PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH

(from German Deutsch, or Deitsch, German), 17th- and 18th-century German settlers in Pennsylvania and their descendants. They now live largely in Lehigh, Berks, Lebanon, Lancaster, and York counties. Some groups still speak a German dialect, known as Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German (Pennsylfawnish Deitsch), and much larger numbers retain such elements of their traditional culture as a special cookery (e.g., shoofly pie, a pie of molasses and dough crumbs) and distinctive decorative motifs, including geometric hex signs painted on barns and floral patterns stenciled on furniture and housewares. Most Pennsylvania Dutch are thoroughly assimilated and live lives scarcely different from the life of other Americans. Some groups, notably the Amish, however, wear plain, old-style clothing, drive horse-drawn buggies, and live according to relatively strict religious principles. The liberal and tolerant principles of William Penn's government in colonial Pennsylvania attracted a large flow of immigrants from the Rhine country of Germany. The immigration began with the Mennonite Francis Daniel Pastorius, who came to Pennsylvania with some German Quakers in 1683 and founded Germantown, the pioneer German settlement. The early German settlers were for the most part members of the smaller sects who came and settled as groupsMennonites, Amish, Dunkers, or German Baptists, Schwenckfelders, and Moravians. After 1727 the immigrants were mostly members of the larger Lutheran and Reformed churches. Their farming skills made their region of settlement a rich agricultural area. By the time of the American Revolution they numbered about 100,000, more than a third of Pennsylvania's population.