We are told that the early colonists had strong faith in the fruitfulness and natural advantages of their choice of lands. “They knew these would prove to them and their children the home of plenty.” Their anticipations have never failed.[29]
The harmony existing between the Indians and these men of peace is very pleasing. Soon after their first settlement here, Lieutenant-Governor Gookin made a journey to Conestogo (1711), and in a speech to the Indians tells them that Governor Penn intends to present five belts of wampum to the Five Nations, “and one to you of Conestogo, and requires your friendship to the Palatines, settled near Pequea.”[30] About seven years after this, William Penn died in England, in the year 1718.
Dr. Seidensticker compares the German emigration hither, in its origin, to the Quaker and Puritan. After the Lutherans and Reformed had succeeded in gaining a recognition, there were sects in Germany who did not agree with the three recognized confessions and who were bitterly persecuted. Against such Christians the indignation of the clergy and the wrath of the civil authorities was directed in almost every German land.
Says Herzog’s Cyclopædia:
“When the Baptists were oppressed in Switzerland and the Palatinate, the Mennonites united into one community with the Palatines at Groningen (Holland), and established in 1726 a fund for the needy abroad, to which Baptists of all parties richly contributed. About eighty years after this fund was discontinued, being no longer thought necessary.”
Thus active persecution of the Baptists in those regions had ceased, it seems, about the year 1800.
The German or Swiss colony in Lancaster County is said to have caused some alarm, though we can hardly believe it a real fear. Nine years after the death of William Penn, representation was made to Lieutenant-Governor Gordon (1727) that “a large number of Germans, peculiar in their dress, religion, and notions of political government, had settled on Pequea, and were determined not to obey the lawful authority of government; that they had resolved to speak their own language, and to acknowledge no sovereign but the great Creator of the universe.”
Rupp, from whom I quote the above passage, adds: “There was perhaps never a people who felt less disposed to disobey the lawful authority of government than the Mennonites against whom these charges were made.”
The charges were doubtless dropped, or answered in a satisfactory manner; for two years subsequently, or in 1729, a naturalization act was passed concerning certain Germans who had emigrated into the province between the years 1700 and 1718. Over one hundred persons are naturalized by this act (Martin Meylin, Hans Graaf, etc.); and a great part of the people of the county can find their surnames mentioned therein.[31] All the names, however, are not necessarily those of Baptist families.