How much to we really know
about our own history? True, the English settled along the bank of the James
River in 1607, so migration began over 400 years ago. Our country was founded not
by the prosperous, but by the Skilled men and their families who were determined to build an inheritance and future for their children that would have been unthinkable in the European
Countries where about the only way to have land was to inherit it or gain it through war, which wasn't an option for the 50-60% who were peasants surviving on what little food they could keep that was grown on rented land.
By 1650 five European
Countries had staked out land in the Americas; Dutch, English, French, Spanish,
and Swedish Settlements spread from Spanish Florida to New France’s Montreal,
yet they still had no idea how much land was untouched by Settlers.
In the American School system
our youth were usually taught about the English Establishing a Foothold at
Jamestown from 1606-1610, but were also Huguenot or Dutch region that became New York, or the two million German Huguenots (French
Protestants) who fled France in
1865? The Blue of the Rt hand map was New France.
Huge numbers of these Huguenot artisans, craftsmen and
professionals migrated to the Carolinas, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York from France.[i] Many of America's best Artisans were Huguenots that settled in New Amsterdam (Now New York City), northern New Jersey, and western Connecticut. (You can find both Huguenot Strangers and Quakers on the manifest of the Mayflower.)
Our Schnee family came from Germany through my 6th great grandfather, Johannes Christian Schnee, who arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of 21 in 1743. Although we don't know if they were Huguenots, he went straight to Lebanon County Pennsylvania where he died in 1794. He and his wife, Anna Elisabeth Jacob had 8 children, as far as I have been able to discover, however we do not know as yet who his parents were of where in Germany our family resided except that according to German maps and research, there were several small Schnee townships in lower Saxony.
Did your family migrate to America to escape religious persecution? If not, why did they come to America?
BTW, if you have ancestors who
were Huguenots, there will be an annual Meeting of the Huguenot Society of
America on Wed. 29 April 2015 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at The Union Club, New York,
N.Y.[1]
