DDPARTMEINT OF HISTORICAL RESIEIARCH. II3 



different sort from most of those hitherto undertaken. In most of the pre- 

 vious cases it has been expedient, in spite of the attractive possibilities ly- 

 ing in provincial and local archives, to leave them at one side for the present 

 and to confine attention, in the first instance, to central or national archives, 

 more abounding in material and more certain to be resorted to by students ; 

 and in each such case the main mass of the American material is due to the 

 relation of the government in question with the government of the United 

 States or its predecessors. 



In the German case the main object of historical attention is different. 

 The relations of the Prussian and other German governments to that of the 

 United States have some importance, and their diplomatic archives and 

 those which relate to the Hessian troops and other matters of a political 

 character should be subjected to careful examination. But the main histori- 

 cal relation of Germany to the United States is not that of a political state 

 or states, but that of the German nation as the source of a large fraction, per- 

 haps one-fifth, of the American population; and the subject best worth our 

 investigating in the archives is that of the German emigration to America in 

 the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. To furnish a guide to 

 researches in this line was made distinctly the object of Professor Learned's 

 mission. To pursue it required researches in provincial and local quite as 

 much as in central archives. 



German archive-administration is, however, to such a degree centralized 

 that the higher officials can do much to promote the success of inquirers in 

 local archives, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the expression of our 

 indebtedness to Geheimregierungsrath Dr. Reinhold Koser, director of the 

 Prussian archives, and to His Excellency Geheimrath Professor K. Th. von 

 Heigel, president of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, by whose kindness 

 the most excellent arrangements were made for saving Professor Learned's 

 time and labor in local researches. For instance, when he was in Munich, 

 working through the materials in the Reichsarchiv,the Bavarian Staatsarchiv, 

 and the Kreisarchiv of the place, those pertinent to his subject in most of 

 the other Kreise of Bavaria were sent thither for his examination. In the 

 Staatsarchiv in Berlin he had the opportunity to do much of the work need- 

 ful to be performed in or in respect to the sixteen other Prussian state 

 archives. His local searches, in the six months which he has been able to 

 give to the work, March to September, extended as far east as Danzig and 

 Konigsberg, and southeastward into Saxony and Silesia, but were mainly 

 conducted in the provincial and local archives of western Germany, the re- 

 gion from which the earlier German emigration to America mostly flowed, 

 from the archives of Colmar, Stuttgart, and Nuremberg to those of Cologne 

 and Diisseldorf. Before his return voyage he examined also the archives 

 of two of the three imperial Free Cities, and made provision for a proper in- 

 ventory of the third. His report has not yet been presented. But his letters 



