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The Assimilation of German Immigrants into a Pennsylvania German Township, 1840–1900
| Considerable progress has been made in the field of German American immigration history since Kathleen Neils Conzen lamented in 1980 that "almost no attention has been paid to the large numbers of Germans who settled in rural areas." Excellent studies of pioneering settlements on the agricultural frontier have subsequently appeared.1 Not all rural German settlements, however, were found in the newly developed lands of the Midwest and the Great Plains. This article examines an exception of the sort Conzen has called a "side channel" of the nineteenth-century immigration tide—namely, those German-speaking immigrants who settled in Nockamixon Township, a lightly populated, rural Pennsylvania Dutch township of northern ("Upper") Bucks County in southeastern Pennsylvania.2 It tells the story of their adaptation to America, which was unusually rapid and successful because of the special environment in which they settled. |
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Through the lens of assimilation theory, the experience of these newcomers and their progeny suggests a cultural-pluralist paradigm. However, they did not create a local, pluralist society by establishing a non-Anglo-American immigrant subculture (as was possible, for instance, on the frontier with Conzen's Stearns County, Minnesota, Germans3), but rather they melded into and reinforced one element in a pluralist culture already extant among Bucks County natives. More specifically, these emigrants from Germanic Europe, in what might be called cognate assimilation, blended into a predominantly "Pennsylvania Dutch" society, one with which they shared many values and customs, including religious affiliations and traditions, occupational and political orientation, and, most noticeably, facility in a non-English language. Thus, they found it unnecessary to create an ethnic subcommunity with its typical array of institutions. Instead, they integrated rapidly into the local community, quickly moving through Elliott Barkan's six stages, "From Contact to Assimilation," in one generation.4 This "Dutch" "core culture," however, was itself in flux and slowly and reluctantly anglicizing, a process promoted by a minority in the township and by the "English" elements from the more southerly part of the county that dominated county government.5 |
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More partial to the plow than the pen, Nockamixon people were not inclined to speculate about the ethnic nature of their community. But, William J. Buck, a township native, descendant of colonial Rhineland immigrants, and an enthusiastic amateur local historian, did express his opinion on the role of Bucks County "Germans" (by which he meant primarily indigenous residents of German ancestry) in the wider society, a belief that can be transposed into modern assimilation theory. Uninfluenced by the social scientific labels of the twentieth century, he vigorously rejected what we would call "Anglo-conformity" for his people and, in an 1882 article, posited a version of the "melting pot" theory. Yet, this was a melting pot that simmered so slowly that it might reasonably be labeled a version of the rather elastic concept of "cultural pluralism." He noted that Bucks County "has now been occupied fully two centuries by different European nationalities" and that these raw materials were "harmoniously blending to form our American citizens." Nonetheless, he advocated the preservation of the "German" language in America (a variety of which he had learned growing up in Upper Bucks and still spoke), expressed admiration for certain German American personality traits, and seemed in no hurry to promote the blending process. His concluding remarks suggested that "two more centuries of amalgamation will leave but few of pure German, English or other nationality."6 |
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