Pennsylvania Dutch & Ten Eyck

[Doug Millison]

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
groups--Mennonites, 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.


"Pennsylvania Dutch" Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 
<http://www.members.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=60576&sctn=1> 
[Accessed 20 June 2001]. 


Pynchon comes back to Penn and these Germans in M&D.


"jbor"
"Ten Eyck is a Dutch name (Pennsylvania Dutch?"


...and, speaking of factory automation and people becoming machines (not to
mention the factory system reaching its epitome in the German long distance
rocket program or American support for the Nazis), there's this kute
korrespondence:

Dearborn
city, Wayne county, southeastern Michigan, U.S., adjacent to Detroit (north
and east), on the River Rouge. The birthplace of Henry Ford, it is the
headquarters of research, engineering, and manufacturing of the Ford Motor
Company. Settled in 1795, it originated as a stagecoach stop (called Ten
Eyck and later Bucklin) on the Sauk Trail between Detroit and Chicago. A
community known as Pekin developed there and was laid out in 1833 as
Dearbornville (named for U.S. Revolutionary War hero Gen. Henry Dearborn),
which was incorporated as the village of Dearborn in 1893. Industrial
development began with the building of the Ford Motor Company River Rouge
Assembly Plant in 1917 and continued with related automotive industries. The
City of Fordson, adjacent to the plant, consolidated with Dearborn in 1928.
Henry Ford Community College (1938) and the Dearborn campus (on the site of
Fairlane, the former Ford estate) of the University of Michigan (1956) are
located there. Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum feature exhibits
of Americana; the Dearborn Historical Museum is housed in the former
quarters of the commandant of the Detroit Arsenal (built 1833-37). Inc.
city, 1927. Pop. (1990) 89,286. 

"Dearborn" Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 
<http://www.members.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=30124&sctn=1> 
[Accessed 20 June 2001].