Person:Hans Berkel (1)

On 29 September 1733 HANS JACOB and family arrived in the port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River aboard the Pink Lady (also called Mary or Pink Mary) from Rotterdam, Holland (the Netherlands) and settled in Lebanon, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Many of the early German-speaking settlers of America were refugees from the area known as the Palatinate, situated west of the Rhine and north of the French (Alsatian) border. Before 1800, it included large areas east of the Rhine, including Mannheim and Heidelberg. Those of us today trying to find the Palatinate of the 1700's on maps, and trying to understand what was meant by the terms German, Dutch, Deutch, and Palatine or Palatinate on colonial records, usually end up confused and frustrated. The historic Palatinate always had rather vague boundaries and once consisted of 44 different countries. It was one of the major principalities of the Holy Roman Empire and comprised an area astride the middle Rhine River.

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. The Palatinate was one of these states, and was located along the Rhine River, roughly where the modern German state of Rheinland-Pfalz is located. The boundaries of the Palatinate varied with the political and dynastic fortunes of the Palatine Counts. It included parts of modern Germany, Switzerland, France, etc.

The Palatinate is now called Rheinland-Pfalz.