One thing that I learned at the PalAm conference at Hebron Lutheran Church this past weekend was that Klaus Wust should have a new book out within the year, perhaps within months. I always recommend his works and I understand that this book will look at the backgrounds of German emigration in the early eighteenth century.
At one time I examined the impact of the 1709 emigration on the emigration in the following decade. There is no doubt but that it had a definite influence in encouraging people after 1709 to come. Until 1709 there had been very little emigration from Germany. Starting in the 1680's, there were the Mennonites, who settled Germantown outside Philadelphia and whose numbers were augmented through the years, but these were not a large number. A non-Mennonite group, perhaps of about one hundred people, left in 1708 and settled on the Hudson River, not far above New York City. Then in 1709 there were the large numbers of Germans who made their way to London. Probably they numbered more than ten thousand. These 1709 people served as an advance guard in paving the way for others to come.
After they left, then their neighbors became better aware of the possibilities. "If Johann und Maria could do it, then I can do it." To examine this question in more detail, I looked in Hank Jones' books, The Palatine Emigrants of New York 1710 , and used the geographical index of place names with respect to the homes of our early Germanna ancestors who started leaving in 1713, 1717, and in slightly later years. What I found showed that the Germanna people had been preceded by significant numbers of people from their localities in 1709.
For the First Colony people of Germanna, I used the place name of Siegen which is usually used in conjunction with the surrounding villages. Altogether, I found about 200 people who had left in 1709 from the region around Siegen. This region was a little more than fifteen miles in radius around Siegen, perhaps less. For any one square mile, the chances were excellent that an individual had left. Since the range of knowledge of someone who stayed extended for many miles, probably everyone who did not go in 1709 was aware of someone who had gone. Even more probably, they were aware of several individuals who had left. The chances that one of the these emigrants was a relative was fairly highly.
Some of the villages mentioned include Oberfischbach, 5 mi. west of Siegen; Netphen, 4 mi. northeast; Wilnsdorf, 5 mi. southeast; Zeppenfeld, 7 mi. south; Salchendorf, 6 mi., south; Oberholtzklau, 6 mi. northwest; Anzhausen, 5 mi. southeast.
Emigrants include:
(more later)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.