Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1917-08-23
in THE SPURS
OF THE BLUE RIDGE
The Land OF The Pennsylvania
Dutch
AN IRISH ADDITION
Where Prosperity Puts Up Its Signals
On The Highways In Every Nook
And Corner of The Country.
Especial 70 The Evening CapitaLl

fertile fields and long sweeps OF
luxuriant grassy meadows, and crys-
tai rills and creeks that add pietur-
esque touch TO hill and plain. Pros
perity puts in its signals on the nigh
ways and in every nook and corner OF
the country The name of the people
is a misnomer There are no Penn
svlvania Dutch. The name carries
with ii species of contempt for the
people and their origin. Never was
soubriquet more foreign and cruel.
II all came from a misrepresentation.
When the edict of Nantes was re-
Noked by Louis the Fourteenth OF
France. the Huguenots of that ma
ton. no longer able to enjoy their
freedom of worship, fled to the Ger
man Palatinate. The King OF france
pursued his fugitive subjects into that
country with fire and sword and they
and the German people OF the PalaIl-
nate sped on in terror of their hVes
toard Switzerland, and the French, the
Germans and the Swiss kept up their
flight to Holland, the land OF the
Dutch.
About this period, 1904, and in that
decade. emigration to the American
Plantations had begun to lag ana
Queen Anne, of England, sent her
agents to Holland to secure settlers
for America The result of her ne
gotiations was that 10000 of these
splendid people, who preferred ban
ishment from their own land ,than the
violation of their consciences, came
to Pennsylvania. The record of their
names has happily been preserved
Now, when these three nationalities
reached Pennsylvania, they neither
understood each other, and the jar
gon that they spoke and the country
from which they had sailed, soon gave
them the name of Dutch to which the
other description Pennsylvania" was
naturally added. The Dutchman, in
deed is fine character, and one may
well feel proud of descent from HIM,
but the truth of history requires 1t to
be told that the Pennsylvania Dutch
man is no Dutchman at all, but is
either the descendant of German,
Swiss, or a Frenchman. They were
a great and noble people and they
gave a magnificent progeny to the key
stone State.
Among the emigrants that thus
came to Pennsylvania was Madame
Maria Ferree, pronounced today most
contrarily, in Pennsylvania, Freeze.
On the revocation of the famous writ
of liberty that brave Henry of
Navarro, King of France" had given,
Daniel Ferree and Maria Ferree' silk
weavers of noble birth in Normandy,
gave up their home, country and bust
ness and, with their family, fed to
Germany. There the husband died.
Madame Ferree then, with her
children, went to England, and came
Penn. who took her to see Queen
Anne, who gave her assistance. Then
with her sons and daughters, and
those who had married into her fam
lily, Madame Ferree emigrated to New
York, and thence, about the year 171S,
to Pennsylvania. Here she bought
from Penn a tract of land of 1000
acres. She lived four years here be-
fore her death, but had the delight of
seeing her family before her demise in
a state of prosperity, and living in a
land of freedom. This fine woman has
in her descendants given many of
high attachments and superior use to
our country. Col. John Ferree, one
of them, was a Colonel in the Revolu-
tionary War; Major General John F.
Reynolds, of the United States Army,
who died on the field of Gettysburg,
was one of. her descendants, as was
Read-Admiral Winfield Scott Schley,
the commanding officer in the action
off Santiago when the fleet of Admiral
Cervera was destroyed
An Irish Addition to the Citizenship
of Pennsylvania.
When the family of Madame Ferree
had been in Pennsylvania for three
score years, there came an interest
ing Irish addition to the population
of the Keystone State. 1t was of the
clans of Hughes McDevitte and
GREELEY. They had been engaged in
an unsuccessful effort ito set old Ire
land free" For very obvious reasons
they had to leave ireland. They
came to America and settled in Column
bia county, Pennsylvania. About that
time near the year 1890, there was
living in that vicinity Anna Maria
Ferree, the granddaughter of Madame
Maria Ferree, first settler. The Irish
Roman Catholic. Barnabas O'Reiley, of
the O'Reiley clan, and fair Anna
Maria Ferree, Huguenot. fell in love
with each other, and married to the
dismay and opposition of the Ferree
family, the bride. of course, excepted.
The Huguenots, though a century had
elapsed, had not forgotten the revoca-
ton of the edict of Nantes. The nup-
tials. in spite of dissent prospered,
and a large and respectable family
was the result, and the only trace of
the domestic war that remains is that
the surname of the household lost its
honorable co. and the apostrophe and
one of its lees" which connected it,
historically, with the ancient lords of
the Emerald Isle, in its civilization of
seventeen centuries, prior to the
Christian era. and became modest
Riley"
Emmitsburg.
Emitsburg, in Maryland, is a fine
and fiourishing mountain town, con-
tanning 1850 inhabitants 1t is located