In 1773, John Frederick Whitehead and Johann Carl Buttner, two adolescent Germans, were placed on board the same ship headed to colonial America. With few options in Germany, each had been recruited by the labor contractors known popularly as soulsellers--men who traded in human cargo. On arrival in America they were sold to different masters, and, years later, each wrote a memoir of his experiences. These two autobiographies are valuable historical records of immigrant attitudes, perceptions, and goals. Despite their shared voyage to America and similar condition as servants, their...

In 1773, John Frederick Whitehead and Johann Carl Buttner, two adolescent Germans, were placed on board the same ship headed to colonial America. With few options in Germany, each had been recruited by the labor contractors known popularly as soulsellers--men who traded in human cargo. On arrival in America they were sold to different masters, and, years later, each wrote a memoir of his experiences. These two autobiographies are valuable historical records of immigrant attitudes, perceptions, and goals. Despite their shared voyage to America and similar condition as servants, their...

Immigrant and Entrepreneur examines the life of German immigrant and successful businessman Caspar Wistar. Wistar arrived in Philadelphia in 1717 with nearly no money; at the time of his death in 1752, his wealth outstripped that of the contemporary elite more than threefold. Through this in-depth look at an immigrant's path to achieving the American Dream, Beiler reevaluates the modern understanding of the entrepreneurial ideal and the immigrant experience in the colonial era.

The book follows Wistar's life from his family's German influences to the potential reasons behind...

The clash of modernity and an Amish buggy might be the first image that comes to one's mind when imagining Lancaster, Pennsylvania, today. But in the early to mid-eighteenth century, Lancaster stood apart as an active and religiously diverse, ethnically complex, and bustling city. On the eve of the American Revolution, Lancaster's population had risen to nearly three thousand inhabitants; it stood as a center of commerce, industry, and trade. While the German-speaking population--Anabaptists as well as German Lutherans, Moravians, and German Calvinists--made up the majority, about...

Early Europeans settling in America would never have survived without the help of Native American groups. Though histories of early America acknowledge this today, that has not always been the case, and even today much work needs to be done to appreciate more fully the nature of the interactions between the settlers and the "First Peoples" and to hear the impressions of, and exchanges between, these two groups. We also have much to learn about Native Americans as people--their cultures, their languages, their views of the world, and their religious beliefs--and about their impressions of...

David Zeisberger (1721-1808) was the head of a group of Moravian missionaries that settled in the Upper Ohio Valley in 1772 to minister to the Delaware Nation. For the next ten years, Zeisberger lived among the Delaware, becoming a trusted adviser and involving himself not only in religious activities but also in political and social affairs. During this time he kept diaries in which he recorded the full range of his activities. Published in English for the first time, The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger offers an unparalleled insider's view of Indian society during...

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was a unique colonial town. It was the first permanent outpost of the Moravians in North America and served as the headquarters for their extensive missionary efforts. It was also one of the most successful communal societies in American history. Bethlehem was founded as a "congregation of the cross" where all aspects of personal and social life were subordinated to the religious ideal of the community. In Community of the Cross, Craig D. Atwood offers a convincing portrait of Bethlehem and its religion.

Visitors to Bethlehem, such as Benjamin...

The clash of modernity and an Amish buggy might be the first image that comes to one's mind when imagining Lancaster, Pennsylvania, today. But in the early to mid-eighteenth century, Lancaster stood apart as an active and religiously diverse, ethnically complex, and bustling city. On the eve of the American Revolution, Lancaster's population had risen to nearly three thousand inhabitants; it stood as a center of commerce, industry, and trade. While the German-speaking population--Anabaptists as well as German Lutherans, Moravians, and German Calvinists--made up the majority, about...

In Translating the World, Birgit Tautz offers a new narrative of German literary history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Departing from dominant modes of thought regarding the nexus of literary and national imagination, she examines this intersection through the lens of Germany's emerging global networks and how they were rendered in two very different German cities: Hamburg and Weimar.

German literary history has tended to employ a conceptual framework that emphasizes the nation or idealized citizenry; yet the experiences of readers in eighteenth-century...