Editor's Notes, Germanic Immigration into Pennsylvania

EDITOR’S NOTES GERMANIC IMMIGRATION INTO PENNSYLVANIA A rticles in this issue remind us that there was variety in the Germanic immigration experience. In the 1750s, the villages of Frommern, Weilheim, and Waldstätten saw almost sixty residents depart “as they say, to the New World”–a significant loss for the villages. The records hint at individual stories. One man’s wife died in childbirth on the voyage; he returned to Germany. Another man first made the trip alone, returning for his family several years later. In the 1790s Christian Ludewig Krumbhaar came to Philadelphia from Leipzig. It was not his first trip away from Germany. The cursive script in which he made entries in his Bible and his use of the name Lewis is explained by information in the family history that he was educated in England. The Bible record shows that he returned for a time to England and Germany, with a child born in each country. Broader Germanic migrations continued into the 1850s, as we see from the origins and unfamiliar names on the tombstones in St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Philadelphia. In the tombstone carvings of Balthasar Orth and the lists of jurors and other officials from the Courts of Oyer and Terminer, we see some names becoming anglicized as English becomes the main language of the second and third generation, who then mix more and more with neighbors of English and Scotch-Irish descent. Patricia Law Hatcher, CG, FASG CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS 43:32—36 (“Marriages by the Reverend Robert Cooper, 1786—94, Middle Springs Presbyterian Church, Cumberland County”). In 1979 a photocopy was also at the Pennsylvania State Library; it is available on FHL #1,029,744, item 4. F. Edward Wright published these marriages, correctly attributed to Cooper, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Church Records of the 18th Century (Westminster, Md.: Family Line Publications, 1993). 43:37 (“Marriages from a Justice of the Peace Docket 1814—1816, 1828—1829, Elk Lick Township, Somerset County”). In footnote 2, the page numbers should be 554—55, not 5554—55. Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine Vol. 43 (2003) Final copy 31 December 2003 171