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This is the work of 7 years in the making starting from scratch with little assistance in the very beginning. But with so much help as time went by from very interested family members, I have culminated a history of over 1,900 names, dates, births, deaths, and individual histories and this is a continuing on going process.
Johann Jost (Joost) Cope (Coope, Kupp) and his wife, Dorothea Barbara Germany, both German Lutherans and born before 1700, and their firstborn, a son, Johann Nicholas Cope, born c. 1717, in Heidelburg, Prussian Saxony, Germany, traveled in the year of 1726-1727 to Werttemberge, then to Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
then to Rotterdam where they boarded the good ship, "Adventure", and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, arriving in Philadelphia harbor, October 2, 1727. There were a total of 324 ships that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and the "Adventure" was the fourth ship to arrive from Europe. Joost Coope is listed on page 14 of the passenger list book and he is the 14th man in the second column of the "A" list. There were a total of 55 men on the "A" list, 31 men on the "B" list. A total of 140 persons, including wives and children.
It is noted that the 5th ship, the "Friendship," arriving October 16, 1727, 52 men on the "A" list and 38 men on the "B" list of which, on the "A" list, 10 men were "sick" and 7 men were listed as "dead".
Johann Jost soon afterwards received a land grant from William Penn and became one of the first German Pioneer farmers with 150 acres of land. He later purchased 450 acres of land in Maryland. Of the children of Johann Jost and Dorothea Barbara, only one of them, Johann Nicholas, my 5th greatgrandfather moved to the South, to North Carolina, to Davie County, Cooleemee Plantation where he and his wife, Anna Catherine Gobel and their children set up their farm.
The journey to Pennsylvania fell naturally into three parts. The first part, and by no means the easiest, was the journey down the Rhine river to Rotterdam or some other port. Gottlieb Mittelberger in his Journey to Pennsylvania in the year 1750, writes:
"This journey lasts from the beginning of May to the end of October, fully half a year, amid such hardships as no one is able to describe adequately with their misery. The cause is because the Rhine boats from Heilbronn to Holland have to pass by 26 custom houses, at all of which the ships are examined, which is done when it suits the convenience of the customhouse officials. In the meantime the ships with the people are detained long, so that the passengers have to spend much money. The trip down the Rhine lasts therefore four, five and even six weeks. When the ships come to Holland, they are detained there likewise five to six weeks. Because things are very dear there, the poor people have to spend nearly all they have during that time."
The second stage of the journey was from Rotterdam to one of the English ports. Most of the ships called at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. This was a favorite stopping place, as 142 ships are recorded as having sailed from Rotterdam to Cowes. Other ships touched at one of seven other channel ports. Taking them from east to west they were: Deal, where twenty-two ships stopped. Dover, with eleven ships, Portsmouth thirty-two ships, Gosport, near Portsmouth, two ships, Porte in Dorsetshire, one ship (No. 109), Plymouth two ships, Falmouth, in Cornwall, four ship. One ship (No. 297) went from Rotterdam to London, one ship (No. 263) from Rotterdam to Berwick upon Tweed, on the east coast of England, near the Scotch border, five ships from Rotterdam to Leith in Scotland, two ships from Rotterdam to the Orkney islands (Nos. 110, 163) and one ship from Rotterdam to St. Christopher, one of the West India islands.
The third stage of the journey, or the ocean voyage proper, was marked by much suffering and hardship. The passengers being packed densely, like herrings, as Mittelberger describes it, without proper food and wa
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