and Connecticut began to leave their home towns. Of those who departed,
a half went to other places in New England, a quarter to western New
York, and a quarter to Ohio and other points in the then "Far West."
The extreme western part of New York State had not begun to develop
as early as the period of which we are speaking. Canandaigua was the
largest town in 1790, and it had but a hundred inhabitants. Pioneers
came from New Jersey and Pennsylvania by way of the Susquehanna and
Tioga Rivers, went to Seneca Lake, and thence to Cayuga; others from
Connecticut had entered the valley of the Mohawk by way of Albany and
Fort Schuyler. Small settlements sprang up at Bath, Naples, Geneva,
Aurora, Seneca Falls, Palmyra, Richmond, Fort Stanwix, and Marcellus.
The Erie Canal was as yet undreamt of.
The population picture of New York State in 1790 is then a double one.
The great bulk of the State, so far as area is concerned, was a colony
of Anglo-Saxon origin almost identical with the New England States. The
Hudson valley formed a less important appendage to this, with New York
City at its mouth--a miscellaneous settlement of people of all sorts
whose interests were largely commercial.
New York was one of the States that lost most heavily by the Loyalist
migration at the end of the Revolution. This superior Nordic element
left in two great streams; one by sea to Nova Scotia, and the other
overland to Canada. Long Island was a particularly heavy loser, 3000
people going in one fleet in 1783. The influx of Loyalists into Nova
Scotia, amounting to some 35,000, was a severe burden on that little
colony. Those who went into Canada overland from New York were more
easily assimilated, and many of the important settlements along the
northern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, such as Kingston,
date from that time. To these Ontario settlers was given, by Order in
Council in 1789, the honorary name of "United Empire Loyalists," and
they formed the backbone of Upper Canada, as the Province of Ontario
was then called, and were a main element in defeating the plans of
American strategists in 1812 to capture Canada and annex it to the
Union.
Although New York is generally credited with having more Loyalists
during the Revolution than any other colony, she also furnished
more troops for the patriot army than did any other State except
Massachusetts.
New Jersey, in contrast to its neighbors on either side, was one of the
most thoroughly English of all the colonies. The settlements of the
Dutch in the north, and the squabbles of a few hundred Dutch, Swedes,
and Finlanders in the south, left little trace on the population when
colonization once started in earnest. The real history of the colony
begins in 1664 when the English proprietors, to whom it had been
granted, began to colonize it seriously.
Northern New Jersey was a chaos of rugged hills and forests which
offered little to the settler and is still largely waste land. The
southern part of the State is also largely waste land, consisting
chiefly of pine barrens so that early settlement was virtually limited
to two areas. On the North River, as the Hudson was called, the lands
along the meadows opposite Manhattan Island were inviting, and on the
South River, as the Delaware was originally designated, there was a
broad strip of fertile farm land which attracted the early settlers.
Among other centers New Haven had established a colony there about
1640, but had been driven off by the Dutch. There was also some
extremely fertile land around Freehold and other towns on the line
between New York and Philadelphia.
Since these two areas were so inaccessible to each other by direct
communication, the State grew up in two distinct settlements; that
along the western side of New York harbor, then known as East Jersey,
and that on the Delaware, known as West Jersey. While these two were
consolidated administratively in 1702, they have never been wholly
consolidated in actual character, and the two ends of the State are,
even today, diverse enough to show their somewhat divergent origin.
The land along the Delaware was colonized, for the most part, directly
from England by the Quakers who had secured an interest in it, and who
established the only two towns of importance in West Jersey during
the Colonial period--Burlington in 1667 and Salem in 1675. Those
who established Burlington were mostly from Yorkshire with a large
group also from London, and they took opposite sides of the town, the
Yorkshire people spreading north and the London people spreading south.
Geographical difficulties checked the southward spread so that Cape May
was settled separately by people from Connecticut and from Long Island.
Later, some of the French Huguenots went down into West Jersey, but
it always remained essentially an English colony, largely of Quaker
complexion and influenced by the close proximity of co-religionists in
Pennsylvania.
East Jersey, like western New York, represents more directly a New
England outpost. Elizabethtown had been established in 1665 by
emigrants sent direct from Great Britain, but Newark had at almost
the same time been colonized by people from Connecticut, who at first
gave to it the name of their old home, Milford. The Elizabethtown
Association somewhat later sold part of its territory to people from
New Hampshire and Massachusetts who established the two hamlets of
Woodbridge and Piscataqua, now New Brunswick.
In 1666, Connecticut Puritans also established on the Passaic River
first Guilford, and later Branford, both of which with Milford merged
in the town of Newark. The New England overflow continued until the
shores of Newark Bay had become another New England colony. Such
communities as the Oranges were chiefly transplanted Puritan towns.
The proprietorship of East Jersey shortly passed into the hands
of Scotsmen and a steady immigration of these began about 1684.
The capital of East Jersey, Perth Amboy, was named for one of the
proprietors, James Drummond, the Earl of Perth. The colony soon
became, and has ever since remained, one of the strongholds of Scotch
Presbyterianism in America, which found its intellectual center in the
establishment of Princeton University.
For a long time the two sections of New Jersey were of about equal
size and importance. As the country between them gradually filled
up, the State grew slowly until at the time of the Revolution its
population was estimated at about 120,000. Another fifteen years saw a
healthy growth, the first census, in 1790, showing 184,139 inhabitants.
The somewhat complicated details of its development should not obscure
the fact that New Jersey was one of the most purely white, Protestant,
Nordic settlements in the colonies.
Although prior to the arrival of William Penn there were several
thousand settlers on the Delaware River, in the territory now covered
by Pennsylvania and Delaware, the real settlement of that region
is generally dated from the beginning of his operations in 1681,
when Upland, now Chester, was settled as his headquarters. A year
later Philadelphia was founded, and in spite of this late start grew
so rapidly that William Penn, the Quaker, at his death, had the
satisfaction of knowing that the City of Brotherly Love was the largest
in North America.
While the foundation stock was made up of English Quakers, Penn had
ambitious ideas of establishing a headquarters for other like-minded
persons, and with this idealism was apparently mixed a solid commercial
ambition which led him and his agents to advertise the merits of
the colony widely. The land system, unlike that of Virginia or New
Netherlands, favored the settler with small means. English and Welsh
farmers rapidly appropriated to themselves the country along the west
side of the Delaware River from Trenton to Wilmington.
Penn maintained friendly relations with the Protestant leaders
in southern Germany, and he and his agents seem to have had an
extraordinary flair for finding obscure and peculiar sects and getting
them to emigrate to the new colony. A mere list of the odd religious
denominations that soon flourished in Pennsylvania is bewildering, and
an attempt to define the characteristics, which to them seemed more
than matters of life and death, is quite beyond the capacity of the
present-day student not steeped in the knowledge of seventeenth-century
theology.
Germantown was established in October, 1673, the first outpost of the
Alpine race in the present territory of the United States. Its founders
were Mennonites; but they were later joined by Dunkards or Tunkers,
that is, Dippers, who held to the efficacy of baptism by immersion.
Generally speaking, the Germans who came to Pennsylvania during the
first quarter-century of its settlement belong to these distinctive
sects, while after that time the immigration was made up of a somewhat
more uniform mass of adherents of either the Lutheran or the Reformed
Church. This difference soon became a recognized one for an easy
division of "the Pennsylvania Dutch," as this mixed group of Alpines
came to be called, not very correctly, from an assimilation of
_Pennsylvanische Deutsche_. One would ask, on hearing such a person
mentioned, "Does he belong to the sects or to the church people?"
A few of these such as the Labadists from Friesland who settled in New
Castle County, Delaware, were either from Holland or parts of Germany
bordering Holland, but the great bulk of the "Pennsylvania Dutch" came
from the Rhine Provinces, particularly from Alsace and the Palatinate,
with a liberal sprinkling of northern French Protestants who had been
forced over the border, while others came from Austria and Prussia and
even from northern Italy. As a matter of fact, down to the time of the
World War, Americans called, colloquially, all Germans "Dutchmen."
While the Palatinate furnished only a part of the immigration its name
was soon given to all similar newcomers, so that the term Palatine
became a general description for a German-speaking immigrant; and one
even finds in the old records such anomalies as an allusion to "a
Palatine from Hamburg." An important centre of their dispersion was the
town of Crefeld near the border of Holland.
The colonies in general, being overwhelmingly and typically British,
looked with suspicion on any alien groups, and New England, in
particular, probably would not have encouraged these Alpines to
enter at all. Virginia with its Church of England establishment and
its self-conscious English attitude was likewise not disposed to be
hospitable to such a large group of foreigners.
Governor Oglethorpe attracted some of them to Georgia, but not very
successfully, as will be mentioned later. One important group of his
settlers, in particular, the Moravians, left Georgia about 1739
because they were required to take up arms against the neighboring
Spanish in Florida. They moved to Pennsylvania where they founded, in
1741, the town of Bethlehem, which has been their headquarters ever
since.
While New York originally welcomed the Palatines, it soon treated
them so badly that thereafter almost all the vessels bearing German
immigrants came directly from Dutch ports to the Delaware, and if by
chance an occasional ship was forced to make a landing in New York,
its passengers quickly made their way across the Jerseys into more
hospitable territory.
Even in Pennsylvania the invasion of the Germans eventually began
to cause alarm among the English-speaking and dominant part of the
population. In Virginia this attitude of exclusion of supposedly alien
races had been maintained ever since the first permanent settlement.
Inspired by visions of building up a great industry, the proprietors of
that colony had sent out with their "second supply" a little group of
eight artisans from Germany and Poland who were skilled glassmakers.
The English colonists charged them with treasonable dealings with the
Indians and the Chronicler of the settlement refers to them disgustedly
as those "damned Dutchmen."
Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1753, expressed his opinion of some of his
fellow citizens in a letter to Peter Collinson, was merely reflecting
an attitude which the English stock had more or less generally taken
when he declared:
"Those who come hither are generally the most stupid of their own
nation, and, as ignorance is often attended with credulity when
knavery would mislead it, and with suspicion when honesty would set
it right; and as few of the English understand the German language,
and so cannot address them either from the press or the pulpit, it
is almost impossible to remove any prejudices they may entertain.
Their clergy have very little influence on the people, who seem to
take a pleasure in abusing and discharging the minister on every
trivial occasion. Not being used to liberty, they know not how to
make a modest use of it. And as Holben says of the young Hottentots,
that they are not esteemed men until they have shown their manhood
by beating their mothers, so these seem not to think themselves
free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting
their teachers. Thus they are under no restraint from ecclesiastical
government; they behave, however, submissively enough at present to
the civil government, which I wish they may continue to do, for I
remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our elections,
but now they come in droves and carry all before them, except in one
or two counties.[7]
"Few of their children in the country know English. They import
many books from Germany; and of the six printing-houses in the
province, two are entirely German, two half German, half English, and
but two entirely English. They have one German newspaper, and one
half-German. Advertisements, intended to be general, are now printed
in Dutch and English. The signs in our streets have inscriptions
in both languages, and in some places only German. They begin of
late to make all their bonds and other legal instruments in their
own language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed
in our courts, where the German business so increases that there
is continued need of interpreters; and I suppose in a few years
they will also be necessary in the Assembly, to tell one-half our
legislators what the other half say.
"In short, unless the stream of their importation could be turned
from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they
will soon so outnumber us that we will, in my opinion, be not able
to preserve our language, and even our government will become
precarious. The French, who watch all advantages, are now themselves
making a German settlement, back of us, in the Illinois country, and
by means of these Germans they may in time come to an understanding
with ours; and, indeed, in the last war,[8] our Germans showed a
general disposition, that seemed to bode us no good. For, when the
English, who were not Quakers, alarmed by the danger arising from
the defenseless state of our country, entered unanimously into an
association, and within this government, and the Lower Counties
raised, armed, and disciplined near ten thousand men, the Germans,
except a very few in proportion to their number, refused to engage
in it, giving out, one amongst another, and even in print, that, if
they were quiet, the French, should they take the country, would not
molest them; at the time abusing the Philadelphians for fitting out
privateers against the enemy, and representing the trouble, hazard,
and expense of defending the province, as a greater inconvenience
than any that might be expected from a change of government. Yet I
am not for refusing to admit them entirely into our colonies. All
that seems to me necessary is, to distribute them more equally,
mix them with the English schools, where they are not too thickly
settled, and take some care to prevent the practice, lately fallen
into by some of the shipowners, of sweeping the German gaols to
make up the number of their passengers. I say I am not against the
admission of Germans in general, for they have their virtues. Their
industry and frugality are exemplary. They are excellent husbandmen,
and contribute greatly to the improvement of a country."
By 1727, the English in Pennsylvania had become sufficiently alarmed
over the proportions of the Palatine invasion to demand a careful
record of the numbers arriving each year so that from then on there
is full official record of all foreigners entered at the port of
Philadelphia. By that time there were probably fifteen or twenty
thousand Germans already in the province, and the record mentioned
indicates that between 1727 and 1745 approximately 22,000 arrived by
ships. To this number should, of course, be added the high natural
increase of those already settled.
Since the English had pre-empted much of the desirable land along
the Delaware and around Philadelphia, the Germans, with whom the
acquisition of farming land was a dominant passion, mostly went
westward of the English settlement and formed a belt where their
language was and, in scattered groups to this day, is spoken. They
filled the Lehigh and Schuylkill valleys and occupied a band of
fertile soil beginning in eastern Pennsylvania on the Delaware, passing
westward toward the Susquehanna through the towns of Allentown,
Reading, Lebanon, Lancaster, and thence down to the Cumberland valley
on the Maryland border where they had a natural outlet to western
Virginia and to the south. The tier of counties north of this belt and
along the borders of New York was comparatively neglected by them, and
was filled largely by settlers from Connecticut. The influx of English
and German sectaries was so rapid that within three years from its
founding, Penn's province had made a growth as great as that of New
Netherlands in its first half-century.
The early Quakers who belonged to the privileged group grew prosperous,
and many of them finding the strict ordinances of their sect somewhat
oppressive became Anglicans. Thus the Church of England gained an
important position in Philadelphia which it retained up to the
Revolution. In general, it represented the Loyalist element and
therefore partly disintegrated when they left at the end of the war.
The Revolution was largely Calvinistic, and the Established Church was
in most of the northern colonies regarded with disfavor as "loyalist."
The invasion of Ulster Scots into Pennsylvania began shortly after the
German immigration was well under way. Within a few years the great
majority of the Ulster immigrants to America were making directly
for the Delaware shores. Presbyterian congregations existed in
the important towns of the colony about 1700, and within the next
decade the Scotch had made numerous settlements in New Castle County,
Delaware, and on both sides of the Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary at
its intersection with the Delaware line.
When the great tide of emigration from Ulster set in about 1720,
the Scotch found the best and most accessible soil in Pennsylvania
occupied by the English and the next belt held firmly by the Germans.
In general, therefore, they were obliged to pass over these two
territories and settle still farther west, particularly in the
Cumberland valley of which Gettysburg, York, and Carlisle are now
important centers. In this district geographical isolation led later to
the establishment farther south of a distinct church, the Cumberland
Presbyterian, somewhat different in its tenets from the Presbyterianism
of the Philadelphia region and Delaware.
The number of Scotch who thus left Ulster for Pennsylvania is
uncertain, but may have exceeded 40,000 or 50,000. Taken in connection
with the Palatine immigration at the same period the influx to
Pennsylvania in the 1730's formed the largest migration from Europe to
the New World that ever took place until the steamship era arrived.
[Illustration: TERRITORIAL GROWTH of the UNITED STATES]
Seeking newer and freer land, the Scotch together with some Germans
began to follow the mountain valleys trending southwestward from
Pennsylvania. They not only filled the Shenandoah Valley in a few
years, but filtered down to the back country of the southern
colonies and to the eastern portion of what is now Tennessee.
A good illustration of this migration is Daniel Boone, himself of
English stock, who was born on the Delaware only a few miles above
Philadelphia. The Boone family soon moved to Reading. Thence drifting
southwestward with his compatriots, Daniel Boone settled in the North
Carolina uplands, along the valley of the Yadkin, then passed beyond
into Kentucky, and, after that location began to be civilized, went on
as a pioneer to Missouri. His son appears a little later as one of the
early settlers of Kansas, his grandson as a pioneer in Colorado.
When the land west of the Alleghanies was opened for settlement about
1768, the Ulster Scots began to throng the mountain passes. In addition
to their aptitude for frontier life, and the insatiable desire to find
new and cheap land, they wanted to get away from their neighbors, the
Pennsylvania Dutch, with whom they usually did not live on very good
terms. Pittsburgh rapidly became a Nordic territory settled mainly by
the Ulster Scots.
These streams of immigration were sufficient by 1740 to enable
Pennsylvania to overtake and pass the population of every other colony
except Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia, although most of them
had been started a generation earlier than Penn's settlement. A decade
later Maryland was passed and just after the Revolution Massachusetts
was outstripped, while Philadelphia remained the metropolis of the
United States until finally excelled by New York City in the first
half of the nineteenth century.
Benjamin Franklin's offhand estimate that at the end of the Colonial
period one-third of the population of his adopted State was English,
one-third Scotch, and one-third German, was not far from the truth.
Though the population was then by a safe majority British in origin
and English-speaking, the Germans remained an element impossible to
assimilate, so long as they continued to be segregated in their own
communities of which Lancaster was the largest inland town in the
thirteen colonies.
Such of the Germans as went to the frontier States were assimilated
by the Nordic groups without much difficulty; but the experience of
the Pennsylvania Dutch farming communities is like that of some of
the city slum districts of the last century, in presenting groups
almost impossible to Americanize. Even at the present time this Alpine
island of population still retains many of its alien characteristics.
For this, among other reasons, the German element in Pennsylvania
at the time of the Revolution played a relatively unimportant part
in the affairs of the State, as suggested by the quotation from
Franklin above. The dominant element was formed by the group around
Philadelphia composed mainly of the original English Quakers; but the
Pennsylvania-Dutch, on their farms, and the Scots on the frontier,
furnished a large contingent with which the politicians had to deal,
though they were seldom represented in the government and leadership
of the colony. The German element was inclined to follow the leadership
of the Quakers under whose invitation it had come to Pennsylvania. The
Scots, on the other hand, were apt to be in a state of rebellion when
occasion arose, as conspicuously in the Whiskey Rebellion, which formed
one of the first tests of the power of the Federal Government under
Washington's presidency.
The claim that half of the Ulstermen were adherents of the Established
Church, rather than Presbyterians, is doubtless extreme, but emphasizes
the typically non-Irish and Protestant character of this whole element
of the population, as also the fact that many of the Ulstermen were
not Scots, nor even Lowland Scots, whose ancestors had moved northward
across the border from England; but were direct emigrants from England
to Ireland, some indeed as late as and even after the time of Cromwell.