With about 2000 European emmigrants present when Penn's grant was established and 2,000 acoompanying him in 1682, by 1700, the colony's growth is undisputed and its estimated population varies from  about 18,000⁵ to about 30,000 residents⁸. Rupp and Kapp record that in 1709, between the middle of April and the middle of July, the number of German Protestants that came to America, by way of London alone, was11,294.¹⁰ In the late 1720s, there may have been 75,000 [total penna pop] present. ⁸ "Although some  of the later immigrants remained where they landed at Philadelphia, most had to go into the  interior to find sufficient land for their homesteads. They moved north up the Delaware River Valley toward what became Easton, northwest to the Schuylkill River Valley toward   what is now Reading, and west to the Conestoga region where in 1729 there were about 3,500 settlers.' ⁸The later scenario is that which was taken by our forebears studied within these  pages.

Initially, immigrants to what we now call Pennsylvania were mostly Quaker and from the British Isles, England, Wales, especially, but early Quaker immigration was not confined to Pennsylvania alone.  Burlington, New Jersey saw 1000 arrive in 1677, [relevant to our REED line] before Penn's proprietorship in neighboring Pennsylvania. First immigrants were not confined to Quakers; There  were in Germantown [then Philadelphia environs now Urban Philly] a colony of Mennonites who arrived  October, 1683 on the Concord, and this involved 13 families with which none of our direct ancestors was involved.  However, Penn's warm attitude towards the beleaguered Mennonites of Germany and Switzerland encourage early emmigration of larger numbers of that sect; specific to this writer's line are the Mennonites arriving 1710. See Our Mennonites of Pennsylvania.   "The providence of Pennsylvania grew rapidly during the course of the 18th century. With an estimated population of 18,000 in 1700, it ranked behind five other provinces: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland and Virginia. When the first United States census was taken in 1790, the stateís population was 434,000, growing by 24 times since the 1700 count."⁵. As it turns out, in 1770 an average day laborer earned about 2* shillings a day. Twenty shillings make up a pound so a 5 pound lease payment could be worked off in forty days. In other words,  the land  would cost them a little over 15% of their yearly earnings." ⁹
 Pennsylvania received as well the Scotch -Irish, migrating  "  from about 1717 until the Revolution in a series of waves caused by hardships in Ireland. They were primarily frontiersmen, pushing first into   the Cumberland Valley region and then farther into central and western  Pennsylvania. They, with immigrants from old Scotland, numbered about  one-fourth of the population by 1776"⁴"Between 1734 and 1740, six Presbyterian churches were established in the Cumberland Valley.  The date and location of each clearly reflects the advance of the Scotch-Irish southward toward the Potomac and the 'back  parts' of Prince George's County, Maryland.  Silver's Spring was organized  in 1734, followed by Meeting House Spring in 1734 or 1735,  Big Spring in 1735 or 1737,  East Conococheague (or Rocky Spring) in 1739,  Falling Spring  in 1739,  Mercersburg in 1738 or 1739, and Upper and Lower Marsh Creek  [Robert McCurdy and Allied relevant] in 1740." ³.
The volume of German immigration increased after 1727, coming largely from the Rhineland⁴. In 1731 there were 15,000  members of the Reformed Church in Pennsylvania from the Palatinate.⁶   This number does not address  that the Penna Germans did not revile each other if Reformed or Lutheran unlike the situation in their homeland, and often, in the early days, Reformed and Lutheran Germans shared the scarce German ministers available. "The Pennsylvania Germans settled most heavily in the interior counties of Northampton, Berks, Lancaster and Lehigh, and neighboring areas. Their skill and industry transformed this region into a rich farming country, contributing greatly to the expanding prosperity of the province....By the time of the revolution, Germans  comprised a third of the population." ⁴  Michael Schlater writing from Amsterdam and having been to the colony stated in 1751: "In the whole of Pennsylvania, according to estimation, there are 190,000 souls, in which the pagan inhabitants are not included. Of these, it is estimated 90,000 are Germans;... These are scattered through all the cantons or counties; still they have more especially settled down in the counties of Philadelphia, Bucks, Lancaster, York, and Chester.' "See Pennsylvania and its towns/ pop in 1751 within these pages which gives the population and numbers of houses in Pennsylvania's major towns that year as described by Schlater. " Up to 1776, when the importations ceased, 39,000 German emigrants had arrived and settled mainly in Lancaster, York, Berks and Northampton counties. As early as 1790, when the population of this State did not exceed 435,000 there were already 145,000 Germansî ⁶ In the fall of 1749 no less than 20 ships arrived in Philadelphia bringing 12,000 passengers.
Ben Franklin "expressed concern that the influx of newcomers with their different customs, language, and looks were turning Pennsylvania into 'a colony of aliens' " ¹but the year for point of reference of this comment is unknown. Ben Franklin lived 1706-1790.

Was German really debated as the official Language of the Colonies? No, Despite their numbers, the oft repeated notion  that German would be considered the official language is not based in fact :
"First of all, the United  States has never had an ìofficial languageî ... and doesn't have one now. Nor was there any such vote in 1776. Congressional debate and a vote concerning German probably did take place in 1795, but dealt with translating US laws into German, and the proposal to publish laws in languages other than English was rejected a few months later. ... At no time in its early history was the percentage of Germans in the United States ever higher than about ten percent, with most of that concentrated in one state: Pennsylvania. Even in that state, at no time did the number of German-speaking inhabitants ever exceed one-third of the population. Any claim  that German might have become the main language of Pennsylvania in the 1790s, when over 66 percent of the population spoke English, is absurd. " ⁷

What the above settlement history  means to our Lines:
Colonization occured  from a Southwestern perspective in regards to our lines, and the years of county formation from the original three counties of Philadelphia,  Chester and Bucks,  as new lands were acquired, settlement occured,  and the need for closer centers of regional government for beourgeoning populations gives a good idea of how settling advanced.  Our Pennsylvanians in the Howard allied lines were part of the Quaker immigration, earliest among the Pennsylvania settlers and prominent in Pennsylvania affairs, arriving from 1680-1699, but our direct line ancestors of this branch of  ascendancy remove from Penna to Virginia by 1800, and thence to the deeper American South and to Texas, only returning to Pennsylvania  in the 1940s when a direct member married into the Adams County SWOPE line. In the meantime, among our Swope ascendancy were Germans arriving from 1709 onwards, mostly present in the headwaters of the lines  by the same year, 1800,  during which our Howard allied directs removed from Pennsylvania. These germans  remained in entirity in the state, advancing westwards or finding themselves in western evolving counties branching off from the previous counties encompassing their area. Included in our Swope allied ascendancy are the Scotch Irish surnames, present from ca 1722 in Lancaster County and moving west to the region of York County now pertaining to Adams   by 1780, and coalescing into the Swope line in marriage in Adams County in the early part of the 19th century.

Sources for this Page:
1.  WHYY webpage Delaware=diversity page
2.  pages of Historical maps of Pennsylvania, specific page: 1860s Penna Maps
3 Chapter XII The Scotch-Irish Migration from CarolinaCradle, Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier, 1747-1762 by Robert  W. Ramsey
4 PENNSYLVANIA STATE HISTORY THE QUAKER PROVINCE: 1681-1776, part of  Penna historical and museum Commission webpages
5 Adams County Tidbits from the Adams County Bicentenniel commitee.
6 Edward W. Spangler. The Annals of the Families of Caspar, Henry, Baltzer and George Spengler. York, Pennsylvania: The York Daily Publishing Co., 1896.p 324
7 Webpage German the Official US Language? in about.com library webpages

8. Page dedicated to the  PETITION FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF  LANCASTER COUNTY,   FEBRUARY 6, 1728/9 from Pennsylvania State Archives

9. The History Of Stony Branch Valley (Part 2) [Frederick County, Md]  The first Settlers  by  Michael Hillman presented by the Emmitsburg Historical Society

10. Michael Eichelberger (1774-1830) of Eichelbergertown Bedford County Pennsylvania. Webpages mounted by Ginette [76515.3610@compuserve.com] with credit for text to Katy Eichelberger Gallagher.

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