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To: the OlLine Rebel

But there are a lot of us here. Michigan and much of the Midwest is primarily of German descent. I grew up in a town called Hanover (MI.) after Hanover Germany. There is also a Hanover in PA. and another in IA..


9 posted on 04/20/2013 8:47:59 AM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: cripplecreek

New Hanover County, NC. The famous Plott Bear Hound is descended from the Hanoverian Hound.


11 posted on 04/20/2013 9:08:51 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: cripplecreek
There are three stages to Scandinavian immigration to America. The latest big movement occurred toward the end of the 1800s ~ one a generation before occurred during the first couple of great famines. That, BTW, affected other countries and those refugees are better known.

Long before that, beginning in 1638 and lasting until the 1700s, Scandinavians by the boatload were sent to America to the British colonies to do work related to naval stores (pine tar, lumber, metal mining). That first group are actually the largest simply because their ancestors arrived so early, but they are little known. For the majority of them today they frequently misidentify their own surnames as of German origin, or just 'plain American'.

A great example is the Lancaster county PA experience. First settled in the 1600s by Swedes, Finns and Sa'ami, by 1700 they all relocated to York county PA on the other side of the river to get away from the Quakers who were attempting to convert them from Lutheranism by force.

The Quakers in short order began importing Germans to do the work in Lancaster county. Later, other Germans from various communal orders came there and replaced the original German farmers and Quaker landowners.

Doing genealogy on any early Pennsylvania ancestor is very difficult if he has a Germanic name ~ or what you think is just a misspelled Germanic name. Hovås is a good example. Three generations down the road most Hovås ancestors spelled it Hovis and 7 generations down some of them got the idea it was Hofius.

They imagine it to be German yet it started out as a common Swedish name.

14 posted on 04/20/2013 10:30:00 AM PDT by muawiyah
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