Just who are the "Pennsylvania Dutch"? When and why did they emigrate to colonial America? Who founded their various colorful communities, and what was their style of life? If you're looking for answers to these and related questions about the Pennsylvania Dutch, you'll find them in Oscar Kuhns' classic treatise, "The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania." In scarcely 200 pages, Professor Kuhns has surveyed the factors that compelled roughly 100,000 emigrants from the Palatinate, Wurtenberg, Zweibrucken, and other principalities in southern Germany to settle in Pennsylvania between 1683 and 1776 and establish a new way of life in their adopted homeland. The author pinpoints the different waves of colonial Germans and Swiss and illustrates the pivotal roles played by such personalities as William Penn, Francis Daniel Pastorius, and Henry Melchior Muhlenberg in helping launch communities in Philadelphia, in Lancaster and Berks counties, and ultimately throughout Pennsylvania.
