From Patriot to Insurgent: John Fries and the First Tax Rebellions

Hans Faber
Jul 27, 2022
16 min read

Updated: Apr 18

On the Facebook page 'Frisian Americans', the question popped up regarding the role certain Frisians played in the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania in 1794. We checked, and the short answer is: none. The Whiskey Rebellion was a revolt of the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch farmers resisting the taxation of whiskey. It was crushed—without ice—by the young federal government. Interestingly, a former captain of the Continental Army by the name of John Fries was in charge of a militia to restore federal authority. Only five years later, however, this same John Fries led a revolt against yet another government tax: the house tax. A revolt that became known as the Fries Rebellion. So, Frisians after all behind the rebellions. Or not?

It is common knowledge that the relationship between Frisians and taxes has always been precarious and complicated, especially when go-it-alone farmers come into play. Already in the first century AD, Frisians revolted against taxes imposed by the Romans. But also consider the saga of the so-called freedom privileges that Frisians allegedly enjoyed since the Early Middle Ages, privileges that basically revolved around the question of to whom Frisians had to pay tribute or taxes. One of the medieval taxes was the huslotha ('house plot'). A tax to be paid to the Frankish king. Yet another striking example is when the bishop of Utrecht, Conrad of Swabia, imposed an additional tax on Frisia in the late eleventh century, and he was murdered in 1099. The murder was reportedly committed by a Frisian merchant (Henstra 2012).

With this general reluctance for taxes in mind, and the surname Fries (pronounced as 'freeze'), one might be tempted to draw the conclusion that those Pennsylvania Dutch must have been true and genuine Frisians of origin. Tempting, indeed. But too easy, as we will see.

1. The Kirchenleute of Pennsylvania

Kirchenleute is a German word meaning 'church people' and refers to the Lutheran and Reformed immigrants from Protestant Europe, mainly originating from Germany, but also from, for example, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The Kirchenleute spoke a German dialect known as Pfalz Dietsch. Hence, they are often named Pennsylvania Dutch or the Dutch Community, despite not having a specific Dutch/Netherlands' background.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Pennsylvania Dutch were the largest immigrant group in America, behind the English-speaking population. At the end of the twentieth century, almost 60 million Americans considered themselves of German descent, which accounted for a quarter of the American population. Again, read it slowly: a quarter of the American population. So, how is that for the 'Dumb Dutch,' as the Pennsylvania Dutch were nicknamed and shouted at?

Pennsylvanian Dutch — Pennsylvania Dutch

The term Kirchenleute gives away a lot revolving around religion with these early Protestant immigrants coming to America in the early modern period. Many different denominations, schisms, and faiths existed among them, and still do. A general distinction is made between the so-called Plain Dutch and Gay Dutch. The Gay Dutch are the Kirchenleute and were more liberal in the sense that they did not restrict themselves socially all that much and enjoyed most benefits of the world. The Plain Dutch are the Sektenleute ‘sectarian people’ and include, among others, the Amish and the Mennonites.

Plain Dutch were descendants of the German and Swiss Anabaptist reformers. These reformers did separate themselves, in various degrees of orthodoxy, from society (Grimminger 2009). Minne Simens or Menno Simons (1496-1561), a priest from the terp village of Witmarsum in the province of Friesland, is the founding father of the Mennonite community. Mennonites, also rejecting the use of violence, were an influential economic and political community in the Dutch Republic and also had much support in northern Germany. Besides rejecting violence, Mennonites in general showed contempt for authority (Doedens & Houter 2022).

Furthermore, many Dutch followers of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, emigrated to America. This occurred after the English writer William Penn (1644-1718) personally encouraged the Friends to do so, having visited the Netherlands three times. William Penn, founder of the Pennsylvania Colony, was of British-Dutch origin and a Quaker. His mother, Margaret Jasper, came from the port city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

From the second quarter of the nineteenth century, also Ostfriesen (‘East Frisians’) from Lower Saxony in Germany started to migrate to the United States in significant numbers. We hear the reader think: "Oh no, not Saxons moving west. Not again!" The Ostfriesen settled more in the west, in the State of Illinois, than the German migrants did earlier, especially in towns like Alton, Freeport, and Quincy. Around the year 1900, the Ostfriesen also established themselves in northern Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota. In Butler County, Ohio, many settled as well. Think of American football player Jared DeVries from the town of Aplington. These tall immigrants mostly came to the United States for the economic possibilities it offered. As for religion, most Ostfriesen were Reformed and also Lutheran. In the more rural areas, they even established separate communities according to their church denomination (Frizzell 1992).

From the early nineteenth century onward, especially many Frisians, together with other migrants from the north of the Netherlands, migrated to the United States and Canada as well. Extreme poverty among farm laborers was the main push. After the Napoleonic period ended in 1813, sea trade with the Baltics never recovered. Skippers from the province of Friesland used to dominate this navigation, thus providing an important economic factor. Things got even worse with cholera outbreaks, poor harvests, the potato blight in 1845, and the agrarian depression around 1880 that hit Western Europe. The emigration from Friesland was so strong that it led to a population decline (De Haan & Huisman 2009). Many of these 'genuine Dutch' settled in the states of Iowa and Illinois, including the Frisian neighbourhood Roseland in Chicago, and the state of Michigan, especially the towns of Holland and Grand Rapids in West Michigan. Except for the southern states, Frisians eventually settled throughout the United States. Think of the big dairy farms in California. Many of these settlers were still religiously conservative and often members of the Dutch Reformed Church.

2. Three tax rebellions

"Read my lips: no new taxes," as (future) US President George Bush sr. said in 1988. But that promise was only made two centuries after three famous tax revolts.

On the 4th of July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies declared themselves independent from the kingdom of Great Britain. The motto of the Colonies was: "No taxation without representation!" The War of Independence lasted until 1783, a war of the Continental Army against the Loyalists and the British. The rebellious colonies were supported by Spain, France, and the Dutch Republic. An interesting fact is that Great Britain hired many soldiers from Germany, of whom quite a number defected upon arriving in America. In a way, they were fighting their fellow countrymen. It was the Province of Friesland that recognized the United States in February 1782, becoming the second state in the world to do so after France. In September that year, the newspaper Independent Gazetteer reported that in the town of Franeker in the province of Friesland, people celebrated the independence of the United States with fireworks (Dijkstra 2021).

After the United States of America was finally a reality, the young federal government needed to show its muscles toward its own citizens. Who was boss after all this republicanism, fighting for freedom, and liberty? Anarchy lay in wait. The war was over and now a country with institutions and public works had to be built up. Not that sexy but vital. To function as a state you need money. A normal government gets this mostly through levying taxes. So did the States, and immediately it led to three tax revolts in the period between 1786 and 1799.

The first one was the Shays’s Rebellion in the years 1786 and 1787, and took place in central and western Massachusetts. Albeit he was only one of many other insurgents, it was the Irish Daniel Shays who led a militia of about 1,200 men, and who attacked the federal arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts. Shays troops were easily defeated, and Shays fled to Vermont. Nevertheless, it was a sign the fresh government was not fully in control yet.

The second tax revolt was the Whiskey Rebellion. This one happened in western Pennsylvania in 1794, after liquor was being taxed. Whiskey was the most distilled alcohol and it is how this rebellion received its name in history. Taxing whiskey had a, probably, unforeseen indirect effect for farmers. Surplus of corn was used by farmers to convert into whiskey. This could be preserved much longer than corns and was easier to transport east over the mountains. Furthermore, whiskey functioned as de facto currency due to shortages of coin. In other words, taxing whiskey hit those farmers notably hard.

Fries’s Rebellion

The third, and for this blog post the most relevant, tax revolt was the Fries Rebellion, and it took place in the year 1799. Again in south-eastern Pennsylvania. In the German-Dietsch dialect the rebellion was named the Heesses Wasser Uffschtand ‘hot-water uprising’. The reason to impose this tax was the Quasi-War with France, with as consequence the States had to raise a standing army again. In total 2 million dollar was needed, of which Pennsylvania alone had to cough up more than 10 percent (McIntosh 2021). It was a Direct Tax on slaves, on land, and on private dwellings. The height of the tax on dwellings, which specifically aroused emotions among the Kirchenleute in Pennsylvania—note not many slaves were held in Pennsylvania—was determined by the number and size of the windows of a house. This was executed by the hated federal taxmen called assessors. Hence, the Fries Rebellion is also known as the House Tax Rebellion.

Maybe taxing houses triggered ancient social memories of the times also the Frisians were forced to pay a house tax to the Frankish rulers who had conquered Frisia in the eighth century. A levy, as mentioned earlier, called huslotha ‘house plot’. Read our blog post With a Noose through the Norsemen’s Door for more detailed information.

The German-speaking Kirchenleute of Pennsylvania traditionally were ambivalent and low in trust toward the central government. Toward both parties, Federalists and Republicans. Legitimacy of the new-born federal government, and thus national taxation as such, was accepted by the Pennsylvania Dutch. At the same time, they feared too direct involvement of a too powerful federal government. Let alone if assessors literally came onto your yards and into your homes to count and measure with a ruler your windows! To this day, do not just wonder on someone's property or park your car in front of a driveway.

“[the government was] laying one thing after another and if we do not oppose it they will bring us into bondage and slavery“

People also thought the burden of the Direct Tax was disproportionate among the people, and spared wealthy merchants and industrials. On the other hand, federal assessors regarded the Kirchenleute not as being true Patriots since many were religious pacifist and (thus) had not taken up arms against the oppressor the king of Great Britain during the War of Independence. This preconception toward the Kirchenleute did not help either to overcome the difficulties.

In Milford Township, house owners refused to pay and assessors were being harassed. Protestors started to wear uniforms of the Continental Army, and raised the former Liberty Poles of the revolution again. Liberty Poles were raised in the ‘70s to oppose the British tax. In March 1799, a posse of hundred farmer rebels rode out to Quakertown where they captured several assessors, who were quickly released with the message for President Adams to end the “damned house tax” among the Pennsylvania Dutch (Longley 2020). Today, they all would have ridden out with their tractors (Duitsland Instituut 2024, Wissink 2024), but back then it was still classic horsepower.

One riot one Marshal—the federal government send in a US Marshal to restore order among the Pennsylvania Dutch. The Marshal made several arrests in the town of Bethlehem and had them temporarily locked up in the Sun Inn. Again a posse of rebels rode out. This time to Bethlehem. Through negotiations the rebels were able to release the Marshal’s prisoners. Noteworthy, the whole affair went without a single shot being fired, which is not a minor detail for the pacifist Kirchenleute. Tavern the Sun Inn is still there by the way. To have, at your own free will a rest, a meal and maybe a drink.

Federal troops were sent to Pennsylvania, and in April the rebellion was crushed. Forty-five insurgents were charged with treason. Leader John Fries and four others were actually prosecuted for treason, and seventeen others for lesser crimes. The trials were sensational, and the public and press loved it. In May 1799, John Fries and three others were sentenced to be hanged for treason. On 23 May, President Adams pardoned John Fries and his followers. According to John Adams, they were guilty only of high-handed riot and rescue, and not of making war on the United States. The reason to charge the leaders of the rebellion with treason, which was quite exceptional and disproportionate, was the fear within the States of a Jacobite insurrection of their own (Newman 2000). In addition, from their own recent war of independence against the British, the young American government knew all too well what forces taxes could trigger.

3. John Fries

John Fries was born in 1750 in Hatfield Township, Pennsylvania. He is said to have been of Welsh descent, at least according to his youngest son. John’s father, Simon Fries, apparently came from Wales. It is quite a mystery how a German became a Welshman. Based on his surname and American experience, he is probably German, and he even had a German passport (Newman 2000, 2005). John Fries was bilingual in English and German. When he was twenty-one years old, he married Margaret Brunner. She also belonged to the Pennsylvania Dutch, thus German, community. Fries’ personality was that of a talker, a storyteller, and someone who had humor. John Fries owned a small plot of land and had the occupation of auctioneer. He furthermore served during the War of Independence as a captain in the Continental Army.

In 1794, John Fries was asked by the federal government to lead a militia to crush the Whiskey Rebellion. And he did, although we do not know to what extent his actions contributed to restoring order.

During the Fries Rebellion in 1799, however, it was John Fries who took the lead in organizing the rebellion. He was a respected member of the community and was, as said, a Patriot veteran. According to John Fries, the Direct Tax on dwellings was unconstitutional. In February of that year, he set up meetings to mobilize the insurrection. It was John Fries who led a troop of 100 men that rode to Quakertown early in March, and later that month again to the Sun Inn in the town of Bethlehem, where about 400 rebels had surrounded the inn. At Bethlehem, John Fries was also the leader who negotiated the release, on bail by the way, of the federal prisoners from the Sun Inn. As mentioned earlier, John Fries was successively arrested, charged, and convicted for treason, to be hanged, and then pardoned by the President. A true rollercoaster. After he was set free, he simply resumed his occupation as an auctioneer again. In 1818, he died in the town of Trumbauersville in Pennsylvania.

4. Surname Fries

Fries, stemming originally from Vriese, Vrēse, Vrieze, der Friese, Friesen is a widespread surname in Germany—think of Jakob Friedrich Fries from Barby or Millane Friesen from Berlin—and, to a lesser extent, in Switzerland, too. Within Germany, the name Fries occurs more in the region of Ostfriesland, which has to do with the late introduction of surnames during the Napoleonic period; people all said they were Frisian. Vries or De Vries is a common surname in the Netherlands (check our blog post Know where to find your sweet potato. And the cradle of house nursing, too) and is found more frequently in the province of Friesland and the western coastal area of the country. Together with the surname Jansen, Vries is even the most common one in the Netherlands. The reason for it is probably the same explanation concerning the Napoleonic period as with Fries in Germany. In Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, the surname Fries, Friis (like Achton Friis and Otto Friis), or Friesgaard can also be found, but in more limited numbers.

Often, the surname Fries or Vries, and all its variations, is explained as being ethnically Frisian. Someone descending from Frisia, Fresia, Friso, or Friesland.

Interestingly, in the old oberdeutch or Upper German speech, 'friesen' had a different meaning. Upper German is spoken in the far south of Germany and in Switzerland. Here fries meant ‘to dig/to make ditches’ (Schweizerisches Idiotikon website). A friesen was a skilled worker who cultivated swamplands and drained wet grasslands—a Wasserbauarbeiter in the German language. Emblem or symbol of friesen workers was the Friesenbeil or Frieseneisen. A long, halberd-like axe used to dig ditches in the fields and cut sods. In the region around Scheidt (Saarbrücken) in Rheinland-Pfalz in Germany, quite a number friesen workers were hired in the seventeenth century. Often these workers originated from Switzerland. The friesen worker left but the name Fries stayed (Eid 1894, Ballas 1996, Wörterbuchnetz.de website). And believe it or not, there is a company named Scheidts Landscaping in Illinois. Of course, friesen in this context is related to the Dutch word frees and verb frezen, meaning respectively 'a cut' and 'to mill/to cut something in long straight lines'. Compare also the German verb Fräsen.

There are four towns that carry the name Friesenheim in Germany and France. Interestingly, all four are located near the River Rhine. The most northern one is Friesenheim (Rheinhessen) near the city of Mainsz. Then there is Friesenheim (Ludwigshafen) near the city of Mannheim. Next, albeit a bit away from the River Rhine, is Friesenheim (Baden), south of the city of Strasbourg. This brings us to the last, and French, Friesenheim (Bas- Rhin), just south of the town Rhinau. Because all four are along the River Rhine, one of the theories is that it was Frisians who moved up the river and settled here to trade. Another theory, is that Friesenheim towns owe their name to friesen workers. Not for nothing the coat of arms of Friesenheim (Baden) contains a plowshare, and that of Friesenheim (Bas-Rhin) and Friesenheim (Ludwigshafen) a shovel. That would plead for the friesen workers as explanation. Whether or not the old shire Frisonovel or Friesenfeld located in Eastphalia has Frisians or friesen workers as origin, is unclear to us (Nifterlaca website 2018, Schoorstra 2024).

Just like Friesenheim (Bas-Rhin) in France and Friesenheim (Ludwigshafen) in Germany, the village of Bedum in the province of Groningen in the Netherlands also has a coat of arms portraying a shovel. The coat of arms of Bedum refers to Saint Walfrid, a Frisian living in the Middle Ages, who irrigated swamps with his shovel and turned it into arable land (see further note 1 at the end of this blog post).

das Friesenhaus, Scheidt, Saarbrücken, Germany — The Friesenhaus (built ca. 1690) on Kaiserstraße St. in Scheidt, now part of Saarbrücken, southern Germany. The house has been demolished by the Kreissparkasse in 1971. The house was owned by Friesen migrants from Switzerland, namely the Blatter and Mauer families (Ballas 1996). Do we see a *Frieseneisen*/*Friesenbeil* 'friesen axe' in the foreground?

Also, in the south of Germany, a fries could have yet another meaning, namely a ‘great fighter/fighter of unusual strength’ (Namenforschung.net website). But no further lead is given.

Note that, of course, there are more alleged connections and ties between Frisians and Swiss besides the surname or occupation Fries/fries. Find out in our blog post Make way for the homesick dead! which sagas exist in the cantons of Switzerland about the Frisian origin of the Swiss. Really! They were, it goes without saying, great tall fighters who migrated from Frisia to Switzerland in dark times.

5. Conclusion

Basically, this whole blog post was initiated because of the alleged involvement of Frisians and John Fries with the famous tax revolts in the United States. Examining all the available facts, we might just as well not have written this article at all, and certainly not have posted it on our blog. As far as we are concerned, John Fries is a distant offspring of a Swiss migrant worker, a Wasserbauarbeiter, who, or whose ancestors, irrigated the wet fields in Germany in the second half of the seventeenth century. Who knows, John Fries’s family may have made a stopover in Wales before finally ending up in Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century, explaining his perceived Welsh decent.

When digging into the backgrounds of John Fries, we wondered if there was any excuse to write a blog post about it on our blog since John Fries had no immediate connection with the history of Frisia or the Frisians at all. Well, there is.

The history of the friesen, i.e., the Swiss migrant field workers, opened our eyes how the native Frisians living along the southern coast of the North Sea got their tribe's name some 2,000 years ago, too. In our blog post A severe case of inattentional blindness: the Frisian tribe’s name we explain why, how, and when the Frisians got their tribe's name. A must read for everyone whose surname is Fries, De Fries, Vries, De Vries, De Vreese, Vrieze, Freyse, Vreys, Freezer, Vriesendorp, Friis, etc., and for everyone who considers her- or himself Frisian or of Frisian descent. It turns out that both the profession/term friesen workers and the tribe name Frisians have, albeit independently from each other, an identical origin. Go read it and learn why we, humble hikers of the Frisia Coast Trail, defy all scholarly explanations on the name Frisians! To quote Johan Cruijff: "Je gaat het pas zien als je het door hebt" ('you only see it when you get it').

Note 1 — The history of the area around Scheidt (Saarbrücken) resembles that of the Woldgebied area in the province of Groningen, the Netherlands. There, when this part of the Netherlands was still Frisia, Saint Walfrid cultivated the swamps before he was killed by Vikings, and he is commonly depicted with a spade instead of a Friesenbeil. Check out our blog post Walfrid, You’ll Never Walk Alone for his history and that of his son.

Note 2 — If interested in the part Frisians played in American history, including the bourgeois liberties of the Declaration of Independence, see our blog post History is written by the victors—a story of the credits.

Suggested hiking

In 1937, a hiking path was laid out in Lower Saxony called the Friesenweg. It ran from the town of Osnabrück via Haselünne to the town of Papenburg in Landkreis Emsland. A trail of about ten days. In 2008, the Landesvermessung und Geobasisinformation Niedersachsen, LGN) renamed the Friesenweg into Hünenweg (yellow sign with a blue h), supposedly because it did not ran through the region of Ostfriesland. Probably due to lack of historic understanding with LGN, they were not aware of the other meaning of friesen, that of friesen workers. Or, did they think Huns would sell better and draw more attention to the trail than Frisians?