ontier people
settling the interior and upland regions. There they cleared the land,
laid out their small farms, and worked as "sturdy yeomen on the soil,"
hardy, industrious, and independent in spirit, sharing neither the
luxuries of the rich planters nor the easy life of the leisurely
merchants. To their agriculture they added woolen and linen
manufactures, which, flourishing in the supple fingers of their tireless
women, made heavy inroads upon the trade of the English merchants in
the colonies. Of their labors a poet has sung:

"O, willing hands to toil;
Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil;
Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in the field."

=The Germans.=--Third among the colonists in order of numerical
importance were the Germans. From the very beginning, they appeared in
colonial records. A number of the artisans and carpenters in the first
Jamestown colony were of German descent. Peter Minuit, the famous
governor of New Motherland, was a German from Wesel on the Rhine, and
Jacob Leisler, leader of a popular uprising against the provincial
administration of New York, was a German from Frankfort-on-Main. The
wholesale migration of Germans began with the founding of Pennsylvania.
Penn was diligent in searching for thrifty farmers to cultivate his
lands and he made a special effort to attract peasants from the Rhine
country. A great association, known as the Frankfort Company, bought
more than twenty thousand acres from him and in 1684 established a
center at Germantown for the distribution of German immigrants. In old
New York, Rhinebeck-on-the-Hudson became a similar center for
distribution. All the way from Maine to Georgia inducements were offered
to the German farmers and in nearly every colony were to be found, in
time, German settlements. In fact the migration became so large that
German princes were frightened at the loss of so many subjects and
England was alarmed by the influx of foreigners into her overseas
dominions. Yet nothing could stop the movement. By the end of the
colonial period, the number of Germans had risen to more than two
hundred thousand.

The majority of them were Protestants from the Rhine region, and South
Germany. Wars, religious controversies, oppression, and poverty drove
them forth to America. Though most of them were farmers, there were also
among them skilled artisans who contributed to the rapid growth of
industries in