THE DUTCH FORK SETTLEMENT As good land became scarcer in Saxe Gotha, German and Swiss immigrants settled on the west bank of the Broad and on the east bank of the Saluda. The early settlers passed up the slate belt depicted later by Robert Mills in his atlas and chose instead the better soils above a line extending from the mouth of Big Creek on Saluda to a point halfway between the mouths of Crim's Creek and Wateree Creek on Broad. There the soils were derived from the weathering of crystalline rocks of granite, gneiss, schist, diorite, and gabbro, and in them the oaks grew as opposed to the pines of the slate belt. The area from the confluence of the Broad and Saluda to a line extending between the two rivers a few miles south or east of the present city of Newberry became known as the Dutch Fork despite the fact that no known Dutch immigrants ever settled there. The words "Deutsch volk" meaning "German Folk" were used in both Pennsylvania and South Carolina to denote German-speaking people. The word "volk" meaning "fold" in German was easily converted by the English-speaking inhabitants as "fork." Hence the German-speaking settlers in the lower part of the Fork of the Broad and Saluda undoubtedly caused the area to be known as the Dutch Fork. The earliest settlers of the Dutch Fork came there in 1744. They were Thomas Brown, Jacob Derer, Capar Faust, John Jacob Fridig, John Jacob Geiger, John Hamelton, and John Matthys. No more came in 1745, but six persons took warrants for land in 1746, six more in 1747 and forty-seven in 1748. The first settlers took up lands in the neck of the Fork. The second group settled in the pinlands below Wateree Creek on Broad and John's Creek on Saluda. Seventy more warrants were taken for lands in 1749; the group settled on Hollenshed's Creek, Crim's Creek, Cannon's Creek, and Second Creek. Of these George Abnor, Thomas Baccurst, Nicholas Booker, Edward Brown, Benjamin Gregory, Andrew Holman, Johannes Kuntz, Barnard Lavingstone, John Reddy, and Peter Rentfro came overland from Pennsylvania and the Jerseys and started the immigration into the Fork from the northern colonies. This group of immigrants also furnished present Newberry County's first settler, E. B. Hallman, on the basis of the dates of plats, precepts, and grants, concludes that Johannes Kuntz (Counts) was Newberry's first settler but states that the whole group from the northern colonies could have come in a body. In the period 1744-49, the Dutch Fork settlers had 125 warrants for 21,150 acres and a population of 423 persons. The Broad River valley had some eighteen hundred Germans and one thousand Britons by 1759. The early Swiss settlers of the Dutch Fork were of the Reformed persuasion, whereas the Germans, largely from Baden and Wurttenberg, were Lutherans. Swiss immigration practically ceased in 1748 because of Swiss laws prohibiting emigration. The German influx ceased in the 1760s. The two sects worshiped together as one, first under the Reverend Christian Theus and then under the leadership of the Reverend John Gasser. Both were of the Reformed persuasion. Gasser left Switzerland in 1752 to serve the spiritual needs of the German settlers in the Dutch Fork. Coming by way of Pennsylvania, he reached Charleston where he obtained a grant of fifty acres on Crim's Creek on March 24, 1754. The church, later known as St. John's, seems to have been organized at once. Gasser promptly presented a petition, signed by himself and forty others, to His Majesty's Council in South Carolina. The petitioners stated that bad crops and the expenses of settlement made it impossible for the people to support a minister and schoolmaster and asked permission to make a general collection within the province. Gasser soon returned to Switzerland. As Elders of the Dissenting Congregation on Crim's Creek, John Adam Epting and Peter Dickert in 1763 petitioned for a grant of land for their organization. John Pearson, deputy surveyor, made the plat, certified by him on June 27, 1763, for 100 acres for a meetinghouse and glebe. On this plat appear a church building and various roads leading from it together with the names of the adjoining landowners. John Gasser was one of the latter. next: THE ENOREE AND LITTLE RIVER SETTLEMENTS ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com