Many of the German immigrants maintained their contacts even as they dispersed in the colonies. In the same way that immigrants in Pennsylvania maintained their contacts with their home village, they maintained contact among themselves in the New World, even as they moved from Penn's Woods to the North Carolina Piedmont. Researcher Susanne Mosteller Rolland discovered that kinship, acquaintanceship, and religious networks, especially among the northern Kraichgauers whom we have been discussing, influenced migration from Germany to Pennsylvania, and from there to North Carolina. The Germans tended to settle in a series of clusters rather than isolation or in one large community. She found considerable networking among extended families. The southward migrants followed friends and relatives to the frontier area and settled near them.
( Note from Web Page Caretaker: Susanne discussed migration from PA to NC, and how the Germans' connections influenced their settlements in NC; of equal significance is how these same connections influenced German migration from VA to Eastern TN. One need only look at the list of eary settlers in East Tennessee, from about 1735 to about 1760, to see that the same phenomonem occurred here also. This list is a virtual "Who's Who" of the 1717 Germanna immigration and later German immigrations. In Washington and Greene Counties, TN, one finds just about all the families that were included in immigrations from 1717 onward: BROYLES, WILHOIT/WILHITE, BROWN, MAUK/MAWK, CARPENTER, COPP/CUPP, STONECIPHER/STEINSIFER, KEEBLER/KOBLER, VAUGHT/VOGT, and so on. Even those 1717 and later immigrants who migrated to NC maintaind connections to their "cousins" in Eastern TN, often marrying back and forth between the two settlements. Family, religious, and economic ties, and ties of friendship, tended to continue networking among extended families to wherever the Germans migrated. )
Letters were an important part of this interchange of information. Often one person was designated to be the focal point for the letters such as was illustrated in the last note with Lohrmann. One way in which this was done is shown by the action of Durs Thommen, an immigrant from Canton Basel, who wrote the city council in Basel and told them that anyone who wished to contact him should send their letters to Caspar and Johannes Wistar in Philadelphia. Hans Georg Gerster wrote open letters from Germantown to Niederdorf, informing everyone of the whereabouts and fate of the emigrants from there.
The financial and communications network became crucial to the new immigrants' struggle to establish themselves in the New World. Often, by the time an individual reached Philadelphia, he was in debt and ill. To be met at the docks by the likes of the Lohrmanns, who could provide guidance and perhaps make a loan, tremendously increased the chances that the new immigrant would be one of the success stories.
But not all immigrants were so lucky. In the next note, we'll look at Maria Barbara Kober who did not benefit from this networking.
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.