ABSTRACT
Pennsylvania German and British traditions in the PCR has had a lasting influence on the ways that people there talk, eat, work, and play.
Simon J. Bronner
The Pennsylvania Germans, also known colloquially as the Pennsylvania Dutch, are the descendants of eighteenth-century German-speaking settlers from the German Palatinate and neighboring portions of Switzerland and Alsace. They are concentrated most heavily in southeastern Pennsylvania, where they first settled and from which they migrated to influence other American regions, including the Midwest and especially
western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia as well as Canada. The Pennsylvania Germans should not be confused with later-arriving German Americans, mostly from Bavaria and Prussia, as the Pennsylvania Germans had already established themselves as a distinct ethnic group by the time subsequent German immigration began in the mid-nineteenth century. Throughout the history of the group, Pennsylvania German identity has centered on three major and interwoven aspects of the culture-religion, language, and agriculture.
