Colonial America

by Richard Middleton, Anne Lombard

  A further group to appear before the turn of the eighteenth century were the Huguenots, or French Protestants. Most came following Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which until then had assured them of religious toleration. The Huguenots were generally welcomed, as their numbers were not large enough to constitute a threat and they brought many valuable skills as coopers, gunsmiths, clockmakers, and textile workers. These skills, added to their thrift and diligence, soon enabled them to prosper. They improved their position still further by learning English and integrating with the rest of the community, even to the extent of joining the existing Anglican Church. Perhaps 5,000 Huguenots had arrived by 1750. They were especially numerous in New York, where they founded the town of New Rochelle, and in South Carolina.

  A few hundred Jews also came to North America from Britain during the latter part of the colonial period. While they faced clear discrimination, their commercial talents enabled them to prosper in the major seaports of Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, where the first North American synagogues were established. By the time of the French and Indian War, merchants like David and Moses Franks of Philadelphia were sufficiently established to secure contracts for supplying the British army with provisions.

  The two most important sources of white immigration in the eighteenth century, however, were from Germany and Ireland. In both countries the population was initially driven from Europe rather than attracted to North America, their uprooting being the familiar product of the search for economic opportunity and a desire for greater religious freedom.

  Map 22 Immigration and expansion, 1700–1760.

  The first Germans to come to British North America arrived with Francis Pastorius in 1683 at the invitation of William Penn. Their numbers were small. German emigration became substantial only after 1690, the year in which the Palatine prince decided to become a Catholic. Severe persecution ensued as he attempted to convert his subjects. In addition the devastation of the principalities of Baden, Württemberg, and the Palatine during the wars of 1689–1713 led many to consider emigration as the only possible escape. Most Germans looked for refuge elsewhere in central and eastern Europe: America was never the promised land for more than a small minority during the colonial period. German emigration proceeded in two main waves. First came the Pietist sects, erroneously called Palatines, like the Mennonites and Dunkers. Later came a second, larger wave from among members of the established Lutheran and Reformed churches after European hostilities had ended in 1713.

  Initially, departures were necessarily restricted by the fighting in Europe, though some emigrants did escape. In 1709 a group of Swiss Mennonites made their way to Pequea Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The following year 2,500 Rhinelanders arrived in New York, assisted by financial aid from the British government. The Whig ministry believed that Dutch commercial success in the seventeenth century had resulted partly from that nation's tolerant religious policy. Hence the exodus of German and French Protestants might be put to good use, especially, it was hoped, in producing hemp for the navy.

  In the event a change of ministry meant that no further aid was forthcoming, and it was some time before the refugees finally found shelter on the Schoharie Creek to the west of Albany. The lack of suitable land and the indifference of the New York authorities led most Germans to look instead to Pennsylvania, where the early Mennonites had received a welcome because their Pietist beliefs were close to those of the Quakers. Soon other groups were arriving in the Delaware, notably the Amish people, an offshoot of the Mennonites, who settled in Lancaster County. Other newcomers were the Dunkers, or Baptists, who found homes there and in Berks County.

  The end of the war in Europe brought a new exodus around 1720. These emigrants increasingly belonged to the main Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and their reasons for emigrating were more economic than religious. The Upper Rhineland in particular was experiencing a population explosion that meant ever smaller farms and less opportunity. In the mid-1730s, however, the Moravians, an evangelical branch of the Lutheran Church, began to arrive, following their expulsion from Austria by the archbishop of Salzburg.

  The total number of German-speaking immigrants during this period is difficult to assess, but it certainly approached 100,000 and led to one-third of Pennsylvania's population being of German origin by 1760. The numbers were so high that fears were expressed for the survival of the English inhabitants. In 1727 a bill was passed requiring all immigrants to take an oath of loyalty, and in the early 1740s there was talk of barring from office anyone who did not speak English, the first demonstration of that later phenomenon known as nativism. As Benjamin Franklin commented, “Why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together, establish their language and manners, to the exclusion of ours.”1 He was referring not only to the continued use of the German language but also to the fact that Germans lived in their own enclaves, socialized in their own taverns, drank coffee rather than tea, worshiped in their own churches, and seemingly failed to become politically involved. Recent scholarship suggests that the Germans were not keen to assimilate; they defined for themselves a distinctive identity as Palatines and resisted pressures to become more like their English neighbors, at least initially.2

  The Germans were to prove able colonists. Most of them were peasants who needed only settled conditions to prosper, being hardworking, God-fearing, and thrifty. Not all farmed immediately. Many came as redemptioners, hoping to pay off the costs of passage either by borrowing from relatives already there or by becoming servants for a time. This practice was bitterly criticized by the Reverend Gottlieb Mittelberger, who came to America in 1750 to investigate. He asserted: “It often happens that whole families, husband, wife and children, are separated by being sold to different purchasers, especially when they have not paid any part of their passage-money.” Mittelberger was anxious to dissuade others from coming and accordingly painted a picture of hardship on the voyage and disappointment on arrival. In fact, since most redemptioners traveled in groups and possessed property, usually only one or two had to be sold into servitude, and they were generally redeemed by the rest of their family within a short time. Some German emigrants in any case saw servitude as an apprenticeship that was useful to complete before buying a farm. Some took 10 to 15 years to purchase a property of their own.

  Unlike most English-speaking colonists, the Germans, or at least the Mennonites, cherished their farms and sought to improve the land rather than merely to exploit it. This attitude often encouraged them to take over farms which the original owners had decided were no longer viable. And like the Puritans in New England, they rarely moved until the pressure of population forced the third generation to look elsewhere for land. The result was that they generally prospered, and their husbandry was one reason that Pennsylvania prospered in turn. Though one of the last provinces to be founded, Pennsylvania contained over 300,000 people by 1760, making it the third most populous colony in America and the one with the highest per capita income.

  The second major ethnic group to arrive in the period 1715–60 were the Scots-Irish from northern Ireland, where religious persecution also played a part. Although the Presbyterian Scots-Irish had been brought to Ireland by the Protestant James I, they suffered considerable persecution, not least the requirement to pay tithes to the established Episcopalian Church. Then in 1665 the Anglican-dominated Parliament in Dublin passed an Act of Uniformity requiring all ministers to conduct services according to the Book of Common Prayer. The effect was to bar Presbyterian ministers not only from holding church services, including marriage ceremonies and funerals, but also from operating schools. However, for the first 35 years the act was enforced only intermittently. Then at the turn of the eighteenth century a more militant Anglican Church, as elsewhere, attempted to make its supremacy effective in practice as well as in theory. This culminated in the 1704 Test clause of the Popery Act which barred all dissenter
s from holding any public office in central or local government.

  The Scots-Irish had economic grievances too. Although Ireland was a dominion of the British Crown, it had been excluded from the mercantilist system, like Scotland before 1707. The worst blow had been the 1699 Woolen Act prohibiting Irish wool exports to Britain. This ban particularly hurt the northern province of Ulster, where a textile industry was developing. Finally, most Scots-Irish were tenant farmers. Many of their leases were due to lapse in 1717, and the only prospect they faced was higher rents. The coming of peace in Europe induced many merchants to offer passage on their outward voyages, and for some Scots-Irish the chance proved irresistible.

  Accordingly, in 1717 several shiploads of emigrants set off from Ireland to seek a better life. In a few cases whole congregations emigrated, though when the restrictions against the Presbyterian ministry were eased shortly thereafter, this phenomenon ended.3 Once a precedent had been set, however, others were ready to follow, especially since the economic problems remained. Initially, many headed for New England, believing that they would be welcomed there. When the inhabitants discovered that the newcomers were Presbyterians, however, relations quickly deteriorated, culminating in the burning of the newcomers' church at Worcester. Hostility was so great that in 1720 the Massachusetts assembly passed a bill to discourage any further immigration from Ireland. A few groups did manage to establish themselves in New Hampshire and Maine, where the settling of the frontier was considered more important than the maintenance of religious orthodoxy. Among the new settlements were the towns of Londonderry and Belfast.

  Initially the southern colonies were also unattractive to the emigrants from Ireland. The domination of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas by the plantation system with its slave workforce restricted both the demand for white labor and the availability of land, though attempts were made to lure them to the South Carolina backcountry in the 1730s with bounties to increase the white population. Another apparent obstacle was the presence of the Anglican Church, which made further persecution a possibility.

  New York had little appeal because its manorial system left little freehold land available for settlement. After being tenants in Ireland the emigrants were determined not to have any more landlords. Nor was there any need to do so, for as the former governor of New York Lord Bellomont observed, “What man will be such a fool as to become a base tenant … when for crossing the Hudson River that man can for a song purchase a good freehold.”4 Accordingly it was to New Jersey and Pennsylvania that the newcomers looked. Only there did the Quakers ensure the absence of religious persecution; and only Pennsylvania offered freehold land on easy terms, not least because the proprietary family was anxious to increase the value of its holdings.

  Map 23 The manors of New York. From Patricia Bonomi, A Factious People (New York, 1971).

  Reproduced by permission of Patricia U. Bonomi.

  Document 26

  Gottlieb Mittelberger on the perils of crossing the Atlantic, 1750, reprinted in Merrill Jensen, ed., English Historical Documents, Vol. 9: American Colonial Documents to 1776 (New York, 1955), 464–9

  This passage by a German immigrant describes the conditions on Atlantic crossings in the eighteenth century. Questions to consider: What kinds of expectations do you think these immigrants had of America? How might the experience of the passage have affected the identities of the new immigrants who came over?

  When the ships have for the last time weighed their anchors near the city of Kaupp [Cowes] in Old England, the real misery begins with the long voyage. For from there the ships, unless they have good wind, must often sail 8, 9, 10 to 12 weeks before they reach Philadelphia. But even with the best wind the voyage lasts 7 weeks.

  During the voyage there is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of seasickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and the like, all of which come from old and sharply salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably.

  Add to this want of provisions, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, anxiety, want, afflictions and lamentations, together with other trouble, as the lice abound so frightfully, especially on sick people, that they can be scraped off the body. The misery reaches the climax when a gale rages for 2 or 3 nights and days, so that every one believes that the ship will go to the bottom with all human beings on board. In such a visitation the people cry and pray most piteously …

  That most of the people get sick is not surprising, because, in addition to all other trials and hardships, warm food is served only three times a week, the rations being very poor and very little … The water which is served out on the ships is often very black, thick and full of worms, so that one cannot drink it without loathing, even with the greatest thirst …

  At length, when, after a long and tedious journey, the ships come in sight of land, so that the promontories can be seen, which the people were so eager and anxious to reach, all creep from below on deck to see the land from afar, and they weep for joy and pray and sing, thanking and praising God … But alas!

  When the ships have landed at Philadelphia after their long voyage, no one is permitted to leave them except those who pay for their passage or can give good security; the others, who cannot pay, must remain on board the ships till they are purchased … The sick always fare the worst, for the healthy are naturally preferred first, and so the sick and wretched must often remain on board in front of the city for 2 or 3 weeks, and frequently die …

  Pennsylvania thus offered a preferable alternative, since there was still so much unsettled land in the colony. A steady stream of Scots-Irish arrived in Pennsylvania at the rate of over 2,000 a year in the peak periods of 1717–19, 1727–9, 1740–3, and the early 1750s, when economic conditions were at their worst in Ireland. Perhaps a third of those emigrating went as families with sufficient resources to pay their passage and buy land on arrival. The rest, mainly single young men and women, took the traditional option of traveling as indentured servants. The men might hope in due course to buy land or become craftsmen. The women could look forward to a good marriage at the end of their service as the best means of securing a better life.

  Initially, the newcomers, at least those who had the means, went to Lancaster County and the frontier areas of Cumberland and York, including the Susquehanna Valley and its tributary, the Juniata River. They were assisted by the readiness of the proprietary family to buy out the Native Americans, though by the 1730s most of the best land in eastern Pennsylvania had been distributed. To the west lay only the uninviting Allegheny Mountains, but land was known to exist in the Shenandoah, or Great Valley of Virginia. The newcomers, accordingly, began trekking down through Maryland to the junction of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers at Harper's Ferry. They were encouraged to make the journey because the northwestern part of Virginia was not suitable for plantation agriculture, while the Anglican Church there was too weak to pose a threat. The Virginian authorities in any case welcomed the newcomers as a means of protecting their frontiers from attack by the French and their Indian allies. The settlers might also prevent runaway slaves from setting up maroon communities (settlements of fugitives and Native Americans who lived independently from white societies). Lastly, the Virginian elite wanted to sell them lands which they had patented for this purpose. Accordingly, in 1738 Frederick and Augusta counties were organized where new arrivals could apply for a survey and obtain a patent. Prices ranged from £3 to £11 a hundred acres, depending on location and availability.

  The Scots-Irish settlers making this trek were joined by many Germans, Scots, and people of English descent. The coastal areas were experiencing a demographic explosion of their own thanks to the extraordinary rate of reproduction among descendents of the early English settlers. In the period 1720–60 Connecticut's population rose from 60,000 to 140,000; Maryland's from 60,000 to 160,000; and Virginia's similarly from 130,000 to 310,000. The
children of English settlers needed farms of their own, and land was becoming almost unobtainable in the tidewater, except for the wealthy. Members of all groups therefore moved west. In Frederick County in the Shenandoah 38 percent of the population were English, 30 percent German, and only 28 percent Scots-Irish, though for the valley as a whole the figures were 25 percent English, 31 percent German, and 38 percent Scots-Irish. Since the mountains remained forbiddingly impenetrable, the settlers turned southeast from the Shenandoah, arriving in the backcountry of North Carolina from 1740 onwards. Here they found what had until now been a sparsely populated area. By 1750 an advanced guard of settlers had reached South Carolina, where they were welcomed as a protective screen against the still powerful Cherokee, Catawba, and Creek nations. South Carolina also saw them as a useful balance to the province's large number of slaves. In these regions the new settlers were more exposed to the Indians, of course, than colonists in the long-settled regions nearer to the coast.

  It is hard to calculate precisely the total number of Scots-Irish immigrants to America; the most scholarly assessment suggests that about 100,000 people left Ireland in the period 1717–60. Higher estimates have been given but seem suspect in light of the limited Scots-Irish population in Ireland. The immigrants were not a unified group; they were theologically divided and left Ireland for a variety of reasons.5 Of course emigration from Ireland could have included other groups, like the descendents of those who settled following Cromwell's conquest since passenger lists for the period 1717–20 reveal many departures from ports outside Ulster, notably Dublin, Cork, and Waterford. Many Catholics may also have taken ship, changing their religion and anglicizing their names so that they could make a fresh start on the other side of the Atlantic. As early as 1692 Edward Randolph had noted that Somerset County in Maryland was “pestered with Scotch and Irish.” The presence of Catholic immigrants could explain why the authorities in Massachusetts acted with such hostility.6 Even in Pennsylvania they were not warmly welcomed. Pennsylvania's elites denigrated them as wild and uncivilized.