Pennsylvania German Society

The Pennsylvania German Society is a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to studying the Pennsylvania German people and their 330-year history in the United States and Canada. The Society works to preserve and promote the history, culture, religion, and dialect of the Pennsylvania Germans (also commonly known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch"). It was founded in 1891 and became a founding member of the Pennsylvania Federation of Historical Societies.

Regular efforts and activities of the Society include:

The Pennsylvania German Society was organized in a series of four meetings from February to April, 1891. The delegates present at the organizational meetings shared a number of characteristics. They were Pennsylvania German in family background, city dwellers, upper middle class professionals, and business men. They were older men having been born largely in the 1830s and 1840s, and they were well established in their careers. A large number were college graduates. It is likely that all knew and on occasion spoke the Pennsylvania German dialect and that most could read and speak standard High German.

Among the concerns of the founders was that railroad, factory, city, and public school would erode quickly most evidence of their culture, present in the United States and centered in Pennsylvania for over two hundred years. It was a distinctive culture, largely based in an agrarian society of an earlier age, and they were determined to preserve the knowledge about it from obliteration. In their minds, the time was ripe for an organized effort to preserve the culture which they were proud of.

Another concern motivated the founders. They were proud of their forefathers who had contributed significantly to the development of Pennsylvania and the nation, and they were convinced that their contribution had been neglected by the New England and Virginia historians who had written most American histories to that date They were determined to repair the omission and to give to the Pennsylvania Germans proper credit for the winning of independence during the Revolutionary War and for the preservation of the Union during the Civil War.

The founders of the Society wanted their people to develop pride in their culture. This purpose was stated clearly in the call for the convention:

It is interesting to note that the founders wrote of German and Swiss ancestors of the Pennsylvania Germans rather than only of German ancestors. The Germanic ancestors that arrived in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries arrived primarily from the Swiss Federation and the counties and kingdoms that would later unite into the German Empire in 1871. Furthermore, it is notable that their concern was only with the 17th and 18th century settlers of Pennsylvania. They were not interested in German and Swiss settlers of the 19th century and later.

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