CHAPTER II       PG 16

THE SMALL PALATINE EMIGRATION

OF 1708



Since the founding or Germantown in Pennsylvania under the leadership of Francis Daniel Pastorius in l683, no large groups of Germans had sought homes in the New World. intermittently, individuals with their families may have made the voyage, but of larger movements there were none. Twenty-five years passed before another band of emigrants made their way down the Rhine on their way to America. The emigrations of the eighteenth century.

The leader of the band of emigrants of 1708 was the Reverend Joshua Kocherthal, referred to before as the author of a promising description of Carolina. Kocherthal had visited London two years earlier and canvassed the possibilities at that time, What arrangements were made and with whom is not known but that assurances of aid were given appears certain fudged by the experiences of the little band. The group was originally composed of forty-one people; ten men, ten women, and twenty-one children, ranging In age from six months to fifteen years. The heads of the families were Lorenz Schwisser, Henry Rannau, Andreas Volck, Michael Waigand, Jacob Weber, Jacob Pletel, Johannas Fischer, Melchior Gulch, and Joshoa Kocherthal. One of the ten man was single, a young man of twenty-three, Isaac Turck by name. They came from the neighborhood of Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate and represented themselves as refugees of the war there.

On February 16th, 1708, Kocherthal and his party applied to the English consular representative at Frankfort on the Rhine for passes to England. Mr. Davenant, the representative, refused



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