A Peculiar Mixture

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Jan Stievermann

Part 1 Migration and Settlement

1 Rethinking the Significance of the 1709 Mass Migration

Marianne S. Wokeck

2 Information Brokers and Mediators: The Role of Diplomats in the Migrations of German-Speaking People, 1709–1711

Rosalind J. Beiler

3 The Palatine Immigrants of 1710 and the Native Americans

Philip Otterness

Part 2 Material and Intellectual Cultures in the Making

4 Of Dwelling Houses, Painted Chests, and Stove Plates: What Material Culture Tells Us About the Palatines in Early New York

Cynthia G. Falk

5 (Re)Discovering the German-Language Literature of Colonial America

Patrick M. Erben

6 “Runs, Creeks, and Rivers Join”: The Correspondence Network of Gotthilf Henry Ernst Mühlenberg

Matthias Schönhofer

Part 3 Negotiations of Ethnic and Religious Identities

7 Divergent Paths: Processes of Identity Formation Among German Speakers, 1730–1760

Marie Basile McDaniel

8 Defining the Limits of American Liberty: Pennsylvania’s German Peace Churches During the Revolution

Jan Stievermann

9 Pennsylvania German Taufscheine and Revolutionary America: Cultural History and Interpreting Identity

Liam Riordan

Contributors

Index

“The collection of essays in A Peculiar Mixture serves the scholarly community in at least two ways. For those actively engaged in studies of ethnicity, migration, and cultural history, it provides a solid contribution to the chapter on German-speaking immigrants to North America. For those of us in German American studies, it is a cautionary model. We can and should move beyond older visions of what scholarship on German immigration can be.”

—Randall P. Donaldson, Journal of American Ethnic History