Susanna Artz Benesch & Merrelis Benesch Herrold

In the 17^th Century, Protestants were considered, at best, second-class citizens, with very few rights, high taxation and low standard of life. Protestants were being massacred by Catholics, the 30 Years’ War the tipping point that forced numerous families, including the Artz’s, to leave their home village and look for asylum, ending up in the Palatinate. This is where one Artz daughter, young but bold Susanna, was born in Imbsheim and would met the Benesches, another displaced Protestant family. Although safer and less oppressive than their French and Bohemians homelands, the Palatinate was fraught with wars, skirmishes and taxation, often changing hands between the Roman Empire, Germanic regions and Francia. Stalwart Neo-Lutheran Susanna wed Claus Benesch and bore four children, one daughter commonly called Merrelis. But Palatine life was another type of struggle, so thirty-year-old Susanna made a fateful decision to migrate to Holland, boat to London into refugee camps and lastly a voyage to the New World. Sadly, at age 41, Claus died on the trip, and the widow was forced to continue, having used all her family’s meager belongings and money for passage. The resolute Susanna, her three youngest children, her half-brother John Artz and his family, arrived in Philadelphia on the ship “Adventure” in 1732, after long, horrid voyage during which some perished; Susanna’s son John Benesch would immigrant later. Immediately Susanna noticed oppression once again, as the local British Protestants and Quakers weren’t tolerant of German Lutherans, so Susanna hit the path once more, settling in Stouchsburg, a rural area of the central Pennsylvania Colony. Though the conditions were primitive and native attacks not uncommon, Susanna would meet other immigrants, find land, build a home and set to educating and caring for her children. She helped others too, joining the fledgling Christ Lutheran Church, and made friends and bartering companions in her rural community. At the age of eighty, indomitable and high-spirited Susanna overcame tremendous odds, taking years to travel over 9,000 km from her homelands to Philadelphia and a final seventy miles to Stouchsburg, probably on foot, with her children in tow. Susanna never remarried and raised her children in relative safety of Stouchsburg; her Lutheran church, close-knit community, and relative freedom allowed her to teach, feed and care for her children and grandchildren, securing for them a better life. Her daughter Merrelis, who survived that trip as a child, would have the same dogged determination and pioneering spirit to start a family and give her family that same freedom and opportunity.