Westward to Pennsylvania

The decision to immigrate to the American colonies was a long and expensive affair. First, the family must sell everything they owned and travel for several weeks until they reached Rotterdam. From there, another fare must be bought and more time spent traveling to London where many families, unable to afford the final fare across the Atlantic, entered into indentured servitude to pay their way. Upon a long and nearly insufferable voyage across the ocean, a voyage that most young children did not survive, a family would be literally split up before ever setting foot on land, in order to enter into service to pay for their fare. An adult would normally be required to work for about seven years, whereas a child would normally be bonded until the age of 21. Despite the hardships of the voyage, German immigrants found that they land could be easily acquired as long as one was willing to work it.

Before 1710, the only immigrant settlement near Philadelphia was the town of Germantown (which , according to Philip Klein and Ari Hoogenboom, was actually settled by the Dutch, not the Germans). After about 1720, German religious groups began settling in towns around Philadelphia, such as the Mennonites, the Dunkards (1719), Schwenkfelders (1733) and the Moravians (1741). The Lutherans and Reformed Germans followed, swelling the German population in Pennsylvania. By the late 1720's, the influx of Germans had so concerned the local government that Governor Keith declared that all Germans entering Pennsylvania must be documented and they must pledge their loyalty to the English crown. By that time, approximately 20,000 Germans had entered the colony and that number would swell to 110,000 by the American Revolution.

Germans tended to settle together, away from other ethnic groups. They were, as a whole, a hardworking people who provided a positive example to other colonists, but English speaking colonists were often distrustful of them, being unable to speak or understand German. (The misnomer "Pennsylvania Dutch" actually refers to the Germans, or the Deutsche.) In fact, in 1753 Ben Franklin wrote to a friend that he feared it would be necessary to have (German) interpreters in the Assembly, and that "unless the stream of importation could be turned from this to other colonies,…they will soon outnumber us, that all the advantages we have, will in my opinion, be not able to preserve out language and even our government will become precarious". Fortunately, not everyone shared Franklin's view, and even he lessened his prejudice as time went on.

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