The Village School and the Old Church Bells

The Rev. Johann Stumpf, who was the minister in charge of the Roman Catholic Church in Waldorf about the middle of the eighteenth century, was so impressed with the healthful climate, and material advantages of the town, that he put himself on record in a number of Latin verses, whose translation gives us some insight into the advantages John Jacob Astor gained by spending his boyhood days in Baden.

"Walldorf, a market place of the Palatinate, A beautiful and nourishing place—may God preserve Walldorf, An incomparable place, because no word rhymes with Walldorf. If the people of Waldorff are called "Maerker", (Those who derive benefits from a common wood-lot) The people of Walldorf are thereby only lauded and praised. They listen to God and His word. And this is something that pleases God; Everybody wants to live at the place having five "W's," And Walldorf is well-favored by God for this, For it has all the five "W's" together— (Walt, Waiz, Wein, Wasser, Weid) Woods, wheat, wine, water, and hunting grounds. The people of Walldorf are happy people; God be praised, Walldorf has many gifts; May God keep Walldorf in his grace, Through the merits of St. Peter, the patron-saint. As written, 2. Peter 1:15."

The poet added to his verses the following explanation:

"Johann Stumpf was pastor in Walldorf for twenty-five years, and in honor of Walldorf, and out of love for it, he has written the above verses in the famous year of war and death 1734."

The seal of the town of Waldorf honored the oak tree, and further Latin verses dwelt upon this fact, including a touch of history. In translation they read:

"'What does the vow under the oak tree signify'? I ask the seal. The oak signifies the strength of the vow. Truly, he is a healthy person, who is as healthy as the oak tree; There is scarcely a place as healthy as Walldorf. The air is agreeable to every gentleman, no matter what the condition of his body is. It is said that oaks attain an age of five hundred years. Walldorf existed long before the city of Heidelberg. The age of Walldorf has been, and is, and will be like that of the oak; O, that the days of my life were so deeply rooted, and of such long duration! See the archives of the church! See the court-records!"

The Rev. Johann Stumpf's satisfaction with his parish has given us a vivid picture of the superiority of John Jacob Astor 's native town.

The school which John Jacob attended through his childhood, was founded by the Church, and was served alternately by Roman Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran school teachers, according as each party was dominant in the state for the time. The boy was most fortunate in having Valentine Jeune, one of the best of the pedagogues of that day, fall to his lot. The teacher of the village school was a French Protestant, like John Jacob's own ancestors. He had fled from his country during the reign of Louis XIV. Valentine Jeune was a progressive and sympathetic teacher, and bestowed a generous amount of personal attention upon his scholars. Together with the Rev. John Philip Steiner, the Protestant minister of Waldorf, he succeeded in indelibly planting the doctrines of the Reformation in the minds of his pupils, which principles swayed John Jacob Astor's life to its close.

The school was supported by the town, but every child added his mite, as he came each day laden with two sticks of wood.

One of the objects that attracted John Jacob's attention on the way to school, was the old bell-tower of the Roman Catholic Church. The lad's interest in the bells of his town was equal to that of all his kind. What boy does not climb a bell-tower before he has reached manhood? Who among them does not long to feel his hand on the bell-rope, and be responsible in his own strength and muscle, for the peals which ring out over the house-tops and die away in the valleys?

John Jacob's attachment to the bells of Waldorf was intensified by the stories of the old men of the village, who made their clanging music the key-note of many a tale of the past. There were three bells in the old Roman Catholic Church tower when John Jacob was a boy. The heathen tribes had rung these same three bells, when they lived in this vicinity, before the Christian religion was introduced. The sweet sounds had floated over hills, and wound their way through grassy dells in honor of some pagan goddess, till they reached the groves and forests, the heaths and mountains where the early Germans loved to worship. It was easy to pass from the tales of the bells to the wonders of the mythical past, and the boys half believed still in the elves and nixies, dwarfs and giants, which had pervaded the earth and air and water in the old heathen days.

These bells had rung out paeans of rejoicing over the early Christian Gospel, and pealed for Roman Catholic dominion. Nearer to John Jacob's own time they had sounded brave notes for the Reformation.

The three bells had not always kept each other company, though one might have thought them welded, together by centuries of united action. During the thirty years' war, the two larger bells were taken to Philippsburg by the enemy, and held in the arsenal there, to the grief of the villagers. During the war only the small bell was left in the tower to call the people to worship, or ring out the scant causes of rejoicing during these troublous years.

The time came, however, when the captive bells were redeemed for one hundred florins, and brought back to Waldorf. Alas! the bell-tower had been struck by lightning and burned, while bereft of its music, so for many years the bells stood silent in the church, while a generation grew up who had never heard their sweet chimes, and looked upon their silent forms as relics of the past, whose mission had been accomplished.

But with the return of peace, a sense of safety, of recurring crops unspoiled by an alien army, and of dawning prosperity, turned the villagers' thoughts toward homely joys once more. They would rebuild the old tower and hang the bells in their places. As in days gone by, they should be the key-note of the town's rejoicing.

So it came about that John Jacob Astor was more fortunate than the children of the thirty years' war, or of the years immediately succeeding it. He grew up with the chimes of the old bells in his ears. He had heard them peal in times of rejoicing, and listened to them toll in times of grief. They were alive to him, as to every other boy in the village, with love of home and native land, with the sweep of enthusiasm, or the wail of woe. Their musical notes pulsed through his heart, and found there answering echoes.

Waldorf was rich in history, pleasant in situation, healthful, and full of matters of interest to a boy, yet John Jacob Astor longed to leave it for a broader life, a wider horizon.