GERMAN ROOTS

Bearing in mind that just about everyone with English roots originates from the Germanic Angles and Saxons who invaded Britain after the Romans left, it should not surprise anyone that their more immediate ancestors might also have been German.

The ports England were used by all emigrants -- from all over Europe, especially Germany -- taking passage to the British colonies in the new world America and some of these emigrants, for some reason or other, decided to stay in England.

Could one of them have had a name similar to Dewick or Duick and started a family in an area already populated by the indigenous Dewicks or Duicks? Or are the strange name spellings merely errors in transcription?

Before the famine induced massive Irish migrations in the 19th century, the Germans were the world's most numerous group of people leaving their homeland for a better place to live and, like the Irish who followed them, England was their first place of refuge and America was their ultimate destination.

A broad look at 17th and 18th century Germany leads one to conclude that at that time in history Germany was such a terrible place that people literally escaped from it, not migrated from it.

There were incredibly bitter divisions between the Catholics and the Protestants -- far more so than in England -- but by far the most pressing reason for Germans to emigrate at any time before unification a century later in 1871 was incessant conflict between the many German kingdoms.

By the time George II succeeded George I of Hanover to the British throne in 1727 England had become a very attractive place for Germans to live, making it rather than America, the first choice for a new home.

Up until the British government organized mass migrations to America in 1709, passage to the new world had been largely by private means. You needed a certain amount money to pay your way, or you needed to be a valued servant of a rich emigrating family. Emigration to America was not, therefore, an option for the majority of poor Germans prior to 1709 but emigration to England -- just across the ditch -- was within the means of some.

The most terrible period was during the Thirty Years' War 1613-1645 which ravaged Germany, causing the death of thousands of young men in battle and millions of peasants by starvation in its aftermath from 1645 onwards. It can be compared with the terrible state of Ireland after the famine the late 1800s, but was much worse, of course, because of additional violence.

It was also a period in which many local records were burned, so we are particularly fortunate that so many German records survived. This war was essentially a Catholic Reformation led by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (1619-1637) against the heretic forces in the Empire, most especially Fredrick the Palatinate, married to Elizabeth Stuart, daughter James I, who incurred Ferdinand's wrath by accepting the crown of Bohemia and adopting Rosicrucian influences. Being good Catholics no doubt saved the lives of some, but nevertheless countless numbers of German converts to Protestantism, with the means to leave the country, fled the country by any means they could in order to save their lives during these years.

At this point in history, it must be remembered that England itself from 1625-1660 was in turmoil with its so called Glorious Revolution. It was not a place you visited unless you went as a soldier of fortune fighting for either Scotland or England. The Scots and English both attracted Catholic and Protestant hot-heads from Europe, some of whom were invariably German.

After the Seven Years War, from 1645 onwards, the plight of the impoverished and war-weary Germans was so terrible that Catherine the Great of Russia and many of the Austro-Hungarian kings sent envoys into the German countryside offering the starving farmers and their families a new home in their lands. By that time, course, the American Revolution made emigration to America difficult. If any Germans with family names that sounded like DEWICK did migrate to Russia or Hungary, then they either changed their name -- possibly to DEUCK -- or their male line died out.

At a time when Europe was torn by sectarian violence, William Penn came to the rescue with a vision of harmony in the new world. He was granted the Charter Pennsylvania in 1681 and founded Philadelphia in 1682 with migrants he had previously attracted during his travels through Europe actively promoting religious freedom in the new land. Germans constituted the largest group of emigrants to Pennsylvania and they founded Germantown in the same year, 1683, that the Moslem Ottoman Turks had advanced through southern Austria and were besieging its capital, Vienna.

By 1680, the threat of Eurabia was far more terrifying -- and possible -- than it is now.

In 1709 -- reacting to the desperate plight of millions of starving Germans, and conscious of the need to expand the Red Coats in order to continue fighting Queen Anne's North American War 1702-1713 -- the first of the mass, organized two-stage emigrations from Germany to America financed by England commenced.

The first stage was from Rotterdam in Holland to England, and the second stage was from England to America. The second stage never occurred for some Germans because they had either lied about their religion or were misinformed to start off with. Under Queen Anne's reign England did not tolerate Catholics entering the country, and thousands were forced to return to Germany. Thousands more agreed to be sent to Jamaica or Ireland -- which explains Germanic names suddenly turning up in Irish parish registers -- and others joined the English military or just disappeared into the English countryside.

That Dewick births first occurred in Barbados in 1688 makes one wonder whether they were the children of German or English emigrants -- or, more likely, because of the mother's name, they could have been the result of a union between their father, Thomas Dewick, and a Negro slave. Armadell, for instance, is not a common European female name. 

Unluckiest of all, though, were the thousands of Germans -- Catholic and Protestant -- who arrived at Rotterdam and never made it to England because the assisted passage scheme had attracted far too many willing emigrants. The Dutch were instructed to return to Germany all those awaiting transferal to England, but it's likely that many stayed in the Netherlands rather than return to the misery of life in Germany.

It wasn't until 20 years later -- from 1720 to 1733 -- that mass, organized emigrations to America were arranged by the Dutch alone. Dutch ships left from Rotterdam and went directly to America carrying thousands of Germans as well as other European nationals.

That many ancestry records hit a brick wall around the 1700s indicates that a key male figure may have not only emigrated but possibly changed his name and other details at the same time, too. Maybe his objective was to cut ties completely with the Old World, not just because it had given him such a hard time but because he may have had a very good reason to disappear. Maybe the bailiffs were after him for debts or bigamy!

The fortune of Germans changed when Queen Anne died in 1714 causing a succession crisis. George I of Hanover, Germany, became the new king of England by virtue of being the son of Sophia, the niece of Charles I. The accession of a German to the British throne precipitated a growing migration of Germans to England -- first as part his entourage and then as permanent settlers as the situation in Germany worsened.

That a new surname, Dowick, appeared in Warwick in 1729 with a sketchy connection to the Duicks and Dewicks of Ashfordby, Leicester, makes one wonder whether this family, too, might have been German -- especially so when the name later changed to Doick, a surname common to Erwitte in Germany. However, the father and mother of these children -- James and Sarah -- did not have common German names and while anything is possible in genealogy the mundane explanations are mostly right.

Anyway, it cannot be emphasized enough how George I changed England. For want a better word, he "Germanized" it. German, not English, was spoken at Court, and German speakers and tutors were thus highly regarded and in great demand well into the reign of Queen Victoria (whose mother was pure German). With this sort of social milieu, even Germans in good circumstances at home would have been attracted to make England their new home.

In 1701 Frederick III, Elector Brandenburg, had expanded his territory, assumed the title of King of Prussia and precipitated heightened tension between the various German kingdoms. This tension would ultimately lead to the 1756-1763 Seven Years War under the territorial expansionist policies of Fredrick the Great of Prussia. Long before this war broke out, though, larger numbers Germans than ever starting migrating to the new world. This time, German settlements took place in Virginia, settling on the land around Lovettsville, and no doubt many would have made their fortunes on the great slave-run tobacco plantations.

Rather than die in another pointless war, thousands of young Germans fled the country before the 1756 war broke out.

By the end the 18th century, an equally disastrous situation of starvation in France led to the French Revolution of 1789, the execution of the royal family and the unfortunate rise of Napoleon who wreaked more havoc in Europe, particularly Germany. By the mid-1800s, many old German family names had disappeared. It is unlikely that very many young men survived the 1756-1763 War and its terrible aftermath, and by the time time Napoleon started marching through Europe in the 1800s those young men remaining would have been forced to fight for Prussia against France and inevitably would have also met their Waterloo.

Taking into consideration the bloody history of Europe -- which would get progressively worse in the 20th century -- it is amazing that any Germans survived at all. Lucky for those who were able to escape European bloodshed and starvation that they had welcoming countries to which they could emigrate. It is unfortunate that those who emigrated to America got caught up in Indian Wars, the Revolution and then the Civil War. They must have wondered whether it was worth it, and some, indeed, may have returned to Germany or wandered around Europe, possibly fathering a lot children and giving them strange names that sounded like DEWICK!