Susan, the immigrants you are referring to came from the Palatinate between 1709 and 1740, first to England and Ireland and then to the East Coast of the United States. This emigration was not because of religious persecution but due to great devastation during the Thirty Years war and afterwards the continuous attacks and plundering by the armies of Louis XIV of France. Specifically, the French devastated the province in 1674; in 1688-89 it was laid waste again; and in 1701, during the War of Spanish Succession, it was again plundered. The villages, towns and farms of the Rhine region were pillaged and burned, their inhabitants tortured, ravished or slain. All of this ruination followed hard on the heels of the Thirty Years War from which the region had not yet recovered in 1674, when it was plundered again. By the early 1700s, there had been almost a century of intermittent warfare. When immigrants were asked about their reasons for immigrating they spoke mainly "of the French ravages in 1707. In 1708, the Rev. Joshua Kocherthal applied to an English agency in Frankfurt am Main for permission to take a small group to England, where he applied to Queen Anne for assistance for the Palatines. Queen Anne then provided for their welfare and sustenance. Kocherthal then asked if he could transport the Palatine Germans to America. It was decided that New York would be the appropriate place for them. In 1708, a small group arrived in New York. Each person received fifty acres of land. The settlement they established was called Newburgh, in New York. In 1709, there were some 13,000 Germans in England who were awaiting passage to America. In 1710, Kocherthal returned to England and brought more of them to America; some of these early Palatine Germans settled in Ireland, but the majority made it to the New World. Perhaps the largest group, approx. 3,000 came to New York in 1710. Eventually, it is estimated that tens of thousands came in the colonial period to America, and settled in various colonies. It should also be noted that while they are generally referred to as Palatines, some of the immigrants came from Alsace, Lorraine and Switzerland. Regarding the word or surname: "Pickel" is German; Pickel = Pimple; also ref. "Pickelhaube" the pointed helmet worn by the Kaiser. "Pickle" is English. Ursula ----- Original Message ----- From: "Susan Clark" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, January 2, 2010 5:58:16 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [G-P-L] Lutheran Connections Marvin (and anyone else who can help me), You refer to "descendants of the large Lutheran population that came to America in the colonial period and settled along the east coast, especially heavily in the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Maryland ...." I am interested in a group of Swiss and Palatinates who settled in New Bern, North Carolina, in the early 1700s -- see http://newbern.cpclib.org/research/settlers.htm. In 1740 this group petitioned the colonial government to build a "church or chapel for the use of the High Germans and the Church of England." (Though I can't find the info right now, I believe this group of settlers may have originally fled persecution and settled in England, and then been chosen by the English authorities to establish a "Protestant" presence in the colonies.) The church is today called the Chinquapin Chapel Christian Church. I don't know if this is its original name. I have several questions -- are these Palatinates some of the Lutherans you refer to? Would they have fled Germany and gone to England in the late 1600s/early 1700s due to persecution? I think the church still exists today, but I didn't receive a reply when I wrote for possible records. Is there a Synod in that area that may have them? This is a general question to everyone: Finally, the ancestor I'm trying to get information on is one who signed the petition for the church -- Michael Pickel. Until I came across this reference, I always had understood that the name Pickel/Pickels/Pickles was of English origin. Is there a German name (one suggestion was something like Peuchal) that could have been Anglisized (is that a word?) to Pickel when this group settled in England? Thanks for any help! Susan For all the latest News, please visit our Homepage: http://www.germanyroots.com Please visit and participate in our new forum http://www.germanyroots.com/phpBB3/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message