Of course, I find it interesting that George Utz and Hans Herr lived about two miles from each other. George is an ancestor and the Hans Herr House is where I volunteer as a tour guide. There is far greater significance to the proximity of George and Hans though.
We have seen that friends and relatives played a major role in influencing people to come to America. Our story in the Kraichgau started in 1717, but there were others who came before this. Not many, but I contend that these few were very important. The phrase that I use is they "broke the ice". A trip to America was to be feared, and I will develop this theme in a future note. Pennsylvania had been asking for people for thirty years by 1710, but few had responded. Hans Herr and his fellow Mennonites took the bold step of going to America, and they certainly recruited more of their compatriots to come and join them. They even sent people back to Germany to recruit. The members of what became the Second Germanna Colony saw their neighbors were going to America. They too decided there could be a better future there.
Besides the Mennonites, there was a very large group that left Germany in 1709. I have identified some of these people and found that they overlapped the homes of the 1717 and later people. Most of these people were Lutherans, with some Reformed. The Catholics were few in number. Regardless of the religion, which usually did not matter too much, the people who were leaving in 1717 knew that people were getting across the ocean. The letters back to Germany must have started early, because, within a year or two, other people from the Kraichgau were going to Virginia, which was not a usual destination. That people like the Kablers went to Virginia is testimony to the correspondence that must have existed across the Atlantic. How else were they to know that their neighbors, the Zimmermans, were in Virginia?
Up around Siegen, the mass migration of 1709 was very noticeable in its impact. I have extracted, using Hank Z. Jones' study of the 1710 immigrants to New York, that more than 200 people left from a circle of about fifteen mile radius around Siegen. Several of the names even repeat the name of the ancestors of our Germanna people. When Johann Justus Albrecht came on a recruiting trip, probably in 1710, the departure of many neighbors and perhaps a few relatives was still fresh in the minds of the people they left behind. That so many people had responded in 1709 to the lure of America is testimony to the economic conditions there in the Siegen area. Probably this condition had not improved markedly by 1713. Thus, we can postulate poor economic conditions, plus the knowledge that others had made the trip, toward the success of Albrecht's recruiting efforts.
It is profitable to study the exodus of 1709 in both general terms and the specific names of people. It will certainly fill you with admiration for the boldness and bravery of the people who made the trip.
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.