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To: nathanbedford
About Lancaster County PA.

Lancaster was a major piece of New Sweden in the 1600s. About 1700s Penn, the Quaker, decided to start bringing in Quakers from England.

The Sweden colony folks were predominantly nominal Lutherans so the Quakers tried to convert them to the "true path". Swedish ministers were brought over to "defend" their colonists. This entailed bringing in big, strong churchmen to beat down Quaker missionaries messing with their people.

People were rough in those days and fistfights were not thought of as all that serious.

Some of the Lancaster Swedes and Sa'ami moved to Bucks County to get away from this. Read the history of Daniel Boone's family regarding that.

A smarter bunch relocated the colony to York PA on the other side of the river.

Later on the King of England used Lancaster as a dumping ground for German refugees ~ I think he didn't like the Quakers!

Roughly, if you find an ancestor from Lancaster in the 1600s, he or she is a Swede or Sa'ami. If the date slops over into 1701 to about 1725 or so, they are invariably Quaker. You get up beyond 1725 you find Germans ~ sometimes pretty obviously so. due to the interlocking ethnicities started by the Old West Gothic speaking people back in the 6th and 7th centuries, some German, English and Swedish surnames ARE IDENTICAL, so be very careful.

Your Sa'ami ancestors will probably have Swedish surnames and live in Lancaster county up to 1700, and then they live in York county.

33 posted on 12/22/2009 7:03:21 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah
Swedish ministers were brought over to "defend" their colonists. This entailed bringing in big, strong churchmen to beat down Quaker missionaries messing with their people.

That may possibly explain why part of my family original cemetary in Lancaster county was plowed over and crops grown on it.

36 posted on 12/22/2009 4:33:54 PM PST by BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagan)
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