Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The Massachusetts Bay Company's claim on New England was preceded by those of two other joint stock companies. The first of these was the Dorchester Company, organized by the Anglican minister John White. When it went out of existence in 1626, the company's claim was transferred to a new organization, the New England Company, led by John Endecott. Endecott would ultimately found the town of Salem, Massachusetts in 1628. Endecott's shares and those of fifty-six other New England Company investors would soon be absorbed into those of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629. The author ably recounts the fortunes, intrigues, and shifting allegiances of these formative companies, listing members or investors wherever such information has survived. Of great interest to genealogists are the sketches of 125 Adventurers (investors) in Massachusetts Bay.
Synopsis
Just who are the "Pennsylvania Dutch"? When and why did they emigrate to colonial America? Who founded their various colorful communities, and what was their style of life? If you're looking for answers to these and related questions about the Pennsylvania Dutch, you'll find them in Oscar Kuhns' classic treatise, "The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania." In scarcely 200 pages, Professor Kuhns has surveyed the factors that compelled roughly 100,000 emigrants from the Palatinate, Wurtenberg, Zweibrucken, and other principalities in southern Germany to settle in Pennsylvania between 1683 and 1776 and establish a new way of life in their adopted homeland. The author pinpoints the different waves of colonial Germans and Swiss and illustrates the pivotal roles played by such personalities as William Penn, Francis Daniel Pastorius, and Henry Melchior Muhlenberg in helping launch communities in Philadelphia, in Lancaster and Berks counties, and ultimately throughout Pennsylvania.