Table Of Content

UNIVERSmy PENNSYIVANIA. UBKARIES THE German Exodus to England IN 1709. (/IDas6en*auswan&erunQ &ec jptalser). PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF tTbe ipcnn0i?l\>ania.^(5erman Society, By frank RIED DIFFENDERFFER. MEMBER OF THE I'ENNSYLVANIA-GERMAN SOCIETY, HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA SECRETARY LANCASTER COUNTY ; HISTORICAL SOCIETY, ETC., ETC. LANCASTER, PA. 1897. ccpyrioht 1897. Bt F. R. Diffenderffer. all rights reserved. INTRODUCTORY. HE t colonization of this continent by the Spaniards, Bngiish, Dutcli, Swedes, French, and Germans, presents many curious historical features and incidents. From the settlement of the Spaniards in Central and South America, to that of the French in the Canadas, many curious episodes thrust them- selves upon the consideration of the chronicler, matching in interest and importance anything Insignia of thk Pennsyl- vania-German Society. told in Greek or Roman story. Our Society, while taking an interest in all these early colonists, has to do only with those peoples from whom our membership claims descent, except in so far as they may incidentally have come into 258 The Pennsylvania-German Society. contact witli the people of other races and their OMai lives and careers been influenced by the men of other lands, and whose interests and destinies were more or less closely interwoven with their own. But even as we stand upon the very threshold of this great question of Germanic immigration and settlement in the New World, we are confronted with the magnitude no less than the importance and grandeur of the subject. Its period of active and continuous duration covers more than a century, and even now, more than two centuries since the first German settlement was made in one of the suburbs of Philadel- phia, this Teutonic wave still continues to reach the shores of our Commonwealth. De Quincy in one of his brilliant essays describes the flight of a Tartar tribe, in which 600,000 men, women and children, pursued their course from the banks of the Volga, for more than 2000 miles through the treeless plains and sandy wastes that mark the highlands of Central Asia, from midwinter until the succeeding fall. It was an event wonderful in its conception and as re- markable for its successful execution. But it was after all, only the return of a people to the home which their forefathers had left generations before. It was going back to the old rooftrees where plenty as well as a welcome awaited them. Not so with the early Germans who came to America. Desolation and hunger indeed, lay behind them. With poverty and misery for companions, they braved the perils of the ocean for months at a time they were crowded ; into ships that became pest houses, in which the fatal Introductory. 259 ship fever more than decimated their ranks, the sur- vivors well aware that years of servitude under task masters would be their lot. But the task to which I address myself is not to rehearse the story of the German immigration and settlement in this and some of the other states. That is a grand theme, worthy of anyone's ambition. In a general way it has been told and retold, but the subject is of fadeless interest and much still remains to be discovered and recorded. Out of the many in- teresting phases of this wonderful story, I have chosen one episode, one of which the writers of our history have made but small account, but which, while surrounded by obscurity, is nevertheless of sur- passing interest to us, the descendants of those early colonists.- IMMIGRATION BEGINS. — EARLY GERMAN COLONISTS TO AMERICA WHEN AND WHERE — LOCATED FOLLOWED BY THE STILL GREATER IMMIGRA- TION IN THE SUMMER OF 1709 TO LONDON, MUCH OF WHICH EVENTUALLY FOUND ITS WAY INTO PENNSYLVANIA. t HERE Has been some discus- sion among historians who have dealt with the question of German immigration to America, which should be considered the first established colony. Loher^ tells us the Spaniards, Italians, French and English may not claim the exclusive honor of founding early settlements on this continent. ''In Venezuela was planted the first Ger- man colony in the New World," are his words.^ 1 Geschichte und Zustanden der Deutchen in Amerika, von Franz Loher, p. i. This now well-established fact has also been carefully elaborated by Julius F. Sachse, Esq. ^ Geschichte, p. 14.