10/06/2026
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It's German American Day, the 6th October. But the first German immigrants to America had arrived in 1608, brought by a British sailing ship "Mary and Margaret".
Seventy-five years before 13 German Mennonite families from Krefeld landed in Philadelphia in 1683, helped to found Germantown, Pennsylvania, and are celebrated today.
A transatlantic voyage took eight to ten weeks in the early 17th century, and the Mary and Margaret landed around 1 October with skilled craftsmen, farmers and tradesmen, seeking religious freedom as well as a better future. And they settled in the small fort town of Jamestown.
Among them a PhD botanist Johannes Fleischer the Younger from Breslau, Silesia, in search of healing plants, and Swiss German mineral prospector Wilhelm Waldi, who was to accompany the ship's captain searching for precious metals. Under orders from the Colony's organisers, the shareholder owned Virginia Company of London.
Captain John Smith, leader of the Jamestown Colony, complained about the majority of the settlers, many were English gentlemen unused to hard labour who looked upon it as something of an adventure. "Never did know what a day's work was, except the Dutchmen (Germans) and Poles, and some dozen other".
The craftsmen's skills were important to the new colony, and they went straight to work but faced the same hardships as their English counterparts. A shortage of food and illness, with the winter of 1609-1610 extremely difficult on the Jamestown colony.
Four out of five colonists died within a few years of their arrival.
The number of Germans was too small to make a major impact during the initial years of the emergent colony, but their influence grew and more German immigrants followed.
Ensuring their place in American history among the country's founders.
Photo credit: First Germans at Jamestown Marker, original source unknown.
