On September 16, 1751 Captain Coatam from Rotterdam sailed the vessel Nancy into Philadelphia harbor. All males of the age of majority were escorted by British soldiers to the State House. The group of some seventy-five men became British citizens before walking back to the ship to collect personal goods and family members before beginning a new life. Aboard was Christian Nagel, a tailor from Doffngen, Wurttemberg, Germany. Nagel and his second wife Anna left Germany with their four children. Daughter Christine died on the voyage and was buried at sea. Christian lived only eighteen months longer.
Three years later Christian Nagel’s son Gottlieb Nagel arrived in Philadelphia on the vessel Barclay on September 14, 1754. Gottlieb, too, went through the immigration procedure at the Philadelphia State House. Both men swore allegiance to King George II of England. Ironically, George II was a member of the Hanover Dynasty from Germany. According to legend, George II could not speak English, although he ruled from the British throne in London.
Gottlieb spent the next twenty years in Pennsylvania where he married and started a family. By 1774 the family moved down the Great Wagon Road to Mecklenburg, now North Carolina. Gottlieb and his family relocated to Rowan County in 1778. At that time, he changed his name to Caleb Nail, much more Anglicized. He received a land grant of 127 acres on Bear Creek in Rowan County. Gottlieb/Caleb served in Captain Pearson’s company and attended the Old Heidelberg Lutheran Church as late as 1793. Gottlieb/Caleb died intestate on May 6, 1794. Son John was appointed administrator of his estate.
The Nail family came to America from an area of Germany that straddled the Rhine River, an extremely fertile farming region coveted by France and other European countries. The residents were known as Palatines, some of the best farmers in the world. But warring nations and continual fighting forced countless Palatines to emigrate to William Penn’s Province of Pennsylvania, where they were welcomed with open arms.
After Gottlieb/Caleb died, two of his sons migrated to northeast Indiana where a group of Swiss and Germans congregated. Over the years the families migrated southwesterly. From Indiana they found their way to Illinois around the vicinity of Alton on the Mississippi River. After the Civil War they tried farming in Missouri and Indian Territory before arriving in Montague County, Texas. Along the way, members of the family married and changed names, found spots they wanted to make their homes, or continued on the migration trail.
If you haven’t guessed, this is one of my ancestral families. Yet, the Nagel/Nails through to the Hardy family have a uniqueness I found nowhere else. I must admit that I have not completely found all of my ancestors, but the descendants of Christian Nagel are the only ones who had to swear allegiance to the King of England. As far as I know, everyone else were either English, Scots or Irish. At the time of their arrival the American Colonies were part of Great Britain. No need to swear allegiance to any of the three King Georges.
My genealogy friends are always finding naturalization records, ships records, and such while mine slipped in with no questions asked. As far as I can determine at this time, everyone was here before Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. I visited Philadelphia recently and tried unsuccessfully to find the State House. But I did see where all the other significant works that created our nation in a very difficult time.