The common port of entry in the United States was Philadelphia. An examination of the early counties in Pennsylvania reveals individual families and religious congregations seeking free land in America.
From 1682 to 1776, Pennsylvania was the central refuge of emigration from Germany, France, and Switzerland. Penn’s liberal views and the illiberal course of the government of New York toward the Germans induced many to come to this Province. In the first period of twenty years, from 1682–1702, comparatively few Germans arrived: not above two hundred families. They located principally in Germantown, Pennsylvania. The origin of emigrants from Plattdeutsch (Low German) from Cleves (a Duchy in Westphalia) arrived from 1683 to 1685. Leaving their native country at that time, they providentially escaped the desolation of the French war of 1689 that laid waste to the city of Worms, near which town they resided, and ravaged the country.
The spreading families throughout the American colonies commenced shortly after arrival in Pennsylvania.
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