Between the time of these two great raids there occurred several noteworthy incidents. There came to Holland and Germany, in the year 1677, a man who was then of little note, a man of peace, belonging to a new and persecuted sect, but who has since become better known in history, at least to us who inhabit Pennsylvania, than Marshal Turenne, or the great Louis XIV. himself. It was the colonizer and statesman, the Quaker William Penn.
The Elector Palatine then reigning was a relative of the King of England. Penn failed to see this prince, but he addressed a letter to him, to the “Prince Elector Palatine of Heydelbergh,” in which he desires to know “what encouragement a colony of virtuous and industrious families might hope to receive from thee, in case they should transplant themselves into this country, which certainly in itself is very excellent, respecting taxes, oaths, arms, etc.”
I know not what encouragement, if any, the Elector offered to Penn; but only about four years later Penn’s great colony was founded across the Atlantic, a colony which afforded refuge to many “Palatines.”[23]
Of this journey to Germany and Holland, just spoken of, Penn kept a journal, and there is mention made at Amsterdam of Baptists and “Menists,” or Mennonites; but whether he ever met on the Continent any of our Swiss exiles I do not find stated in history. Of his other two journeys to Germany, no journal has been found.
Eight years after Penn’s journey there occurred, in the year 1685, a circumstance which may have especially interested our Swiss Baptists and have operated to bring their colony to Pennsylvania; for in June of that year the Elector Palatine dying without issue, the electoral dignity went to a Roman Catholic family.[24]
The Swiss exiles that first took refuge in Lancaster County came here about thirty-eight years after the severe Bernese persecution of 1671. Rupp, the historian of our county, tells us that in 1706 or 1707 a number of the persecuted Swiss Mennonites went to England and made a particular agreement with the honorable proprietor, William Penn, for lands. He further says that several families from the Palatinate, descendants of the distressed Swiss, emigrated to America and settled in Lancaster County in the year 1709.[25]
The sympathy of the Society of Friends, William Penn’s co-religionists, was at this time called out for this people in a substantial manner. Barclay says, “Not only did the leaders of the early Society of Friends take great interest in the Mennonites, but the Yearly Meeting of 1709 contributed fifty pounds (a very large sum at that time) for the Mennonites of the Palatinate who had fled from the persecution of the Calvinists in Switzerland.”[26]
The next year the commissioners of property had agreed with Martin Kendig, Hans Herr, etc., “Switzers” lately arrived in this province, for ten thousand acres of land twenty miles east of Connystogoe. (This Connystogoe I cannot locate. The Conestoga Creek empties into the Susquehanna below Lancaster.)
The supplies of the colonists were at first scanty, until the seed sown in a fertile soil yielded some thirty-, others forty-fold.[27] Their nearest mill was at Wilmington, distant, as I estimate, some thirty miles.
One of their number was soon sent to Europe to bring out other emigrants, and after the accession the colony numbered about thirty families. They mingled with the Indians in hunting and fishing. These were hospitable and respectful to the whites.[28]