literature and music. There were a few distinguished scholars among
them and some of the finest examples of early American books bear the
imprint of their presses.

This modest beginning of the German invasion was soon followed by more
imposing additions. The repeated strategic devastations of the Rhenish
Palatinate during the French and Spanish wars reduced the peasantry to
beggary, and the medieval social stratification of Germany reduced
them to virtual serfdom, from which America offered emancipation.
Queen Anne invited the harassed peasants of this region to come to
England, whence they could be transferred to America. Over thirty
thousand took advantage of the opportunity in the years 1708 and
1709.[2] Some of them found occupation in England and others in
Ireland, but the majority migrated, some to New York, where they
settled in the Mohawk Valley, others to the Carolinas, but far more to
Pennsylvania, where, with an instinct born of generations of contact
with the soil, they sought out the most promising areas in the
limestone valleys of the eastern part of that colony, cleared the
land, built their solid homes and ample barns, and clung to their
language, customs, and religion so tenaciously that to this day their
descendants are called "Pennsylvania Dutch."

After 1717 multitudes of German peasants were lured to America by
unscrupulous agents called "new-landers" or "soul-stealers," who, for
a commission paid by the shipmaster, lured the peasant to sell his
belongings, scrape together or borrow what he could, and migrate. The
agents and captains then saw to it that few arrived in Philadelphia
out of debt. As a result the immigrants were sold to "soul-drivers,"
who took them to the interior and indentured them to farmers, usually
of their own race. These redemptioners, as they were called, served