A Sunday in November

In November 1720, on a Sunday morning while the citizens of Ittlingen were at church, armed servants of the Gemmingen and Greck lords rode into the village and drove off the entire herd.

All 160 pigs. Gone.

The lords had decided the village owed additional fees for the use of communal forests to fatten the animals before slaughter — a traditional right the citizens had exercised without charge for generations. The village disagreed. The lords did not wait for a court to decide. They seized the pigs and drove them two hours down the road to Gemmingen.

What followed were years of litigation before the Imperial Chamber Court at Wetzlar — the highest court in the Holy Roman Empire. The case accumulated grievances far beyond the pigs: excessive fines, forced labor beyond what the old 1579 contracts allowed, the lords' appropriation of ¹⁶

On May 9, 1721, 78 citizens of Ittlingen signed a Prozeßvollmacht — a power of attorney, authorizing Ludolff to prosecute their case before the Imperial court. Among the 78 signatories was Hannß Adam Romich.

He was 32 years old. He had been in Ittlingen for a decade, perhaps less. He was established enough in civic life to sign alongside the mayor, the innkeeper, the blacksmith, and the leading citizens of the town. Of the 78 signatories, 13 affixed personal seals — the Petschaft marks of the Hofbauern, the holders of the closed farmstead estates. One of those seal impressions reads "HR" — assessed as most likely belonging to Hannß Romich.¹⁷

If that reading is correct, John Adam Romich was not merely a citizen of Ittlingen in 1721. He was a Hofbauer: a man of the sealed class, a recognized holder of the Romigshof, testifying before an Imperial court that his lord had stolen his pigs. He had a farm, a family, a civic identity, and a grievance.

He would wait eleven more years before concluding that the grievance would never be fully redressed — and that Pennsylvania might be better.