Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/438

 366 Hi STORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY of slavery, where free labor was despicable, but the North. Ger- man emigration has been invaluable to the United States. Most of the emigrants were but peasants, but they were not afraid of work. They were not gentlemen by birth like the Virginian eolony in search of advantage or gold. They were well suited for the hardships and privations of the early settlers. With inde- fatigable diligence and endurance they turned the impenetrable wilderness into blooming meadows and pleasant settlements. German emigrants of 1848 were not common laborers, they emigrated on account of political reasons. President Fillmore in 1859 said aboul them: "Before 1848, we had numerous Ger- man emigrants, but they were of different material — good, honest laborers, who came here with pick and shovel to get their own homes. Those of l s 4s arc different people, full of music^ ethics, politics, philosophy, and criticism," etc. The Germans of colonial tunes made settlements principally in New York and Pennsyl- vania, also in North Carolina. South Carolina, .Maryland. New Jersey, Manic, and Massachusetts. The first German settlement in the Tinted States took place •in 168.">. when thirteen families from Krefeld, Germany, landed in Philadelphia, Pa., and founded Germantown, near Philadelphia. Pastorius bought 10,000 acres of land for them from AVilliam Penn. The real beginning of German history in the United States dates from 1683. To commemorate the event the German Day has been established since 1883. In 1709, 10.000 emigrated from the Palatinate (Pfalz) on the Rhine; most of them stayed in New York. They colonized Pala- tine Town or the Camp German Town or East Camp, German Flats, Tharbush, Ancram and Rheinbeck, Newburg and New Windsor. In South Carolina, settlements were made at the junction of the Saluda and Broad river, at the Congaree and AVateree. They colonized Purysburg in Beauford county. In North Carolina they settled in Granville county. Lincoln county and -Mecklenburg county. They colonized Bethabara, Salem and Bethany. Stephensburg and Sheperdstown in Virginia; Frederickstown, Hagerstown and Middletown in Maryland. In New Jersey they settled in the counties of Morris, Hunderton, Sommerset, Sussex, Passaic, Bergen and Essex. At the beginning of the Revolution- ary war four-fifths of the inhabitants of New York were Ger- man and Dutch, while two-thirds of Pennsylvania and one-third of New T Jersey and Maryland and Virginia was German. Germans of prominence in colonial times were John Conrad Weiser, Conrad Weiser, Peter Summer, John Peter Zenger, Dr. H.