Albrecht Coffee Mill

 

        Recently (circa 2009) the Lititz Moravian Archives and Museum Committee received an inquiry from Dick Duez, an antique dealer from Bridgeport, WV, who has a special interest in early American coffee grinders. He wrote that there was a rumor of an 18^th-century grinder in a Lititz museum, and he wondered if it might be in the Moravian Museum? Dale Shelley, answering for the Committee, responded, “Yes, we have a coffee grinder on display that was brought to the Museum from the Church’s coffee kitchen in the 1990s. It is signed and dated: A. Albrecht, 1772.”

This was all Duez, a member of the Grinders Finders Club, needed to hear. Immediately he requested pictures and any information we had on the mill’s provenance. If possible, he wanted pictures showing the signature and date to print in the next Grinder Finder, a newsletter of the Association of Coffee Mill Enthusiasts. Here is what appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Grinder Finder, part of an article by Dick Duez and Don Drozdenko.

Pennsylvania Mills Pre-1800

 

From those early days to the present, there have been lots of box mills made to help quench America’s desire for brewed coffee. Since those early days in the United States seem to start in the 1820s, the design of the box mill has basically not changed. Pre-Civil War hand-made mills were over-built compared to the next generation that was mass-produced. Thus spelled the demise of those individuals who could not keep up with the demand and be cost effective for what had been a home cottage industry, which lasted around 40 years.

For many years of putting a sizable collection together, lingering questions were always out there. Where are the early mills, the prototypes? When did they start showing up here in the United States? Sure, there have been a few mills on occasion that appeared very early but never one dated before the 1820s.

We will attempt to show in this article a few mills that are familiar to most collectors and that have always been labeled 19th-century. Also, for several years a rumor persisted that a mill dating back to the 18th-century existed in a Lititz Museum in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. That museum turned out to be a very prestigious one, belonging to the Moravian Church that was organized in 1749. When contacted, museum authority Dale Shelley was very helpful in our request for information. That ‘rumored’ coffee mill turned out to be not only 18th-century, but dated 50 years earlier (1772) than the earliest known mills of the Pritz brothers, Daniel Small and Timothy Vogler of the 1830s. The mill maker, Andreas Albrecht (1718-1802), was a gunsmith and of German descent. He learned his trade while in the German army and in 1750 migrated to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and later to Lititz in 1771.

 

 

Much of Albrecht’s story is told in his own words, probably his Lebenslauf⁽¹⁾, published in the Biographical Entries for Lancaster County Gunsmiths. It’s hard to believe that a Moravian was such an important part of the Pennsylvania long-rifle story! Trained in Germany, he was the master gunsmith in Nazareth in the 1750s. Today there remain six known Albrecht rifles, and the Moravian Historical Society in Nazareth is home to one of them.

Albrecht came into contact with the Brethren during his service as gunstock maker in the German regiment garrisoned in Halle, Saxony, where Count Zinzendorf was educated. In 1743 he met and heard Zinzendorf preach and thought that he would one day join the Brethren. He continued to serve his regiment as gunsmith through the Silesian Wars. In 1748, he was dismissed from the regiment and that very next day he was on the road to the Moravian community of Herrnhaag. There he was quickly accepted into full communion; and in 1750, he left with 80 Brethren for America. He arrived in Bethlehem on June 27, 1750.

Shortly after his arrival in Bethlehem, he moved to nearby Christian Spring to live, teaching music at a boys’ school in Nazareth. All the time he continued to develop his skills as a gunsmith. In Europe, only the military and noblemen were permitted to have firearms, but in America the rifle was considered just another tool on the American frontier. It was not until after the massacre at Gnadenhutten that the Brethren would think of the rifle for self-defense.

In 1766 Albrecht married Elizabeth Ort in Bethlehem, and for five years they managed the Sun Inn at Bethlehem. In 1771 the Albrechts resettled in Lititz and there he established himself again as a gunsmith. The coffee mill was one of his first projects upon arriving in Lititz. The mill was long used in the old coffee kitchen of the church to make the Lovefeast beverage. It is reported that during the American Revolution, his rifles were included in shipments from Lancaster County gunsmiths to Revolutionary troops.

Albrecht died in 1802 and was buried in God’s Acre in Lititz.

 

by Robert A. Sandercox, CSJ, Fall 2009

 

Author's Note:

⁽¹⁾A life story written by one prior to one's death. It served as a self-assessment, a summary of one's spirituality, often one's admitted weaknesses.