These immigrants are the most ignorant and stupid people of their own country. They can never adopt our language or customs, anymore than they can adopt our skin color. They used to not get involved in our elections, but now they come out in droves. If we don't get rid of them, they will overrun us, and our language and our government are in danger!
Now, since this diary appears under the auspices of the Genealogy and Family History community, you're probably not frantically searching for my profile or posting history to see what trollish sock puppet has snuck in to wreak havoc on dKos. Nor should you be. For these are not my words, but rather the modernized words of one of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin. He was not speaking of the Italians, the Irish or Hispanics. He was in fact speaking of that most dastardly of immigrant groups, so dark-skinned they threatened the English population; the group that was putting the entire nation at risk: the Germans!
The German invasion
The English and French in North America and the Spanish toward the south preceded the Germans, but the Germans were no slouches. The first German settlement of any size was founded in Pennsylvania toward the end of the 1600s, about 80 years after the English. After that, and throughout the first half of the 18th century, there was a steady stream of Germans, principally to Pennsylvania, but also to New York. They were largely farmers, although a secondary reason was religion, with Lutherans escaping governments which were enforcing Catholicism.
The War against the English ... Meh, whatever.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, approximately 30% of Pennsylvania was German or of German descent. They are referred to as the Pennsylvania Dutch, but unlike the common misconception, the "Dutch" did not mean people from Holland, but was in fact a mispronunciation of "Deutsch". After 1700, Germans from Alsace and the Palatinate started to come, and spread into Virginia.
Many of the Germans weren't interested in the English colonists' cause against the British crown. I don't remember the source, but I remember reading a comment in one of the histories on the war to the effect that the British army would ride into a town and the German settlers there would tell them they supported the Crown and would be happy to sell them food and supplies. Then after they'd left, the Continental Army would ride into town, and the Germans would tell them they supported the American cause and would be happy to sell them food and supplies.
The Germans did not always mix with the already-established English descendants. Benjamin Franklin was perhaps more virulently anti-German than his colleagues, but there was no question but that the English descendants and the Germans did largely tend to segregate themselves. Here are Franklin's actual words:
Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation…and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain…Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it…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...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 out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.
Here is a second quote from the avuncular Mr. Franklin:
Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.
Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.
The Great Wagon Road
As the German immigrants' numbers increased, they began to look around to see what other land was available. And this is where the Great Wagon Road, sometimes called the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road and originally the "Warriors' Path", came into play.
The Iroquois forged the "Warriors' Path" to travel south for trade with the native Americans toward the Carolinas. It followed valleys and river beds from the north, southward down the Atlantic coast. It was this path that became known as the Great Wagon Road. "The growth of the route after 1744 into the principal highway of the colonial back country is an important chapter in the development of a nation". [The Great Wagon Road by Parke Rouse Jr.] Rouse quoted another historian
In the last sixteen years of the colonial era, southbound traffic along the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road was numbered in the tens of thousands; it was the most heavily traveled road in all America and must have had more vehicles jolting along its rough and tortuous way than all other main roads put together.
I have many German ancestors, and they had first arrived in the late 1600s / early 1700s in the area around Philadelphia. they came from Alsace, the towns around Postroff and Stuttgart. Like many of your families, my German ancestors jolted in their covered wagons down the Great Wagon Road, and headed to the Carolinas. They stopped there for a generation, then word of GOLD spread. The great gold rush of..... Georgia!
GOLD !!
Gold was discovered around the area of Dahlonega, Georgia in 1828. Hundreds of people - including many of the German descendants who had traveled from Pennsylvania down the Wagon Road to the Carolinas - packed up and headed further south to make more money than scratching in the dirt of the Carolinas.
I have met many Georgians who assumed their relatives first populated the state during the land lotteries, or when land was granted to Revolutionary War soldiers for their war service. However, for many of them the truth was that the lure of panningDahlonega gold drew their ancestors south.
Twenty years later, word surfaced that gold had been discovered at Sutter's Mill in California. My relatives, however, either were too tired to move again, or had set down roots. In any case, they stayed in the north Georgia mountains.
"German" Immigrants???!!!
I grew up with a Germanic last name, eating sausages and cole slaw. Of course I descended from Germans, right? Right? Well, maybe not. It turns out, as I noted above, that that branch of my family came from Alsace. But the part of Europe they came from is now in France. In fact, it was the center of a giant tug of war throughout history, so the area has been German, then French, then German, then .... and so on. i have therefore decided I am neither, and I am both. I claim German beer and French wine, so I'm happy.
But the serious point of this diary:
As you may remember from all my previous GFHC diaries, I tend to see my family as part of the great American story, for good or for ill.
And the obvious overriding story from this diary is immigration. Hispanics and all our other immigrants and their families are often discriminated against and railed against. They don't learn English, they are the criminal class of their own countries and bring their criminal tendencies on their backs, upheld by their cantelope-sized leg muscle. yadayadayada. And like the Germans, I think God for them. For without these groups we stagnate.
I learned in school that greatness migrated, as one culture touched another and the resulting synthesis produced greater achievements. So Greece touched Rome, and Rome grew. And Rome touched France. And France touched England. That's a pretty simplistic view of history, but the foundational truth is that any society which closes its doors and windows does not grow. Our immigrant nature is not holding America back - it's what makes us successful.
Opening the gates
As always on Fridays, this is an open thread, so please feel share your comments and questions. And by the way, have any of you panned for gold, or dug for gems in North Carolina? When I was a child, we were driving near a creek in Dahlonega. My dad found an old aluminum pie plate, and we got out of the car to triy our hand at panning. We scooped up gravel shook the pie plate back and forth in the water for quite a while, and finally found a single flake of gold, which my brother and I thought was absolutely the coolest thing in the world. I totally understand gold rushes.