A Peculiar Mixture: German-Language Cultures and Identities in Eighteenth-Century North America

Chapter 4: Of Dwelling Houses, Painted Chests, and Stove Plates: What Material Culture Tells Us About the Palatines in Early New York

Four Of Dwelling Houses, Painted Chests, and Stove Plates What Material Culture Tells Us About the Palatines in Early New York Cynthia G. Falk Much of what is known about the Palatines in New York comes from written sources, and many of these documents were authored not by members of the immigrant group but by others who observed or interacted with them. As this essay will demonstrate, the examination of material culture, in addition to textual sources, can contribute significantly to a better understanding of how the Palatines lived and what their lifestyle reveals about colonial German American history and culture. Such an approach provides a necessary corrective to the prevailing focus on Pennsylvania in the study of German communities in early America, and it allows for interpretation of the New York Palatine experience based not on what others said about them but rather on items they produced and used themselves.1 The study of immigration history by its very nature relies on evidence of how people of diverse backgrounds identified and defined those perceived as “other.” During the Palatines’ stay in London and at the naval stores camps in New York’s Hudson Valley, British officials had ample reason to make detailed records of the actions, attitudes, and physical condition of the group. Following the failed naval stores project and the migration of some Palatines farther west to the Mohawk Valley, both the British and the French kept accounts of the Germans who occupied a contested territory that both European powers hoped to control.2 86 Material and Intellectual Cultures What is missing from interpretations based largely on the resulting documents is an understanding of the Palatine experience derived from sources produced by the Palatines themselves. Yet capturing the Palatine perspective is not an easy task. Often the most deeply rooted values as well as the mundane details of everyday life do not get recorded when people put pen to paper, because most writing is conceived not to document but to achieve a certain end result.3 For example, Philip Otterness has shown that when the Palatines engaged in written political discourse with British authorities, they used words, including the erroneous label “poor Palatines,” to realize particular goals.4 Even text produced for other German speakers was often designed to fulfill certain purposes. Ulrich Simmendinger authored his 1717 register of Palatine families in order to provide information as to the current whereabouts of members of the 1710 immigrant group, but he also discouraged further immigration by referring to the “wretched servitude” and “untilled and wild” conditions of the New World.5 Simmendinger’s case aside, as the Palatines gained greater freedom from English control, they generally had less reason to correspond with British authorities or with anyone else who archived their words for the sake of posterity. Ironically, a migration that began as the result of the written word—Joshua Kocherthal’s “golden book”—through time received less and less attention in textual sources. In studying Palatine immigrants and their descendants who settled on the frontier in the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys , scholars interested in social and cultural history need to supplement what the written record tells them with other types of evidence in order to gain a more complete understanding of the Palatine experience. More than just physical reminders of Palatine settlement in the region, artifacts such as buildings, furniture, and other household goods provide evidence of the culture the Palatines helped forge in colonial New York’s river valleys. Surviving material goods, usually made to serve a practical purpose such as providing shelter or heat during the cold winter, can also function as evidence of deeply held beliefs and everyday behaviors, things not necessarily divulged in written sources.6 Particularly when examined as a group, rather than as discrete examples, the items that embodied the physicality of the domestic world have the potential to add depth and texture to our understanding of the lives of those who dwelled therein.7 Using material culture to learn more about New York’s Palatine population is not without its challenges, however. Violent conflicts in the eighteenth century destroyed many objects and buildings made and used by settlers in New York’s river valleys, thus eliminating many potential sources from the start. Houses, Chests, and Stove Plates 87 Over time, still more buildings and objects have been destroyed or physically altered. In 2011, for example, torrential rains caused the...