The Palatinate
Background
The webpage of KarenFurst.com: Mostly Genealogy & A Few Other Things gives a very succinct description of the region as follows:
“The Palatinate (or Pfalz in German) was a region of Germany located along the Rhine River, roughly where the modern German state of Rhineland-Pfalz is located. It is named for the Count Palatine, a title held by a leading secular prince of the Holy Roman Empire.
“Prior to 1871, what is now Germany was a number of separate states, such as Württemberg, Prussia, Bavaria, etc., whose boundaries changed frequently as a result of war and other causes. Geographically, the Palatinate was divided between two small territorial clusters: the Rhenish, or Lower Palatinate, and the Upper Palatinate. The Rhenish Palatinate included lands on both sides of the Middle Rhine River between its Main and Neckar tributaries. Its capital until the 18th century was Heidelberg. The Upper Palatinate was located in northern Bavaria, on both sides of the Naab River as it flows south toward the Danube, and extended eastward to the Bohemian Forest. The boundaries of the Palatinate varied with the political and dynastic fortunes of its counts. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Palatinate’s lands on the west bank of the Rhine were incorporated into France, while its eastern lands were divided largely between neighboring Baden and Hesse.
“After the defeat of Napoleon (1814-15), the Congress of Vienna gave the east-bank lands to Bavaria. These lands, together with some surrounding territories, again took the name of Palatinate in 1838.
“In the 18th and early 19th century, the term “Palatine” was used in America to describe immigrants from “The Palatinate” and other adjoining German-speaking areas. Finding an American reference to someone being from the “Palatinate” may not point to a specific place of origin, but rather an approximate location in or near western or southern Germany.
“During the War of the Grand Alliance (1689-97), the troops of the French monarch Louis XIV ravaged the Rhenish Palatinate, causing many Germans to emigrate. Many of the early German settlers of America (the Pennsylvania Dutch) were refugees from the Palatinate. “
https://www.karenfurst.com/blog/genealogy/historical-background/germany/the-palatinate/
European Beginnings
(The following section, “European Beginnings,” was written by Avery Kolb, and appeared with his permission in Mary Francis Beasley’s Culp and Related Families, published in Arkansas, in 1986. This and other sections, used by her to describe the background of the Kolb family, were taken from first revised draft 1978 of Avery E. Kolb‘s book: Kolb Families and Relatives in the South – Johannes Kolb and Sons Progenitors of Southern Families.)
The name “Kolb” is an old Teuton tribal one, meaning helmet and one with a shaved head. It is descriptive of the warrior and a monk and, paradoxically, suggests the roles those who bore the name would play in the history of their times – both men of war and men of peace. But primarily, the Kolbs were men of the soil.
The Teutonic clans came out of the northlands, bearded, fair-skinned people, at the time of the Roman Empire. They came, not for plunder, but seeking land on which to plant crops and pasture cattle, land on which to build farms and rear families. They settled in the valley of the Rhine, on the slopes of the Alps, and prospered under a simple code which held that a man was due only as to the product of his labors.
But they were set upon by contending hoards, by plundering Romans, and later by warring lords who envied them their storehouses, their lands, their women. What they had wrought, some stood to defend. But many, being peaceable men, loaded their families and goods and moved on. Their longest and most difficult trip was down the Rhine to the Netherlands and across the Atlantic to the New World. Here the cycle of their trials was to repeat itself, as though it were ever so.
The German immigrants who came to America before the Revolution, of whom the Kolbs were a small but influential number, were almost entirely from South Germany, especially the Palatinate, Wurtemberg and from Switzerland. This area has an important history. Its inhabitants are descendants of German tribes called the Rhein Franken, with an admixture of Alemanni who were defeated and assimilated around 500 A.D. situated along the great water highway of Europe. They are said to combine the best qualities of the North and South, being distinguished for indomitable industry, keen wit, independence, and a high degree of intelligence.
During the Middle Ages the Palatinate was the most powerful and prosperous of the German States, having benefitted and advanced under progressive and tolerant rulers. The country along the Rhine and Neckar Rivers was known as the garden of Germany, and the University of Heidelberg was one of the most influential seats of learning in Europe. The yeomanry were in a state of great prosperity. “Their houses were comfortable, their barns capacious, their stables well stocked with horses and cattle, their crops were plenteous, and many had considerable sums of money safely stored away against a rainy day.”
The disorders of religious wars dealt a terrible blow to this prosperity. The causes run deep. The consequences marked a crucial turn in history. Many would leave their homeland for the new world.
(The following section, “War in the Palatinate,” was written by Avery Kolb, and appeared with his permission in Mary Francis Beasley’s Culp and Related Families, published in Arkansas, in 1986. This and other sections, used by her to describe the background of the Kolb family, were taken from first revised draft 1978 of Avery E. Kolb‘s book: Kolb Families and Relatives in the South – Johannes Kolb and Sons Progenitors of Southern Families.)
War in the Palatinate
In Germany, meanwhile, the Mennonites were caught up with other Protestants in the general disorder of religious wars. The Thirty Years’ War, precipitated by Frederick V in 1618, was one of the most destructive in history. Cities, towns and villages were devastated, and the country which had been so prosperous became a wilderness of uncultivated land, marked with blackened ruins.
The sufferings of country folk were pitiable indeed. “Not only were horses and cattle carried away by the various armies which shifted back and forth over the land, not only were houses, barns, and crops burned, but the mast of the house was frequently subjected to torture in order that he might be forced to disclose the hiding place of his gold or, as often happened, as a punishment for having nothing to give.
“At the approach of a hostile army the whole village would take flight, and would live for weeks in the midst of forest and marshes. The enemy having departed, the wretched survivors would return to their ruined homes and carry on a painful existence until they were forced to fly again. Many were slain, many of the young men were lured away to swell the ranks of the armies, many fled to the cities for safety and never returned to teir native village.”
A period of comparative peace followed the war; but then, in 1685, Louis XIV made claim to the Palatinate, and finding himself opposed by England and Holland as well as Germany, determined that “if the soil of the Palatinate was not to furnish supplies to the French, it should be so wasted that it would at least furnish none to the Germans.” He thereafter approved the famous order to “bruler le Palatinat.”
Macaulay described the scenes that followed: “The commander announced to near half a million human beings that he granted them three days grace…Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, were blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women and children flying from their homes…Flames went up from every market place, every parish church, every county seat, with the devoted province. The fields where corn had been sowed were ploughed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of a harvest was left on the fertile plains near what had been Frankenthal. Not a vine, nor an almond tree was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny hills round what had once been Heidelberg.”
The war ended in 1697, but not the troubles of the crushed and helpless people. Churches were reopened, but only those of the Catholics; and all were required to “bend the knee to the passing of the Host.” While the country lay in ruin, extravagant rulers built costly palaces, and while villagers were starving, Court officers lived in luxury and idleness. The remaining Mennonites, along with Walloons and Huguenots, now abandoned their homes to seek refuge with their brothers in Holland. But some, including a family of Kolbs of particular interest to us, were not to stay there.
They would go much further.
The German-Dutch Koln family connection, like the Swedish-German connections half a century earlier, stem from the 17th and 18th Century protestant migrations. Peter Kolb was an elder of the Kriegsheim Mennonite congregation in the Palatinate during the first half of the 18th Century. This was no doubt Peter the elder son of Dielman Kolb and brother to the American immigrants who were to maintain their contacts in Holland. In 1709 Peter visited the Netherlands; presumably as the confidential agent to the Dutch Mennonite Committee of Foreign Needs of Amsterdam. In 1731, he was invited to give information to the Amsterdam Committee concerning the needs of the congregation in the Palatinate, per information in the Mennonite Encyclopedia.
But, a word of caution. One must not suppose that all Kolbs came from Bavaria, nor that all were Protestant. Our records of those by the name indicate that Kolbs were also in other principalities of Central Europe and Prussia and what was to become Austria and Czechoslovakia. Charles R. Kolb of Vicksburg, Miss. says his parents came from Platten in eastern Europe. At a Kolb family reunion in Dallas, Texas in 1969, a musical composition by an early 18th Century German Kolb was displayed. He was a Catholic Monk, Carlman. Well, you might say, but he had no descendants.1
1Kolb Families and Relatives in the South – Johannes Kolb and Sons Progenitors of Southern Families. Author Avery E. Kolb
This article was posted over 4 newsletters published in October and November 2025.
(The following section, “The Immigrants”,” was written by Avery Kolb, and appeared with his permission in Mary Francis Beasley’s Culp and Related Families, published in Arkansas, in 1986. This and other sections, used by her to describe the background of the Kolb family, were taken from first revised draft 1978 of Avery E. Kolb‘s book: Kolb Families and Relatives in the South – Johannes Kolb and Sons Progenitors of Southern Families.)
The Immigrants
The era of great maritime adventure which began with Columbus, mounted in the seventeenth century under the compulsion to colonize. Western Europe, from the Iberian to the Scandinavian peninsulas, entered upon the seizure and division of new lands. Wonder tales were held up before the oppressed millions by idealists and schemers alike who, for good cause or profits, sought to induce them to cross the Atlantic.
To William Penn goes the credit for diverting the largest part of the German immigration to America to his own province. There came to these people in 1671 and again in 1677, a young man named Benjamin Furley, the agent of Penn, who preached a doctrine of good will. Penn’s Quaker tenets differed very little from those held by the followers of Menno Simon, and the news that he offered them a home where they could live without wars and persecutions brought hope to many a household.
By March 1682, Penn had sold several 5000-acre tracts to merchants of Crefeld, Germany. The following year Germans bought 24,000 acres upon which the city of Germantown was to be located. This was the beginning of a mighty Teutonic wave of immigration which, commencing with the Crefelders, continued to come until it outgrew and, in a measure, displaced some of the nationalities that preceded it.
The principal port of embarkation was Rotterdam, hence to Cowes, in the Isle of Wright. Scows, brigantines, brigs, every kind of craft and vessel was employed. The late winter and early autumn months were generally chosen for passage.
While many of the immigrants had, at one time, been well-to-do, most were now reduced to poverty. Whatever property they had been able to gather together was used up in expenses for descending the Rhine and crossing the ocean, or was stolen on the way. The deliberate diversion of their chests by unscrupulous merchants was one of the greatest hardships these people had to endure, as they depended upon these not only for meager clothing but for dried fruit and meat, butter, preserved food, brandy and medicines they needed for nourishment and health on the way.
The journey took weeks, sometimes months. Sitting on boxes and bundles which were piled high in the middle of the craft could be seen gray-haired men and women, old and feeble, along the sides, gazing at the shores as they slipped away, stood the young. Despite the comforts of religion and communion, the passage of the Atlantic was one continual series of discomfort, suffering, disease and death.
For a number of years, no record of the arrivals was kept. There were three general streams of the German Immigration: the first, in 1683, lead to the founding of Germantown and up to the coming of the Mennonites in 1710; the second from 1710 to 1727, when official statistics began to be published. The third period extended to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, when all immigration ceased for a time.
In 1709 a large colony of Palatines landed at New York and settled in the Mohawk Valley. They found conditions there to be as bad, if not worse, than those they had left behind. Arnold Kolb and Henry Kolb with three daughters arrived with the first party. Frans Kolb, wife and two children, were among the first to return to Holland, disillusioned, in 1709. By 1711, many had returned to Germany, taking with them tales of the privations they had encountered (Note: Of 2,00-odd German Palatines shipped to New York in 1710 in ten ships, 470 died on the voyage and 250 more soon after landing.) This brought the emigration temporarily to a hold. But by 1727, Palatine Germans again decided to seek their fortunes in America.
The influx of foreigners into Pennsylvania assumed such proportions that the authorities adopted a resolution requiring that all masters of vessels importing German and others make a list of the names of all male passengers over sixteen. Then, upon reaching Pennsylvania, the immigrants were obliged to sign a declaration of allegiance to the King of Great Britian and of fidelity to the Propriety of Pennsylvania. This oath was first taken in the courthouse at Philadelphia on September 21, 1727 by a hundred Palatines.
Dielman, Senior’s sons Martin, Jacob, Henry and Johannes Kolb arrived in 1707 before the ship records were kept. Dielman, their brother, arrived on August 10, 1717, and probably crossed again to bring back a wife, Judith, in 1729. After that time, the ship passenger records show that nine of the name. perhaps three or four families, arrived before 1740, and that an additional sixteen or so, comprising perhaps five or six families, arrived at Philadelphia up to 1770. Included herewith is a list of the names which are grouped roughly as to their assumed ties.
The rigors of the Atlantic crossing were unbelievably harsh from cramped quarters, lack of sanitation, and cruel sea captains who often withheld food and let the weak and sick die enroute. Thus, on the ship Fortune, which arrived in November 3, 1804, Wilhelmina Kulp was among the dead. And there no doubt were many more among the unrecorded passengers. These hardships left the immigrants with many bitter memories, but afterwards the families told exaggerated and romanticized stories about it. Two of these tales have been handed down by generations in Kolb families. The Joe Newton Kolb family in Texas, descendants of Joseph Henry Kolb and John Hayes Kolb of Alabama, tell the story that when the Kolb brothers were coming over from Germany they were shipwrecked before reaching the shores in America. Only one brother was rescued, and he was their ancestor.
Perhaps the most romantic story is told by a branch of southern Kolbs which became Culps. In a letter to Vernon Milton Gantt of Albemarle, N.C., Mrs. Wilma Blevett Little wrote in 1961 inquiring after her ancestor Josiah Cahplin Culp: “They came to Pennsylvania, then to Virginia. He was a ‘horticulturist’, who eloped with a German Princess, hiding her in a barrel marked ‘potatoes’ until the ship was well under way.
Among the original Palatines in Pennsylvania, fair records were kept in heavy-cover old German bibles and in records of the church. The relations of these people have been well documented in Mennonite histories and in the work of Daniel Kolb Cassel who in 1895 found most of the descendants of the names still living in Pennsylvania and its neighboring states. The families of the latter work comprise what has come to be known as the Northern Branch of the Kolb Family.
All the problems of establishing homes, schools and churches in the new land faced these early settlers. Martin Kolb was one of those in 1708 who signed a letter to Amsterdam presenting “a loving and friendly request for some catechisms for the children and little testaments for the young.” They explained that the country was still weak and that “it would cost them much money to get them printed, while the members who came here from Germany have spent everything and must begin anew, and all work to pay for the conveniences of life of which they stand in need.”
Another request in 1745, by Martin and Dielman, asked that the “Bloedigh Tooniel” (Martyr’s Mirror) be translated from Dutch into German for use by the colonists. When the request was turned down, the community got the Dunkards, who had a hand press and paper mill in Ephrata in Lancaster County, to print the work. It took years and the labors of fifteen men to translate and print “a true history of Christians put to death from the time of the Apostles to the year 1660.” The book consisted of some 1500 pages.
But while the communities gained in self-sufficiency, the Mennonites were torn by internal strife over doctrines of the church, so that their history is one of various sects splitting iff over such matters as the manner of baptism, the correct day for the Sabbath even over the proper clothes to be work and tools to be used. Many were conservative and wished to hold to old ways while others wished to press ahead with new ideas and reforms aimed at liberalizing the old restrictive codes. The Kolbs were generally of the latte group, and we read that on April 289, 1749 because on John Philip Bocher died without having been sick, so no minister could be secured to deliver his funeral sermon. The death was seen as an act of God’s wrath and none of the doctrinaire ministers would give the man’s body final blessing. Then Martin Kolb came forth to perform the service for the family. This was seen as such a kind act by one of the Dunkard pastors of Germantown that he wrote: “When such circumstances take place, not of necessity but out of love, then all jealousy, sectarianism, and the like would take an end.”
Other circumstances of the frontier tended to induce these early settlers to give up their doctrines of non-violence. On May 10,1728 inhabitants of Calebrook Dale petitioned Governor Gordon, praying for relief against what they suffered, and were likely to suffer, from the Indians who had fallen upon the back inhabitants of Faulkners Schivamm and Goshenhoppen. The Pennsylvania Archives which report this matter (Vol. I, p. 213) lists Martin Kolb among the forty-five petitioners.
It was not long, however, before the immigrant’s poverty and distress was changed into prosperity and plenty. This was especially true of the Mennonites who came when land was cheap and they were able to buy in large quantities. Later, property in the neighborhood of Philadelphia and adjacent counties became more difficult to acquire and settlers were compelled to move further out upon the frontier – beyond the Blue Mountains to the north, across the Susquehanna to the west, many finding their way into the green valleys of Virginia.
While some were handicraftsmen, by far the greater number were “bauern”, farmers. Plunging into an unbroken wilderness, often fifty or sixty miles from the nearest habitation, and with skills and industry inherited from thirty generations of land cultivators, these German settlers soon changed the forest into thriving, well-kept farms. The back woods had no terrors for them. They were not afraid of work. Trees fell to the blows of their axes. In the fertile valleys, on the green hillsides, and in the depths of the forest, wherever a spring burst from the earth, their homes appeared.
When sturdy sons and daughters came along and were married, many of them to Welch, Scotch and Irish neighbors, they too struck out for lands of their own. Turning south, they followed the Indian trails into western Maryland and down the Shanandoah Valley into Virginia and the Carolinas, into Kentucky and Tennessee. Climbing the Appalachian Mountains, they debouched into the wild regions beyond. Crossing the Creek Nation into the Mississippi Territory, they spread ever further into what was to become Arkansas and Texas. Today they are to be found in all parts of the nation – some still as farmers, some tradesmen, others as business entrepreneurs, many as professional men. Wherever the Germans went with their plows and ponderous bibles, their fervent but unobtrusive piety went with them and in their quiet way they brought credit on the country wherever they located themselves.
Plain of dress and demeanor, plain of speech, and generally free from evil habits, they practiced doctrines and habits of the primitive church, Mennonite or Evangelical Baptist like Quaker…
“Holding as in his Master’s sight,
Act and thought to the inner light
The round of his simple duties walked
And strove to live what the others talked.” 1
1 – Kolb Families and Relatives in the South – Johannes Kolb and Sons Progenitors of Southern Families. Author Avery E. Kolb
