Christian Roth

DAR Ancestor #: A098697

Christian Roth was born in Moore Township on Christmas day, 1757, which undoubtedly prompted the name “Christian”. Christian was 19 at the time of the Revolutionary War, and at that time was living in Northampton County. He had originally enrolled in John Arndt’s company of Colonel Baxter’s battalion of the Flying Camp at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. That unit mustered on July 9, 1976, immediately after the publication of the Declaration of Independence. He participated in one of the first military actions of the war, the disastrous Battle of Long Island, and a short time later in the battle for the Harlem heights above Manhattan, what is now called the Battle of Fort Washington. Apparently he was captured by the British, but released after a short time (a common British practice at the time), after which he re-enlisted in the Continental Army. The British kept some notorious prisons in New York City for the captured Americans, in unheated churches converted to the purpose and on prison ships, and so Christian is fortunate to have been released without ruined health. He later served in the war as a lieutenant. Bethlehem township tax records of 1780 show a “Christian Road”, with property of 380 pounds, who may be our Christian Roth. County records show a Christian Rhode as a wheelwright after the war, but I can only speculate that he too is our Christian Roth. Christian is listed as the owner of a tract in one of the worst parts of Northhampton County—the so-called “Drylands” between Allentown and Easton. Although fertile, the drylands had no water (though at the same time Christian Roth also owned a small lot in the city of Easton). A couple of his younger children were baptized at what was called the Drylands or Salzburg Church. After the war Christian prospered as a partner of a real estate promoter working out of Easton, Nicholas Kraemer (who later went spectacularly bankrupt). One might suspect that he did a bit of profiteering at the expense of discredited loyalists, like the Penn Family, who owned large portions of Pennsylvania. During and after the war loyalist lands were confiscated and resold by the State Government (although some portions of land were later returned by the courts to their loyalist owners). During peace negotiations, the victorious Americans wanted to mollify the British so as to gain the concession of all lands to the Mississippi. Americans thus promised to respect English and loyalist property rights and debt. Although a third of the Pennsylvania population in 1776, Germans were frozen out of Pennsylvania government and commerce by English (mostly Quakers) centered around Philadelphia. Germans saw the Revolutionary War as a good opportunity to reduce the Quaker English grip on Pennsylvania, and so avidly supported the war. Christian lived his later years on a large tract of well-watered land near Hellertown south of what is now Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which may have belonged to his sons’ wives’ family, the early pioneers, the Riegels. His daughter-in-law's father, Matthias Riegel owned a large amount of property in Lower Saucon, south of present-day Bethlehem. His name is on the 1743 petition to create a separate township out of Lower Saucon. As a reminder of the comfortable life on the Lower Saucon property, was the handsome stone house of Christian’s son Daniel.