In discussing the remarkable success of the province, the colonists always disputed whether the credit should be given to the fertile soil or to the liberal laws and constitution.It was no doubt due to both.But the obvious advantages of Penn's charter over the mixed and troublesome governmental conditions in the Jerseys, Penn's personal fame and the repute of the Quakers for liberalism then at its zenith, and the wide advertising given to their ideas and Penn's, on the continent of Europe as well as in England, seem to have been the reasons why more people, and many besides Quakers, came to take advantage of that fertile soil.
The first great increase of alien population came from Germany, which was still in a state of religious turmoil, disunion, and depression from the results of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War.The reaction from dogma in Germany had produced a multitude of sects, all yearning for greater liberty and prosperity than they had at home.Penn and other Quakers had made missionary tours in Germany and had preached to the people.The Germans do not appear to have been asked to come to the Jerseys.
But they were urged to come to Pennsylvania as soon as the charter was obtained; and many of them made an immediate response.The German mind was then at the height of its emotional unrestraint.It was as unaccustomed to liberty of thought as to political liberty and it produced a new sect or religious distinction almost every day.Many of these sects came to Pennsylvania, where new small religious bodies sprang up among them after their arrival.Schwenkfelders, Tunkers, Labadists, New Born, New Mooners, Separatists, Zion's Brueder, Ronsdorfer, Inspired, Quietists, Gichtelians, Depellians, Mountain Men, River Brethren, Brinser Brethren, and the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness, are names which occur in the annals of the province.
But these are only a few.In Lancaster County alone the number has at different times been estimated at from twenty to thirty.
It would probably be impossible to make a complete list; some of them, indeed, existed for only a few years.Their own writers describe them as countless and bewildering.Many of them were characterized by the strangest sort of German mysticism, and some of them were inclined to monastic and hermit life and their devotees often lived in caves or solitary huts in the woods.
It would hardly be accurate to call all the German sects Quakers, since a great deal of their mysticism would have been anything but congenial to the followers of Fox and Penn.Resemblances to Quaker doctrine can, however, be found among many of them; and there was one large sect, the Mennonites, who were often spoken of as German Quakers.The two divisions fraternized and preached in each other's meetings.The Mennonites were well educated as a class and Pastorius, their leader, was a ponderously learned German.Most of the German sects left the Quakers in undisturbed possession of Philadelphia, and spread out into the surrounding region, which was then a wilderness.They and all the other Germans who afterwards followed them settled in a half circle beginning at Easton on the Delaware, passing up the Lehigh Valley into Lancaster County, thence across the Susquehanna and down the Cumberland Valley to the Maryland border, which many of them crossed, and in time scattered far to the south in Virginia and even North Carolina, where their descendants are still found.
These German sects which came over under the influence of Penn and the Quakers, between the years 1682 and 1702, formed a class by themselves.Though they may be regarded as peculiar in their ideas and often in their manner of life, it cannot be denied that as a class they were a well-educated, thrifty, and excellent people and far superior to the rough German peasants who followed them in later years.This latter class was often spoken of in Pennsylvania as "the church people," to distinguish them from "the sects," as those of the earlier migration were called.
The church people, or peasantry of the later migration, belonged usually to one of the two dominant churches of Germany, the Lutheran or the Reformed.Those of the Reformed Church were often spoken of as Calvinists.This migration of the church people was not due to the example of the Quakers but was the result of a new policy which was adopted by the British Government when Queen Anne ascended the throne in 1702, and which aimed at keeping the English people at home and at filling the English colonies in America with foreign Protestants hostile to France and Spain.
Large numbers of these immigrants were "redemptioners," as they were called; that is to say, they were persons who had been obliged to sell themselves to the shipping agents to pay for their passage.On their arrival in Pennsylvania the captain sold them to the colonists to pay the passage, and the redemptioner had to work for his owner for a period varying from five to ten years.No stigma or disgrace clung to any of these people under this system.It was regarded as a necessary business transaction.
Not a few of the very respectable families of the State and some of its prominent men are known to be descended from redemptioners.
This method of transporting colonists proved a profitable trade for the shipping people, and was soon regularly organized like the modern assisted immigration.Agents, called "newlanders" and "soul-sellers," traveled through Germany working up the transatlantic traffic by various devices, some of them not altogether creditable.Pennsylvania proved to be the most attractive region for these immigrants.Some of those who were taken to other colonies finally worked their way to Pennsylvania.
Practically none went to New England, and very few, if any, to Virginia.Indeed, only certain colonies were willing to admit them.
