Our Family's Early History
Or are we German?
Germantown
Immigration to Pennsylvania, started in the late 1600’s. William Penn had accepted forty thousand square miles of land from King Charles II of England as a debt payment to his late father Sir William Penn. His plan was to make a home in the new world, for the Quaker's who were being persecuted for their religious beliefs, in their native land.
William Penn’s cousin-William Markham came to Bristol in 1681, and bought the tract of land from the Indians lying along the Delaware River to the Blue Mountains, paying for it in kettles, guns, powder, beer, and beads. Berks County was included in the sale. Penn himself arrived in October 1682, made his first treaty with the Indians, and laid out several counties in the same year- Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks.
Francious Pastorius-a wealthy aristocrat who represented German investors, along with thirteen Quaker families, made the first journey West from Crefled, Germany aboard the sailing ship Concord in 1683. Pastorius had purchased land from William Penn and upon the emigrants arrival, they founded Germantown. In fact, it is noted that the first several hundred settlers to Germantown were in fact Dutch!
Although German immigrants came soon thereafter, It wasn't until the early 1700's, that the Germans came in any significant numbers. The colony increased so rapidly, that other towns sprang up around the original settlement. Germantown became officially incorporated in 1689. By the time of the Revolutionary War in 1775, anywhere from 65,000-100,000 additional Germans, had settled in various parts of Pennsylvania. (The Penn family lost ownership of Pennsylvania as a result of the American Revolution, in 1776.)
Do you know, how Pennsylvania got it’s name?
The first German emmigrants, came to Pennsylvania in 1683. The typical German settler, was not unlike our ancestors-the Gellers. A majority of them were farmers, having come from the agricultural lands of the Rhineland. Others, came with craftsman type skills, such as glass making, millrights, and iron makers.
Most immigrants to the new world, were poor-meaning that they could not afford the costly passage to the America's. In those cases, settlers came as indentured servants-meaning that they had to agree to work for whomever paid their passage to America, until such time as their debt was redeemed. Upon redemption, they had the freedom to go their own way. I have heard that up to two-thirds of immigrants may have been indentured, and that the average servitude, may have been up to seven years long. (We had one tiny tidbit of information, that suggested that Geller arrived in Pennsylvania as an indentered servant, but we can't confirm it).
Sources/Credits:
Concord Image-1683Wikipedia-William Penn
Wikipedia-Francis Daniel Pastorius
Wikipedia-German Americans
Excerpts from History of Berks County, Pennsylvania
By J. Wallace Luckenbill, Fleetwood Junior High School Lectures, 1938-1945