CHAPTER IV OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS The Europeans Who Became Colonists.-The greater part of the inhabitants of the colonies, whose beginnings and growth People from we have been studying, were of English origin. But we must many lands not think that all the early settlers in the English colonies in came to America America came from England. Great numbers of them looked back to the other countries of the British Islands-to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland-as their Old-World homes. Many others came from Germany. The sons of Holland, Sweden, and France also played important parts in planting the settlements which were to grow into the United States of America. All these European peoples were our ancestors. The settlers who came from England, however, were not only far more numerous than those from any other European The English country, they were also more widely scattered throughout the colonies. Most of the early Virginians, nearly all the Puritans who came to New England, and the greater part of the Quakers settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were natives of England. In all the other colonies the English element in the population was very large. The colonists of English birth and their descendants have had a far greater part in the making of America than the men of any other race. John Smith, William The number of Dutch and Swedish settlers in the valleys of the Hudson and the Delaware was not large, but they had a marked influence upon the history and life of those regions. The Dutch The Van Rensselaers, the Schuylers, and other families and Swedes descended from the early Dutch immigrants, have played a great part in the making of the state of New York. There are many people in Delaware, southern New Jersey, and southeastern Pennsylvania who can trace their ancestry back to the Swedes who colonized in that section. Toward the close of the seventeenth century, after nearly all the English colonies were founded, many Huguenots, or French Protestants, came to America. These people fled to The French the new world to escape a terrible religious persecution in their own land. They settled in many of the colonies, but there were more of them in South Carolina than anywhere else. Among the descendants of these French settlers there are many men who have been famous in our history. Soon after 1700 a steady stream of German immigrants began to come to the American colonies. This German stream continued to flow westward throughout the remainder of the The colonial period of our history. Religious persecution, the hope Germans of bettering their condition in life, and, in the case of the large number who came from the Rhine valley, the desire to escape from a land wasted by war, were the causes of the great German migration to the American colonies. Some of the first comers from Germany settled in the Mohawk Valley in New York, but the great majority of the Germans who came to America in the eighteenth century made their homes in Pennsylvania where they occupied whole counties. Soon some of the Germans who came to Pennsylvania, and their descendants, began to move into the interior of the country toward the southwest, and in the course of time there were large numbers of them in western Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Companies of German pioneers also came direct from their fatherland to the Carolinas and Georgia. The Germans in Pennsylvania lived by themselves and The Scotch- kept their own language and customs, as their descendants continue to do to this day in some sections of that state. They were a hard-working and thrifty race. They settled upon some of the best land in America, and in time they came to be the best farmers in the colonies. An eighteenth century writer who knew the Pennsylvania German farmers well, speaks of their "extensive fields of grain, full fed herds, luxurious meadows, orchards promising loads of fruit, together with spacious barns and commodious stone dwelling houses." The Scotch-Irish were another important element in the population of the colonies. They were the descendants of Scotch people who had settled in the north of Ireland in the early part of the seventeenth century. These settlers, like most of the Scotch, were Presbyterians in religion. About a century after they went to live in Ireland, petty religious persecution and the heavy taxes laid upon them by the English government drove large numbers of these Scotch-Irishmen to America. A few of them settled in New England, many made their way to the southern colonies, but probably the largest number found homes in Pennsylvania. The Scotch-Irish settlers were among the later immigrants to the colonies and most of them pushed on beyond the districts near the coast, which were already settled, to the frontier where it was still easy to get land. The Scotch-Irish were a bold and hardy race of men who loved the free life of the border. They furnished a large proportion of the pioneers who won the colonial frontier from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas from the Indians and the wilderness, and then led the way over the Alleghany Mountains into the valley of the Mississippi. Besides the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians there were many Roman Catholic Irish in Maryland and Pennsylvania and a few of them in nearly every one of the other colonies. Then, Irish, Scotch, too, thousands of Scotch came direct from Scotland to the and Welsh American colonies. They were especially numerous in North Carolina. Such Welsh names as Gwynedd, Bryn Mawr, and Tredyffrin, all places in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, suggest the home land of the founders of these settlements. What the Colonists Brought from Europe to America.The men who colonized America brought with them to the them new world the civilization of the Old-World lands from which The colonists they came. They could not leave behind them their own brought OldWorld ways traits of character nor the ideas, customs, and beliefs which of living and they had inherited from their ancestors. It was just as natural thinking with for them to set up in the colonies the social and political institutions which they had known at home. We have already seen how they also brought with them the seeds of their industrial life, the grains, fruits, domestic animals, arts, and crafts of their old homes. Life in America, as we know it, was planted here by our European ancestors and has grown from what they brought with them from Europe. But American life has become somewhat different from life in Europe because of the new conditions which our European ancestors found in America. The various races which colonized in the United States had many common characteristics, yet each possessed its own peculiar traits, and all these traits have helped to make the English American people what they now are. In the making of Ameri- character, language, cans the influence of the English has been far greater than that and law of any other race. The colonists from England were a strong, brave, and enterprising people, fond of outdoor life, industrious, shrewd in business, and very tenacious of purpose. The English brought to America our language, our laws, and our forms of government. In most respects the early Dutch and Swedish settlers French and skill upon the Hudson and the Delaware strongly resembled the English. Many of the Dutch were traders or merchants, while, as a rule, the Swedes were sturdy farmers. The French Huguenots were a particularly desirable class of settlers and, in proportion to their numbers, they added a very great contribution to the making of our country. Nearly intelligence all of them came from the cities of France, where they were skilled workmen, merchants, or scholars. They brought with them to the new world their habits of industry, their keen intelligence, and their upright character. They have furnished a large number of leaders in every department of life in America. The Germans who came to the colonies in such large numbers during the eighteenth century were a quiet, hardworking, frugal and thrifty race. They were very poor when industry and they arrived in America, but their industrious habits soon brought them prosperity. They were a very religious people, honest in their dealings and contented in spirit. As we have seen, they wished to remain German and consequently they clung tenaciously to the customs, language, and literature of their fatherland. German thrift There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between the plodding and peaceful Germans and the stern, aggressive, Scotch-Irish warlike Scotch-Irish, who came about the same time, and energy and settled in the same parts of the country. The Scotch-Irish were a rugged and hardy race-energetic steadfast, and libertyloving. They were famous Indian fighters and did much to love of liberty Ideas of industry races, our colonial ancestors brought with them to America a |