William Penn personally visited along the Rhine River as early as 1680 and recruited people for Pennsylvania. He got about 100 Mennonites from urban settings to go to Pennsylvania (where they founded a town with the novel name of Germantown outside Philadelphia). Though Penn's agents continued their recruiting efforts and he published pamphlets extolling Pennsylvania, he did not obtain emigrants in the numbers that he thought he would. A few additions were made to the inhabitants of Germantown, but, in general, there was a long dry spell of thirty years before any sizeable number of Germans came.
Even in the face of the thousands of Germans who descended on London in the year 1709, Pennsylvania obtained hardly any of those in immediate years after 1709. Separately from the thousands who wanted to come in 1709, a small group of Mennonite farmers made their way quietly to Pennsylvania where they settled on the frontier, in what is now Lancaster County. We wish that Hans Herr and his party had left better records of their motivations.
We do know that these Mennonites settled on the frontier where they could buy large quantities of land. Some bought only 500 acres, but many took 1,000 acres. All the farms were next to one another, which is the reason they went to the frontier. There were no other settlers there to interfere with the purchase of about 10,000 acres of land all together. Since a man could only farm about 50 acres at the most at that time (with the aid of a family), why did they buy so much land? It appears that they were anticipating having a German community to be augmented with their friends, relatives, and families. We do know that they had good reasons for leaving Germany, but they could have gone to the east. Why did they choose North America, and probably Pennsylvania, in particular?
We do not know. We do know that they started seeking others in Germany to come. They wrote letters and even sent a "salesman" to recruit more people.
Because of the bad taste in English mouths due to the 1709 influx of Germans, the British put a damper on further German emigration to America. All was quiet for several years. Then all of a sudden, in 1717, several hundred Germans decided to go to America (I believe that Klaus Wust gave these numbers once). Why this occurred is not known of course, but it would be of interest to many Germanna Colonists to know this because the number included about 80 Germans who were side-tracked by Capt. Tarbett, Captain of the ship Scott .
The mystery lies not in the reasons for leaving. The mystery lies in the reasons for choosing America.
(05 Jun 03)
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.