Title: German immigration to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s - Lynn-Heidelberg Historical Society
Headings: Lynn-Heidelberg Historical Society

Content: The passengers had two documents with them on this voyage. The first was a passport that all citizens of Germany and Switzerland were supposed to have. The passport stated that the community the immigrant came from did not have any dangerous plague or infectious diseases. It also stated that the immigrant has paid all the taxes necessary to allow him to travel freely. The second document was a letter of recommendation issued by the pastor of the immigrant's home church. The German immigrants were not moving to America and adopting the ways of the English speaking community. The German immigrants moved to America and brought with them the German language and the German way of doing things. Their communities in America were simply the German culture transplanted to American soil. When the Germans arrived in this country, some of them went to the frontier and every year the German settlers would push the frontier further west. They were looking for good land that had not already been claimed.