History Founding of Germantown
13 families from Krefeld made the start – How Germans shaped America
Every year, Americans celebrate the founding day of the first German settlement in the New World with “German American Day” on October 6th. In doing so, they honor the German contribution to US culture, which was diverse and can still be felt today.
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Faith moves mountains – and it can lead people to make a life-threatening journey across the ocean to start a new life on another continent. An example of this is a smaller group of German emigrants who arrived in the New World in 1683, and whose legacy continues to shape the United States today.
13 families from Krefeld and today’s Meerbusch, who had Dutch and Swiss roots, settled in the then British colony of Pennsylvania on October 6, 1683 after an almost three-month journey. They founded the first German settlement in North America and called it Deitscheschteddel, i.e. “Little German Town”. English name: Germantown. They were Mennonites, followers of an Anabaptist Protestant faith, which allowed them to live more freely in North America than in Europe at the time.
Scenes from Germantown (clockwise): Pastorius’ first log cabin around 1683, his later home around 1715, print shop and home around 1735, market square around 1820
What: Wikipedia / Public Domain
Pennsylvania’s namesake was a devout Quaker from England named William Penn, who owned a large area near Lake Erie and turned it into a refuge for religious communities facing persecution in Europe. This came to the attention of Franz-Daniel Pastorius, a lawyer and preacher who arrived in America from Frankfurt am Main in August 1683.
Settlement was initially known as “poor town”.
On his journey to the New World, Pastorius stopped in Krefeld and was able to win over the Mennonites for his project of a German, faith-oriented settlement in Pennsylvania. A decision that many of the emigrants soon regretted, because at the beginning Germantown was barely getting off the ground economically. There was a lack of skilled workers and materials to make the land arable and productive, so the settlement soon lost the malicious nickname “Poor Town”.
But the settlers remained steadfast, including when it came to their Christian values: in 1688, four residents of Germantown wrote the first protest against slavery in America. The economic situation gradually improved, and in 1690 Wilhelm Rettinghaus (later Americanized as William Rittenhouse) founded a paper mill. In 1691, Germantown received city charter from the English crown.
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From the beginning of the 18th century, around 100 Palatinate families settled in Germantown. These settlers were Amish – a religious community that had split off from the Mennonites. The “Old Order Amish,” who still speak a kind of Palatine dialect today, moved to the countryside in Lancaster County, where they still live according to the rules of the New Testament: with strict dress codes and precisely regulated social order. Their faith prohibits many Amish from owning bicycles and cars, instead they use horse-drawn carriages.
The German settlers and their descendants had less of an impact on the country politically than the British colonial power, but they had a significant cultural influence. The immigrants also left a major mark on agriculture and also during industrialization in the 19th century. They influenced settlement in the Midwest and shaped steel cities like Pittsburgh.
More than 23 percent of the Union Army was of German origin
Historians have researched that in the Civil War from 1861 onwards, 23.4 percent of the Union Army were of German origin, specifically 516,000 men, of whom 210,000 were born in Germany. More than 80 percent of US citizens of German origin opted for the north. This made them the largest ethnic group to take a stand against the slaveholding states, which had its historical roots in the protest note of 1688.
Germans had previously influenced the American War of Independence, but here on both sides: the Prussian Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben successfully reorganized the continental army, while Hessian soldiers went to war on the side of the British colonial power. On October 4, 1777, one of the most famous battles of the Revolutionary War took place near Germantown.
With “German American Day” on October 6th every year, US citizens honor the contribution of German immigrants. This German-American Day dates back to the 19th century and was first celebrated in 1883 on the 200th anniversary of the founding of Germantown.
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The holiday was abolished at the beginning of the First World War, and it was only US President Ronald Reagan who revived the tradition for the 300th anniversary of Germantown. Since then, there has been a special statement from the US President every year on German American Day.
Today, around 50 million US citizens, one sixth of the population, trace their roots to German immigrants. These include the King of Rock’n’Roll Elvis Presley – his German ancestors were called Pressler – as well as the ketchup mogul Henry John Heinz, the jeans inventor Levi Strauss and aircraft pioneer William E. Boeing.
In addition to the real German influence on the New World, there are also various myths surrounding the German influence on the USA. The most famous is this so-called Muhlenberg legend. After that, in 1794, the US House of Representatives only rejected the proposal to make German the official language of the United States by a narrow majority. In fact, at that time it was only about publishing legal texts in German.
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