married Paul Heck, a member of the same community. By the preaching of Wesley many of these Germans, whose descendants were long afterward known as Palatines in Ireland, became converts to Methodism. The Hecks emigrated from Ireland about 1760, and settled in New York, where other Methodists from Ireland became domiciled about the same time. They had no pastor and grew careless of religious observances. In 1765 they were joined by Philip Embury, who had been a local preacher in Ireland. Soon after his arrival Mrs. Heck entered a room in which, according to some accounts, Embury was present, and found the emigrants playing cards. She seized the cards and threw them into the fire, expostulated with the players in pathetic language, and then went to Embury and charged him that he should preach to them, or God would require their blood at his hands. In consequence meetings were shortly afterward begun. (See Embury, Philip.) When the Revolutionary war began the Hecks retired to Salem, in northern New York, in order to be among loyalists, and founded the first Methodist society in that district. Paul joined the army of Burgoyne, and, while at home on a furlough at the time of the surrender at Saratoga, was arrested by patriot soldiers, but escaped at night while they slept, and made his way through the woods into Canada, where he was joined by his wife. They settled in Augusta, and with others from New York formed the earliest Methodist society in Canada. Paul died several years before his wife, toward the close of the last century. Barbara Heck is known as the “mother of American Methodism.”
HECKER, Friedrich Karl Franz, German
revolutionist, b. in Eichtersheim, Baden, 28 Sept.,
1811; d. in St. Louis, Mo., 24 March, 1881. He
went to school in Mannheim, and studied law at
Heidelberg. He began practice as an advocate at
Mannheim in 1838, entered politics, and was
elected to the Baden assembly in 1842. His expulsion
from the Prussian dominions, while upon a
visit to Berlin with Itzstein in 1845, made his name
known in all German lands. In 1846-’7 he was
the leader of the extreme left in the Baden diet.
His energy and eloquence made him popular, and
he was carried by the drift of the age toward
Republicanism, until he took ground with Struve as
a Republican and Socialist-Democrat when the
arrangements for a German parliament were under
discussion. His political plans having been
rejected by the majority of the constituent assembly,
he appealed to the masses. Appearing at the
head of columns of working-men, he unfolded the
banner of the social republic, and advanced into
the highlands of Baden from Constance. He was
beaten by the Baden soldiery at Kandern, 20 May,
1848, and retreated into Switzerland. There he
learned that the national assembly, which had met
meanwhile at Frankfort, had denounced him as a
traitor. His hopes of a revolution having been
dashed, with the prospect of a felon's death before
him if he remained, he fled to the United States in
September. The following year, at the news of the
May revolution, he returned to Germany, but
arrived after the rising had been suppressed. Hecker
recrossed the Atlantic, became a citizen of the
United States, and settled as a farmer in Belleville,
Ill. Like others of the German revolutionists, he
took part in American politics, but did not make
a new career for himself. He refused brilliant
diplomatic positions, feeling an honorable reluctance
to accept a personal gain in requital for the
services he performed for the party to which he
attached himself. The anti-slavery cause awakened
the enthusiasm of his nature, and to the end of his
life he was a powerful speaker on the Republican
side. He joined the Republican party on its formation,
and in the civil war led a regiment of volunteers
in Fremont's division of the National army.
He resigned his colonelcy in 1864, and devoted
himself thenceforth to agricultural occupations.
During the Franco-German war he uttered words
of hope and sympathy for the German cause, but,
after visiting Germany in 1873, he expressed
disappointment at the actual political condition.
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HECKER, Isaac Thomas, clergyman, b. in New York city, 18 Dec., 1819; d. there, 22 Dec., 1888. His boyhood was passed in straitened circumstances, and he was obliged to support himself by manual labor, at the same time spending all the time he could spare in study. He afterward engaged in the flour business with his two brothers, but just as it was becoming a success entered on the study of Kant, and applied himself to metaphysics and theology. He finally withdrew entirely from mercantile pursuits, and became one of the Brook Farm community. Here he remained for nine months, occupied in baking the bread that was eaten by the community. He then became dissatisfied, and left Brook Farm in company with Henry D. Thoreau. The two friends were desirous of discovering on how little human life can be sustained, and they succeeded in living on nine cents a day. Meanwhile his brothers were anxious that he should resume his place in the business, and on his coming of age he consented to do so on condition that the three brothers should possess all in common and keep no separate purse, and that he should have entire charge of the men that were employed. He then provided a library for the workmen, fitted up a hall for their amusement, and frequently gave them lectures. This continued for a year, at the end of which he resumed his studies and investigations, and was at one time attracted by the theories of Fourier, but felt that they could not be successfully applied to society. At the age of twenty-two his attention was drawn to the Roman Catholic system by lectures delivered in New York by Dr. C. Brownlow, and in the following year, while staying with Thoreau in Massachusetts, he became a convert. He soon afterward went to Germany to study for the priesthood, was ordained by Cardinal Wiseman in London in 1849, and returned to the United States in 1851, having previously entered the Redemptorist order. He conducted several missions throughout the country, but, believing that a new order was necessary which should be thoroughly American in character, spent the autumn and winter of 1857-’8 in Rome, and laid his plans before the pope, who approved. On his return to the United States he went on a preaching and a lecturing tour throughout the United States and Canada, and soon had enough money collected for his purpose. He at once bought the ground that is at present occupied by the church, residence, and schools of the Paulist
