[nathanbedford]

The article omits a very important and very early German emigration which occurred about three quarters of a century before the Declaration of Independence. These Germans were mostly pilgrims in the sense that the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims of 1620 were religious refugees. About a century later, many Germans made the same trip, proceeding down the Rhine to Holland, wintering there and then proceeding on to America.

When they arrived they found that the English had taken most of the attractive and arable coastal lands so they moved inland. Many of them were Mennonites and Amish but most of them were yeomen farmers who pioneered homesteads and farmed typically without slaves. The German farmers were probably the most efficient and most successful farmers of that age. They maintained a bilingual culture in many places such as in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia which continued up until the first world war when the language as well as the German nation fell into disfavor. Of course the Amish still speak an interesting dialect of German to this day.

There is an interesting anecdote which appears in the Virginia Historical Society papers describing an incident in the Shenandoah Valley when a Confederate officer dispatched from Richmond stood on a wagon to harangue the crowd to secure volunteers for the Confederate Army. After he spoke a few words he was interrupted and told that he could speak English if he preferred.

[Lysandru]

At Oktoberfest in Fort Wayne, IN, I saw renactors for the 32nd Indiana Volunteer Infantry. The 32nd used German as its command language. Fort Wayne has one of the 2 Lutheran High Schools in the entire state of Indiana.

[wastoute]

The Palatine Germans. I am the descendant of one. We had two members of the family in the Revolution.

[QBFimi]

Meine frau ... er, ah - my wife had relatives in Vienna who were quite knowledgeable about “die Hutten” (the Hutterite immigrants to America). Although their sermons are in German, they speak “Hutterisch”, a German dialect originally spoken in Carinthia and Tirol. It is not much changed from when they arrived here in the mid 18th century.

Austrian university researchers come here to study it!

Gruss Gott! (Sorry, ain’t got no umlaut on this here keyboard.)

[larryjohnson]

We are winding up a river cruise which spent a week on the Rhine.
Our guides were just polite when we told them our ancestors were German.my wife’s Pennsylvania,mine Virginia.
I wish I knew more how they got there so, NB, I will contact you.

[ckilmer]

Yes, my family is from that earlier group. they are definitely not beer drinkers. To this day you can find taverns all over Wisconsin. But few in the Pennsylvania countryside.