The port of Philadelphia was the entryway to Pennsylvania for tens of
thousands of Germans who were lured to New World by the promise of
religious peace and material prosperity. William Penn himself, granted
title to the 40,000 miles of what was to become his namesake state,
traveled to the Rhine provinces ``whose once-peaceful valleys,
thriving fields, and vine-clad hills had become the hunting ground of
political and religious fanatics,'' writes Ralph Beaver Strassburger.
Personally and through his agents, Penn invited the Rhinelanders,
``the suffering Palatines,'' to ``help him found a state in which
religious and civil liberty would prevail.'' And beginning with the
Germantown settlement in 1683, Pennsylvania became a bastion of
freedom-seeking Germans.

In 1934, Dr. Strassburger put together ``Pennsylvania German
Pioneers,'' a compilation of the original lists of passenger arrivals
in the port of Philadelphia from 1727 to 1808. The two-volume set,
published originally by the Pennsylvania-German Society, was out of
print when Genealogical Publishing Company reissued it in 1966. The
set has continued to sell out of editions, and the latest has just
been come off the presses.

Pennsylvania German Pioneers contains data on 38,000 people. According
to the introduction, it is ``the basis of the ancestry of hundreds of
thousands of Americans, enabling them to determine with certainty the
time of their ancestors' arrivals in Pennsylvania and the place ...
whence they came.''

In some cases, especially with later arrivals, other details are
available, such as the ages of the immigrants, relationships to others
on board, occupations, and even their height and color of their hair!

The index is particularly comprehensive, running some 450 of the set's
1,564 pages, and including many variant spellings of surnames and even
given names.

No serious researcher into the roots of the Pennsylvania Germans
should be without access to this basic reference. Most good libraries
covering the subject even peripherally have it or may be ordering the
latest edition. Those who would like their own set may order from the
publisher (Dept. SM, 1001 North Calvert Street, Baltimore, Md.,
21202-3897, 1-800-727-6687) at $75 plus $3.50 postage and handling.
                                                               --J.F.S.