USA > Pennsylvania > Progressive Pennsylvania; a record of the remarkable industrial development of the Keystone state, with some account of its early and its later transportation systems, its early settlers, and its prominent men > Part 4
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Penn is a man who honors God, and is by Him honored in return, who loves good, and is by all good men rightly loved, etc. I do not doubt that others will yet come here and learn by experience that my pen has not written enough in this direction."
The Mennonites who settled Germantown were not the first of their faith who came to the Delaware. Historians tell us that about 1662 twenty-five Mennonites from Hol- land, under the leadership of Peter Cornelius Plockhoy, es- tablished a small colony on the west side of the Delaware, at a place called Hoornkill, on or near the site of the un- fortunate Swanandael, and that in 1664 these "defenseless Christians" were dispersed by the Duke of York's soldiers, their subsequent fate, except that of their leader, being unknown. Plockhoy and his wife, long years afterwards, found their way in their old age to Germantown, where they were tenderly cared for until they died.
Nor were the Crefelders who founded Germantown the first Germans to settle on the Delaware. In the same let- ter from which we have already quoted Pastorius says : "In regard to the inhabitants I can do no better than divide them into the natural and the cultivated. Concerning these first cultivated foreigners I will say no more now than that among them are found some Germans who have already been in this country twenty years, and so have become, as it were, naturalized, namely, people from Schleswig, Brandenburg, Holstein, Switzerland, etc."
Following the Mennonite settlement of Germantown in 1683 came members of the long established German Re- formed and Lutheran denominations, who were chiefly Ger- mans from the Palatinate, where religious persecution and the horrors of devastating war had long prevailed. At first only a few of each denomination came, some of whom set- tled in Germantown but the most of whom settled in the Schuylkill valley and in the Delaware valley above Phila- delphia, but their numbers steadily increased, and soon after 1700 many thousands of each sect and of Mennonites had settled in Bucks, Montgomery, Lehigh, Northampton, and Berks counties. The Mennonites entered the Cones- toga valley in Lancaster county in 1709. It has been esti-
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THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
mated that in 1731 there were 17,000 Lutherans in Penn- sylvania and 15,000 German Reformed. No trustworthy estimate of the number of other so-called German sects in Pennsylvania at that time is available.
Accompanying some of the colonists above mentioned were many French Huguenots, largely from the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, who had been driven from their country by religious persecution, culminating in the Revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. At the time of their immigration to Pennsylvania these Huguenots came from the Palatinate and adjoining Rhine countries, including Switzerland, in which countries they had originally found refuge. Because of this association with these Protestant neighbors the Huguenots were usually identified and con- founded with them. All these emigrants generally settled together when they came to Pennsylvania, the principal exceptions being in the Oley valley, in Berks county, and in the Pequea valley, in Lancaster county, in which almost exclusively Huguenot settlements were made, the former in 1712 and the latter, under the leadership of Madame Ferree, in 1710 and 1712. There is an Alsace township, adjoining Oley township, in Berks county.
In the decades immediately succeeding the settlement of Germantown members of other Continental sects of numerically minor importance than the Mennonites, Ger- man Reformed, and Lutherans came to Pennsylvania and settled in the Schuylkill and Delaware valleys and at Germantown and in its neighborhood. One of the most numerous of these minor sects was known as the Dunk- ards, who came to Pennsylvania in considerable numbers in 1719 and afterwards, coming first to Germantown, where many remained, others going into the valleys above men- tioned. Twenty Dunkard families arrived in Philadelphia in the fall of 1719 and others soon followed. This sect was formed at Schwarzenau, in Westphalia, Germany, in 1708, by Alexander Mack, and virtually all his followers came to Pennsylvania, the entire body that remained in Germany coming with him in 1729, in which year he settled in Germantown, where he died in 1735. When the first Dunkards came in 1719 they were accompanied by
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Rev. Peter Becker, their pastor. The Dunkard immigrants fraternized readily with their Mennonite neighbors, as there were many points of substantial agreement between the two sects. All the Dunkards seein to have been Ger- mans, which can not be said of the Mennonites, who came from Holland and Switzerland as well as from Germany. Few Roman Catholics came until after the Revolution.
The Schwenkfelders were a small sect of Protestants, originating in Silesia, in the eastern part of Prussia, and were the followers of Casper Schwenkfeld, a Silesian noble- man. Religious persecution drove to Pennsylvania all the Schwenkfelders who survived its cruelties. They landed at Philadelphia in 1734 and settled in the Perkiomen valley, in Montgomery county. Governor John F. Hartranft was descended from a Schwenkfelder immigrant. There are now about two thousand Schwenkfelders in Pennsylvania. A recent writer says : "Montgomery county, the lower end of Berks, and the southern corner of Lehigh contain the only Schwenkfelders in the world." There is now a Schwenkfelder church in Philadelphia, with more than one hundred members. In all there are six churches and eight ministers of this faith in Pennsylvania.
Following the Schwenkfelders came the Moravians, a much more numerous sect, a small body of whom, eleven persons in all, after a short residence in Georgia, came from Saxony to Nazareth, in the Upper Delaware valley, in 1740. They were followed in 1741 by a few others of their faith under the leadership of Count Zinzendorf, a Saxon nobleman and Moravian bishop, who had given the Moravians, on his estate at Herrnhut in Saxony, an asylum from persecution in their own country, Moravia. Their principal settlement in Pennsylvania was at Bethle- hem, which was founded in 1741. In that year there were 120 Moravians in Pennsylvania. In the next year fifty-six came and in the following year one hundred more came. In 1747 a Moravian settlement was made at Lititz, in Lan- caster county. The Moravians were followers of John Hus, who was burnt at the stake in 1415. They were originally Slavs, but in the changes that came to their sect in Europe and in this country other nationalities were incorporated.
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THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
Historians so frequently refer to the Palatinate as the home of many immigrants to Pennsylvania that the read- er will be interested in the following historical account of this part of Germany, which we find in Johnson's Cyclo- pædia : " The Palatinate, formerly a political division and independent State of Germany, consisted of two separate territories, respectively called the Upper Palatinate, now forming the northern part of the kingdom of Bavaria, and the Lower Palatinate, situated on both sides of the Rhine, and now forming the southern part of Rhenish Prussia, the northern part of the grand duchy of Baden, and the province of Bavaria, called Rhenish Bavaria. From the eleventh century these two territories belonged together and formed a hereditary monarchy, their ruler being one of the electors of the German Empire, but in 1648, by the treaty of Westphalia, they were separated, the Upper Palatinate falling to Bavaria while the Lower Palatinate continued a possession of the original dynasty. At the Peace of Lunéville in 1801 the Lower Palatinate ceased to exist as an independent State, its territory being divided between Hesse-Darmstadt, Baden, and France, and the only alteration which the Congress of Vienna made in this arrangement in 1815 consisted in transferring to Bavaria that part of the Palatinate which France had occupied."
The Scotch-Irish formed a numerous class of the early settlers of Pennsylvania. They were the descendants of Scotch farmers and of other Scotchmen who had been in- vited at the beginning of the seventeenth century to settle on confiscated lands in the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland, this invitation being a result of political and religious differences between the British Crown and the Catholic inhabitants of Ireland. They were not Irish in any sense but simply transplanted Scotch. Virtually all these Scotch settlers in Ireland were Presbyterians. At the end of a hundred years, however, the descendants of these Scotch settlers became dissatisfied with the exac- tions of the British Government and rapacious landlords and then began a stream of emigration from Ulster to the British colonies in America, particularly to Penn- sylvania which lasted until long after the middle of the
3
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eighteenth century, and which has had a great influence upon the character of the whole people of our country. One of the first of these emigrant Ulstermen was the Rev. Francis Makemie, a Presbyterian minister, who came to Maryland and Virginia several years before the close of the seventeenth century. In 1698 he preached in the first Presbyterian church in Philadelphia. In 1706 he was the moderator of the first Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in this country, which met in Philadelphia in that year. He died in Virginia in 1708.
In 1906 a native Scotchman, the Rev. John Watson, author of Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush and other well- known books, came to this country and delivered a series of lectures in aid of a fund to provide a monument over the neglected grave of Mr. Makemie in Virginia. While engaged in this work Dr. Watson himself died at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in May, 1907.
Before 1700 Presbyterians from the north of Ireland began to settle in the three lower counties of the Penn- sylvania of that day but which now constitute the State of Delaware, landing at Lewes and New Castle, while oth- ers came to Philadelphia. Some of these first Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlers soon found their way into Chester county, then including the present county of Delaware, and into Bucks and Montgomery counties. We do not hear of any large immigration of Scotch-Irish to Pennsylvania until 1710, about which year large numbers began to ar- rive, and there was no cessation in this tide of immigra- tion for many years, in some years 5,000 coming annu- ally and in other years many more coming. Between 1720 and 1730 eighteen Presbyterian congregations were organ- ized in Pennsylvania. At the beginning of this decade Scotch-Irish settlements were made in Lancaster county and commenced in York county, and in the next decade they were commenced in the Cumberland valley. There was a great wave of Scotch-Irish immigration to Pennsyl- vania in the years immediately preceding the Revolution. Many Scotch Presbyterians also came directly to Pennsyl- vania from Scotland, and naturally, because of a common · origin and like religious belief, they at once became iden-
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1502863
THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
tified with their Scotch-Irish brethren and were themselves usually known as Scotch-Irish.
Historians have given us estimates of the population of Pennsylvania at various periods prior to the taking of the first United States census in 1790. In previous references that have been made in this chapter or in the preceding chapter to the population of the province we have used figures that have seemed most entitled to belief. In 1747 Governor Thomas wrote to the Bishop of Exeter that it then amounted to 200,000, of whom three-fifths were Ger- mans, but he probably overestimated the Germans. In 1763 the total population was estimated at about 280,000. Estimates of the white population of Pennsylvania at the breaking out of the Revolution, not including Delaware, vary from 300,000 to 341,000. The larger estimate was obtained by the Continental Congress in 1776 in a general inquiry that was made by it into the population of each of the colonies. The white population of Pennsylvania in 1775, as reported by Governor Penn to Lord Dart- mouth, under date of January 30 of that year, amounted to 300,000. This total falls considerably below the 341,000 above mentioned for the following year. Of the total white population at the beginning of the Revolution Hanna es- timates that 100,000 were Scotch-Irish and Diffenderffer says that 100,000 were Germans, in which classification he probably includes not only Germans and Swiss but also Dutch and Huguenots. Accepting the estimate of the Continental Congress as being substantially correct there would remain of the total white population of Pennsylva- nia in 1776 about 140,000, divided between the English and other Quakers, English Episcopalians, Swedes, and representatives of other nationalities.
The inquiry that was made by the Continental Congress in 1776 showed that, having reference only to the white population, Massachusetts was then the most populous of all the colonies, with a population of 352,000, including Maine, and that Pennsylvania came next, with 341,000, not including Delaware, which was credited with 37,000 ; Vir- ginia was third, with 300,000, including Kentucky ; and New York fourth, with 238,000, including Vermont. In the
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census of 1790 the total population of Pennsylvania, includ- ing negroes, is given as amounting to 434,373 ; Massachu- setts, 378,787 ; New York, 340,120 ; and Virginia, 747,610. Virginia's large negro population in 1790 accounts for its prominent position at that time, when it was the first of all the States in total population, Pennsylvania coming next. North Carolina was the third State in population in 1790, with a total of 393,751, due again to its large negro population, Massachusetts and New York following in the order mentioned. Vermont had been admitted into the Union in 1791 when the census of 1790 was taken. In the following table is given the total population of Pennsyl- vania at each of the census periods from 1790 to 1900.
Years.
Population.
Years.
Population.
Years.
Population.
1790
434,373
1830
1,348,233
1870
3,521,951
1800
602,365
1840
1,724,033
1880
4,282,891
1810
810,091
1850
2,311,786
1890
5,258,014
1820
1,049,458
1860
2,906,215
1900
6,302,115
Pennsylvania would have shown a larger population in the decades immediately prior to the Revolution if all who settled within its borders had been satisfied with their opportunities and environment. Many Germans, however, pushed on through the Cumberland valley into Maryland and the Shenandoah valley in Virginia, while a considera- ble number of Scotch-Irish and some Quakers also moved from Pennsylvania to Maryland and other Southern States. Daniel Boone was born in Berks county. John Lincoln, the great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Berks county to Virginia about 1750. He was a Quaker. The mother of Abraham Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, was de- scended from a Berks county family which emigrated first to Virginia and afterwards to Kentucky. Just after the Revolution many of the first settlers in Southwestern Pennsylvania moved to Kentucky, and soon after the be- ginning of the nineteenth century there was a large emi- gration of Pennsylvanians to Ohio.
In this chapter and in the preceding chapter we have brought together in chronological order and in sufficient
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THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
detail the leading facts which establish the mixed and heterogeneous character of the early settlers of Pennsyl- vania. No other colony had anything like such a varied population. Nearly all the nations of Northern and West- ern Europe contributed to the peopling of Penn's province, even far-away Finns coming to the Delaware with the Swedes. The Swedes, Finns, and Dutch, from the north- ern section of the Continent, were followed by a few Ger- mans and by English settlers under the Duke of York's rule, and these by the English and Welsh Quakers under Penn's leadership, while afterwards came large numbers of Germans, Swiss, Dutch, and French Huguenots from the Rhine provinces and Scotch-Irish from the north of Ire- land, with other Englishmen and a few Scotchmen. The Quaker element in the population of Pennsylvania was largely outnumbered in a few decades by the other ele- ments, although Quaker influence in the government of the province continued to be dominant for a still longer period, far along toward the breaking out of the Revolu- tion, but most of the time with the Scotch-Irish and some- times the Germans in opposition. It was the opposition of these elements that finally broke the Quaker power. It must be said, however, that, notwithstanding the lack of homogeneity among the early settlers of Pennsylvania, the influence of the Quaker element impressed upon the laws and institutions of the province essentially English ideas and precedents, as well as loyalty to the British Crown. This loyalty was weakened and finally shattered, as we know, by events which led up to the Revolution, but this was not done by the Quakers but by the Scotch- Irish and Germans, without whose leadership and aggres- siveness Pennsylvania would not have voted for independ- ence. Down to the Revolution Pennsylvania was essen- tially an English colony in its laws, literature, religious tendencies, political ties, and business connections, as were all the other colonies, even New York yielding to English influence at an early day in its colonial history. But Pennsylvania Dutch was largely spoken in Pennsylvania.
Prior to the Revolution Pennsylvania was most for- tunate in securing a population possessing so many di-
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verse and excellent characteristics. The English Quakers brought with them marked commercial instincts, and it was mainly due to their enterprise that Philadelphia soon became a centre of trade and commerce as well as a great city. In later years these commercial instincts led them to establish mining and manufacturing enterprises, but still near to Philadelphia. They also engaged largely in farming, but those who became farmers kept close to the Delaware. The Welsh Quakers were nearly all farmers, who at first did not venture very far into the interior. They occupied a large tract of land in Montgomery and Chester counties, called the Welsh Tract, but afterwards they made settlements up the Schuylkill. The Germans, the Dutch, the Swiss, and the Huguenots, if we except the settlement at Germantown, at first settled in the fertile valleys of Eastern Pennsylvania, chiefly as farmers, after- wards moving farther inland. Philadelphia possessed few attractions for them. In a little while they built their own towns-Easton, Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, York, Lebanon, and others. While not neglecting other pursuits in which they have been successful these people and their descendants have made the best farmers the world has ever known, and we owe to their love of the soil and their skill as husbandmen much of the prosperity that Pennsyl- vania has always enjoyed. Speaking particularly of the Germans, the Dutch, and the Swiss who helped to settle Pennsylvania, as a class their industry, honesty, love of home, and respect for authority have been notable char- acteristics, and these characteristics have been transmitted to their descendants. The Huguenots were in every way a superior people. The Moravian settlers at Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Lititz, a majority of whom were also farm- ers, early established excellent schools, and these schools exist to-day. Possessed of a missionary spirit they under- took the task of converting to Christianity their Indian neighbors and other Indians, and their efforts in this di- rection were for a time largely successful but the final outcome was disheartening. No better people have ever lived in Pennsylvania than the Moravians. It is an in- teresting fact that about fifty years ago a large number
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THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
of Moravians emigrated from Germany to Wayne and Pike counties in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, where they and their descendants have been profitably engaged in the agricultural and other development of that somewhat neglected region.
The Scotch-Irish immigrants are the last that we need to notice. Filled with the spirit of adventure and fearless of consequences they early pushed into the interior of the province, beyond the settlements of the other immigrants we have mentioned, partly because land there was more easily acquired, even if they had sometimes to take it without the formality of securing title from either the In- dians or the proprietaries of the province. They were the main factors in the settlement of the Cumberland, Juni- ata, and Susquehanna valleys-true pioneers, who could not be turned back by frontier hardships and privations or dismayed by the attacks of hostile Indians. At first farm- ers almost exclusively they soon illustrated their aptness for trade, the mechanic arts, and the learned professions. They founded all the leading towns in Central Pennsylva- nia, and before the Revolution they had scaled the Alle- ghenies and joined with Marylanders and Virginians in the settlement of Southwestern Pennsylvania. In a short time they became the leading element in the settlement of that part of Pennsylvania, and their influence in shaping the development of that section has always been controlling.
It is worthy of mention that the Mennonites, Dunkards, and Moravians of Pennsylvania are steadily increasing in numbers, as are also the more numerous German Reform- ed and Lutherans. The so-called German element in the population of Pennsylvania is not, therefore, at all likely to be lost sight of in the future history of the Common- wealth. In its past history this element has not permitted itself to be overlooked. It has not only been active and enterprising in the development of the industrial resources of the State but it has been active in shaping its political affairs. Of the twenty-five Governors of Pennsylvania who have been elected under the Constitutions of 1790, 1838, and 1873 eight were Germans-Snyder, Hiester, Shulze, Wolf, Ritner, Shunk, Bigler, and Hartranft, while
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PROGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.
Beaver is of mixed Huguenot and German extraction and Pennypacker is descended from a Holland ancestor.
Careful students of Pennsylvania history must always regret that the Swiss, Dutch, Huguenot, and Moravian ele- ments in its population have not received more general recognition. Their identity has been almost entirely lost because of their intimate association with the more nu- merous German settlers. They not only settled in close contact with the Germans, but most of them before com- ing to Pennsylvania, owing to the persecutions which had brought them together, had acquired a knowledge of the Platt-Deutsch dialect, which was largely the mother tongue of the Palatines and the Swiss Mennonites. Living in the same communities, intermarrying, and speaking the same language as the Germans it was natural that they should themselves be known as Pennsylvania Germans. They were as a rule absorbed by them, although there are to- day whole communities of so-called Pennsylvania Germans which are not German in their origin but Swiss. As an illustration of the absorption of the Swiss, Dutch, Hugue- nots, and Moravians in the great Pennsylvania German family a late distinguished Pennsylvania jurist was popu- larly supposed to have been a German and he married the daughter of another prominent Pennsylvanian who was also regarded in his lifetime as a German, but both men were of Huguenot extraction. A careful study of this subject will show that a very large number of the people who are called Pennsylvania Germans are not Germans in their origin but Swiss, Dutch, Moravians, and Huguenots. A large number of the Mennonites in Pennsylvania are descendants of Swiss immigrants. The Swedish element in the population of Pennsylvania, which was at first a con- siderable factor, is now rarely distinguishable in any way. Welsh ancestry is easily distinguished by family names. Pennsylvania has always had a large and intelligent Welsh population additional to its Welsh Quakers. A large num- ber of Welsh immigrants settled in Cambria county soon after the Revolution, and their descendants are very nu- merous in that county to-day. The iron industry has in more recent years brought many Welsh immigrants to
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THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED PENNSYLVANIA.
Pennsylvania, and so also has our great coal industry. Huguenot ancestry can occasionally be distinguished by family names, but unfortunately many Huguenot names have been either Anglicized or Germanized. This is also true of some Holland names.
The name, Pennsylvania Dutch, has long been used as a synonym for Pennsylvania Germans. Historically inac- curate as is the latter term in embracing large numbers of Pennsylvanians who are not of German origin, it is far more accurate than to designate Germans, Moravians, Hu- guenots, and Swiss as Pennsylvania Dutch. The latter is now and long has been a serious misnomer, although when originally applied it may have been proper enough. Not only were emigrants from Holland among the earliest settlers on the Delaware but many other Hollanders ac- cepted Penn's invitation and helped to found Germantown and settle the Schuylkill valley. It was entirely correct, therefore, to call them Dutch, as the natives of Holland, or the Netherlands, have always been called. That this name should have been applied to their German neighbors in Pennsylvania was probably due in large part to the universal use at that day of the term Deutsch as designat- ing the people of Germany, the Germans themselves so using it. To them the name of their country was Deutsch- land, not Germany, and Germans to-day, when speaking their own language, call their country Deutschland. The official name of the German Empire is Deutsches Reich. There are to-day in Germany two large and influential trade organizations which are styled respectively Verein Deutscher Eisenhüttenleute and Verein Deutscher Eisen und Stahlindustrieller. Some native Germans, as already men- tioned, speak Platt-Deutsch, that is, Low German. Most of the Palatines who came to Pennsylvania in large numbers and came early spoke Platt-Deutsch, and here again we find a reason for the use of the word Dutch. A Pennsyl- vania German in our day, when familiarly addressing another of his class, calls him Deutscher.
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