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Werner Spaenhauer III — Description

Skipping across the pond, Jacobus Wernhardt “Werner” Spaenhauer was born on July 16, 1719 in the village of Muttenz, located just east of the Swiss city of Basel. He was the second son of Werner Sr., a cooper by trade, and Elsbeth Spittler. The specifics of his growing years are a little hazy. His older brother Heinrich records in his memoirs that they were, “brought up by my parents, in a Christian way, according to the best of their knowledge, notwithstanding that they were, for that sake derided by other indifferent People, and deemed as Fools.” That is… such a bizarre sentence that I'm really not sure what to make of it. I think the Assassin's Creed fan in me wants to extrapolate some deeper conspiracy out of that vagueness. I mean shit, the tone is identical to Haytham's first chapters in AC Forsaken, and what's about to happen next certainly doesn't divert suspicion. It could however just refer to the fact that they were Protestants in a predominantly Catholic community, which to be fair could be construed as a secret society narrative in its own right from a certain point of view.
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Whatever the Spaenhauers did to piss off their neighbors, it came to a head in 1732 when, and I swear I'm not making this up, Werner Sr. was straight up poisoned by a quote “wicked man”. While he recovered from the most immediate effects, the toxin left him disabled in mind and body, withering him into a husk of his former self until his heart stopped beating in March 1737. Clearly, the family wasn't wanted in Muttenz anymore, so Elsbeth took the initiative to get them aboard a ship that'd take them all very far away from this Papish place. On May 5, 1740, the Spaenhauers packed their stuff onto a barge headed up the Rhine River to Rotterdam. They arrived in the Netherlands after a four week voyage, and on June 2 booked passage across the Atlantic aboard Captain William Vettery's vessel, the Friendship. Yes really.
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Despite their transport's rather approachable name, the seven week journey to the New World was absolutely brutal. Setting sail in July, the ship was accosted by a storm so violent that everyone aboard was certain they were gonna die. Heinrich recalls in his memoirs watching the crew themselves shrug, abandon their stations, get absolutely piss drunk, and head below decks to accept their fate like seasoned badasses. Well, okay, I think that's badass, but Heinrich obviously wasn't pleased with the situation. He did that thing we'd all do in a life-ending disaster, grab God by the balls and insist you'll go to church more often if that mad son of a bitch'll let you live. God, always one for a good stroke, abided. The Spaenhauers were able to make landfall on North American soil in August, docking in the colonial city of Philadelphia, where on September 23 they took an oath of allegiance to the British Empire as immigrants ready to start their new life under the crown. According to the charter, this is where the family was first given the Anglicanized version of their name as “Spainehower”, but as this was before standardized spelling, this name has long since mutated into minor variations such as “Spainhour”, “Spoonhower”, “Spainhoward”, and of course my own “Spainhower”, which is obviously the most superior out of all of them.
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Initially settling in Lancaster County, the Spaenhauers (the first couple generations continued to use the old spelling even after the Anglicanization) moved to Yorktown in 1749. Here we finally get back to Werner specifically. That same year, he married a Moravian woman named Verona Wister, who would give birth to his first son, Johann Jacob, on November 7, 1750. This kid would be the only child she'd give him, as just six months later, on May 2, 1751, Verona passed away unexpectedly. Left in no state to care for his infant son himself, Werner handed his baby over to Heinrich to be raised while he found the kid a stepmother. Evidently, it didn't take Werner that long to replace his dead wife. Just one year later, Werner married fellow Friendship passenger Elisabeth Lohner, and that was good enough for him to go collect his kid before it could even develop the concept of daddy issues. Werner and Elisabeth picked up where the previous marriage left off, adding Michael to the family in 1753, Mary Eve in 1755, and twins Johann Heinrich and Anna Elizabetha in 1762.
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However, it seems the Spaenhauers were not welcome wherever they found themselves. Heinrich, who'd continued onwards to settle in Virginia, was chased out of his home by Native Americans in 1755. That at least I don't need any elaboration on. Like sorry Uncle Henry, but you were on their land, you kinda asked for that one. Following the raid, Heinrich moved his family further south to settle on the Little Yadkin River just outside of King, North Carolina. The circumstances behind Werner's decision to follow him in 1763 are a little less clear, but it may be as simple as wanting to be close to family since clearly they were all they had. I can confirm from personal experience that that's going to be a running theme in this family for the next 300 years. It's on this quaint little farm that Werner would spend the rest of his days. His property was too far away from the Bethania Congregation to attend regular church services, so he's recorded as a “communicant” member whatever that means, arranging to have services held at his homestead itself for several years. He and Elisabeth would produce two final mouths to feed on this settlement, John in 1765 and Peter in 1769.
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Raising a baby in your 50s was the smallest of his problems, though. A musket ball shot at Lexington in 1775 was heard all the way down south, announcing the beginning of the British colonies’ war effort to break away from the crown. What Werner's motives specifically were have not been unrecorded so far as I can find, but he took an oath of allegiance to the fledgling United States on June 6, 1778, and ran supplies to the Revolution, 225 lbs of beef specifically. This earned him the ire of his fellow Moravians, who'd been walking a razor thin line of neutrality between the Loyalists and Patriots and didn't appreciate the Spaenhauers pushing things like this. Hell, maybe that's why they got exiled from Switzerland in the first place, come to think of it. History (for once) was on the Spaenhauers’ side, however. The Treaty of Paris recognized the United States as its own independent nation in 1783, and Werner was delivered from his “blameless life” by a prolonged illness on June 6, 1787. Lucky him he died just before we immediately started fucking up the country he had devoted himself to creating. What a mercy.
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Design notes, the aesthetic I was going for with this one was “sequence 1 Assassin's Creed protagonist”. Look at this suave motherfucker, he reeks of young Ezio or Arno. I don't feel like I overdesigned him as much as the last sheet. I do actually think it's plausible he could've gotten this dolled up in real life. If his parents were well off enough to send their children off to learn how to read and write French, they were probably well off enough to afford some snazzy digs. Plus I… had to try really hard to take inspiration from traditional Swiss costume without putting him in lederhosen XD Believe me, the temptation was real. Not much else to say about this piece. My weekend has been nothing short of hell, so imma go lay down.