Note 25 — SWISS EXILES.
Reading edition
This was twenty-eight years after the founding of Penn’s colony. Several years earlier, or in 1701, some Mennonites bought land in Germantown, and in 1708 built a church (or meeting-house). For this information I am obliged to Dr. Seidensticker, of the University of Pennsylvania.
“In the year 1708 about fifty Palatines, who were Lutherans and were ruined, came over to England. Queen Anne allowed them a shilling a day, and took care to have them transported to the plantations; and from these circumstances there arose a general disposition among all the poor of that country to come over. They came to Holland in great bodies: the Anabaptists there were particularly helpful to them, both in subsisting those in Holland and in transporting them to England. Great numbers of these were sent to Ireland, but most of them to the plantations in North America, where it is believed their industry will quickly turn to a good account.”—See Burnet’s “Own Time.” I am told that of those thus sent to Ireland many afterwards came to America; of such was Philip Embury, who, being converted in Ireland, came to New York, and was the first to introduce Methodism on the continent. He and his family were from the Palatinate.
Mention has just been made of Lutherans going to England from the Palatinate. I infer that many who fled thence were of the Reformed Church. The French Huguenots would in Germany probably join the Reformed Church?