The Forest Village on the Old Roman Road

Waldorf was one of seven "forest villages," bordering an old military road of the Romans, which led from Spires to Italy. The names of the seven towns through which the old road passed, suggested a still earlier and Celtic origin. In 638 only a hunting castle stood upon the site of Waldorf. Later a number of dwellings were erected around the castle, and in 750 a church was built. In the middle ages the little town had been surrounded by a wall.

John Jacob Astor was five years old when the forest villages refused their share of the labor in reconstructing the Waldorf toll-bridge, claiming that the road was a public highway. Surely this road had earned the name of a public thoroughfare through successive centuries of service. In the years which followed the revolt regarding the toll-bridge, John Jacob often heard the ownership of the road, and obligations concerning familiar objects, discussed in this land grown hoary with age.

In such a region there was much to awaken a boy's curiosity, and set his thoughts to speculating on those who had lived here before him. It is easy to imagine that that time-honored names, which the boy found already attached to various places in and about the little town, had been the gathering places of generations of children; and that he, in turn, found that "the boys' path" led woodward way, that the "row of trees", the "middle stone", the "fire-hedge", and the "thorn hedge," referred to places he would like to know, and that "behind the castle," and "the gypsy place" still held mysterious charms for the children of Waldorf, as they had for the children before them. What boy does not know all the paths that lead to the interesting objects in his neighborhood?

The town had many acres of forest, tall beech and oak trees, luring the young people to their cool depths on half holidays. Among the trees was one that had a story of its own. It was called the Carl-Louis beech, since the Elector Carl-Louis, on a hunting trip, had once taken two young beeches, a black and a white, and twisted them together, till they had grown like one tree, and only showed a small opening near the ground.

There were other matters of mystery further in the wood. Old walls, places where the walls were caved in, subterranean passages, well-pipes, remnants of earthern jars with the name of the maker, "Victorinus," upon them, and Roman coins of different sizes, all dated far back, some of them to the time of the Emperors.

John Jacob and his brothers had delighted in the discovery of these relics of armies that had passed that way, and earlier peoples, who had inhabited their land, as an American boy does to-day in the stone arrow heads of our own Indians. But over the three mounds in the town forest the most speculation ran rife. Were they old burial places? When did the people begin to call them "the three little hills?" To be sure there were more than three mounds, but there were three that rose high above the remainder of the fourteen hills, and between them all ran the forest road.

These mounds gave favorable limits for a race, elevations from which to spy out a boy hiding from his comrades in the forest, opportunities for an embryo orator to address his audience, or a would-be general to order the march of his men down the very road the Romans had trod in the centuries past. In fact, these mounds, with their crowns of trees, were among Waldorf's glories, and a gathering place for her boyish population, until the sun sank low and the shadows lengthened, and some lad with a more imaginative temperament than the rest, grew fluent in regard to the old warriors probably lying under their feet, when the groups would scatter, and the mounds be left in solitude, their silent curves forming dark landmarks under the stars.

John Jacob had left his cold shivers over these ''little hills" years behind him, and leagues away, when it was really proven that beneath the hard-beaten sand of one hill, a dense, hard, yellow clay formed a tomb, within which a woman's skeleton had lain for centuries. Two jewels were found upon her breast, and her hands and arms were stretched straight down at her sides. A larger mound contained a more capacious grave—that of a warrior. A single-bladed knife lay diagonally across his body, one arm bent toward it,—so keeping in touch with his trusty weapon, even in death. Two metal buttons, adorned with rosettes of some white substance resembling gypsum, lay near his feet, evidently having ornamented, or held together some foot covering. At the belt and shoulder were other metal decorations, and a gold ear-ring near his left ear.

Some fragments of vessels of a very primitive make, unglazed, with black and red stripes on the outside, lay scattered about the grave. A large bone of some animal, probably placed there as a "dead man's meal" lay between his legs. Under the skeleton of this mighty man of long ago, had been placed various bones of larger and smaller animals, all of which had passed through the consecrating fire of sacrifice, before the distinguished person had been laid to rest upon them. Could the boys who played on the mounds in John Jacob's time, have known of the discoveries to be made under their feet, it is probable many a boyish hand would have made the earliest excavations.

The Astor boys looked forward eagerly to the annual street fairs of Waldorf, which emptied the houses of the little town while they lasted, and turned both old and young into the open air. At these times the narrow streets, paved with stone from house to house, were almost impassable. Everything was offered for sale from cheap gewgaws to family Bibles. Waldorf, with its windows filled with flowering plants, and its long, sloping, red-tiled roofs, with tiny windows reaching to the peaks, made a picturesque background for these festive yearly sales. The events of the street fairs, and the purchases made then, were talked over for many a day afterward, certain articles of utility and ornament in the homes always dating back to some one of these annual celebrations.

Some of the family Bibles bought at street fairs in Germany reached America. Descendants of the Conrad family of Philadelphia have in their possession a rare old family Bible bought at a Frankfort street fair, a translation of Martin Luther's, handsomely illuminated and illustrated. The book gives not only a record of the early ancestors of the family, but also the name of the vessel in which they sailed to America, and of the Captain and crew. The account of the passage includes the hymns sung, and prayers offered on the voyage.

John Jacob sometimes carried grain to the old Thorn Mill with its four water wheels. Hovering around the mill, and watching the water dash over the wheels, paid for a hot walk with a heavy bag upon one's shoulder. It had been an ancient law that the town of Waldorf was to furnish a scale and provide a box alongside of the mill. In this box the miller was to keep a constant supply of flour. When the boy took grain to be ground he placed it on the scale, but he did not return with it the same day. According to the rule of the mill, he was to make a second trip for his flour on the third day after, finding it in the same place.

If the town failed to keep a scale, then the miller was to ride from door to door, while the grain was loaded on his wagon, and he in turn, was expected to return it ground to its owner on the third day after.

There were acres of vineyards, meadows, fields and sand-pits, flower-gardens and vegetable gardens, in Waldorf; and, forestalling the day when the waste lands should be watered by irrigation, Waldorf's chronicler mentions among its blessings, "seventeen acres of brooks and ditches".

John Jacob was accustomed to the holding of large estates by his neighbors. One manner of dividing these great farm holdings was by "marking stones," which occasionally bore the armorial design of the family who owned the estate. One of John Jacob Astor's own name, Felix Astor, is noted as leasing an estate for hunting purposes; while in 1741, "Mr. Astor, landlord of the Lion Inn" bought a "small lordly Manor," which formerly belonged to the vintage of Wersau.

Records of the Astor family give evidence that John Jacob Astor 's ancestors were French Huguenots, driven like many of their kind, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, to find refuge in Germany. In the family history still further back, there had been brave Knights, who risked all, even life itself, in fighting against superior forces for a cherished ideal.

The residence of the Astor family in Germany had begun three generations before the boy's time, and John Jacob's small world was filled with the traditions, events, and diversions of the "seven forest villages," which also afforded him his outlook on life.