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Increasing Diversity

Fraktur Birth and Baptismal Certificate Frakturs were an elaborate form of German folk art and style of lettering adapted by the Pennsylvania Dutch (from Deutsch, meaning “German”). They were first used in North America in the 1740s to commemorate births, baptisms, weddings, and other life events. This birth and baptismal certificate for Eva Eissenhaer from around 1773 likely shows the infant’s parents in their finest dress. Used by permission of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia

Population growth and economic divisions were accompanied by increased diversity in the North American colonies. Indentured servants arrived from Ireland and Scotland as well as England. Africans were imported in growing numbers and entered a more highly structured system of slavery, whether laboring on southern farms, on northern estates, or in seaport cities. In addition, free families and redemptioners from Ireland, Scotland, the German states, and Sweden came in ever-larger numbers and developed their own communities and cultural institutions. There were also more colonists who had spent time in the Caribbean before settling on the mainland, and the frontiers of British North America were filled with American Indians and French and Spanish settlers as well as European immigrants.

As the booming population increased the demand for land in the colonies, diverse groups of colonists pushed westward to find territory that either was not claimed by others or could be purchased. In Pennsylvania in the early eighteenth century, Moravian and Scots-Irish immigrants settled in areas like Shamokin that were dotted with Iroquois, Algonquian, and Siouan towns, negotiating with Indians to obtain farmland. At the same time, Delaware and Shawnee groups moved into Pennsylvania from New Jersey and the Ohio River valley and negotiated with colonists and the colonial government to establish communities for themselves. All along the Pennsylvania frontier, the lines between Indian and immigrant settlements blurred, and neither Indian chiefs nor colonial authorities seemed able to demarcate clear boundaries. Still, many communities prospered in the region, with white settlers exchanging European and colonial trade goods for access to Indian-controlled orchards, waterways, and lands (Map 4.1).

Map 4.1 Frontier Settlements and Indian Towns in Pennsylvania, 1700–1740 German and Scots-Irish immigrants to Pennsylvania mingled with Indian settlements in the early eighteenth century as Delaware and Shawnee groups pushed east from New Jersey. In the 1720s and 1730s, however, European migration escalated dramatically in the fertile river valleys. In response, once-independent Indian tribes joined the Delaware and Shawnee nations to strengthen their position against the influx of colonists.Source: Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians & Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 35.

In the 1720s and 1730s, however, a flood of Scots-Irish settlers arrived in Pennsylvania when bad harvests and high rents caused them to flee oppressive conditions back home. The new immigrants overwhelmed native communities that had welcomed earlier settlers. The death of William Penn in 1718 exacerbated the situation as his sons and closest advisers struggled to gain political and economic control over the colony, but this did not halt the flow of white settlers into the region. Indeed, as Indians were pushed to the margins, more diverse groups of European settlers moved into frontier territories.