American history has only recently recorded the achievements of the Pennsylvania Dutch people. Their descendants that are alive today still number in the hundreds of thousands and should be considered a minority in the United States, and such, publishers should not be fearful at offending a pressure group to honor interests. Even some historical societies from Germany to back here in the United States will inaccurately use the term German-American, but cultural anthropologists and sociologists know the Pennsylvania Dutch are born out of a Colonial-American sub-culture of all Rhineland immigrants, who assimilated here before the American Revolution. In an age of social correctness, we should keep politics aside, and fully reinstate the native Pennsylvania Dutch colloquialism.
Since the average American tourist is infatuated with our quaint Amish and Mennonite sects in Lancaster County, their humble ethnic Swiss roots were certainly not included in this German designation; as well as a few other pioneer national origins who had embraced the German language. The fact that early Rhenish ancestors of the Rhine Valley spilled over into different political municipalities, speaking their native German language, does not mean that they were all Germanic ethnic nationals following only German folkways. Academic ethnologist, Dr. Alfred L. Shoemaker was quick to recognize the English colloquialism, “Pennsylvania Dutch” as a more accurate translation of the Dialect-term, “Pennsylvanish (Pennsilfaanisch, Pennsylvanisch) Deitsch,” which was the true native term used to this very day by our local Pennsylvania Dutch people, including my family. An Americanism, the term PA Dutch, can be used most accurately when referring to a person whose ancestry can be traced to Colonial times, before the American Revolution, when this culture created the Conestoga Wagon, Pennsylvania Long Rifle, and Hex-sign decorated Swiss (Schweitzer) bank barn.
Historians trace this Rhineland immigration to as early as 1683, when the first waves of Rhenish immigrants speaking the Germanic Dialect arrived in Pennsylvania. Although the immigrants that made up the 1683 Germantown settlement in the city of Philadelphia were German-speaking Dutch, German, and Swiss immigrants, most of them surprisingly were Dutch, referenced in a book by Dr. Wayland Dunaway in 1939 titled, A History of Pennsylvania. Germantown was the Colonial printing center for German language Bibles and religious imprints for the entire Pennsylvania Dutch community for many decades in our early history. In distinguishing themselves from these early Rhineland immigrants, later German-Americans who do not speak the local PA Dutch dialect, often politely explained, that their modern German language is not the same.
The many German published Bibles proved that German heritage continued to be alive in the New World, but many a American upbringing was definitely influenced by the principles of early Americana religious beliefs from the 18th Century Rhine Valley. Embracing my PA Dutch folk heritage and interacting with Germans in visits here and abroad, I am not sure that my heritage is as much German, as it is a combination of surviving ideals of Rhine Valley sub-cultures welded into one fascinating, New World; a Rhenish PA Dutch Utopian Paradise to my first arriving ancestors. As others like Swiss Mennonites, Amish, Brethren, and French Huguenots who also came to America to escape the ravages of Wars in Colonial times, Deitsch or Dutch did not have a historical military connotation.
However, Pennsylvania Dutch, like other diversified ethnic immigrants who founded America, are very proud of their ethnic heritage as Germanic acculturation has taken place in American Civilization. We often forget that among our German-speaking forefathers were non-German nationals from other Rhineland Countries who spoke the German Dialect in those Colonial frontier years, most prominent of which were other German-speaking nationals such as the Holland Dutch, Swiss, and French Huguenots who also comprise and are included in today’s Pennsylvania Dutch Country’s distinct population, and should not be forgotten.
