The last note mentioned that a spirit of community existed among the immigrants. This extended down to the local village level. This note looks at one case to show how prevalent this was and how it was done.
Peter Lohrmann, an immigrant from Schwaigern who lived in Germantown, Pennsylvania, was the focal point for Schwaigerners. Lohrmann came with a wife, three daughters, and seven others from Schwaigern in 1737. In 1739, Lohrmann wrote a letter back to Schwaigern in which he discussed the arrival of large number of Schwaigerners on several different ships, how they settled, whom they married, where they lived. Sebastian Dieter and his wife and children, Marcel Schneider and his wife and children, Christoph Schaber, and Jerg Gebert, all survived a shipwreck in 1738 before reaching Philadelphia.
The Lohrmans had recently spoken with Martin Boger, who came in 1731, and had received a letter from Mathes Beringer in Schwaigern telling of difficulties there. One of Lohrmann's daughters had married Martin Schwartz, who came from Schluctern, a village very near Schwaigern. They had heard from Schwaigern that Matthes Grassauer's wife and son had died. Mathes Beringer in Schwaigern should be told his son was indentured to an English preacher. Martin Reissinger, one of several tailors to come to Pennsylvania, was living with the Lohrmanns and had remarried. Also, Reissinger's daughter had married. They had not heard anything about Peter Heinrich's daughter, but Hannes Kober's daughter, Maria Barbara, had arrived in Philadelphia and her husband had died here. At the moment they did not know anything about Maria Barbara.
This is particularly fascinating to me as Johann Michael Willheit from Schwaigern is an ancestor of mine. Much of his ancestry and of his wife has been worked out. The names that Lohrmann gives in his letter above sound as if I were reading the ancestry of the Willheits. This is also the same village that gave us our Germanna families of Koch (Cook), Baumgardners, and Reiners.
One gets the feeling that everyone in Schwaigern knew almost everything about everyone who had gone to the New World. And most of the immigrants probably knew what was happening in Schwaigern. There was a lot more communication among the Germans than we have believed.
The Lohrmanns served as the communications hub for the dispersed community. When Jerg and Wendel Heinrich, who had emigrated in 1731 and 1737 respectively, rode into Philadelphia in 1743 to buy provisions, they went first to Lohrmanns to exchange news about Schwaigern. Lohrmann was the mail center, both verbally and for letters. The Heinrichs received their mail there and left their letter to go back to Germany. Lohrmann put the letters together and sent them on to Schwaigern in batches. Probably Lohrmann knew some ship captains and their schedules to whom he would entrust the letters. (If anyone has information about how this mail distribution network worked, I think we all would like to hear it.)
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.