Re: Simon/Myers connections
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In reply to:
Re: Simon/Myers connections
Sheri 10/03/11
Aha!Levi was my g-g-gf.This would not be the first time that families who knew each other in 17th Century Germany continued their association for many generations and through numerous changes of residence.There was, after all, safety in numbers, for mutual protection against the armies and mobs of an adversary religion, the righteous indignation of aboriginal people seeing their land occupied and their game driven away, or snooty English colonists who looked down their noses at German speakers and sought to inhibit their access to capital.
It's a forgotten fact that in Pennsylvania, German remained the language spoken at home by a majority of the citizenry until the 1930s!Even less well known, perhaps, was the persistent antagonism between Protestant Germans who emigrated to PA in the 1700s and the largely Catholic Germans who came in the 1840s and afterwards.The latter is an observation I made personally as a kid in Ohio, although by my (our?) generation, it reposed largely in the minds of people our grandparents' age.