also hosted annual New York fund-raising events with black leaders such as Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Institute president, and Tuskegee scientist George Washington Carver. He served 40 years on the Tuskegee Board, which he chaired for 23 years. He served simultaneously on the board of the Hampton Institute, an all-black agricultural and vocational institution in Hampton, Virginia.

One of Schieffelin’s most courageous and steadfast commitments, which also spoke to his high national standing, was his unflinching service on behalf of the imprisoned Scottsboro boys. In early 1931, nine black teenage boys were arrested on charges of raping two white girls near Scottsboro, Alabama. The case seemed open and shut, at least to Alabama justice. Eight of the nine were quickly convicted and sentenced to death. The ninth, a twelve- year-old, produced a hung jury not because it doubted his guilt but because it disagreed whether the punishment for a minor should be execution or life imprisonment. The trial displayed the full spectrum of racial bigotry: frame-up, all-white jury, angry mob and near-lynching. But the many cracks in the case, especially the incompetence of the defense, galvanized an unprecedented nation-wide protest.

A national committee was created, the Scottsboro Defense Fund, to raise money for appeals, publicity, and anything else that would reopen the case and keep the “Scottsboro Boys” and their cause alive. Pop became the Fund’s long-serving national treasurer. In 1937, after six years, nobody had been acquitted and seven had spent the entire time in jail. The case in its many facets continued into the 1940s and beyond, with money still needed. Throughout, Pop raised monies for the Defense Fund and kept the issue before the public. In the end, not one of the “boys” was executed. The last of the nine Scottsboro Boys died of natural causes in 1989. In 2013 all nine were granted posthumous pardons by the State of Alabama. Over an 80-year period the Scottsboro Boys had become a lasting national symbol of racial injustice, in substantial part because of the money raised to pay lawyers and write appeals on their behalf. This was Schieffelin’s quiet but substantial triumph.

In 1949, celebrating his 83rd birthday and his lifetime of public service, the New York Times editorialized that William Jay Schieffelin had spent a total of 237 years on five major civic boards: the New York Citizens Union, Tuskegee Institute, Hampton Institute, American Bible Society and American Mission to Lepers. The Times wrote: “He glories in a tough battle.”

Pop and Granny Lou had 9 surviving children. The sixth was my father Bayard Schieffelin. He had a deep love of family, both the one he came from and the one he created. He and my mother, Virginia Langdon Loomis, had four children: Edward, Barbara, Olivia and Nancy. From our parents we learned that community did not just happen: you had to work hard to create it and to nurture family values such as loyalty, hard work, tolerance, and social justice. My father served in World War II and then worked for the New York Public Library, raising funds so that the iconic institution could be sustained. My mother tutored African-American children in the inner city. They raised their children with the values they gained from their Langdon-Loomis and Schieffelin forebears: a passion for civil rights, social justice, adventure, as well as an entrepreneurial spirit, curiosity about the world, integrity, and respect for education. We have tried to instill these values in our own three children. Benjamin has founded an organization that supports socially responsible entrepreneurs in Latin America, Alexander helps families and organizations solve vexing legal issues, and Julia, is an artist, just like Hans Schäufelein, more than five centuries ago.

A summer place on the coast of Maine brings together descendants of 7 of the 9 children of William Jay and Maria Louisa Schieffelin, representing the third, fourth, fifth and sixth generations (roughly 250 people and counting). They come from all corners of the world. In addition to boating, sailing, tennis, hiking and swimming, we continue traditions started in my grandparents’ day. These include a treasure hunt, replete with pirates and buried treasure; sings, accompanied now not by the piano but by guitar and banjo; a softball game between the “Lobsters” and the “Clams;” picnics on island sandbars at low tide; and a square dance with a live band. These traditions continue to bind us together as a family. And we are all grateful for Jacob Schieffelin and Hannah Lawrence for starting it all!

Teil I: Die Jahre 1400 - 1700

Jakob stieg die letzten Meter auf zum Gipfel des Vulkanberges der Limburg. Auf der Südseite unter ihm die Weinberge. Es war ein herrlicher Frühlingstag. Sein Blick schweifte entlang der schwäbischen Alb zur Burg Teck und hinab ins Tal bis Esslingen. Der Alb-Rand war Hügel- und Burgen-Land. Im Norden lagen die 3-Kaiser-Berge der Stauffer, im Südwesten die mächtige Burg Hohenneuffen und weiter die Burg der Hohenzollern, deren Bewohner jetzt einen Familienzweig an der Spree hatten. Jakob war stolz auf die Weinberge seiner Familie. Obwohl sie die höchstgelegenen Weinberge Württembergs waren, trugen sie reichlich Trauben. Das Klima in Weilheim an der Teck war ideal für den Obstanbau. Rund um die Limburg gab es hunderte Baumwiesen und tausende Obstbäume.

Seine Vorfahren hatten das Lehen mit den Weingärten bereits vor Jahrhunderten erhalten. Das Lehen hatte sogar den 30-jährigen Krieg ohne Unterbrechung überstanden. Der Überfall der kaiserlichen Truppen auf Württemberg streifte auch Weilheim und setzte sich im Neckartal bis nach Stuttgart fort. Württemberg war reformierte Enklave zwischen Frankreich und den Habsburgern. Die Protestanten hatten 1634 mit den Schweden die erste Schlacht von Nördlingen verloren. Doch die geschickte Politik mit Frankreich ließ das Pendel in die andere Richtung ausschlagen. In der zweiten Schlacht von Nördlingen 1645 waren die deutschen Fürsten mit Unterstützung durch französische Truppen erfolgreich gegen die Kaiserlichen. Das Alltagsleben während des 30-jährigen Krieges war mühselig. Oft zogen marodierende, schlecht