Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/23

 had been a member of the City Council (and of course, a citizen) in either of the three cities of Prague—the Old Town, or the Small Side—we ought to have a record of it here. I examined carefully the archives and the registers of the three cities in question (and likewise of the Upper town of Hradčany), but, to my regret, I find no trace of Augustine Herrman; nor, for that matter, of Kaspar Redel ”

In 1889 Mr. Čapek published an article about Augustine Herrman in an Omaha, Neb, weekly. Soon afterwards he received a communication from Mšeno, Bohemia regarding an entry in the Memorial Book of that town, “A.D. 1621, the Sunday before Christ’s birth, on a cold day, our beloved pastor, Abraham Herzman went into exile with his family to the city of Žitava (Zittau, Saxony). His noble minded and pious wife did not live long enough to see this humiliation, having died of grief a month before his departure Before the parish stood a vehicle, in which was seated his family, consisting of a son, Augustine and three daughters.”

“Pursuing this clue, Čapek was able to confirm through the local historian of Mšeno that, “the last evangelical pastor at Mšeno was Abraham Herman, who had charge of the parish next the St. John’s Church, No. 199. When after the Battle of White Mountain on June 3, Ferdinand II issued a proclamation that henceforth only Catholic worship would be tolerated and finally, when, by an edict dated July 31, 1627, the Emperor made it known that those refusing to conform with the State religion must leave the country, many persons emigrated from Mšeno, while others embraced the Catholic faith. Likewise the last Utraquist Herman (Hussite) minister of the gospel, Abraham Herman emigrated to Saxony, to the city of