Peter Hasenclever and His Ironworks

Yesterday’s posting introduced Peter Hasenclever, manager of a big ironworks in New Jersey from 1764 to 1769. This extensive article at Immigrant Entrepreneurship tells a lot more about him.

Hasenclever was born in the German city of Remscheid in 1716 and as a young businessman worked in many parts of Europe. In 1763 he moved to London and began to promote a scheme to mine and refine iron in New Jersey. A year later he was in America to set up the manufactory.

A relative recruited miners and other specialized workers in Germany to come to America, their passages paid in exchange for years of work. In the 16 June 1766 New-York Mercury Hasenclever advertised for nine workers who had run away from his employment, asking for them to be “secur’d in any of his Majesty’s Goals.”

In his History of Printing in America, Isaiah Thomas wrote that newspaper hawker Lawrence Sweeny told New York officials that the anti-Stamp Act Constitutional Courant was printed “At Peter Hassenclever’s iron-works, please your honor.”

Hasenclever’s letters show he was opposed to the Stamp Act. Whether he had anything to do with that fake newspaper is uncertain. He might have provided printers James Parker and William Goddard with workspace, he might have provided financial support, or he might have been a convenient red herring.

Thomas also wrote:

Peter Hassenclever was a wealthy German, well known as the owner of extensive iron works in Newjersey. Afterward, other publications of a like kind frequently appeared with an imprint—“Printed at Peter Hassenclever’s iron-works.”

“Frequently” is an overstatement at best. Not one publication with that line has been identified.

The ironworks did not succeed as the investors hoped, and Hasenclever fell out with his partners in 1769. He slipped away to Charleston, then sailed back to Europe. Lawsuits over the American enterprise dragged on in British courts. In 1773, after publishing a pamphlet to promote his side of the story, Hasenclever moved to Silesia in Prussia.

Hasenclever promoted connections to America both before and after the War for Independence, but King Frederick II was uninterested. The businessman died in 1793. Six months later, the Chancery Court in London issued a final ruling for his side in the dispute over the ironworks.

The Mysterious Constitutional Courant

Yesterday’s posting introduced Lawrence Sweeny, a New York newspaper carrier. He played a small but significant role in promoting resistance to the Stamp Act in 1765.

In September of that year, after protests against the Stamp Act had erupted in Boston and Newport, a fake newspaper called the Constitutional Courant appeared in New York. It was dated 21 Sept 1765, and said to be “Printed by Andrew Marvel, at the Sign of the Bribe refused on Constitution-Hill, North-America.” The Princeton University library displays its front page.

Isaiah Thomas later wrote that the Constitutional Courant was really printed in Woodridge, New Jersey, by William Goddard (1740-1815). After being trained in New Haven and New York, Goddard had run a newspaper in Providence until that spring, and the next year he tried Philadelphia. Crown officials reported hearing that James Parker (1714-1770) owned that press and, as a postmaster, sent copies to other cities.

The “newspaper” contained three anti-Stamp Act essays signed with three different pseudonyms and a brief mention of the recent change in government in London. Reportedly the established New York printers had turned down those essays because they were too incendiary. Hence the need for a special printing and secrecy.

In an exhaustive article published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Albert Matthews reported that there were at least two reprints of the Constitutional Courant, presumably from other presses responding to local demand. One of those reprints probably occurred in Boston since the 7 October Boston Evening-Post quoted one essay and told readers, “we hear, it will soon be republished.”

Lawrence Sweeny was one of the people who sold the Constitutional Courant on the streets of New York. According to Thomas, royal officials called him in and demanded to know where that paper had been printed. “Sweeney, as he had been instructed, answered, ‘At Peter Hassenclever’s ironworks, please your honor.’” Peter Hasenclever had come to America in 1764 to manage an extensive iron-manufacturing enterprise in New Jersey.

The masthead of the Constitutional Courant was the first reappearance of Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die” snake since 1754, when he created the image to promote colonial cooperation and the Albany Plan. From then on, the snake promoted a united American front against new measures from London instead of against external enemies. Printers pulled out those snake woodcuts again in 1774 as the conflict with London heated up.