— Ch. 1 · Colonial Settlements And Migration Waves —
German Americans.
~7 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
The first permanent German settlement in what became the United States was Germantown, Pennsylvania, founded near Philadelphia on the 6th of October 1683. This small community of Quaker and Lutheran families arrived seeking religious freedom after facing persecution in their homeland. They brought with them intensive farming techniques that would transform the agricultural landscape of colonial America. By 1775, Germans constituted about one-third of the population of Pennsylvania alone. The Mississippi Company of France later transported thousands of Germans from Europe to what was then the German Coast, Orleans Territory in present-day Louisiana between 1718 and 1750. These settlers felled trees and cleared land using simple hand tools since draft animals were not available. They supplied the budding City of New Orleans with corn, rice, eggs, and meat for many years following. In upstate New York, seven villages had been established by 1711 on the Robert Livingston manor. One hundred homesteads were allocated in the Burnetsfield Patent where some 500 houses were built mostly of stone. The region prospered despite Indigenous resistance. Two waves of German colonists in 1714 and 1717 founded a colony in Virginia called Germanna located near modern-day Culpeper. Virginia Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood encouraged German immigration by advertising in Germany for miners to move to Virginia and establish a mining industry in the colony. The name Germanna reflected both the German immigrants who sailed across the Atlantic to Virginia and the British queen Anne who was in power at the time of the first settlement.