No other known literary work undertaken in the Colonies equals in magnitude the Mennonite Martyrs' Mirror of Van Braght, printed at Ephrata in 1748, whose publication required the labors of fifteen men for three years. The Speaker of the first House of Representatives under the Federal Constitution and seven of the Governors of Pennsylvania were men of German descent. The statue selected to represent in the capitol at Washington the military reputation of Pennsylvania is that of a German. Said Thomas Jefferson of David Rittenhouse: “He has not indeed made a world, but he has by imitation approached nearer its maker than any man who has lived from the creation to this day.”[1] There are no Pennsylvania names more cherished at home, and more deservedly known abroad, than those of Wister, Shoemaker, Muhlenberg, Weiser, Hiester, Keppele and Keim, and there are few Pennsylvanians, not comparatively recent arrivals, who cannot be carried back along some of their ancestral lines to the country of the Rhine. An examination of the earliest settlement of the Germans in Pennsylvania, and a study of the causes which produced it may, therefore, well be of interest to all who appreciate the value of our State history. The first impulse followed by the first wave of emigration came from Crefeld, a city of the lower Rhine, within a few miles of the borders of Holland. On the 10th of March, 1682, William Penn conveyed to Jacob Telner, of Crefeld, doing business as a merchant in Amsterdam, Jan Streypers, a merchant of Kaldkirchen, a village in the vicinity, still nearer to Hol-
- ↑ Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.
