Life in the New Homesteads Stan Nadel
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Life in the New Homesteads—Stan Nadel Life in the New Homesteads Stan Nadel Colonial America German migration to North America is generally treated as having begun with the 1683 arrival in Pennsylvania of 13 families from Krefeld on the lower Rhine, even though most of them were of Dutch origin. But Germans were in fact the largest group of migrants to the Dutch colony of New Netherlands before the English conquered it in 1661 and long preceded the Krefield migrants. Given the Frankfurt am Main Heimat of wealthy merchant Jacob Leisler who governed New York briefly from 1689-91,1 it is likely that some less well-known Germans had their origins in the nearby Bavarian Palatinate. If so, these first “Bavarians” in America were most likely townspeople in New Amsterdam and they blended into the town’s diverse population so completely that we can’t say much about their lives beyond generalizations that could apply to everyone in New Amsterdam. Individuals and small groups of migrants may have gone from the Palatinate to British North America in small numbers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but the first group that shows up in the historical record consisted of Lutheran Pfarrer Josuah Harrsch and about 55 followers who enlisted the help of Queen Anne of England in their migration to the Hudson Valley of New York in 1708.2 Harrsch, writing under the name Kochertal had promoted emigration to Carolina, but it was his success in getting the Queen to pay their passage that mobilized thirteen thousand or more Palatines to try to follow him to North America during and after the famine of 1709. After they arrived in England the British government proved less helpful than Harrsch had led them to expect, thousands of Catholics were sent back to Germany and thousands of Palatine Protestants were sent to Ireland and other British territories, while only about 3,500 were sent to North America. Nonetheless, the 2,368 Palatines who made it to New York were the real founders of German America. About 150 of them stayed on in New York City and joined its multi-ethnic diversity. One youth who stayed was John Peter Zenger who became a successful printer and publisher. Zenger is still remembered as a pioneer of freedom of the press in America because he won a legal battle against a Governor who tried to have him imprisoned for publishing articles critical of the Governor. 1 Edwin G. Burrows & Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, New York/Oxford, 1999, S 97. 2 Georg Fertig, Lokales Leben, atlantische Welt: Die Entscheidung zur Auswanderung vom Rhein nach Nordamerika im 18. Jahrhundert, Osnabrück, 2000, S. 72-73, 104-5. Agnes bretting, „Mit Bibel, Pflug und Büchse: deutsche Pioniere im kolonialen Amerika,“ S. 142-43 in Klaus J. Bade, ed., Deutsche im Ausland – Fremde in Deutschland, Migration in Geschichte und Gegenwart, München, 1992. 1 Life in the New Homesteads—Stan Nadel While some of the Palatines stayed in the Hudson valley, most found new homesteads in the frontier lands of the Mohawk river valley where land speculators, seeking customers in the aftermath of devastating raids during a war with the French and their Indian allies, made land available on easy credit. The frontier farmers of the German Flats and nearby districts got along well with their Mohawk Indian neighbors at first. Sir William Johnson, the trader and British Indian Agent who lived in the Mohawk valley with his Palatine common-law wife Catherine Weissenberg, said the Palatines taught the Indians to distinguish between themselves and the English to avoid being caught up in the Anglo-French wars for control of North America. Young Conrad Weiser learned the Mohawk language of his neighbors and became one of the important intermediaries between the Indians and the English in the mid-18th century. Adopted by the Mohawks, Iroquois chiefs said of him “He is of our Nation and a Member of our Council as well as Yours.”3 A few Palatines like Peter Spelman and Hans Fife went even further and joined the Indians completely, one becoming a Shawnee and the other a Seneca.4 Most of the Mohawk valley Palatines settled down to the hard work of frontier farmers living on scattered farms. “In the rural parts the houses are not build together as are the villages in Germany, but there are some thousands of acres in one piece… If one travels one continually passes through forests; only occasionally does one pass a house, some miles further on there may be another house on the roads. Yet most houses are far away from the roads.”5 Despite this contrast with German settlement patterns, the Palatines of the Mohawk valley maintained close ties to each other through church and social activities that were soon reinforced by marriage ties as they and their children married other Palatines. The land was fertile and they had easy access to markets downriver, so their farms were very successful. The country was healthy and their many children generally survived into adulthood, so their numbers increased rapidly. Visitors a generation or two later reported that the Mohawk valley was mostly German in language and culture. The growing numbers of Palatines eventually came into conflict with their Indian neighbors as they increasingly encroached on Mohawk lands as had the English before them. The Mohawks whose numbers had been reduced by European diseases and warfare were forced to abandon the valley after the Revolutionary war began in 1776, leaving it to the Palatines. But long before that some of the 3 Liam Riordan, “The Complexion of My Country” The German as “Other” in Colonial Pennsylvania, S. 112 in Colin G. Calloway, Gerd Gemünden & Susanne Zantrop, eds. Germans & Indians:Fantasies, Encounters, Projections, Lincoln Nebraska/London, 2002. 4 Colin Calloway, “Historical Encounters Across Five Centuries,” S. 50-53 in Calloway, Gemünden & Zantrop, eds. Germans & Indians. 5 Hermann Wellenreuther, „Image and Counterimage, Tradition and Expectation: The German Immigrants in English Colonial Society in Pennsylvania, 1700-1765,“ S. 90 in vol. 1 of Frank Trommler & Joseph McVeih, eds. America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three Hundred Year History. Philadelphia, 1985. 2 Life in the New Homesteads—Stan Nadel Mohawk valley Palatines, like the Mohawks’ good friend Conrad Weiser, moved south to Pennsylvania where they became the core of the Pennsylvania Palatines whose settlements attracted increasingly large numbers of later emigrants from the Palatinate after 1727. In the long run it was the colony of Pennsylvania that became the home of the largest number of Palatines and other Germans in 18th century America. The best farmland in Pennsylvania cost less than a third the average price of land in southwestern Germany and was three times as fruitful.6 This alone would have attracted migrants from the Palatinate, especially moderately prosperous farmers who couldn’t afford to buy enough land there for their sons. Pennsylvania had large and profitable export markets for its grain, but it suffered from a severe labor shortage so wages were high. Even poorer Germans could rapidly accumulate enough money to buy land if they could just pay for their passage across the Atlantic. As the numbers of migrants increased, Dutch merchants developed a regular trade in migrants from Rotterdam to Philadelphia and began to extend would-be migrants credit towards the costs of the voyage. The Pennsylvania labor shortages meant that farmers and artisans in the colony would pay newly arrived migrants or their ship captains enough to cover the costs of the voyage in return for a contract binding the migrant to several years of labor for the person “redeeming” their debt. A family with several teenage sons could easily finance its travel this way and preserve its resources for buying land, or a single young man with no resources beyond his ability to work could finance his voyage this way. Life for these indentured laborers was often harsh and some compared the system to slavery, but many found it worth the risk—some 68,886 German- speaking immigrants came through the port of Philadelphia between 1727 and 1775 and half of them did so as “Redemptioners” who were bound to service for 2-7 years in exchange for their passage.7 Palatines were by far the most numerous group among them so much so that all Germans were often called Palatines and Pfälzisch became the basis for the new dialect called Pennsilfaanisch.8 At first the English of Pennsylvania welcomed the arrival of Protestant reinforcements, but as the numbers of Palatines grew many began to have doubts.9 As early as 1735 some English Pennsylvanians doubted the wisdom of granting equal political rights to the Palatines. As Palatine immigration peaked in the mid-1700s and another war with France stimulated English insecurities a 66 Georg Fertig, Lokales Leben, S. 86-87. 7 Georg Fertig, Lokales Leben, S. 78, 113-120; Marianne Wokeck, “German Immigration to Colonial America: Prototype of a Transatlantic Mass Migration,“ S. 7-11 in vol. 1 of Trommler & McVeih, eds. America and the Germans. 8 Jürgen Eichhoff, “The German Language in America,” S. 231 in vol. 1 of Trommler & McVeih, eds. America and the Germans. 9 For more extended discussions of these issues see: Hermann Wellenreuther, “Image and Counterimage, Tradition and Expectation: The German Immigrants in English Colonial Society in Pennsylvania, 1700-1765,” S. 85-105 in vol. 1 of Trommler & McVeih, eds. America and the Germans; and Liam Riordan, “The Complexion of My Country” The German as “Other” in Colonial Pennsylvania, S. 97-119 in Colin G.