As we look at how immigrants are changing our country today it might be interesting to look back and see how it was. Recently I read a book about the Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. You might be interested to know he was not nearly as esteemed during his lifetime as he is today. Apparently it is easier to esteem someone we never met.
Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 by William Penn as a refuge for his fellow Quakers. It was a fast-growing colony continually beset by factionalism and conflict between its legislature and its Penn family---controlled executive. Its population, in 1750, was around 120,000 making Pennsylvania the fourth largest colony after Virginia, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Twenty years later it was the second largest colony. The lack of any established church and the Quakers’ reputation for religious toleration attracted a most varied mixture of religious groups. By mid-century the Quakers had become a minority in their own colony at just below 1/4th the population. (I bet they wished they could have closed their borders.) Scotch-Irish Presbyterians made up another quarter and Germans, composed of a wide assortment of religious sects totaled about 40 percent. Favoring the Quaker policies of pacifism, no militia, and low taxes the Germans tacitly agreed to let a Quaker oligarchy run the assembly. Indian problems on the frontier where most of the Scotch-Irish were settled, and that fact that the Penn family, which had converted to Anglicanism, refused to pay what many though was its fair share of taxes, meant that politics in the colony was contentious and turbulent. The bulk of the population of Pennsylvania thought the Penns should do more to pay for the costs of supporting the colony. Above all they should permit the assembly to tax the hundreds of thousands of acres of proprietary lands the Penn family had not yet granted or sold to settlers.
The massive immigration of Germans into Pennsylvania was considered a major problem. “Why should the Germans be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours?” The early settlers wanted to exclude all Germans and black people from the New World. They thought the country should belong to only the English and the Indians, the white and the red.
Not much has changed other than the invaders.
Benjamin Franklin thought the Pennsylvania government neglected the defense of the colony against America’s French and Indian enemies. When the Legislature did not act to defend the colony in 1747, Benjamin Franklin almost single-handedly raised 10,000 armed men in the Militia Association and organized lotteries to raise funds to purchase weapons and ammunition and to build defenses on the Delaware River.
Imagine if someone would do that today.
Some things don't change.
Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 by William Penn as a refuge for his fellow Quakers. It was a fast-growing colony continually beset by factionalism and conflict between its legislature and its Penn family---controlled executive. Its population, in 1750, was around 120,000 making Pennsylvania the fourth largest colony after Virginia, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Twenty years later it was the second largest colony. The lack of any established church and the Quakers’ reputation for religious toleration attracted a most varied mixture of religious groups. By mid-century the Quakers had become a minority in their own colony at just below 1/4th the population. (I bet they wished they could have closed their borders.) Scotch-Irish Presbyterians made up another quarter and Germans, composed of a wide assortment of religious sects totaled about 40 percent. Favoring the Quaker policies of pacifism, no militia, and low taxes the Germans tacitly agreed to let a Quaker oligarchy run the assembly. Indian problems on the frontier where most of the Scotch-Irish were settled, and that fact that the Penn family, which had converted to Anglicanism, refused to pay what many though was its fair share of taxes, meant that politics in the colony was contentious and turbulent. The bulk of the population of Pennsylvania thought the Penns should do more to pay for the costs of supporting the colony. Above all they should permit the assembly to tax the hundreds of thousands of acres of proprietary lands the Penn family had not yet granted or sold to settlers.
The massive immigration of Germans into Pennsylvania was considered a major problem. “Why should the Germans be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours?” The early settlers wanted to exclude all Germans and black people from the New World. They thought the country should belong to only the English and the Indians, the white and the red.
Not much has changed other than the invaders.
Benjamin Franklin thought the Pennsylvania government neglected the defense of the colony against America’s French and Indian enemies. When the Legislature did not act to defend the colony in 1747, Benjamin Franklin almost single-handedly raised 10,000 armed men in the Militia Association and organized lotteries to raise funds to purchase weapons and ammunition and to build defenses on the Delaware River.
Imagine if someone would do that today.
Some things don't change.
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