Location of Pennsylvania
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L E S S O N 1
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Chapter 5
The Pe nsylva ia Dutch
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L E S S O N 1 6
Key Questions
1. Who are the Pennsylvania
Dutch?
2. How did the Pennsylvania
Dutch get their name?
3. What are the twomain
religious groups of
Pennsylvania Dutch?
4. What are themain beliefs and
customs of the Amish?
KeyWords
Pennsylvania Dutch
hex signs
barn raising
shunning
Key Places & People
Germany
Switzerland
Menno Simons
Lancaster
JakobAmman
How the
PennsylvaniaDutch
Got Their Name
I
n Lesson 15, we learned about the
different religious groups who settled
Pennsylvania in the 1600s and early
1700s. Perhaps the best known group
looking for a safe place to settle were the
PennsylvaniaDutch
. They first started to
arrive in our colony around the 1710s and
1720s. They were mainly from
Germany
and
Switzerland
. The language they
spokewas German.
The German word for German is
“deutsche” (doich). The English-speaking
settlers heard the German-speaking settlers
use the term “doich.” The English settlers
thought the German settlers were “Dutch.”
So the English settlers gave the German
settlers the name of Pennsylvania Dutch. It
was amistake, but the name has remained.
The PennsylvaniaDutch settlers reallywere
German speaking.
In the 1710s, several thousand Germans
from the
Mennonite
religious group came to
our Pennsylvania colony. They followed
the teaching of
Menno Simons
.
Jakob
Amman
left theMennonites to formhis own
religious group in Switzerland. His German-
speaking group became known as the
Amish
.
They moved to our colony in the 1720s. By
1750, one-half the population of Pennsyl-
vaniawasmade up of PennsylvaniaDutch.
