Dictionary:

Germantown

  (jûr'mən-toun')

A residential section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Settled in 1683, it was the site of a Revolutionary War battle (October 4, 1777) in which George Washington's troops unsuccessfully attacked the British encampment. The original township was annexed by Philadelphia in 1854.

Germantown was founded in Pennsylvania, six miles from Philadelphia, on 24 October 1683, by a band of German Quakers and Mennonites led by Francis Daniel Pastorius. He was agent for the Frankfort Land Company, which purchased twenty-five thousand acres from William Penn, whose arrival in Pennsylvania the year before ushered in a wave of Quaker immigration, mainly from England. The founding of Germantown marked the beginning of the German immigration to Pennsylvania. Germantown (also German Towne or Germanopolis) never became large, because it was a base for the distribution of Germans into the interior. Christopher Sauer's famous printing press and type foundry were established in Germantown in 1738.

Bibliography

Moltmann, Gunter. "Migrations from Germany to North America: New Perspectives." Reviews in American History 14 (December 1986).

Wolf, Stephanie Grauman. Urban Village: Population, Community, and Family Structure in Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1683–1800. Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press, 1976.

—J. Paul Selsam./A. R.