Reverend Yelles "Julius" Cassel, I

• Yelles the Mennonite Preacher at Kriesheim Germany between Manheim and Worms, in the Palatinate (Pfalz). His grandsons Johan (Johannes), Hupert, and Yelles (Julius) immigrated on the ship Friendship from Rotterdam on 16 Oct 1727. They stayed in Skippack, Montgomery County, PA for a short time. John then moved to Lancaster County, PA and settle near Columbia, Hempfield Township. From A genealogical History of the Cassel Family in America by Daniel Kolb Cassel, 1896
• Pg. 336 says, "Yelles or Julius Cassel, a Palatinate, b. before 1618, near Kriegsheim, Pfalz or Rheinhessen, Bav., d. at an advanced age after 1681 - - -." Pg. 337 lists three children born in Kriegsheim: Johannes, Hupert and Yelles.

Yelles "Julius" Kassel ca1590-1681, Contributed By D Doug.

His first name is sometimes listed as: Yillisz; Yillis; Julius His Surname is sometimes listed as: Castle; Cassel;l Cassle; Cassel

Yelles "Julius" Cassel was born in 1590 in France. Yelles was supposedly a French Hugenot who fled under persecution to Kreisheim, Germany sometime before 1618. He died in 1681 at the age of 91 in Germany. Yelles and family lived in hiding most of their lives moving from town to town. But Yelles's main residence was Kreisheim, about six miles from Worms. Yelles was a Mennonite minister, a poet of some note, and a farmer.
Yelles and family lived in hiding most of their lives, moving from town to town, but Yele's main residence was Kriesham and Worm, Germany, which are about six miles apart. Yelles was a Mennonite Minister, a poet of note, a friend of Martin Luther [1], and a farmer. William Penn, [2], who was later to be known as the founder of Penn's Woods, or what is known today as the State of Pennsylvania, came to speak in 1681 at a meeting in the city of Kassel at Frankfort when he was 37 years old. He then went to Kriesham for a meeting. The meeting was held in secret because that type of religious preaching was forbidden by the authorities. Yelles and members of his family traveled from Worm, Germany, by wagon, to attend the meeting (about 258 km). Mr. Penn spoke of the need for religious freedom. Yelles and other Kasels present, members of the newly emerging Mennonite Church were so impressed with Penn's ideas, that they invited him to their home. Penn told them of the free land that was available in the new world. Two sons of Yelles were the first Cassels to come to America under the terms of a promise to William Penn. They were Johannes and Arnold. They came on the ship Jefferies and it took seven months to make the voyage

Yelles Kasel, A Man of Faith and Courage All rights reserved. Copyright 2009, Brenda Keck Reed
"YELLES KASEL (c1590-c1681) also known as YILLISZ (Julius or Yillis) KASSEL served as a Mennonite minister and leader within his community at Kresheim, Palitinate, Pfalz, Germany. He was a poet of note and a farmer. Yelles was born c1590 possibly in Holland or Germany. We do not know the names of his parents but they may have come from Holland. Some researchers place his birth as c1610, others at c1590. He lived his life as a man of tremendous, abiding faith.

"On or about 29 November 1618 YELLES witnessed a magnificent comet, one of three appearing in 1618, that qualifies beyond any doubt as one of the most spectacular in history described as "A Splendid Comet, with a tail 104 degrees long and of a reddish hue according to Longmantus and said to have been visible in the daytime. John Bainbridge a Doctor of Physicke saw the comet circling Arcturus on 27 November 1618. King James I regarded the comet as a memorable event and wrote a poem to commemorate the occasion. The three comets were considered to be a bad omen as during that year a terrible war that would go on for thirty years broke out among the European powers, and they also aroused the interest of the scientific world. In Frankfurt, gold ducats and silver pattern ducats with a comet motif were issued with the date of 19 November 1618. The comet of 1618 was visible to the naked eye from 6 - 25 September, but was first discovered on August 25th 1618 using a lunette (spyglass). The comet was visible into January 1619. YILLISZ KASSEL, whose family would carry his rough sketches of the three comets to the forests of a transatlantic colony, was hardly jumping to conclusions. In the year 1618 he recalled somberly, 'I also saw the great comet star.' 1618!

"Circa 1632 Yelles married a woman we know only as Mary and by her had five known children born between c1632 and 1650: HEINRICH (a Mennonite minister, possibly a bishop, settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania); JOHANNES, a weaver who converted to Quaker and settled at Germantown in 1681; YELLES, a Mennonite minister who remained in Kreisheim his whole life; ARNOLD, a Mennonite minister who settled in Germantown; and ABRAHAM who remained in Kreisheim. Due to religious persecution for their Mennonite beliefs, Yelles and his family lived in hiding, moving from town to town, though YELLES's main residence was Kriesheim and Worm, in the Palatinate. Yelles was a man of abiding faith who withstood tremendous hardships and came through his struggle with tremendous grace. His descendants variously spell their surname as Cassell, Cassel, Kasel, Kassel, and Castle and can be found living all across America. Yelles died in Kreishem around 1681. "Kresheim came to be called Kriegsheim in 1794, and today is Monsheim Kriegsheim located seven miles west of the City of Worms on the west bank of the Rhine River in the heart of the German Lower (Rhenish) Palitinate in between the cities of Ludwigshafen and Mainz. Worms was established by the Celts who called it Borbetomagus, and is one of the major sites where the events of the ancient German Nibelungenlied took place, and where a yearly festival is held in front of the Dom, the Cathedral of Worms, in an attempt to recapture the atmosphere of the pre-Christian period.

"1618 was the beginning of a sustained catastrophe called the 'Thirty Years' War. The common people of the Palatinate who endured it, as had YILLISZ KASSEL and his family, recalled this interminable 'great misery in Germany' with the bleakest of feelings. And when, in 1648, it had ended in exhaustion in the Peace of Westphalia, with hardly a stone on top of another, wolves roaming empty lanes, once-lush fields scrub-forested, and, in places, a tenth of the population left, the old Catholic German Empire had become a shell. Sixty-one cities and some 300 petty princes paid lip service to it, the map of their holdings a splotchy puzzle. The largest piece in the Rhineland was the 'electoral' Palatinate (Kurpfalz) [3], straddling the north-flowing Rhine, pocked by free cities like Worms and Speyer, and crazy-patched with dozens of other little duchies and earldoms. The elector was headquartered in Heidelberg, just east of the Rhine, where the huge castle looked down over the Neckar. "YILLISZ KASSEL's hamlet of Kriesheim was in Palatine holdings, and thus under the administration of the elector (Kurfürst) himself, but at one edge it touched the little Leiningen-Dagsburg-Falkenburg earldom. However small, each such hereditary realm had its ruined castle and wasted fields. Villages, or even single farmsteads, called 'hofs,' might be divided among two or three baronies or church properties, each with its peculiar set of taxes, tithes, and excises. Small farmers might own modest plots, but their feudal landlords still lived by inherited, multiple, and endless revenues.

"William Penn, who was later to be know as the founder of Penn's Woods, or what is known today as the State of Pennsylvania, came to speak, in 1681, at a meeting in the city of Kassel at Frankfort, and then went to Kriesheim for a meeting held in secret because that type of religious preaching was forbidden by the authorities. YELLES and members of his family traveled from Worm, Germany, by wagon, to attend the meeting. Mr. Penn spoke of the need for religious freedom. YELLES and other Kasels present, members of the newly emerging Mennonite Church were so impressed with Penn's ideas, that they invited him to their home. Penn told them of the free land that was available in the new world. Two sons of Yelles were the first Cassels to come to America under the terms of a promise to William Penn. they were JOHANNES and ARNOLD CASSELL. They came on the ship Jefferies and it took seven months to make the voyage. Later HEINRICH CASSELL, a Mennonite minister and writer critical of his Quaker brother Johannes, would immigrate to Germantown. Shortly after HEINRICH CASSELL arrived in Germantown, the brothers learned that they were heirs to an enormous legacy and a title through the death of a relative, amounting to nearly one million dollars. It was necessary for them to return to Germany to claim the legacy. HEIRICH took the matter before the Mennonite Church Council who decided unanimously that the Cassells should not return to Germany to receive the money as it would "have a tendency to make them proud." Thus JOHANNES and his family were denied their share of the family fortune. There surely was an unspeakable rift between the brothers that time probably did not heal. Johannes lived out his life as a Quaker in Germantown.
"From Kolb's "History of the Cassel Family" we learn the following: William Penn met with many German groups during his three trips to Germany. In 1681 he went to Kassell, Frankfurt, Worms, and then to Kreisheim, arriving there on August 23rd 1681. Penn preached with Count Karl Ludwig's permission. Among the crow were three Kasel brothers to include HEINRICH KASSEL, YELLES KASSEL, and JOHANNES KASSEL, who lived in the region. Heinrich a Mennoite minister, possibly a bishop, lived in Gerolsheim and occasionally used the name Heinrich Kassel von Gerolsheim (Gorlisheim). Yelles was also a Mennonite ministers. Johannes was a weaver. The three brothers were enthused by Penn and invited him immediately to their homes. Penn accepted the invitation to visit HEINRICH in nearby Gerolsheim. (Heinrich was a minister in Lambartsheim in 1681, moving to Gerolsheim in 1690, and to Kreisheim in the early 1700s). Heinrich was a man of "considerable note" in Germany and was briefly tempted from his Mennonites to the Quakers because of Penn, as they were similar in many respects. Heinrich soon moved back to the Mennonites and avidly attacked other Mennonites who remained Quakers, especially his brother JOHANNES KASSEL. He wrote some "broadsides" as they were then called attacking JOHANNES. Some of the broadsides are owned by A. H. CASSELL of Harleysville, Pennsylvania.
"YELLES' son, JOHANNES CASSEL, now a Quaker, sailed to America on the ship Jeffries, leaving Europe on March 20th 1686 and arriving at Philadelphia on November 20th 1686, a seven month voyage. JOHANNES was age forty-seven and was accompanied by his wife, MARY, and children -- PETER, MARY, ARNOLD, SARAH, and ELIZABETH. Some old papers list PETER as HANS PETER but it seems more likely that his Christian name was actually JOHANNES (HANS) PETER KASSEL. His son, Arnold, was elected "Rekorder" of Germantown in 1691. Johannes signed the original application of the town of Germantown necessary to incorporate a new village. His brother, HEINRICH, arrived later and sent his children to the first school in Germantown established in 1702.
"The KASELs brought over with them many of the YELLIS' manuscripts, some of which are still preserved. The most interesting is a poem in Germany rhyme that describes the condition of the country, and throws the strongest light upon the people and the causes of emigration. The writer says that it was copied with much pain and suffering on November 28th 1665. The document belongs to his descendant Abraham H. Cassell and reads as follows:

""O Lord! To thee the thoughts of all hearts are known. Into thy hands I commend my body and soul. When Thou lookest upon me with Thy mercy all things are well with me. Thou has stricken me with severe illness, which is a rod for my correction. Give me patience and resignation. Lay not on me more than I can bear. O Lord God! Protect me in this time of war and danger, That evil men may not do with me as they wish. Take me to a place where I may be concealed from them, free from such trials and cares. My wife and children, too, that they may not have shame upon at their hands. Let all my dear friends find mercy from Thee. (After a successful flight to Worms he continued) O Dear God and Lord! to Thee be all thanks and honor and praise for Thy mercy and pity, which Thou hast shown to me in this time. Thou hast protected me from evil men, as from my heart I prayed Thee. Thou hast let me in the right way, so that I came to a place where I was concealed from sorrows and such cares. Thou hast kept the way cleared till I reached the city, while other people about me were much robbed and plundered. I have found a place among people who have shown me much love and kindness. Gather us into heaven of which I am unworthy, but still I have a faith that God will not drive me into the Devil's kingdom with such a host as which now in this land murder and robbery destroys many people in many places, and never once think how it may stand before God. Well it is know what misery, suffering, and danger are about in this land, with robbing, plundering, murdering and burning. Many a man is brought into pain and need and abused even unto death. Many a beautiful home is destroyed. The clothes are torn from the backs of many people. Cattle and herds are taken away. Much sorrow and complaint have been heard. The beehives are broken down; the wine, spilled." 26 November 1665, Yelles Kasel":From .John L. Ruth's MAINTAINING THE RIGHT FELLOWSHIP, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, No. 26, a narrative account of life in the oldest Mennonite Community in North America, Herald Press, Scottdale, PA 15683 and Kitchener, Ontario 1984, we learn the following about the difficulties YELLES KASSEL as to what he and others like him endured:

""Some twenty communities in the general area of Kriegsheim, just west of the sprawling and multi-channeled Rhine, had in a recent census been designated as containing Mennonite inhabitants. YILLISZ KASSEL's name had been ninth on a list of such people as Jan Clemens of neighboring Niederflörsheim, Peter Bechtel of Gundersheim, Peter Schumacher of Osthofen, Heinrich Fritt of Aspisheim, Heinrich Kolb and Thomas Rohr of Wolfsheim, Jan Bliem of Spiesheim, Johannes Herrstein of Obersülzen, Heinrich Jansen of Rodenbach, and Heinrich Kassel of Gerolsheim. These families, unlike the Mennonites of Holland, were not really citizens of their 'country,' the Palatinate (in German called the Pfalz). As 'Manisten' (Mennonites) they were rather 'tolerated' people who paid, as did the local Jews, special taxes for the privilege of living and working among the citizens. They did not fit any of the three religious categories - Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed - that were recognized under the treaties made in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years' War. Nor were they appreciated by the clergy of the three official churches. These pastors felt that they had enough of a struggle to administer their decimated parishes without the irritating presence of people who looked after their own spiritual concerns, did not 'go to church' or the official statement, 'let their children run about unbaptized,' sometimes held 'their services boldly in the forest,' and even had the audacity to 'solemnize marriages' on their own. What would happen to society in general if such social variety were tolerated?"

""Once the war was ended, however, their notorious diligence attracted the favor of the new elector, the Protestant Karl Ludwig (1648-80), who needed nothing more urgently than settlers to restore his ravaged land. His mild immigration policies drew not only Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed, but Mennonites and even a small Bruderhof of Hutterites from far-off Moravia as well. And so the surviving Palatine Anabaptist communities shortly became the base for new settlements of harassed fellow-believers from both north (the 'Siebengebirge' area) and south (Switzerland and Alsace). Whereas Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed pastors jealously resented their coming, the government - or more accurately the elector himself - from economic motives - was more tolerant. Already in 1652 the church office in Niederflörsheim, the next village north of Kriegsheim, was complaining that foreign 'Anabaptists,' adherents of a 'dangerous, obstinate sect,' had slipped into their community. In the same years, east of the Rhine in the Kraichgau district south of Heidelberg, secret forest meetings of newly arrived Swiss Anabaptists were occurring. Thus occurred that mixing of Dutch-speaking Rhenish Mennonites with German-speaking Palatine and Swiss Anabaptists that in another half century would establish strong new communities between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers in North America.

""Shortly after the Peace of 1648, as a little room was being opened for Anabaptists in the wasted Palatinate, especially hard times descended upon Mennonites a hundred miles north in the 'Lower Rhine' area, above and below Krefeld 'in the land of the Muers,' in the duchies of Jülich and Cleves and in the Siebengebirge region of present-day Bonn. Here some five or six hundred Mennonites, toughened by a century of persecution, had first won a toehold in the cottage weaving industry of the region, and then threatened to dominate it. Since they tended to take such good care of each other, and had what seemed to others to be an uncanny network for letting each other know of available land or economic opportunities, they were sometimes resented. Like Jews, they were highly motivated, and knew their living lay not in their social status but in their work. They were by heritage religiously separate and self-sufficient. The town of Krefeld itself had a long-standing reputation for extraordinary tolerance, and so Mennonite weavers, bleachers, and dyers tended to resettle there, bringing the town eventual wealth, by their productivity, that far surpassed that of the neighboring towns that had banished them. In this region lived the parents of the people who would be founders of 'Germantown.'

"Ruth goes on to discuss the Mennonites' mistreatment and expulsion from their towns, which led some to Krefeld, but since "Not everyone could move to the town of Krefeld ... it was the Palatinate, where 'High German' rather than 'Low Dutch' was spoken and where officials admitted there was 'more than too much open space,' that became for some of these harassed people the best option. We may observe Arnold Schomecker's widow and her children selling the family 'house and hof' at Niederdollendorf, 'for the sake of their faith.' Three of the six children are still minors. Loading their 'movables' on a boat, they sail upstream, toward Mainz, from which they will eventually reach and settle in Kriegsheim, the Palatine home of YILLISZ KASSEL. Perhaps, for all we know, the KASSELs themselves are part of this migration.

""On October 23, 1661, to their great dismay, the electoral regime decreed a major fine of 100 Reichstaler, each person having been caught at the meeting to be assessed proportionately to his means. Again they protested in vain. They were told that they might now again meet in peace, but that on every such occasion there was to be a fine strictly reckoned for each person present, young or old. A religious head tax, in other words. The same arrangement was imposed on the other side of the Rhine at Wolfsheim, home of the Heinrich Kolb family northwest of YILLISZ KASSEL's Kriegsheim (Kriesheim). There too an angry church inspector reported meetings of over 200 persons among the Anabaptists, whose fellowship had lately been augmented by new Swiss immigrants. Further, he claimed, the Anabaptists were trying to mislead members of the Reformed Church. The consternation which now spread among the Palatine Mennonites was complicated at Kriegsheim (Kriesheim) by a recent division in the congregation. Some six years earlier, very soon after the Dutch-speaking immigrants from the Lower Rhine had arrived, an itinerating English Quaker minister named William Ames had been in the community, preaching a Christianity as stringent as that of the Mennonites, but much more outspoken, and with another kind of orientation to governmental authority. The Quakers preached against the payment of such taxes as served for military exemptions, or which purchased the right to hold public worship. No monetary price, they insisted, could be set on such things. Honor should be given to God, not human beings; thus, hats should not be taken off in deference to officials or anyone else. Ames won not only a hearing but also a number of converts from the Kriegsheim (Kreisheim) community, including members of the Hendricks, Schomecker (now Schumacher), and eventually the KASSEL families. Other Quaker missionaries traveled about the Continent preaching fearlessly, often with jail-stays as their reward, and winning small groups of converts, though only in Mennonite communities . . . . At any rate, there were now two sectarian congregations for the Kriegsheim (Kreisheim) officials to worry about. The Quakers made more difficulty by their refusal of some of the traditional taxes the Mennonites had been willing to pay. When the local Reformed clergy understood that these people would now decline to pay the 'tithes' which helped pay salaries in the state church, the Quakers were regarded as 'the offensiveist, the irregularist, and perturbatiousest people that are of any sect. The Mennonites, on the other hand, while they complained over the raising of their taxes for freedom from guard duty, mentioned only their poverty - they said they barely had bread - and the economically draining task of restoring unproductive fields. . . . . Holding out stoutly against the taxes, the Kriegsheim Quakers finally saw seven of their men jailed, with heavy confiscations made on their property. Eight cows were taken. Cabbage and turnips and sheep and swine were likewise forcibly taken and sold to satisfy the guard-duty and meeting taxes in the spring of 1664.

""All this unhealthy commotion deeply disturbed the mayor of Kriegsheim. By refusing the taxes, some of which, he claimed, were ancient and never previously questioned by the Mennonites, and not even letting crops lie in the field where they could be quietly picked up, the Quakers have caused, he complained, 'such confusion … among the common people that nobody wants to obey anyone else any more, so that an uprising is to be feared in the whole community, and the best inhabitants will leave the village of Kriegsheim and settle elsewhere. At the same time the Mennonites filed a complaint of another kind of trouble - the attempts of certain people in the community to reclaim from Mennonite ownership, paying only the original price, the properties these recent immigrants had rebuilt. The Mennonites appealed directly to the elector that this practice of Auslösungsrecht should be disallowed. If this is not done, they inform their prince, 'very many people who have already pretty much made up their minds to move from Holland to the Electoral Palatinate will be frightened off an stay back.' The Mennonite-toleration issue was now reaching a crisis. English Quaker missionaries returned periodically to strengthen their precious flock at Kriegsheim, once with the ostensible reason of helping their friends with the wine harvest. Missionary Ames was able to visit the elector, where he told of the difficulties of the Kriegsheim Friends. Around the same time a written appeal came from the Mennonites of the Alzey district, which included Kriegsheim. This congregation too hoped for a better hearing from their prince than from local religious officials. The poll tax or fine for holding meetings, they claimed, was higher than they had the resources to pay. 'We had greatly rejoiced, certainly, when we heard that we might live in the dear fatherland … to enjoy freedom and the exercise [of our religion] and your Electoral most serene Highness's most gracious protection, and in response to this not only brought our possessions and livelihood, but applied and spent our bodily strength, in order to bring into a handsome up-building and improvement the wastage of houses and property, and we also caused many of our relatives in the faith to come into the land, so that it might be re-inhabited.' But now, if no relief from the recently imposed fines is to be had, 'dire need will force us to leave the dear fatherland and bring us into misery.' There is no danger, these Mennonites imply, of any civil disobedience on their part, outside of these impossible taxes. They are 'willing,' in fact, 'to render the most devoted obedience with body and property, so far as we can.'" ""The elector, who was loath to lose the economic benefit of his Mennonite farmers, finally reacted with a special 'Concession,' issued on August 4, 1664. Acknowledging the Mennonite peculiarity of abstaining from defense and war activities, he reminds his officials that the Palatinate nevertheless has the highest need for subjects who can 'rebuild and bring into proper condition' the emptied countryside. Therefore, after an exact registry of Mennonites had been drawn up, they may be allowed to meet in their villages for worship but in groups representing no more than twenty families, and without allowing any members of the official churches to attend. Any Mennonite who fails to be registered will be severely fined, and other inhabitants are to give such a person no lodging. In return for this declared 'freedom,' each Mennonite household will be charged six guilders a year, under the title, 'Mennonite Recognition Money. But hardly had the Mennonite Registry been recorded, listing some ninety families west and north of Worms, when another misery descended on the struggling local villages. Troops of marauding soldiers, involved in one of the recurrent border battles the elector was too weak to control, once again threatened the safety and prosperity of the area." "After many months of suspense, the chaos subsided: "The countryside was still in an appalling condition."

"In 1667 the greatest single influx of Mennonite refugees into the Palatinate was still three or four years in the future. This was to result from the climactic efforts of the Reformed pastors of the Swiss Canton of Bern, several hundred miles south of the Palatinate, to convert or rid themselves, once and for all, of the Anabaptists in their parishes. Those who would not take an oath of allegiance to the Canton of Bern were given two weeks to leave. By November 2, 1671, 200 of them were reported as arriving, destitute, in the Mennonite communities of the Palatinate, with bundles on their backs and children in their arms. By the beginning of 1672 no less than 787 of such Bernese refugees were reported as having streamed north into the Palatine Mennonite communities, 359 west of the Rhine, and 428 on the east. The Dutch Mennonite churches, touched to the heart, send substantial gifts of 15,446 guilders back to the Palatinate during that 'Anxious Year' of 1672.

""After a meeting with the Quakers of tiny Kriegsheim that was attended by 'a coachful' of curious dignitaries from nearby Worms, William Penn's party went on to Mannheim in hopes of another Quaker interview with Elector Karl Ludwig. He commended the 'Great Prince' for his 'indulgence' to religious dissenters, and asked 'what encouragement a colony of virtuous and industrious families might hope the receive' to 'transplant themselves into' the Palatinate. It was, of course, far from Penn's imagination that he himself should, in another five years, be owner of a territory larger than the Palatinate. He called the elector's attention to the little flock of 'Friends at Kriegsheim,' who just the day before had been forbidden by local officials to hold meetings. This, Penn wrote, contradicted the indulgence the elector himself had allowed. "Making a quick trip by Rhine boat and on foot, Penn's little party arrived the next morning, a Sunday, back in Kriegsheim, where a good many of the villagers were present for a Quaker meeting." "But as to Penn here issuing them an invitation to follow him to the New World, as historians have liked to suggest, there could have been small likelihood. As we have seen, Penn was still considering the Palatinate empty enough to be itself a goal for migrants.
""The Kriegsheim meeting, Penn felt, was a 'good' one, with 'the Lord's power sweetly opened to those present.' Behind the barn in which they met stood the local constable, suspiciously listening at the door. He heard nothing, he later reported to the local clergymen, 'but what was good.' In the evening the seven-family Quaker congregation met again by themselves, when their visitors were greatly impressed by the 'lovely, sweet, and true sense among' them. 'They were greatly comforted in us,' wrote Penn of those Hendrickses, KASSELS, and Schumachers. 'Poor hearts! A little handful surrounded with great and mighty countries of darkness." The next day, after still another meeting, Penn's party walked back to Worms with several Kriegsheimers. He had begun an acquaintance which, in less than a decade, would blossom in an as yet undreamed of American village of 'Germans,' where he and George Keith, a Scottish Quaker who had come along on the tour, would meet again some of the people to whom he had preached here in Kriegsheim near the Rhine." ""This missionary trip may have been the occasion, at Kriegsheim, when JOHANNES KASSEL, apparently son of YILLISZ, became a Quaker. Among his Kassel relatives this move caused unhappiness. HINRICH KASSEL, minister or perhaps bishop at nearby Gerolsheim, issued a 'writing' about this time, entitled An Exposé of the Quakers or Tremblers, in which he expressed his deep grief that some of his Mennonite blood-relatives had become Quakers, and now stood in opposition to him and his family. A quick retort by a Quaker, The Exposer Exposed, appeared in Amsterdam in 1678. "Just at this time, another small Quaker congregation was taking shape some 200 miles down the Rhine from the Palatinate, in the old linen-weaving town of Krefeld."

""Pastorius was looking for a corps of workers to accompany him on the voyage, and help open the new settlement in preparation for the arrival of the Frankfurt Pietist owners themselves. One place he went as he got ready was a village we know - Kriegsheim, west of Worms down along the Rhine. Pastorius conferred with Quakers (and ex-Mennonites) Peter Schumacher, Gerhard Hendricks, and ARNOLD KASSEL, all of whom would, in a few years, follow him to America.

""The fertile Rhineland, by virtue of its central location and wealth of food, had become the cockpit of brawling Christian nationalities - Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed - trying to maintain or redefine Europe politically and religiously. It was a war to be remembered for its unspeakable bitterness, by the people whose farmland it tormented. No atrocity too gross had been left uninvented, no known store of food unrifled, no castle or farmstead or village within reach unwrecked."

"Thus lived YELLIS KASEL."

History

Yelles CASSEL was born in 1590 in Germany. He died in 1681 in Germany. Yelles and family lived in hiding most of their lives moving from town to town. But Yelles's main residence was Kriesheim and Worms Germany which are about six miles apart. Yelles was a Mennonite minister, a poet of some note, and a farmer. Yelles may have been born in France as a French Hugenot and fled to Germany under persecution.

William Penn, who was latter to be known as the founder of Penn's woods, or Pennsylvania, came to speak in 1681 at a meeting in the city of Kassel at Frankford when he was only 37 years old. He then went to Kresheim for a meeting. That preaching was forbidden by the authorities so it had to be held in secret. Yelles Kassel (Cassel) and members of his family traveled from Worm, Germany, by wagon to attend the meeting. Penn spoke of the need for religious freedom. Yelles and other Kassels present, members of the newly emerging Mennonite church, were so impressed with Penn's ideas, that they invited Penn to their home. Penn told them about free land that was available in the new world. Two sons of Yelles Kassel (Julius Cassel , 1590-1681) were the first Cassels to come to America under the terms of a promise by William Penn. They were Johannes (John) Cassel (1639-1691), with his wife, Mary, and Arnold Cassel (1642-1687). They came on the ship Jeffries and it took seven months to make the journey. Shortly after Johannes arrived in Germantown, he learned that a large legacy was left his family, through the death of a relative, amounting to nearly one million dollars. It was necessary for them to return to Germany to claim the legacy. A church council was called to discuss the matter. It was decided unanimously to not receive the money as it would have a tendency to make them proud. Johannes signed the original charter of Germantown, Pennsylvania where he lived the rest of his life.

Children were: Julius CASSEL, Elizabeth CASSEL, Johannas CASSEL, Arnold CASSEL, Heinrich CASSEL

Sources

• Mennonite Preacher,Poet. Wrote account of a comet /comets in 1618.
• Reference: MyHeritage Genealogy - SmartCopy: Dec 14 2018, 18:33:39 UTC
• A genealogical history of the Kolb, Kulp or Culp family, and its branches in America, with biographical sketches of their descendants from the earliest available records , by Cassel, Daniel Kolb, page 150 under Henrich Kolb husband of his daughter Elizabeth. found on internet archives at https://archive.org/stream/agenealogicalhis00cass#page/150/mode/2up
• Cassel, Daniel Kolb. A Genealogical History of the Cassel Family in America: being the Descendants of Julius Kassel or Yelles Cassel, of Kriesheim, Baden, Germany. Norristown, Pa.: Morgan R. Wills, 1896. Pages 255-257.
• Find a Grave, database and images (accessed 23 April 2020), memorial page for Yelles Kassel (1679–1750), Find A Grave: Memorial #8801928, citing Lower Skippack Mennonite Cemetery, Skippack, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, USA ; Maintained by Brad Atherton (contributor 46617333).
• A genealogical history of the Cassel family in America : being the descendants of Julius Kassel or Yelles Cassel, of Kriesheim, Baden, Germany : containing biographical sketches of prominent descendants, with illustrations

by Cassel, Daniel Kolb, b. 1820

• Vol.8, Chapter IV. Spread of the Reformation in Switzerland - https://worthychristianbooks.com/history-of-the-christian-church/vo...