While searching different sites in the southwestern Pensylvania areas of my ancestors I came across this site: MINERD.COM As quoted, "While long-term assimilation is natural for any clan, other strong forces were at work to ultimately Americanize our family.  Wright’s Franklin of Philadelphia reports that Benjamin Franklin was partly to blame for being “especially critical of the Germans in western Pennsylvania” during the colonial era.  Franklin wrote: [Why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements and, by herding together, establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours?  Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them?] Legislation was introduced in Parliament in the 1750s that would have kept Pennsylvania Germans from voting, as Wright says, “until they had acquired ‘a sufficient Knowledge of our Language and Constitution,’ and requiring that all newspapers, almanacs, and legal documents in the province be written in English.”  Under such restraints, it is little wonder that the German values were left behind." Happy Hunting Denise S. New Jersey