An Immigration Story
The Schwenkfelder immigration story is a familiar one of religious persecution leading to emigration to where people believe they can worship as they wish and then the struggle between presenting their own ways and assimilating to the cultures around them. In the early 1700s, Pennsylvania was a place known for its diversity of European settlers and a relative acceptance of difference. Six groups of Schwenkfelder families traveled in small groups here between 1731 and 1737, with the largest group of 170 persons coming on the Saint Andrew in 1734.
