The Palatine Emigration. 



129 



wild, unpatented lands in what is now the township of 

 Tulpehocken, Berks county, ninety miles from Philadel- 

 phia, and by the route the poor people traveled, having 

 made canoes and floated down the Susquehanna, 300 miles 

 from Schoharie. These Schoharie Palatines had heard of 

 the friendly proceedings of the Pennsylvania government 

 to Palatines who had previously settled direct from Ger- 

 many on the Pequa river. Mortimer records that, " being 

 badly received in New York many of them removed to 

 Pennsylvania, where they were kindly entertained by the 

 Quakers, which afterwards proved the means of drawing 

 thither many thousands of German and Swiss Protestants, 

 whereby Pennsylvania is since become by far the most 

 popular and flourishing colony of its standing in British 

 America." 1 Douglass gives distinctly as the reason why 

 they left New York that the government of the province 

 would not give them more than ten acres each. They 

 must have carried the seeds of discontent with them, for a 

 report was made to the Pennsylvania legislature in 1727, 

 that the Palatines who had come by the way of New York 

 (unlike the Palatines who had been imported directly into 

 the province) had seated themselves on lands of the pro- 

 prietaries and others, and refused to yield obedience to the 

 laws. 2 The first portion came in 1723, and the second with 

 Conrad Weiser in 1729. 



Conrad Weiser's father in 1718, was the agent in Eng- 

 land from Schoharie in 1718, to petition the queen and 

 the board of trade for redress: where on the arrival of 

 Gov. Hunter he was thrown into prison. This son became 

 eminent in Pennsylvania as an interpreter for the govern- 

 ment, and f6r Zinzendorf. 3 He died in 1760, at Worn- 



1 History of England, 1764. 3 Penna. Col. Pec, in. 



2 Hist. Soc. of Penna. Coll., 1851. 



Trans, vii. 



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