The Palatines

There is another ancestor, Henry (Heinrich) Mock whose coming to America is recorded in the family records. (Henry begat Elizabeth who married John Phillipy and begat George who begat Salesa who married John Dissinger and begat Harry, whose daughter Elsie was my maternal grandmother.) Henry Mock came over on the ship Ann in 1749. The references on the Internet to the ships Ann and Princess Augusta include discussions about the Palatine Germans and their exodus from Germany in the 18th century so I got off on a tangent (of course) and started wondering about the Palatines.

They came from the Rhineland-Palatinate region, located along the Rhine River in present day Germany. They were “Martin Luther” Protestants and their own ancestors (from 1517 when Martin Luther published his theses, through the Thirty Years War – 1619 to 1648 – and well into the 1700’s) had suffered religious persecution and regional political conflicts. Food, jobs and land were in limited supply. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Palatinate's lands on the west bank of the Rhine were incorporated into France, while its eastern lands were divided largely between neighboring Baden and Hesse. Besides the devastating effects of war, the Palatines were subjected to the winter of 1708-09, the harshest in 100 years.

The scene was set for a mass migration. And off they went, evidently, beginning in 1709. They sought refuge in England where Queen Ann encouraged their passage to the “Island of Pennsylvania”, with, somehow, the support of William Penn (1644-1718.) Not being much of an historian, this part is murky to me (particularly since my current internet connection is simply too slow to support much more research) but I know that Penn wanted to create a utopian society of God-serving people and had land to support that vision. In any case, the ancestors we are talking of here followed some years after Penn died, so I have to wonder how much real opportunity they encountered. I suspect that they were more in the ‘indentured servant’ period than the ‘religious utopian’ one.

(And somehow they became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, forever causing confusion about whether they were Dutch or German. But since they eventually invented shoo-fly pie, who cares?)

More trivia from Wikipedia: “King Charles II of England had a large loan from William Penn's father, after whose death, King Charles settled by granting Penn a large area west and south of New Jersey on March 4, 1681. Penn called the area Sylvania (Latin for woods), which Charles changed to Pennsylvania in honor of the elder Penn.”

So now we know. Sort of.