Talk:Germantown Township, Pennsylvania

According to the current text: These Germans were from the palatinates of Cresheim and Creveld

This statement is probably based on this passage from Daniel Kolb Cassel's 1888 "History of the Mennonites"

''The Germans who originally arrived came for conscience sake to this land, and were a very religious community. They were usually called Palatines, because they came from a Palatinate, called Cresheim and Crefeld.''

Despite Cassells statement, neither Cresheim nor Crevelt is a palatinate.

Cresheim is/was a village in the Rhein Pfalz or Rhineland Palatinate. Its name is variable, but more commonly spelled "Kriegsheim". The only place I've seen it spelled "Cresheim" is in regard to the Germantown. Today Kreigsheim is a borough within the Town of Monsheim. A number of early settlers of Germantown were in fact from Kriegsheim. You could say correctly enough that they came from a Palatinate, but that Palatinate was not called Kiregsheim.

Creveld is an uncommon spelling variant of "Krefeld" a village in what is now Nordrhein Westfalen Province (NWP), which was formed in 1946 from Rheinland and Westfalen, neither of which were ever "Palatinates". Krefeld is in the Rheinland portion of NWP. The earliest settlers of Germantown came from Krefeld in Germany. It was never numbered among the Palatinates.

The German settlers from these two areas came to Germantown in 1685 and 1683 respectively. The term "palatine" could be used in reference to persons from Kriegsheim, but not normally with persons from Krefeld. However, the term "palatine" is usually applied to persons who came from Germany (particularly one or another of the various Palatinates, but not exclusively) in the the Palatine emigration of 1710. In that broad sense settlers from both villages could be described as Palatines.

Nonetheless, referring to the villages of Kriegsheim and Krefeld as "Palatinates" is incorrect.


 * The term "Palatinate" is a reference to the lands owned by one of the Prince Electors who elected the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Krefeld was a walled town, and an exclave of Moers.  Its ruler held the rank of "Count", and was not one of the Prince Electors.  Hence Moers was not a palatinate, but a "County", and is usually referred to as "County Moers".  In 1683 a group of thirteen families from Krefeld and the surrounding area, arrived in Pennsylvania, settling in what became "Germantown", a substantial tract of about 6000 acres North west of Philadelphia.  These settlers would not normally be referred to as "Palatines".


 * additional German settlers came to Germantown in subsequent years. A small group of three families arrived in the Fall of 1685 from the village of Kriegsheim near worms in the "Lower Palatinate".  The ruler of the Lower Palatinate was in fact one of the Prince Electors, and so if one chose these settlers of 1685 could, if one insisted, be referred to as Palatines.  However, that term is normally reserved to describe immigrants from the middle Rhine River Valley who fled Germany in mass beginning about 1709.

TwelveGreat (talk) 01:18, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

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