United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery; the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, collapse of centralized authority and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages; the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete.
The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became admired in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded; the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty established the Carolingian Empire during the 8th and early 9th century. It covered much of Western Europe but succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages.
The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, by the founding of universities; the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine and war, which diminished the population of Europe. Controversy and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: classical civilisation, or Antiquity. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, media saecula, or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625; the alternative term "medieval" derives from medium aevum. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", considered their time to be the last before the end of the world; when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua and to the Christian period as nova. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People, with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries".
Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient and modern. The most given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492. Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and late
Old Order River Brethren
The Old Order River Brethren are a small Old Order Christian denomination with roots in the Mennonite church and German pietism through the Schwarzenau Brethren. The denomination began about 1778 in Pennsylvania, it shares an early history with the Brethren in Christ Church. A group of brethren near the Susquehanna River that had separated from the Mennonites became known as the River Brethren. In 1856, a group left the larger body of River Brethren and established a separate, more conservative group, they were sometimes referred to as the York Brethren or Yorkers, because most of the members in 1843 were located in York County, Pennsylvania. This minority group believed the majority of the church was becoming lax in non-conformity and non-resistance, desired to return to old doctrines and traditions. With the emergence of the Old Order groups among the Amish, the Mennonites and the German Baptist Brethren in the late 1800s they defined themselves as "Old Order". Between 1921 and 1961 four splits occurred in the group about the use of cars, leaving the Old Order River Brethren divided into five subgroups.
Three of the five groups reunited between 1969 and 1977 so that there are three subgroups until today. Traditionally meetings for worship were held in the homes of the members. In recent times and public buildings are used for church services. Ministers are un-salaried and there is no formal training for preachers. A traditional congregation has a bishop, two ministers, one or two deacons. Testimonies are an integral part of every worship service. There is no Sunday School; the two-day Lovefeast observance of communion is practiced. Baptism is by trine immersion. Old Order River Brethren wear a conservative form of plain dress, a distinctive of them. Men wear women wear white head coverings along with general plain clothes. Like among the Reformed Mennonites children do not dress plain until conversion. In 1919 the Old Order River Brethren forbade the use of automobiles and thus the use of horse-drawn vehicles was maintained until the Musser group allowed cars in 1951 and the Strickler group in 1954.
A third smaller and shrinking subgroup, called the "Old Church", still uses horse and buggy transportation. Television is forbidden. During the 20th century the Pennsylvania German language was replaced by the English language, used in services since about the 1940s. Only a few members could speak Pennsylvania German in the 1980s; the Old Order River Brethren publish a newsletter called "The Golden Chain". In 1984 Sonlight River Brethren School was started in Lancaster County. During the 20th century several settlements of the Old Order River Brethren in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Ontario dwindled and became extinct. For 1935 and 1937 the Association of Religion Data Archives lists 472 members for the Old Order Yorker River Brethren, the Old Order River Brethren. In 1960 there were 340 members. In 1986 there were 327 members in three subgroups, the Strickler group with 172 members, located in Lancaster and Franklin Counties and Dallas County, the Horst group with 121 members in Lancaster and Franklin Counties and the "Old Church" with 34 members in Franklin County.
In the year 2000 all groups of the Old Order River Brethren had together 328 members, organized in three subgroups and five congregations. The Strickler group had three districts, Franklin with 86 members, Lancaster with 83 and Dallas Center in Iowa with 33, all together 202 members; the Horst group had one district in Franklin County with 109 members, the Old Church one in Franklin County with 17 members. The horse and buggy people have relocated to Clay County, Kansas between 2000 and 2010; the total population of all Old Order River Brethren groups including children and young not yet baptized members was between 530 and 535 around the year 2000. In 2014 all Old Order River Brethren groups together had about 350 members in five congregations of which the "Old Church" had only about half a dozen members. Poet and historian G. C. Waldrep is a member of the Old Order River Brethren; the Old Order River Brethren publish. In 1984 Sonlight River Brethren School was started in Lancaster County. Margaret C. Reynolds: Plain Women: Gender and Ritual in the Old Order River Brethren, University Park, PA, 2001.
Laban T. Brechbill: History of the Old Order River Brethren, Wrightsville, PA, 1972. Laban T. Brechbill: Doctrine of the Old Order River Brethren, 1967. Myron Dietz: The Old Order River Brethren, in "Brethren in Christ History and Life 6", June 1983, pages 4-35. Stephen E. Scott: The Old Order River Brethren Church, in "Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage I", July 1978, pages 13-22. Donald B. Kraybill: Concise Encyclopedia of Amish, Brethren and Mennonites, Baltimore, 2010. Donald B. Kraybill and Nelson Hostetter: Anabaptist World USA, Scottdale, PA, Waterloo, ON, 2001. Pure & Simple by Stephen Scott at christianhistoryinstitute.org. Joanne Holstein: Old Order River Brethren in Becker Bible Studies Library, 2006. Beulah S. Hostetler: An Old Order River Brethren Love Feast in Pennsylvania Folklife, Winter 1974·1975 Vol. XXIV, No. 2, pages 8-20
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state located in the Appalachian region in the Southern United States, considered to be a part of the Middle Atlantic States. It is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north, Maryland to the east and northeast, Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest. West Virginia is the 41st largest state by area, is ranked 38th in population; the capital and largest city is Charleston. West Virginia became a state following the Wheeling Conventions of 1861, after the American Civil War had begun. Delegates from some Unionist counties of northwestern Virginia decided to break away from Virginia, although they included many secessionist counties in the new state. West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, was a key border state during the war. West Virginia was the only state to form by separating from a Confederate state, the first to separate from any state since Maine separated from Massachusetts, was one of two states admitted to the Union during the American Civil War.
While a portion of its residents held slaves, most of the residents were yeomen farmers, the delegates provided for gradual abolition of slavery in the new state Constitution. The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States; however the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies West Virginia as a part of the Mid-Atlantic. The northern panhandle extends adjacent to Pennsylvania and Ohio, with the West Virginia cities of Wheeling and Weirton just across the border from the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, while Bluefield is less than 70 miles from North Carolina. Huntington in the southwest is close to the states of Ohio and Kentucky, while Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry in the Eastern Panhandle region are considered part of the Washington metropolitan area, in between the states of Maryland and Virginia; the unique position of West Virginia means that it is included in several geographical regions, including the Mid-Atlantic, the Upland South, the Southeastern United States.
It is the only state, within the area served by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The state is noted for its mountains and rolling hills, its significant logging and coal mining industries, its political and labor history, it is known for a wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities, including skiing, whitewater rafting, hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing, hunting. Many ancient man-made earthen mounds from various prehistoric mound builder cultures survive in the areas of present-day Moundsville, South Charleston, Romney; the artifacts uncovered in these give evidence of village societies. They had a tribal trade system culture. In the 1670s during the Beaver Wars, the powerful Iroquois, five allied nations based in present-day New York and Pennsylvania, drove out other American Indian tribes from the region in order to reserve the upper Ohio Valley as a hunting ground. Siouan language tribes, such as the Moneton, had been recorded in the area. A century the area now identified as West Virginia was contested territory among Anglo-Americans as well, with the colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia claiming territorial rights under their colonial charters to this area before the American Revolutionary War.
Some speculative land companies, such as the Vandalia Company, the Ohio Company and Indiana Company, tried to legitimize their claims to land in parts of West Virginia and present day Kentucky, but failed. This rivalry resulted in some settlers petitioning the Continental Congress to create a new territory called Westsylvania. With the federal settlement of the Pennsylvania and Virginia border dispute, creating Kentucky County, Kentuckians "were satisfied, the inhabitants of a large part of West Virginia were grateful."The Crown considered the area of West Virginia to be part of the British Virginia Colony from 1607 to 1776. The United States considered this area to be the western part of the state of Virginia from 1776 to 1863, before the formation of West Virginia, its residents were discontented for years with their position in Virginia, as the government was dominated by the planter elite of the Tidewater and Piedmont areas. The legislature had electoral malapportionment, based on the counting of slaves toward regional populations, the western white residents were underrepresented in the state legislature.
More subsistence and yeoman farmers lived in the west and they were less supportive of slavery, although many counties were divided on their support. The residents of this area became more divided after the planter elite of eastern Virginia voted to secede from the Union during the Civil War. Residents of the western and northern counties set up a separate government under Francis Pierpont in 1861, which they called the Restored Government. Most voted to separate from Virginia, the new state was admitted to the Union in 1863. In 1864 a state constitutional convention drafted a constitution, ratified by the legislature without putting it to popular vote. West Virginia abolished slavery by a gradual process and temporarily disenfranchised men who had held Confederate office or fought for the Confederacy. West Virginia's history has been profoundly affected by its mountainous terrain and vast river valleys, rich natural resources; these were all factors driving its economy and the lifestyles of its residents, who tended to live in many small isolated communities in the mountain valleys.
A 2010 analysis of
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, United States. It is the 231st largest city in the United States; as of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is the fastest growing city in all of Pennsylvania. It is the largest city in the metropolitan area known as the Lehigh Valley, which had a population of 821,623 residents as of 2010. Allentown constitutes a portion of the New York City Combined Statistical Area and is the county seat of Lehigh County. In 2012, the city celebrated the 250th anniversary of its founding in 1762. Located on the Lehigh River, Allentown is the largest of three adjacent cities, in Northampton and Lehigh counties, that make up a region of eastern Pennsylvania known as the Lehigh Valley, the other two cities being Bethlehem and Easton, Pennsylvania. Allentown is 50 miles north-northwest of Philadelphia, the sixth most populous city in the United States, 90 miles east-northeast of Harrisburg, the state capital, 90 miles west of New York City, the nation's largest city.
The Norfolk Southern Railway's Lehigh Line, runs through Allentown heading east across the Delaware River. The Norfolk Southern Railway's Reading Line runs through Allentown heading west to Reading, Pennsylvania. Allentown was cited as a "national success story" in April 2016 by the Urban Land Institute for its downtown redevelopment and transformation, one of only six communities in the country to have been named as such. In the early 1700s, the land now occupied by the city of Allentown and Lehigh County was a wilderness of scrub oak where neighboring tribes of Native Americans fished for trout and hunted for deer and other game. In 1736, a large area to the north of Philadelphia, embracing the present site of Allentown and what is now Lehigh County, was deeded by 23 chiefs of the five great Native American nations to John and Richard Penn, sons of William Penn; the price for this tract included shoes and buckles, shirts, scissors, needles, looking glasses and pipes. The land, to become Allentown was part of a 5,000-acre plot William Allen purchased on September 10, 1735 from his business partner Joseph Turner, assigned the warrant to the land by Thomas Penn, son of William Penn, on May 18, 1732.
The land was surveyed on November 23, 1736. A subsequent survey done in 1753 by David Schultz for a road from Easton to Reading, of which present-day Union and Jackson streets were links, shows the location of a log house owned by Allen, situated near the western bank of Jordan Creek, believed to have been built around 1740. Used as a hunting and fishing lodge, here Allen entertained prominent guests including his brother-in-law, James Hamilton, colonial Pennsylvania governor John Penn; the area, today the center of Allentown was laid out as Northampton Town in 1762 by William Allen, a wealthy shipping merchant, former mayor of the city of Philadelphia and then-Chief Justice of the Province of Pennsylvania. It is that a certain amount of rivalry with the Penns prompted Judge Allen to decide to start a town of his own in 1762. Ten years before, in 1752, Northampton and Berks counties had been formed, each with a county seat and Reading, respectively, it is recorded that, in 1763, the year after the founding of Allentown, an effort was made to have the county seat moved from Easton to the new town.
To this effort William Allen lent all his influence as Chief Justice and as the son-in-law of Andrew Hamilton. The influence of the Penns, however and Easton was retained as the county seat of all that vast area which the notorious "Walking Purchase" had opened up; the original plan for the town, now in the archives of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, comprised forty-two city blocks and consisted of 756 lots 60 feet in width and 230 feet in depth. The town was located between present-day Fourth and Tenth Streets, Union and Liberty Streets. Many streets on the original plan were named for Allen's children: Margaret, James and John. Allen Street was named for Allen himself, was the main thoroughfare. Hamilton Street was named for James Hamilton. Gordon Street was named for Sir Patrick Gordon, Deputy Governor of Colonial Pennsylvania from 1726–1736. Chew Street was named for Benjamin Chew, Turner Street was named for Allen's business partner, Joseph Turner. Allen hoped that Northampton Town would displace Easton as the seat of Northampton County and become a commercial center due to its location along the Lehigh River and its proximity to Philadelphia.
Allen gave the property to his son James in 1767. Three years in 1770, James built a summer residence, Trout Hall, in the new town, near the site of his father's former hunting lodge. On March 18, 1811, the town was formally incorporated as the borough of Northampton Town. On March 6, 1812, Lehigh County was formed from the western half of Northampton County, Northampton Town was selected as the county seat; the town was renamed "Allentown" on April 16, 1838, after years of popular usage. Allentown was formally incorporated as a city on March 12, 1867; the beginnings of the American Revolutionary War began in Northampton County on December 21, 1774 when a Committee of Observation for Northampton County was formed by American patriots. At the time, there were 54 homes in Northampton, the number of inhabitants was around 330. With the Decla
German Americans
German Americans are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of 44 million in 2016, German Americans are the largest of the ancestry groups reported by the US Census Bureau in its American Community Survey; the group accounts for about one third of the total ethnic German population in the world. None of the German states had American colonies. In the 1670s, the first significant groups of German immigrants arrived in the British colonies, settling in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia. Immigration continued in large numbers during the 19th century, with eight million arrivals from Germany. Between 1820 and 1870 over seven and a half million German immigrants came to the United States. By 2010, their population grew to 49.8 million immigrants, reflecting a jump of 6 million people since 2000. There is a "German belt" that extends all the way across the United States, from eastern Pennsylvania to the Oregon coast. Pennsylvania has the largest population of German-Americans in the U.
S. and is home to one of the group's original settlements, founded in 1683 and the birthplace of the American antislavery movement in 1688, as well as the revolutionary Battle of Germantown. The state of Pennsylvania has 3.5 million people of German ancestry. They were pulled by the attractions of land and religious freedom, pushed out of Germany by shortages of land and religious or political oppression. Many arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, others for the chance to start fresh in the New World; the arrivals before 1850 were farmers who sought out the most productive land, where their intensive farming techniques would pay off. After 1840, many came to cities. German Americans established the first kindergartens in the United States, introduced the Christmas tree tradition, introduced popular foods such as hot dogs and hamburgers to America; the great majority of people with some German ancestry have become Americanized and can hardly be distinguished by the untrained eye.
German-American societies abound, as do celebrations that are held throughout the country to celebrate German heritage of which the German-American Steuben Parade in New York City is one of the most well-known and is held every third Saturday in September. Oktoberfest celebrations and the German-American Day are popular festivities. There are major annual events in cities with German heritage including Chicago, Milwaukee, San Antonio, St. Louis; the Germans included many quite distinct subgroups with differing cultural values. Lutherans and Catholics opposed Yankee moralizing programs such as the prohibition of beer, favored paternalistic families with the husband deciding the family position on public affairs, they opposed women's suffrage but this was used as argument in favor of suffrage when German Americans became pariahs during World War I. On the other hand, there were Protestant groups that emerged from European pietism such as the German Methodist and United Brethren; the first English settlers arrived at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, were accompanied by the first German American, Dr. Johannes Fleischer.
He was followed in 1608 by three carpenters or house builders. The first permanent German settlement in what became the United States was Germantown, founded near Philadelphia on October 6, 1683. Large numbers of Germans migrated from the 1680s to 1760s, with Pennsylvania the favored destination, they migrated to America for a variety of reasons. Push factors involved worsening opportunities for farm ownership in central Europe, persecution of some religious groups, military conscription. Immigrants paid for their passage by selling their labor for a period of years as indentured servants. Large sections of Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia attracted Germans. Most were German Reformed. German Catholics did not arrive in number until after the War of 1812. In 1709, Protestant Germans from the Pfalz or Palatine region of Germany escaped conditions of poverty, traveling first to Rotterdam and to London. Anne, Queen of Great Britain, helped; the trip was long and difficult to survive because of the poor quality of food and water aboard ships and the infectious disease typhus.
Many immigrants children, died before reaching America in June 1710. The Palatine immigration of about 2100 people who survived was the largest single immigration to America in the colonial period. Most were first settled along the Hudson River in work camps. By 1711, seven villages had been established in New York on the Robert Livingston manor. In 1723 Germans became the first Europeans allowed to buy land in the Mohawk Valley west of Little Falls. One hundred homesteads were allocated in the Burnetsfield Patent. By 1750, the Germans occupied a strip some 12 miles long along both sides of the Mohawk River; the soil was excellent. Herkimer was the best-known of the German settlements in a region long known as the "German Flats", they kept to themselves, married their own, spoke German, attended Lutheran churches, retained their own customs and foods. They emphasized farm owner
Swiss Americans
Swiss Americans are Americans of Swiss descent. Swiss emigration to America predates the formation of the United States, notably in connection with the persecution of Anabaptism during the Swiss Reformation and the formation of the Amish community. In the 19th century, there was substantial immigration of Swiss farmers, who preferred rural settlements in the Midwest. Swiss immigration diminished after 1930; the number of Americans of Swiss descent is nearly one million. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs reported the permanent residency of Swiss nationals in the United States as 80,218 in 2015; the first Swiss person in what is now the territory of the United States was Theobald von Erlach. The history of the Amish church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann, a native of Erlenbach im Simmental. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a flow of Swiss farmers formed colonies in Russia and the United States.
Before the year 1820 some estimated. Most of them settled in regions of today's Pennsylvania as well as South Carolina. In the next years until 1860 about as many Swiss arrived, making their homes in the Midwestern states such as Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin. 50,000 came between 1860 and 1880, some 82,000 between 1881 and 1890, estimated 90,000 more during the next three decades. In spite of Swiss settlements like Highland, New Glarus, New Bern and Bernstadt were emerging fast, most Swiss preferred rural villages of the Midwest and the Pacific Coast where the Italian Swiss were taking part in California's winegrowing culture, or took up residence in more industrial and urban regions such as New York City, Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, or San Francisco; as the lifestyle and political institutions of the United States were compliant with those of their homeland most Swiss had no problems starting a new life in their part of the New World and became attached to both countries. Along with the Swiss Immigrants came their traditions.
By the late 1800s sufficient numbers of Swiss had arrived that Swiss Vereins were established to provide camaraderie and sharing of customs and traditions of the Heimat. The William Tell Verein of Oakland and the Helvetia Verein of Sacramento, founded in the 1890s, were examples of clubs formed during this period. Much the West Coast Swiss Wrestling Association was established to preserve the Swiss tradition of Schwingen on the Pacific coast of the United States. Of Swiss immigrant involvement in the Civil War, David Vogelsanger writes, "More Swiss participated in the American Civil War than in any other foreign conflict except the Battle of Marignano in 1515 and Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812."Swiss immigration diminished after 1930 because of the depression and World War II, but 23,700 more Swiss had arrived by 1960, followed by 29,100 more between 1961 and 1990, many of whom were professionals or employees in American branches of Swiss companies who returned to Switzerland. Beech Island Historical Society, a historical society in South Carolina dedicated to the preservation of Historic Beech Island, including the early Swiss settlement led by John Tobler.
Grundy County Swiss Historical Society, a historical society in Grundy County, site of former Swiss colony of Gruetli. Highland Historical Society, a historical society centered in Highland, site of one of the oldest Swiss settlements in the United States, it was founded in 1831 by Swiss pioneers from Switzerland. Orangeburgh German-Swiss Genealogical Society, a genealogical society focused on the early Swiss and German settlers of Orangeburg, South Carolina. Santa Clara Utah Historical Society, a historical Society dedicated to the preservation of an early Swiss Settlement in Utah. Swiss American Historical Society - focuses on the involvement of the Swiss and their descendants in American life, aspects of Swiss American relations, Swiss history. Swiss Heritage Village & Museum - begun in 1985, it is the largest outdoor museum in northern Indiana, it is located in Indiana. Swiss Mennonite Cultural and Historical Association - consists of descendants of the Mennonites who immigrated to the USA from Ukraine in the 1870s.
The Swiss Center of North America includes an extensive list of Swiss clubs. Swiss people Swiss abroad Swiss Argentines Swiss Brazilians Swiss Canadians Swiss Chileans European Americans Swiss American Historical Society Swiss Americans Swiss American Historical Society OltreconfiniTi, the official website dedicated to Ticinese emigration San Joaquin Valley Swiss Club The History of New Schwanden Swiss community Hennepin County, Minnesota is the story of a former Swiss colony in Minnesota written by Wayne C. Blesi. Tobler, Douglas F. "The Swiss In Utah", in Powell, Allan Kent, Utah History Encyclopedia, Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, ISBN 0874804256, OCLC 30473917, archived from the original on 2013-10-10 Swiss Americans Article by University of Illinois - Chicago emeritus professor Dr. Leo Schelbert about Swiss Americans. Settling Berne Article by Harold Miller about Berne, NY. Keith Zollinger Collection of Swiss Manuscripts Brigham Young University-Idaho Special Collections at the David O. McKay Library.
The Archives of Le Temps Archival collection of every Journal de Geneve, Gazette de Lausanne and Nouveau Quotidien. The Swiss American Historical Society Records 1927-1985, including correspondence, reports and other materials, are available for research
listen (help·info); usually called Pennsylvania Dutch) is a variety of West Central German spoken by the Amish, Old Order Mennonites, and other descendants of German immigrants in the United States and Canada, closely related to the Palatine dialects.
