Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/27

Rh afterward came to be known as the Middle States section. The Dutch colonization was not large, but it had a strong and persistent influence upon the subsequent development of New York and the region round about.

The gradual predominance in New York of men of English speech and origin came about partly by infiltration from the New England colonies and partly by direct migration from England. There resulted a natural and harmonious fusion between the Dutch pioneers on the Hudson and the English-speaking colonists. Various Dutch institutions survived long after the English language had come into general use.

Before the grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn, the settlers on the Delaware had been mainly Swedish, Dutch or otherwise from continental Europe. William Penn's colonists at the outset were largely English Quakers, and some years later there arrived great numbers of Germans, some French Huguenots, and a good many Scotch-Irish Protestants.

Thus, as compared with New England on the one hand and the Southern colonies on the other, the Middle States had cosmopolitan, rather than purely English, origins. This