The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 promised to the territorial princes the right to decide whether Catholicism or Lutheranism would be admitted within their respective realms. If the common man within a particular territory disagreed with the faith that the prince of that territory chose, he would be permitted to emigrate with his family to another territory. A second provision was that only Lutheranism, of the various Protestant sects, would be permitted in opposition to Catholicism. Lands which were in Lutheran possession at the time of the Treaty of Passau (1552) would remain under such ownership, but thereafter, if a Catholic bishop or other ecclesiastical leader were to convert to Lutheranism, he would have to forfeit his lands and property.

The Peace of Augsburg was flawed and, in part, served as a cause of the Thirty Years War that would erupt in 1618. It was difficult to enforce the provisions. On the one hand, the provision calling for the forfeiture of property was openly violated and flaunted. Catholic princes of territories throughout Germany professed a conversion to Lutheranism, but converted the Church properties within their realms into private holdings. On the other hand, the Peace of Augsburg recognized only Lutheranism as a valid Protestant sect. The Calvinists, Anabaptists and others resented being excluded from the Peace of Augsburg's provisions. It was because of the latter problem that the Protestant Union was formed. The Union was led by a Calvinist prince by the name of Frederick, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine.

The ambitions of Emperor Matthias, the Habsburg king of Austria posed a threat to both, the Protestants and the Catholics. But the Catholic princes formed a League, led by Maximilian of Bavaria, to counter the Protestant Union. The Catholic League decided to support the Habsburg king, who professed his devout Catholic faith. Matthias was childless, and his choice for successor was Ferdinand of Styria, who was likewise loyal to Catholicism. The choice of Ferdinand was accepted in Austria and most of the other regions that fell under the direct control of the Habsburg king. But in Bohemia, the predominantly Calvinist noblemen staged a protest against another Catholic king over their territories. They declared the dethronement of the Habsburg dynasty and then proclaimed the election of Frederick, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine as their new king.

 King Ferdinand responded to the Bohemian challenge by enlisting the aid of a Spanish army to invade the Palatinate region of Germany, and with Maximilian of Bavaria to invade Bohemia with his own army. The Catholic forces were victorious in this initial foray. From that point the war escalated into an international conflict. The Spanish king, Philip IV saw his success in destroying the Palatinate as simply a stepping stone to retaking possession of Holland. The invasion of Holland by the Spanish brought England and France into the conflict on the behalf of Holland. The war even spread across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil in South America. King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway, the Duke of Holstein, and as such a member of the Holy Roman Empire, invaded Germany in an effort to overthrow the Habsburg dynasty. The predominantly Lutheran nation of Sweden joined in the war as an ally of the Protestant Union, it is said, because she feared in Germany fell to the Papists, Sweden would be next.

The Thirty Years War was finally brought to a conclusion with the Treaty of Westphalia, which was signed on 24 October, 1648. The terms of the treaty included the extension of the same rights to the Calvinists as those that had been extended to the Lutherans in the Peace of Augsburg. The Upper Palatinate was ceded to Bavaria. The Lower Palatinate was restored to the eldest son of Frederick, the Elector of the Palatinate of the Rhine. Western Pomerania, including Bremen and Verden, was ceded to Sweden. Brandenburg received the bishoprics of Camin, Halberstadt, Minden and a large portion of Magdeburg. France obtained the Alsace, with the exception of Strasburg; she also retained possessionof Metz, Toul and Verdun. The United Provinces of the Netherlands (i.e. Holland) and Switzerland received their independence from the Empire.

The results of the Thirty Years War, in spite of the devastation wrought on Germany included a certain amount of religious freedom and the emergence of "modern" statehood in Europe. In the end, not all of the Protestant sects were granted equal liberty; only Lutheranism and Calvinism were afforded legal status alongside Catholicism. But since it was the Calvinists who instigated the conflict, they were satisfied with the settlement. Of importance to the Protestant Union was the curtailment of the Habsburg dominance in Germany. The prestige of the Holy Roman Empire was shattered as a result of the war, and as a result, it emerged as simply one of the many "sovereign states" of Europe.

The Germany of the 1700s consisted of nearly three hundred territories, duchies, city-states and cantons linked together by language, custom and their common Germanic ethnicity. The Electoral Palatinate (i.e. the Kurpfalz) was one of the larger territories. It encompassed the region on both sides of the Rhine River and it tributaries, the Main and Neckar Rivers. At the present time the Rheinland-Pfalz is known as the Palatinate, and it lies entirely on the west side of the Rhine. The region to the east of the Rhine, the Neckar Valley, is now known as Baden-Wurttemberg. The German emigrants of the 1700s came primarily from the Palatinate territories located along the Rhine River (i.e. in the southern part of western Germany and the northern part of Switzerland). The greatest number of emigrants came from the Duchies/districts of Zweibrucken, Darmstadt, Hesse-Darmstadt, Hanau, Franconia, Spires, Worms, Nassau, Alsace, Baden and Wurttemberg and the Archbishoprics of Treves and Mayence. The region lying to the east of the Rhine and south of the Neckar, between the Schwarzwald (i.e. the Black Forest) and the Odenwald (i.e. Oden Forest) was known during the Middle Ages as the Kraichgau, and from that region came a large number of emigrants.

The Peace of Augsburg of 1555 gave the sovereign over a village or territory the privilege of choosing the religious preference for the people who resided there. The majority of the Palatinate became Lutheran in 1556, but the villages governed by the Bishopric of Speyer remained Catholic. By the 1560s the Reformed Church had come to the Palatinate; it supplanted Lutheranism as the dominant faith. Then, during the Thirty Years War, Catholicism once more became the predominant faith in the Palatinate. In 1705 the "Palatine Church Division" was effected. The terms of the "Division" included a ruling that 5/7ths of the parishes in the Palatinate were to be Reformed; 2/7ths were to be Catholic; none were to be Lutheran.

Religious persecution is the reason often cited for the emigration of thousands of Germans. That idea seems to simply be a misinterpretation of the "religious persecution" reason for the emigration of British subjects hoping to avoid the Church of England. In terms of the German and Swiss emigrants, religious persecution was only one small aspect of the grand migration. In fact, it might be argued that it was more difficult for Germans and Swiss to obtain permission to emigrate on grounds of religious persecution than any other.

In 1688 King Louis XIV of France sent a large army into the Palatinate to take it into the possession of France. Two years earlier King Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor entered into an alliance with a number of German princes, and the kings of Holland, Sweden and Spain to preserve the Holy Roman Empire against a possible French attack. Ties between the royal families of Holland and England induced England to join the League of Augsburg. The League of Augsburg was therefore ready to meet Louis' army when it arrived in the Rhine Valley in 1688. The War of the League of Augsburg lasted for roughly seven years from 1689 to 1697. It spread to the North American Continent where it became known as King William's War.

The War of the Spanish Succession was felt in the Palatinate when, in 1707, a French army under Marshal Villars crossed the Rhine and plundered throughout the region which is today southwestern Germany.

The hardships wrought by the Thirty Years’ War and then the subsequent War of the League of Augsburg, along with certain natural causes figured more prominently than religious persecution as causative factors of the migration of Germans and Swiss to America. John Duncan Brite in his dissertation, The Attitude Of European States Toward Emigration To The American Colonies, 1607-1820, noted that there were a series of crop failures throughout the territories occupied by Wurttemberg and Pfalz-Rhineland. Hardest hit were the fruit orchards and vinyards, due to the extreme cold of the winter of 1708/1709. Devastatingly cold weather hit Germany and the rest of western Europe. Extreme cold set in as early as October. By November, 1708 it was said that firewood would not burn in the open air and that alcohol froze. The rivers, including the swift flowing Rhone, became covered with ice that permitted carts to be driven across them. At about the same time, restrictions were placed on grazing and wood gathering in the ducal forests of the Palatinate. Increased taxes added to the hardships of survival faced by the working classes.

The greatest motivation for the mass emigration of Palatines appears not to have been religious persecution, war devastation, crop failures or even taxes. Enticement was probably the greatest encouragement for the emigration of the majority of the Germans and Swiss. That enticement came from two sources: 1.) propaganda spread by Neulanders, and 2.) letters from prior emigrants.

William Penn was given a grant of land by King Charles II of England in 1681 as payment of a loan made by William's father. Charles probably found it beneficial to get rid of Penn because he was a loud exponent of his Quaker faith. That faith, among a few others, threatened the power of the Church of England. By granting Penn the land in the New World, Charles would succeed in repaying the debt (without spending money which his government budget could not easily afford). Also, it would remove the bothersome Quaker group from his country. It would be assumed that the Quakers found the deal to be most satisfactory because they simply wanted to be able to practice their religious beliefs as they wished; their intentions had not been to provoke the troubles that they found themselves constantly in.

The British government expected the proprietors of colonies in the New World to populate those colonies in order to confirm the British claims to the land. William Penn, therefore, set about publicizing the plans for his "Holy Experiment". It would be a self-governing state with the separation of Church and State an integral part of the government's foundation. William Penn called for any and all interested persons to make the trip across the ocean to settle in his granted lands. A pamphlet was printed in England and distributed throughout the Palatine. Titled: Some account of the Province of Pennsylvania in America, the pamphlet published William Penn's offer to sell one hundred acres of land in exchange for £2. Penn's pamphlet also offered equal rights to all persons regardless of religion or race. Various other books and pamphlets were published and distributed throughout the Rhine valley during the next two decades, including Daniel Falckner's Curieuse Nachricht von Pennsylvania (i.e. Curious News From Pennsylvania).

Records do not reveal any mass migrations as a direct result of Penn's pamphlet campaign in Germany, but some families did take him up on the promise of a better life in the New World. Although the first major emigration of Germans would not occur until 1709, the names of sixty-four German men, heads of their households, were included on a listing made in 1691 of the residents of German Town in Pennsylvania. 

The earliest emigration of Germans and Swiss from their homelands to the New World was that of a party led by Francis Daniel Pastorius in the year 1683. Enticed by William Penn's invitation to his province, the party settled near the young town of Philadelphia. The German settlement was appropriately named "Germantown".

Twenty-five years would pass between the emigration of the Pastorius party and the next significant mass departure. In 1708 the Reverend Joshua Kocherthal assembled a party of forty-one adults and their children and prepared to emigrate to the Carolinas; they had been enticed by the advertisements published by the proprietary governor of the Carolina colony. In order to settle in any of the British colonies, Kocherthal had to submit a request to Queen Anne. The party traveled to London in the Spring of 1708 to secure the royal permission and was confronted by the usual governmental red-tape. Reverend Kocherthal had to provide a justification for the emigration; the reason given was the French ravages in the Rhine and Neckar Valleys in 1707. The Germans' petition was submitted to the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade suggested that the Germans should be settled in Antigua. Upon the opinion that the Palatines would not be suited to the hot climate of the West Indies it was then suggested that they be directed to the Hudson River Valley of the Province of New York. The Germans would therefore be available to assist the English on the frontier against the French and the Indians.

By the time that the Germans actually embarked for the New World in October, the original party of forty-one had been increased by the addition of fourteen more emigrants. One family had to remain behind because of the mother's illness. En route, two children were born.

The Kocherthal party arrived at Long Island on 18 December, 1708. They were granted lands along the west side of the Hudson River about fifty-five miles north of New York City. Their settlement developed into the town of Newburgh. Almost from the start, the Germans suffered from want of provisions. A proposed naval stores industry, by which the Germans would be gainfully employed, never materialized. The Reverend Kocherthal returned to England to petition the Queen for additional monetary assistance. He hoped to raise the funds necessary to establish vinyards in the new settlement. Although not able to raise the exact amount that he hoped for, the Reverend Kocherthal succeeded in obtaining some funds, and the Newburgh settlement survived and flourished. The success of the Newburgh settlement is important to the history of German emigration because it paved a favorable path through the English government for subsequent emigrants. If the settlement had failed, the English might not have been so eager to provide assistance to future German settlement schemes.

Other German families were excited by the news of the success of the Newburgh Palatines, as Kocherthal's party of emigrants became known. They were also enticed by the suggestion made by Kocherthal in the third edition of his pamphlet, Aussfuhrlich und umstandlicher Bericht von der beruhmten Landschafft Carolina, that because the English government had provided their party with monetary assistance, perhaps it would likewise provide for other emigrants.

German and Swiss families from the Rhine and Neckar Valleys began to pack up their belongings and traveled north toward the the ports of the Netherlands. A dispatch from James Dayrolle, the British Resident at the Hague, dated 24 December, 1708 included a letter from an unknown person which stated that:

Although the letter exaggerated the number of emigrants (i.e. the number would not reach nine hundred until some three months later), it was prophetic. During 1709 approximately 13,500 German and Swiss emigrants would apply for passage to the English colonies.

Troops were being ferried on transport ships from England to the Low Countries to fight against the French in the War of the Spanish Succession. Dayrolle negotiated with the Duke of Marlborough to allow the Palatines to be conveyed to England on the return trip of the transport ships. Eight hundred and fifty-two Germans were carried to London in April, 1709. Shortly thereafter, word was received in Rotterdam that the Elector Palatine had issued an edict forbidding the German emigrants from leaving their homeland. A number of persons were imprisoned after they were captured making their way down the Rhine. But the edict and the show of force did little to deter the mass exodus of the Palatines. They traveled by land toward the seaports of the Netherlands.

Queen Anne, through the intercession of the Duke of Marlborough, had agreed to allow the nine hundred or so emigrants to be transported to England. The English government even paid for the transport of the refugees from Rotterdam. In May, when an additional two thousand had arrived at Rotterdam, Dayrolle again requested Marlborough's intercession on their behalf. A second transport was agreed to. But as the German emigrants continued to arrive in Rotterdam, the English hospitality began to strain and break down. The English Secretary of State, Henry Boyle, wrote to Dayrolle on the 24^th of June instructing him to send over to London only those Palatines who were then actually in the Netherlands. All others on their way were to be turned back. Dayrolle had advertisements published in the Gazette of Cologne warning that no more Palatines would be given passage to England. The hospitality of the Dutch authorities at Rotterdam was also becoming very strained. They appealed for help from the States General at the Hague. The Dutch ministers at Cologne and Frankfurt were informed to do what they could to stop the flow of emigrants. All the efforts by the English and Dutch authorities were to no avail; the proprietors of the Carolinas had sent over pamphlets and circulars titled: Propositions of the Lord Proprietors of Carolina to encourage the Transporting of Palatines to the Province of Caroline. The missives promised, among other things, one hundred acres of land for every man, woman and child, free of quit-rent for ten years. The Palatines, enticed by the promise of a better life in the American colonies, poured like a giant wave toward the Netherlands and England.

Thirteen thousand and five hundred Palatines arrived in London between May and October, but the authorities there sent back 2,257 because they were Roman Catholic. The emigrants were initially given shelter throughout London under the assumption that they would soon embark for the American colonies. But arrangements for such a large number had not been made, and the temporary lodging became an extended encampment. As the days and weeks wore on, the patience of the English people wore out. The Palatine encampments were attacked on more than one occasion by mobs of armed Englishmen.

Until such time that a plan could be devised to handle the logistics of transporting the thousands of German and Swiss emigrants across the Atlantic Ocean, short range plans were discussed to settle them in the British Isles. The plans included settlement of the emigrants in Wales where they could be put to work in the silver and copper mines. Of the various proposals considered by the English authorities, one that was finally agreed upon was proposed by the Council of Ireland. The Council hoped that the settlement of the Palatines there would strengthen the Protestant presence in the largely Catholic island. Over three thousand Palatines made new homes in Ireland between September, 1709 and January, 1710.

Despite troubles with the Irish Catholics who were understandably upset about the colonization of their homeland, the Palatines flourished in their new settlements. Over time they intermarried with their Irish neighbors to the extent that their "Germanic" origins were nearly forgotten.

In early-October 1710, the movement of the Palatines to the Livingston Manor tract was begun. They had been encamped on Nutten Island (later renamed Governor's Island) since their arrival in July through August. Not all of the Palatines would move to Livingston Manor. In 1713 some eighty-three persons, comprising twenty-three families, remained in New York City.

The land was surveyed and five town plats were laid out by the surveyors. Three towns were laid out on the east side of the Hudson River and two on the west side. By June, 1711 seven towns had been established at Livingston Manor. Along the east side of the river were Hunterstown, inhabited by one hundred and five families; Queensbury, inhabited by one hundred and two families; Annsbury, inhabited by seventy-six families; and Haysbury, inhabited by fifty-nine families. Along the west side of the Hudson were Elizabeth Town, inhabited by forty-two families; George Town, inhabited by forty families; and New Town, inhabited by one hundred and three families.

The towns were platted to consist of individual lots measuring approximately forty feet in frontage and fifty feet in depth. The Palatine families were obliged to construct their own houses and out-buildings. They did so in whatever fashion they desired, but most constructed simple log cabins chinked with mud.

Robert Livingston provided food and many of the necessities of life to the Palatine settlers during the first two years of the settlement's existence. It might be argued that were it not for his generosity, the settlement might not have survived.

Initially, the Livingston Manor Settlement thrived and grew without discord except for the religious squabbles that erupted, almost as soon as they arrived in the New World, between the Lutheran and the Reformed congregations. To aggravate the situation between the two faiths, the Reverend John Frederick Haeger had been sent to the settlement by the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to convert the Palatines to the Church of England. One would be induced to believe that the religious difference between the three faiths would induce a breakup of the settlement, but that would occur as a result of other concerns.

Certain of the Palatines, in fact between three and four hundred of them, formed a secret association during the Spring of 1711 and plotted a rebellion. Their complaint was that they felt that they were being cheated in the contractual arrangement, the covenant, by which they had come to the New World. Back in England prior to their departure, Governor Hunter had expressed to the Secretary of State, Charles Spencer (aka the Earl of Sunderland) the need for a contract between himself (as Governor of the Province of New York) and the Palatines. The covenant was needed, according to Hunter to prevent the Palatines "from falling off from the employment designed for them, or being decoy'd into Proprietary Governments". The covenant stated that in exchange for the great expenditure in monies advanced by the government to provide for the transportation and settling of the Palatines in the New World and providing them with employment (in the production of the naval stores), the Palatines agreed to settle upon the lands provided for them by the government and to continue to reside there (and that their heirs, executors and administrators would continue to reside there). The covenant contained a clause that stated that on no account or manner of pretense would the Palatines attempt to leave the settlement or break the covenant without the consent of the Governor. The Palatines were to agree to remain in the employ, essentially as indentured servants, until they should "have made good and repaid to her Majesty, her heirs and successors, out of the produce of our labors in the manufactures we are employed in, the full sum or sums of money in which we already are or shall become indebted to her Majesty". In exchange, the governor would grant forty acres of land to each person free from, taxes and quit-rents for seven years.

The rebellious group claimed that they had incorrectly been told the stipulations of the covenant prior to their embarkation. They claimed that the way it was read to them was that 'seven years after they had been given forty acres, they were to repay the Queen with naval stores of their production'. Rather than receive their forty acres per person, they had received only a small lot. They felt they had been cheated into servitude. One of their demands was that they receive the land that had been promised to them by the Queen, which they believed lay in the Schoharie Valley.

Governor Hunter replied in force. He called for a military detachment from Fort Albany, who disarmed the rebellious Palatines. They were forced to submit, and most of them asked for pardon. On 12 June, 1711, Hunter established a court to oversee the Palatines. The court had the authority to judge and punish the Palatines for anything it deemed to be "Misdemeaners, Disobedience or wilfull Transgressions". The imposition of a military state of rule over them angered more of the Palatines than simply the original three or four hundred dissenters.

The issuance of "subsistence supplies" provided another source for agitation throughout the settlement. Bread, beer and meat was supplied by Livingston and issued to the people by Commissaries of Stores. The Palatines were not permitted to provide certain of their own subsistence supplies, which including the baking of bread. The issuance of the subsistence supplies was on a somewhat irregular schedule, and the quantities issued were not uniform. The quality of the food also varied. According to a letter sent by one of the commissaries to Governor Hunter, "I never saw salted meat so poor nor packed with so much salt as this Pork was. In truth one eighth of it was salt."

Adding insult to injury, John Bridger, the individual hired by Governor Hunter to instruct the Palatines on the techniques of manufacturing the naval stores, gained Hunter's permission in the latter part of 1710 to go to New England. In the Spring of 1711, when Hunter requested that he return to the settlement in order to continue training the Palatines on how to manufacture the tar and pitch, Bridger refused. Hunter found a substitute instructor in the person of Richard Sackett, a local famer who claimed to know the procedure. He proceeded to direct the debarking of nearly 100,000 trees in the vicinity. Sackett's method resulted in the production of 200 barrels of the tar, which was far less than anticipated. An investigation into the reasons for the low level of tar production revealed two major problems. First, Sackett's method of girdling and debarking the trees was not efficient and resulted in loss of the valuable resin into the ground. Secondly, the type of pines that grew in the vicinity were white pine, which were not conducive to producing the same quality of resin as the true pitch pine. The English government was not interested in the reasons for the production failures, no matter how valid; the Board of Trade was only interested in results. Therefore the funding that Governor Hunter expected to receive was directed elsewhere.

On 06 September, 1712, Governor Hunter gave orders that the industry was to be halted and that the Palatines would receive no more subsistence supplies. The Palatines were to provide for their own needs by obtaining employment where they could, but certain of the rules established the previous year would still remain in effect. The Palatines would be permitted to find work only in the provinces of New York and New Jersey. They would be required to register their new place of residence and employment so that they could be called back to the Livingston Manor settlement in the event that the naval stores industry could be revived.

The cutting off of the subsistence supplies so abruptly and just at the onset of winter caught many of the Palatines off guard. They suffered miserably through the winter of 1712/1713. The Reverend Haeger sent a letter on 06 July, 1713 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in which he stated that the Palatines were obliged to eat boiled grass and leaves.

Many of the Palatines left the region. Risking imprisonment by the court, some fled southward to Pennsylvania. Most of them, though moved closer to the vicinity of New York City and Hackensack, New Jersey. On 31 October, 1712 Governor Hunter sent a letter to the Board of Trade in which he stated that "some hundreds of them took a resolution of possessing the land of Scoharee & are accordingly march'd thither".

Governor Hunter was upset by the fact that the Palatines had moved to the Schoharie Valley without permission to do so, nor with the proper legal arrangements that should have been undertaken. In the spring of 1713 Governor Hunter sent orders to the Schoharie Valley which forbade the Palatines to settle there. But then, he was not in a position to provide subsistence for them any longer and their removal from Livingston Manor relieved him of such obligation.

The Palatines, ignorant of the British claims to the Schoharie tract, entered into their own negotiations with the local Mohawk Indians for the purchase of the Schoharie Valley lands. The Indians, although they had already presented the tract as a gift to the English Queen, were more than willing to be paid for it by the Palatines.

During the autumn of 1712 approximately one hundred and fifty families moved to the vicinity of Schenectady and Albany while the negotiations with the Indians progressed. About fifty of those families moved directly to the Schoharie Valley and erected crude shelters. During the following spring, the rest of the families moved to Schoharie. A number of small villages were created by the Palatines: Kniskerndorf, Central Bridge, Gerlachsdorf, Fuchsendorf, Schmidsdorf, Brunnendorf, Hartmansdorf, Weiserdorf, and Oberweiserdorf.

During the first year that the Schoharie Settlement was in existence, the people were very industrious, building their houses and plowing the land to sow corn, wheat and other grains. Because they had not taken many hand tools, farm implements or furniture from their Livingston Manor homes for fear of being charged with theft, they were without many of the necessary implements to either create a new life or live comfortably in one once it was created. They obtained some supplies from Schenectady, about forty miles away. Others, they received from the friendly Mohawk Indians. In regard to food, the Indians recommended various edible plants that were growing in the region, including potatoes. And the congregation of the Dutch Church of New York sent them some supplies in 1713. Despite the hardships, the Schoharie Settlement prospered and survived.

As might be expected, Governor Hunter grew increasingly upset with the situation. In 1715 he sent an order to the Schoharie settlers that they would either have to purchase or lease the land on which they had settled, or they would be forced to move from it. The Palatines became beligerent in their attitude toward what they felt was encroachment on their rights to the land promised to them by the Queen of England. A sheriff sent by Hunter to serve a warrant for the arrest of Johann Conrad Weiser, who was implicated in intending to travel to England to present the people's grievances against Hunter to the English government, was beaten and abused by the Palatine womenfolk before he could effect his escape.

In 1717 Governor Hunter organized a conference between himself and Johann Conrad Weiser and three men from each of the Schoharie villages. He informed them that they would need to come to an agreement with the true owners of the land, which were seven residents of Albany (known as the Seven Partners) to whom he had sold the Schoharie tract in 1714. If they did not, they would be forced to move.

In 1718 Johann Conrad Weiser, William Scheff and Gerhart Walrath made a trip to London to argue their case against Hunter, but before they got there they were robbed by pirates. When they did arrive, without money to pay for the passage, the three were locked up in the debtor's prison. In the meantime, Governor Hunter, receiving word of the Palatines' intentions, traveled to London. He arrived there before Weiser and the others could get out of prison and presented his side of the story. The English authorities, of course believed his claims that the Palatines had been treated with fairness, and that they were simply being rebellious so as to cheat the proprietors. It was ruled that the Palatines would have to move from the Schoharie Settlement. By the time Weiser, Scheff and Walrath were freed from prison, the decision had been made. Orders to have the Palatines removed from Schoharie were sent to Governor Hunter's successor, William Burnet.

In 1721, Governor Burnet offered the Palatines a number of choices, including one that they could purchase lands from the Mohawks in the Mohawk Valley, some eighty miles from Albany. Governor Burnet also raised the restrictions that had previously been placed on the Palatines against moving into the other proprietary colonies. As a result, about fifteen families left Schoharie in 1723 and moved southward to settle in the Tulpehocken Valley of the Province of Pennsylvania. Certain of the Schoharie Settlement residents conceded to the assertions of the provincial government that the lands were legally the property of the Seven Partners of Albany. They negotiated purchases or leases from the Seven Partners and continued their residence at the Schoharie Settlement.

The New Bern and Livingston Manor/Schoharie settlements are the most memorable of the New World settlements of Palatine German and Swiss emigrants. But smaller groups of Palatines had emigrated from their homeland with the Province of Pennsylvania as their destination.

Because of their lack of knowledge of the North American Continent, many of the early emigrants believed that Pennsylvania and the Carolinas were part of the West India Islands. Their papers requesting permission to leave their homeland stated that their destination was the "island" of Pennsylvania.

The Reverend Henry Melchoir Muehlenberg traveled throughout the Province of Pennsylvania after his emigration in 1742. He kept journals of his travels. In his journals, Rev. Muehlenberg commented on the Palatine emigration and early settlements in Pennsylvania. He noted four distinct phases of Palatine emigration:

The first period of the emigration mentioned by Muehlenberg included the party led by the Reverend Francis Daniel Pastorius, who settled in the vicinity of Philadelphia that became known as Germantown. It also included a party known as the 'Mystics of the Wissahickon' led by John Kelpius, and who settled in the vicinity of 'the Ridge', where the Wissahickon Creek empties into the Schuylkill River.

The second period was defined by the emigration of Palatine and Swiss Mennonites who settled on 10,000 acres of land near the head of the Pequea Creek in the part of Chester County that would become, in 1729, Lancaster County. The first of these emigrants arrived at Philadelphia on 23 September, 1710. Seven years later, In September, 1717, three ships arrived in Philadelphia carrying 363 German and Swiss emigrants.

In 1723 some fifteen families moved from the Schoharie Settlement in the Province of New York to settle in the Tulpehocken region of Pennsylvania. It is claimed that they were invited to settle there by Lieutenant-Governor William Keith. By 1725 there were about thirty-three German families residing in the Tulpehocken district. The increasing numbers of these settlers aggravated the relations between the Provincial authorities and the local Indian tribes.

The continuing emigration of large numbers of Germans from the Palatinate began to make the provincial authorities uneasy. When Patrick Gordon took office as Pennsylvania's lieutenant-governor in 1726, he took action to institute an Oath of Allegiance & Subjection to naturalize the emigrants as subjects of Great Britain. The action was enterred into the Minutes of the Provincial Council on 14 September, 1727 and read as follows:

The emigrants aboard the ship, William And Sarah, were the first of the Palatines to be so required to take the Oath. Between the years 1727 and 1775, it has been estimated that approximately 65,000 Palatine and Swiss emigrants arrived in the Port of Philadelphia. That number, given in Volume I of the book Pennsylvania German Pioneers, by R. B. Strassburger and edited by W. J. Hinke, was based on 36,129 known passengers, of which 14,423 (males) signed their names to the Oath.

The emigrants from Germany who arrived during the period from 1727 to 1775 settled primarily in the southeastern region of the province of Pennsylvania. But settlements were also made all along the Atlantic seaboard from Nova Scotia to South Carolina. Just prior to the American Revolutionary War period a migration route southward from Pennsylvania through the Shenandoah Valley opened up. German families began to travel that route and homestead in western Maryland, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and in both of the Carolinas. From North and South Carolina, the Germans moved westward into what would later become the states of Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee. Following the close of the Revolution, a number of German families migrated northward into the Niagara region of New York. The major thrust, though, was westward into the Ohio Valley. That westward route traveled along the roads cut by Braddock and Forbes in the 1750s through the southcentral part of Pennsylvania, which included Bedford County.

Although exact figures are not available, certain estimates can be made concerning the German population in the 1700s by looking at census records. From the 1790 United States Census we find that German families made up approximately 32% of the total population of Bedford County at that time. It has been estimated that of the Germans who arrived in the New World, at least seventy percent settled in Pennsylvania. The large numbers of German settlers in the province of Pennsylvania, as compared to the other predominantly British colonies, made Pennsylvania seem like a foreign nation. 

The earliest Euro-American settlers in Mother Bedford, so far as public records can confirm, were the four or five men who made their living as traders to the local Indian population, possibly as early as the 1730s. They tended to be single men, primarily of Scot or English descent, who would establish a trading camp in a certain location, operate their business there for a few years, and then move on. The traders, of whom we have record, included Robert Ray and Garrett Pendergrass, who set up their trading posts in the vicinity of where the borough of Bedford would come to stand in present-day Bedford County; Frank Stevens, who established his trading post in the vicinity of the village of Frankstown in present-day Blair County; George Croghan, who settled along the Aughwick Creek in the vicinity of the village of Shirleysburg in present-day Huntingdon County; and John Hart, who established a trading post in the vicinity of the village of Alexandria in present-day Huntingdon County. Apart from folklore and legends of their adventures and their names in certain features of the local landscape, those early traders left little else. It would be up to the families that followed them, who homesteaded on the land and tamed it from wilderness to cultivated farmland, to establish civilization in the frontier that was Bedford County. As noted in the section titled The Coming Of The Euro-Americans, settlements in the region that became Bedford County in 1771 had been established as early as 1710. Those first pioneer settlers were not German, though.

The settlement of German families in Bedford County began prior to the American Revolutionary War, and increased dramatically as a result of the post-Revolutionary War migration via the old Forbes Road.

Although it can't be given as a steadfast rule, the Ulster~Scots and Germans, in general, tended not to settle in the same valleys. It has been noted by many historians that the Germans seemed to seek out limestone based land which was the best suited for cultivation. The Ulster~Scots, on the other hand, were used to farming on less desirable soil; therefore they might not have been as choosy as the Germans. The Ulster~Scots also tended to move about more frequently than the sedentary Germans, the German settlements, therefore, tended to become more well known as established communities. But then, all that is a generalized viewpoint, and did not hold true in all cases.

In present-day Bedford County, there were large numbers of German settlers in the Dutch Corner region and throughout the Morrisons Cove, which extended from Evitts Mountain northward along the west side of Tussey Mountain into present-day Blair County. The early settlers of Cumberland Valley Township included a number of German descent.

In present-day Blair County, the Morrison Cove was not the only region settled heavily by the Germans. The Blue Knob mountain and the many valleys stretching down out of the mountain provided prime homesteading lands for German farmers. The Indian Path Valley that extends from the Borough of Bedford northward to the base of the Blue Knob Mountain, along the west side of Dunnings Mountain was settled mostly by German settlers.

Settlers in the region originally formed as Quemahoning Township, which stretched from the Stony Creek Glades northward into present-day Cambria County, were predominantly German.

Practically no German families homesteaded in the southeastern part of Bedford County which was erected into Fulton County in 1850. From the proliferation of Irish and Scot place names found in Fulton County (e.g. Belfast, Ayr, Dublin, McConnellsburg, etc) it can be seen that the region was settled predominantly by Ulster-Scots and Irish.

Apart from the Woodcock Valley, there were few areas of German settlement in present-day Huntingdon County.

The region lying west of the Allegheny Mountain Range, which is present-day Somerset County, and which included the area in which the Borough of Somerset was laid out, was originally laid out as Brothers Valley Township within Bedford County. The entire region was heavily settled by Germans who belonged to the German Baptist, or Brethren, congregation. The town of Berlin was entirely composed of German families, when it was founded in the 1780s. The valley lying between the Chestnut and Laurel Ridges, known as the Turkey-Foot Valley, is believed to have been the part of present-day Somerset County in which the earliest settlements were made, many of them being German.

Into the 1790s a number of the residents continued to be refered to as "Duchman" if their given names were not known. The name of Duchman Butterbaugh was one of those that continued to appear on the tax assessment returns.

According to Solon J. Buck and Elizabeth Hawthorn Buck in their book, The Planting Of Civilization In Western Pennsylvania, in 1790, "Of the 12,955 white families in the five western counties of Allegheny, Washington, Fayette, Westmoreland, and Bedford in 1790, it appears that about…twelve (per cent were) of German (origin)…" Of the total population within the individual counties, they noted that, "Of Germans there were thirty-two per cent in Bedford…"

Despite the large percentage of Germans residing in Bedford County (at least one third of the population in 1790), they were spread out. Except, as noted above, in present-day Somerset County and other particular regions, the German settlers were scattered among the other ethnic groups in Bedford County. They therefore did not create "isolated" ethnic communities such as those found in the eastern counties, the so-called "Pennsylvania" Dutch (i.e. Deutsch, or German). It should be noted, though, that the intermingling of the German settlers with certain of those other ethnic types (especially the Ulster Scots and Irish) resulted in an unique strain that was almost as exclusive as the Pennsylvania Dutch of the eastern counties.

The various ethnic groups brought to Bedford County their own particular customs and ways of life, and the German influence was strong. The Germans celebrated many more holidays, such as Christmas, and many more social events, such as weddings, than their British neighbors. Unfettered by decades of Puritan austerity, as their British neighbors were, the Germans exhibited a love of social activities. Any event could easily become a community party, complete with the dancing of jigs and reels and the drinking of whiskey or hard cider, and most of them did. The making of apple-butter and the butchering of pigs in the fall called for a community get-together. House-raisings were another community-shared event. Families would get together to husk corn, to full cloth or to quilt or hap bed coverings. This is not to say that the other ethnic groups did not help each other ~ they simply did not tend to make such events into parties complete with music and dancing and heavy drinking.