Swiss Fairy Tales
Copyright© 2025 by William Elliot Griffis
Chapter 2: The Swiss Home Near Valley Forge
Only a few days did the Harbys abide on the banks of the Delaware, in the little city of Brotherly Love, where lived a few hundred people, mostly Friends, in drab clothes. Then, from one of William Penn’s land agents—the ancestor of American bishops—John Harby bought a farm. It lay on a piece of high ground, at Barren Hill, which was part of a ridge near the Schuylkill river. It was named after the bears that were still numerous in the forests that then clothed the land. It is known as Lafayette Hill and we shall soon see why. The neighborhood afforded good hunting, for any young man, that had brought his chamois rifle with him. One of the active fellows, who was reckoned a sure shot, was Harby’s nephew, of whom we shall hear later. He shot many deer and the family had venison often. Not far away was White Marsh. Over in another direction, was Fox Chase, where they had hounds and hunted foxes.
Only a few miles distant, across the Hidden Stream, or Schuylkill, as the Dutch had named the river, was the valley forge, where the farmers in the region around had their tools made and mended.
Not far away, on the hill, was soon built Saint Peter’s Lutheran church. In Switzerland, the Harbys had been members of the Reformed church, but all the people of the neighborhood now worshipped together.
The Harbys made their house first of logs of wood, notched at the corners. Trees were plentiful, and the forest was near at hand. Many things were about them to remind them of their old home, though there were no glaciers, or avalanches, or high mountains, with snow lying on them all the year round, and all was as yet rough, in the new country.
When the barn had been built, the cows, pigs and fowls made things look friendly and sociable. They had no cuckoo clock any more, but it was really homelike to hear the cocks crow at sunrise. This sound was certainly much pleasanter, indeed, than to hear the howling of the wolves at night. Occasionally, early in the morning, the Harbys would see a bear in the barnyard, and they had to keep the chickens locked up in the chicken house, for foxes were plentiful, and always on the watch for a poultry dinner. Wild turkeys—a new sort of bird for them—and wild pigeons were plentiful. Benjamin Franklin, who was then a little boy in Boston, the oldest in a family of seventeen children, when a grown man, wanted to make the wild turkey, which gives food to man, the national emblem, instead of the eagle, that lives on flesh and kills little birds.
Inside the house, there were wide seats at the chimney side, and puss purred in front of the great hearth fire. Outside, the dogs kept watch and ward, and often had a lively tussle with wolves and young bears.
When spring time came, the girls went blossom hunting. One very common flower, which they had known in Switzerland, the Pearly Everlasting, somehow reminded them of the Edelweiss. Daddy, who loved trees, almost to worship, saluted the same species as those which he had seen growing in the Old World—fir, birch, pine, and oak; but the persimmon tree was new to him and he enjoyed the autumn fruit, which the frost seemed to ripen; while the sugar maple was as good as a fairy tale, for the idea of a tree bearing candy was wonderful. In fact, the Harbys hailed the trees as friends, true and tried, with reverence and awe.
A generation came and went, and soon there was a little God’s acre around the little church on the hill top. The Hess family, from Zurich, also had made their home near by, at Whitemarsh, and several couples of the young men and maidens of the two households made love and married together.
The fathers and mothers, who had known the old home land beyond the sea, talked often of chamois and ibex, and edelweiss and the rock roses, and the meadow flowers, and the cows and the yodel music. When they spoke of the “Alps,” they meant the summer pastures high up, and not mountains. At times, especially in June, they felt homesick for the yodel songs and the Alpine horn echoes. They spoke often of the curious things at Neuchatel, and Berne, and Zurich, and the Lake of the Four Cantons. They sang the hymns of Heimath, or Home, and of the Fatherland, and of the Heavenly Land, and recounted the exploits of the Swiss heroes. The children were taught not to be afraid of the dark, and all knew by heart many hymns, especially that beginning, “Alone, yet not alone with God am I.”
On the other hand, the new generation told of other game, deer, bear, wolf, wild turkey and pigeons, and of new fruits like the persimmon. Their model, in civil life, was the good governor, William Penn, and their hero in valor and rescue of captives was Colonel Bouquet, the Swiss soldier in the service of their sovereign, Queen Anne. They loved her, also, because she loved the yodel music. Later came the kings named George. The flag over them was the Union Jack, which they saw float on the staff, when they went to Philadelphia often, and, occasionally, to Lancaster.
Yet all this time, one great desire and romantic longing of the maidens was unfulfilled. The yearning of the girls, as they became sweethearts, wives, and mothers, was handed down, as if it were a family heirloom, to see a real prince or a nobleman, or a man with a title. They hoped that some officer, in resplendent uniform, such as they had seen in their home village, would come into their neighborhood, for they were tired of Quaker drab. Even though their grandparents were democratic by their Swiss inheritance, and almost by instinct, and though reared in the oldest of republics, and accustomed to town meetings, the little maids, Sarah and Hannah, longed to see a real pageant, a prince; or at least a marquis, and something of the pomp of courts or even of armies. They heard that the Prince of Wales, who became King George II, had indeed visited New York, and skated on the ice of the Collect Pond; but he had come and gone, as a private person, and it was not likely that either he, again, or even King George III would ever visit the colonies.
Before the two little girls could know what it all meant, the Harbys heard, in their home at Barren Hill, of the Continental Congress, held in Carpenters’ Hall, in Philadelphia. In this gathering Canada was represented. Then, it was hoped that there would be fourteen stripes in the flag, which the Philadelphia City Troop of cavalry were making. But when their flag was unfurled and the handsome horsemen escorted Colonel George Washington, of Virginia, to Cambridge, many felt very sorry, that there were only thirteen, instead of the longed-for fourteen stripes, and hoped, even yet, that Canada would join.
War broke out. From the new State House, in Philadelphia, then one of the most wonderful buildings in any of the colonies, floated the flag of thirteen stripes, red and white, and independence was proclaimed.
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