Pennsylvania Dutch

Pennsylvania Dutch (also Pennsylvania Germans; pnslv.dt. Pennsilfaani Deitsche ) is the name for a group of German-speaking immigrants who have since the 17th century in Pennsylvania, later the U.S. state was founded and originally mostly from the Palatinate arrived. It was Protestants such as Mennonites, Amish and members of the Moravian Church. The of them populated region is referred to in America as Pennsylvania Dutch Country. To the initially populated core area includes the cities of Allentown, Hershey, Lancaster, Reading and York. The language of this group of German-Americans, which is partly still spoken today, is called Pennsylvania Deitsch, officially Pennsylvania German.

Etymology

The Dutch name for the purposes of German was used in English as in the high and low German long time as a collective term for all German and continental West Germanic languages ​​in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.

There are various explanations for the name Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants who came from Germany and not from the Netherlands. One theory is that it is simply a corruption of the word German is ( in the Palatinate dialect Deitsch ), which was pronounced by Americans Dutch. The second theory assumes that the traditional Dutch English name was for people who lived on the Rhine, no matter whether it is acted by the Dutch, German or Swiss. In this sense, the term itself may dip to William Shakespeare. Only since the 17th century only the Dutch were known as Dutch, the Germans, however, as Germans. Another explanation is that German and Dutch for Americans have almost heard the same so that you have kept the Germans in Pennsylvania for the Dutch. In addition, it is argued that most of the German immigrants had come by ship from the Dutch ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam to the United States, so you have erroneously viewed the immigrants in the United States as Dutch.

History

The Quaker William Penn (1644-1718), who wanted to start their own colony on the east coast of the present-day United States, held the purely rural region of Pennsylvania for a particularly suitable location and made it known through his writings to potential German emigrants and enlisted in the 1670s in the German provinces for his project. 1683 founded German Mennonites from Krefeld area to place German Town, is a city district of Philadelphia today. After 1710, the first major wave of emigrants from the Palatinate arrived in Pennsylvania and their reports in the home attracted more settlers who came from the Palatinate, Baden, Württemberg and the Rhineland. 1711 six Mennonite families from Switzerland settled in what is now Lancaster, which was officially founded in 1730. Between 1727 and 1775 some 65,000 German emigrants came to Philadelphia. During the American Revolution deserted a few thousand Hessian mercenaries who were in the service of England, and settled in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. In 1790, 40 percent of the total population of that state were of German descent. Since the Germans settled mainly in the south east of Pennsylvania, up to 80 percent of the settlers were of German descent here in some townships and counties. They first devoted himself exclusively to farming and self-sufficiency of their farms.

Even after 1800 nor German immigrants came to Pennsylvania, but mostly from other regions, partly they were Catholic. They are not counted by historians in general to the population group of the Pennsylvania Dutch. The German immigrants who came after 1820 were more likely to be settled in New York, Illinois and Wisconsin, as the purchase price for farmland in Pennsylvania had meanwhile risen sharply. The "Pennsylvania Dutch Country " is sometimes referred to by the locals as "Pennsylvania Deitschland " or " Pennsylvania Dutch Country ".