RLP 207: Pennsylvania Germans Part 1 with Heidi: History

Nicole (2s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode, 207 Pennsylvania Germans part one with Heidi history. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (43s):
Let’s go. Hi everybody. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (49s):
Hi, Nicole. How are you today?

Nicole (52s):
Fantastic. I’m excited to talk about our topic today with Heidi.

Diana (56s):
I am too. It’s going to be so fun to talk about Pennsylvania German research and we’ll have Heidi and Alice joining us for the next few episodes.

Nicole (1m 9s):
Right? So what have you been working on lately?

Diana (1m 11s):
Well, I’ve been working on my ICAPGen renewal. Can you believe it’s been five years since I became an accredited genealogist?

Nicole (1m 20s):
I cannot believe that.

Diana (1m 23s):
Yeah. So I’ve been working on getting everything together. I have to submit a project of no more than eight pages. So I had to whittle one down that was originally 20 pages. So a research report from a Texas project. And then I had to do a summary of my educational and professional development activities. And then specifically talking about two activities that were just for my Gulf south region, and then also my volunteer hours. And you need to have five hours per year. So 25 hours total volunteering for ICAPGen, which for me, I have done many, many more than that with the various presentations and YouTube videos for our channel and by work on the commissions.

Diana (2m 11s):
So plenty of volunteer hours that I have done through the years for ICAPGen, which has been a great experience.

Nicole (2m 18s):
Oh, that is fun. Well, congratulations on being accredited for five years and working on that renewal.

Diana (2m 25s):
Well thank you.

Nicole (2m 27s):
Well, it’s June and next month we’re going to be starting our registration for our fall research, like a pro study group that registration will open on July 20th at 10:00 AM. And it will go all the way through until August 25th. Then we will begin that study group on Wednesday, September 7th, meeting weekly for nine weeks with a break in October for extra research time. So if you’ve been thinking about joining us, we’d love to have you. And if you’d like to be a peer group leader, we have that leak on our website. So if you’re a peer group leader, you receive free registration for the study group.

Diana (3m 2s):
Well, let’s get right to our topic for the day, which is talking about Pennsylvania Germans and the history behind their immigration. And we have Heidi Mathis here with us again. Hi Heidi.

Heidi Mathis (3m 15s):
Hey guys, good to be back.

Diana (3m 18s):
So we worked with Heidi earlier to record several podcasts and she wrote some blog posts for us all about tracing your 19th century German ancestors. That was where we talked with Heidi about the largest wave of German immigrants to the U S and the 19th century. So this series is going to be about the smaller group who came in the colonial period. And we know them as colonial Germans, or you may have heard the term Pennsylvania Dutch, which is actually a misnomer of Deutsche or German. And they’re one of the founding groups of European settlement in north America. Although only less than a hundred thousand arrived in the colonial period.

Diana (3m 60s):
Now millions of Americans have a Pennsylvania German in their family tree. So this is what would be a series of episodes where we’ll talk with Heidi. And then also Alice Childs, who just recently was accredited and the mid Atlantic region, which includes Pennsylvania. And so together with Heidi and Alice, we are going to answer all sorts of important questions about Pennsylvania, German research, such as who were the Pennsylvania Germans, why did they immigrate? Where do they fit in with the rest of colonial America? And what we all want to know is, well, what are the key records and how do we find them? And then we’re going to wrap it all up with talking about DNA.

Diana (4m 40s):
And if that can be used to research Pennsylvania German ancestors,

Nicole (4m 44s):
That will be a great series. And Heidi, thank you so much for writing these great blog posts and working with Alice on this.

Heidi Mathis (4m 51s):
Oh, it’s been so much fun.

Nicole (4m 53s):
All right, Heidi, let’s get started with talking about some of the most important factors to help understand and find records of Pennsylvania Germans.

Heidi Mathis (5m 2s):
Yeah. The two things I want to start off with that I hope everyone can keep in mind is that what they cared about was owning land and their strong community networks. They were the largest English speaking colonial group. And so the Pennsylvania German community networks lasted much longer because of the language barrier. So understanding your Pennsylvania German, that they probably had a strong drive to own land and to stay part of their cohesive community is key to understanding them and finding their records. You want to be able to identify and all of your ancestors fan club and in this group, you’re especially focusing on their land records and the idea that they were part of this community, the FAN club here, meaning their family, their associates, their neighborhoods of your ancestor, who often in the beginning for Pennsylvania, Germans were people who came from the same German village.

Nicole (6m 2s):
Wonderful. Those are really important things to think about when getting started. It makes sense that they would be searching for land. And then that will inform our research plans. You know, we should look for deeds and grants and any land records that, that might have their information in there.

Heidi Mathis (6m 17s):
And just to begin thinking about them and as a part of this network of other families, that’s really key to being able to find yours. If, if your direct ancestor doesn’t have, you can’t find them in the record, sometimes you can find their, their FAN club in the records.

Diana (6m 34s):
All right. Well, let’s do a little bit of definition who exactly are the Pennsylvania Germans that we’re going to be talking about in this series?

Heidi Mathis (6m 45s):
Yeah, it’s a very group. So it kind of cast a wide net. So since the modern state of Germany only began to exist in 1871, Pennsylvania German generally means those German speaking immigrants who first came to north America in small numbers in the late 17th century. And then in somewhat larger numbers in the mid 18th century, these colonial era Germans came primarily from Southwest part of German lands, such as the Palatinate or Pfalz in German, Baden-Württemberg, Hessa, Switzerland, Alsace, and all also small numbers from the Netherlands.

Heidi Mathis (7m 27s):
The reason most commonly given for the seemingly strange choice of these mostly peasant German farmers to immigrate all the way across the Atlantic to an English speaking colony was that they were fleeing religious persecution and the aftermath of the terrible 30 years war thought earlier in the 17th century, while these were some of the reasons there was more to the story.

Diana (7m 51s):
Interesting. I think there always is more to the story. You know, sometimes we have kind of a high level understanding and then we dig deeper. We find that there is more so why did so many Germans leave everything behind? They knew to risk going to a faraway English colony in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Heidi Mathis (8m 11s):
Yeah, I was so fascinated by this question and you know, I’m still working on the answer, but I found some, some good information for this blog post. So the short answer was for most of these Pennsylvania Germans, it was the large land grants on offer in Pennsylvania. William Penn first received a charter from the English king, Charles the second in 1681 for the colony of Pennsylvania, Penn hoped to create a Haven in the new world for English Quakers who had been so persecuted in England, but for his colony to succeed financially, Penn needed more settlers. So if the Germans need for land and Penn’s need for more paying settlers for his land in the new colony, pulled them, what pushed the Germans from their Homeland?

Heidi Mathis (9m 0s):
It often depends on which era they came in. So Pennsylvania German immigration can be thought of as having three general phases. The earliest group of Germans arrived in north America starting around 1683. These very early Germans were mostly fleeing, religious persecution due to the aftermath of the 30 years war, which was fought between 1618 and 1648. So in the decades, just before these early German speaking immigrants came to north America, but by about 1707 to 1714, a second group began to immigrate because of crop a crop failure crisis.

Heidi Mathis (9m 43s):
This second group sometimes is referred to as the poor Palatine Germans and name they got when they were refugees in England, before they settled in New York, the last group was from about 1717 to about 1775. And this was the largest group and the one focused most on in this blog post that I wrote and their reasons for immigrating can be boiled down to a drive to own land.

Nicole (10m 10s):
Yeah, I’m really thinking about this 30 years war. And I just remember from history classes, that was a really destructive European war. And thinking about the fact that after that there was a lot of religious persecution for Germans. I didn’t realize that.

Heidi Mathis (10m 25s):
Yeah, it’s absolutely so interesting. Our, our history that we get in the United States is obviously really focused on north America and in England. And we often see European history, mostly through English eyes. And so I think one of the fun things for me about doing genealogy is just the chance to see European history a little bit more through another country, Germany in this case,

Nicole (10m 50s):
It’s one of the most wonderful things about doing genealogy research. I think it’s that understanding history from the perspective of our people from no matter where they came from and doing research for other people and helping others. It’s just fascinating to learn from the eyes of their ancestors, to what, what life was like. Tell us more about why they were migrating because of the problem of religious freedom.

Heidi Mathis (11m 17s):
Oh, I’ll start by saying that. One of my main sources for this blog post was this great book I read called German immigration settlement and political culture in colonial America, 1717 to 1775, the author Aaron Spencer Fogelman traces, many of the factors behind the Pennsylvania German immigration and their cultural behavior in north America. Like we were talking about the third years worth understanding German history here is important for this first wave of colonial German speaking immigrants to north America. So yeah, one of the most pivotal events in German history was the 30 years war that was kind of earlier in the 17th century.

Heidi Mathis (11m 59s):
And until the 20th century world wars, it was the most devastating and scarring war in German lands. The 30 years’ war started out as a big as a religious war that kind of came in the aftermath of the Protestant reformation that had happened in the 16th century. Fogelman said that about 40% of the population of Southwest Germany was lost by death or dislocation in this war. So in the decades after this devastating war, the population of Southwest German lands spiked, and this population spiked happened to occur just prior to when the Pennsylvania became a colony though, like most German immigrants, Pennsylvania, Germans were mostly Lutheran or Catholic, far more of these earliest 17th century immigrants belonged to smaller sects.

Heidi Mathis (12m 52s):
And this was because the 30 years war those belonging to smaller sects, almost all immigrated, or that those that stayed behind in German lands kind of had to convert either to Catholicism or Protestantism. So kind of successive waves of immigration were almost always Catholic or Protestant. Fogelman argued that even though religious freedom was an important factor in this first wave, especially for these smaller sects, such as the Mennonites, the Amish, or the Moravians that even in this earlier group that generally religious persecution has been somewhat exaggerated as a push factor for Pennsylvania Germans.

Nicole (13m 32s):
Yeah. It’s hard to know. I guess it could be very individualized depending on the group and the people and, you know, maybe they just, one family decided to go from a Mennonite sect and then their friends who happen to also be Mennonites, went with them. Like it’s hard to really isolate those reasons, but it certainly is interesting to think about the fact that those smaller religious sect did come over more, you know, or converted.

Heidi Mathis (13m 56s):
Yeah. Just understanding all of that is so, so interesting. And it’s always important for everyone to realize that these are just general points and that your individual person may have had a quite unique journey.

Diana (14m 12s):
Well, I think that’s a great point because this is a long time ago and we have history, but how our ancestor fits into that history is sometimes just pure speculation, right? That’s why we use qualifiers in sales probably, or possibly, you know, this is what happened, but unless there’s a record, we really don’t necessarily know. So, but it is great to put them in the context of what is happening in history. Well, let’s get to another question. Why did Pennsylvania German immigration peak in the mid 18th century?

Heidi Mathis (14m 48s):
Yeah, this was so interesting to me. So we’re talking about that third wave. That was the largest and I’m sure men, many family researchers have thought to themselves what would lead so many German speaking people to make such a difficult journey across the Atlantic ocean, to this largely unknown English colony when they would have just, you know, they had the choice to just immigrate within Europe. So interestingly, Fogelman his book hopeful journeys estimated that only about 15% of the Germans who were on the move in this period actually did immigrate to north America and that the other 85% just immigrated to other parts of Europe. So why were they on the move?

Heidi Mathis (15m 29s):
The answer for this third wave of Pennsylvania, Germans was land. The rumors of great stretches of land may have enticed. Those who would have become Pennsylvania Germans to risk the uncertainties of north America, as opposed to simply immigrating within Europe. So the desire for land is at the heart of understanding Pennsylvania, Germans, what was happening in Southwest German lands in this third wave from about 1717 to 1775, Fogelman explained the deeper history in Southwest Germany that would later contribute to so many immigrating in the 18th century. In short, he argued that Southwest German land, since the 11th century, there was a cycle of farming innovation that led to population explosion, which then led to out migration and then population decline followed by immigration, kind of in a cycle.

Heidi Mathis (16m 23s):
In other words, Southwest German lands had a long history of people on the move. In fact, German Lords long knew this area as a place that often had a surplus population that they could recruit for settlement elsewhere in German lands or for raising armies. Another factor was that particle inheritance was generally practice in the Southwest part of German lands. Partible inheritance was where a family’s land was divided among all sons, as opposed to only the oldest or the youngest son inheriting everything, which was practiced in other parts of Germany. Therefore, as the population increased in the 18th century, smaller and smaller parcels of land were inherited squeezing these peasant farmers.

Heidi Mathis (17m 10s):
In addition to these factors, as I said earlier, Fogelman pointed out that there was a pattern of in and out migration in Southwest Germany, and that out migration was a bedded by the authorities. So in the mid 18th century, there was an especially large population boom, Fogelman stated that the population of Europe increased dramatically in the 18th century by about 70% between 1720 and 1800. This population pressure increased tensions between peasant farmers and their Lords. The farmers of south west German lands were generally not as passive as one might imagine of peasant peasants often collectively fought back against their Lords to stop the Lords from squeezing too much out of them.

Heidi Mathis (17m 58s):
For those who came to America, this collective behavior was no doubt fostered further by the language barrier in Pennsylvania land. And this collective behavior explains much of what motivated our Pennsylvania German ancestors. And so understanding this will help us find the records. For example, Fogelman shows this cohesiveness by explaining that half of Pennsylvania Germans were too poor to pay their ships passage. And so had to put themselves on the market as indentured servants who bought the rights of these German indentured servants. Most often it was other Germans with whom they had a connection, either familial or from being from the same village.

Heidi Mathis (18m 44s):
So paying off one’s debt was key to staying in the good graces of the community they depended on for survival. So very few German indentured servants appear to have reneged on their obligation. This strategy of cooperation had helped them survive in German lands, and it helped them overcome their poverty and language barrier in a far away English colony, those close family and community ties make researching fan clubs of your Pennsylvania German, much more helpful as a research tool than perhaps for other groups.

Diana (19m 19s):
Okay. There is a lot to unpack there. I am super interested in this book, hopeful journeys. It sounds so fascinating, but what I kept thinking of when you were talking about how this migrating within Europe was our DNA, and we have this thing with our ethnicity, that the DNA companies can’t quite pinpoint exactly how much German, how much English, how much French. And it makes so much sense because if they were migrating within for hundreds of years, it would be very difficult to figure that out.

Heidi Mathis (19m 52s):
It’s so interesting to think about that. Yeah. That there was just a lot of in and out migration in different parts of Europe that was happening all the time. And it does explain a lot. Right.

Diana (20m 1s):
Well, the other thing that I thought was so interesting, and I know we’ll talk about this later in some of our episodes with Alice is this whole idea of indentured servitude and how interesting that they often were within a community, you know, buying the rights of these indentured servants and that they were really cooperating as a group, which just kind of explains more about the importance of the fan club and the research. So, so many insights that Fogelman gives us.

Nicole (20m 31s):
Yeah. I’m just thinking, you know, if I am tracing a German, trying to get them back to their hometown, if there’s some records about the indentured servitude and I happen to find, you know, the person who sponsored them, that would be a really good person to trace back in time to Germany, you know,

Heidi Mathis (20m 48s):
Absolutely some other experts I’ve listened to have really emphasized this point. And I know Ellis, we’ll talk about it in later episodes, but like the ship’s list, I think I’ve understood that seeing who is next to them on the ships list for Pennsylvania, Germans is just kind of even more important than for other groups that that’s more likely that they’re all from the same village.

Nicole (21m 9s):
Wow, good tip. Well, let’s go to politics. So what role did Pennsylvania politics play on all of this immigration?

Heidi Mathis (21m 18s):
Yeah, we discussed it in another podcast on the book, American nations, Pennsylvania Germans were part of what the author or Colin Woodard called the Midland nation. And in the beginning, Pennsylvania politics were defined by a struggle within this so-called Midland nation. So in this early colonial period, there was a big clash between the Quakers, the Germans and the Scots Irish in Pennsylvania. In fact, frustrated by German political clout, none other than Benjamin Franklin fell prey to kind of our American tendency to otherize immigrant groups. See if you can hear our American pattern of fearing immigrants and what he said about the Pennsylvania Germans quote, “those who come hither are generally of a most ignorant and stupid sort of their own nation.

Heidi Mathis (22m 9s):
And as few of the English understand the German language. And so cannot address them either from the press or pulpit is almost impossible to remove any prejudice they once entertained. Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make moderate modest use of it. I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our elections, but now they come in droves and carry all before them, except for in one or two counties in short, unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies as you very judiciously propose, they will soon. So outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not, in my opinion, be able to preserve our language and even our government will become precarious.

Heidi Mathis (22m 56s):
Why should Pennsylvania founded by the English become a colony of aliens who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglophiling them, and will never adopt our language or customs any more than they can acquire our complexion”. So I just thought that was a funny, a funny quote about how scary the Pennsylvania Germans were. And he even, and another quote said that they were swarthy and, you know, it’s just kind of interesting how that kind of repeats itself in our, in our history.

Nicole (23m 29s):
Oh my goodness. Swarthy means dark skinned. Right. I just had to look it up. Right.

Heidi Mathis (23m 34s):
Totally.

Nicole (23m 34s):
I didn’t realize that to the English men that Germans had like a darker complexion. I didn’t even know that was a thing

Heidi Mathis (23m 41s):
I don’t think they did. I just think that he saw them that way and it just how we easily see others as different from us when, you know, honestly we’re all the same underneath. So I just thought that was kind of so fun. So just to carry on about this kind of political clash that was going on in Pennsylvania. So the Germans and Quakers and Scots Irish were clashing over who would control Pennsylvania government, but in the end, the Germans and Quakers found they had much more in common and formed this moderate Midland nation as described in the book American nations that we talked about earlier, and the Scots Irish went on to form what Woodard called the nation of Appalachia.

Heidi Mathis (24m 25s):
So despite fears like Franklins, what the Quakers in Pennsylvania Germans ultimately had in common was their desire to be free from the other nations, especially the zealous Yankee damnation, or the hierarchal Tidewater nation. Nations that reminded both the Quakers and the Pennsylvania Germans, too much of the Lords that they had left behind in Europe and, and made them see that they had more in common than they realized. So the Pennsylvania Germans desire for land and autonomy plus there being the only major colonial immigrant group to speak a language other than English meant that they formed a somewhat insular community. And they tended to stay together in the decades after the colonial period, even when some went on to migrate to Ontario, Canada, or to Ohio or Indiana.

Heidi Mathis (25m 14s):
And then then on, through the upper Midwest. Pennsylvania Germans mostly stayed within their communities to a striking degree and only truly gave up the widespread use of German after WWII.

Nicole (25m 26s):
They really clung on to that language. That’s cool.

Heidi Mathis (25m 30s):
Yeah.

Diana (25m 30s):
Well, this reminds me of my Isenhaur project and how I discovered that the Isenhaur stayed within a German community from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and then even out to Missouri, but after the civil war, so about, you know, 1850, 1860, that mid 1800s, the next generation went to Arkansas, Louisiana into Texas, and then they lost that German community. And I’m assuming the language, they Anglicised the name instead of E-I, I became I-S, and so, you know, I totally saw that.

Heidi Mathis (26m 13s):
That’s so amazing to think about and that those community ties were still so important generations later.

Diana (26m 20s):
Yeah. So it seems like for about a hundred years, they kept with their German communities. All right. So to wrap this up, let’s just talk a little bit about Pennsylvania. And was this the only place where German immigrants landed in the 1700s?

Heidi Mathis (26m 40s):
Well, while most colonial Germans did settle in Pennsylvania after they landed in the port of Philadelphia and they would settle in the immediate county surrounding Philadelphia, not all ended up in Pennsylvania, as I mentioned earlier, the Palatine Germans settled in New York. And so besides Pennsylvania, New York, they also settled in Virginia, Maryland and in the Carolinas. So maybe that’s where the Eisenhower’s ended up going. Some of them came through the port of Charleston, I believe, and then up into the Carolinas. So, but wherever your Pennsylvania, German as ancestors for settled, kind of to sum up acquiring land and staying close to their community was most likely top of mind.

Heidi Mathis (27m 25s):
So understanding the land, the probate, the church ships list and tax records of colonial America will be key to walking in their footsteps. And our colleague, Alice Childs will be helping us to find these records in the next podcast. And then for the last podcast, I’ll come back and discuss using DNA for helping us to find our Pennsylvania Germans.

Diana (27m 47s):
Oh, thank you so much. Well, I had to go check my family tree really quick and see if my Eisenhower’s really were in Pennsylvania or maybe they just started in, in the Carolinas, but they were in Pennsylvania. And so they did the migration down to North Carolina. Then I actually tracked my John D Eisenhower to Tennessee and then into Missouri. And it looks like in Tennessee that he was with a community of Germans as well. And I need to research that that’s going to be another project, which sounds super fun. Well, this has been just so fascinating, Heidi, to talk all about this. And I love that you referred back to the American nations. So, you know, that was a really fun discussion that podcast and that blog post just fascinating.

Heidi Mathis (28m 32s):
Absolutely. And like you were saying, I’ve noticed that like collateral lines of my Pennsylvania Germans also went into the south. So I don’t think it was an uncommon at all for some of them to go south. They didn’t all stay in the Midland, you know, sort of in that upper Midwest area of north America.

Nicole (28m 51s):
I really learned a lot from you, Heidi, about the pen colony needing to get some more people to make it financially solvent. And that’s probably why the Germans came there because he was advertising his calling. He has a place for people to settle and get land and they wanted land. Those are really important things to know. And thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Heidi Mathis (29m 12s):
Oh, it was so much fun. I learned so much.

Nicole (29m 14s):
All right, everybody, we look forward to continuing this series about Pennsylvania Germans and discussing the records with Alice. So we will talk to you all again next week. Bye.

Diana (29m 25s):
All right, bye. Bye everyone.

Heidi Mathis (29m 28s):
See you next time.

Nicole (30m 6s):
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