ir arrival. The official seal of Germantown
bore the inscription: "Vinum, Linum et Textrinum," the culture of
grapes, flax-growing, and the textile industries being the principal
occupations of the colony. In 1690 W. Rittenhaus established in
Germantown the first paper-mill in America. Here also Christopher Sauer,
a native of Westphalia, published the first newspaper in German type,
and in 1743 the first German Bible, antedating, by forty years, the
printing of any other Bible in America. The Germans in the cloister
Ephrata, Pa., established by the Tunker, or Dunkards, also owned a
printing-press, a paper-mill, and a bookbindery. They published, in
1749, the _Maertyrer-Spiegel_, a folio of 1514 pages, the greatest
literary undertaking of the American Colonies. To the Germans enumerated
must be added the German Reformed; the Moravians, who founded Bethlehem
and Nazareth in Pennsylvania; the Salzburgers in Georgia; the Palatines
in New York; etc. And what may be said of Germantown, is true also with
regard to Philadelphia. June 6, 1734, Baron von Reck wrote concerning
the conglomerate community of this city: "It is an abode of all
religions and sects, Lutherans, Reformed, Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
Catholics, Quakers, Dunkards, Mennonites, Sabbatarians, Seventh-day
Baptists, Separatists, Boehmists, Schwenkfeldians, Tuchfelder,
Wohlwuenscher, Jews, heathen, etc." (Jacobs, 191.) Concerning the
thrifty character and all-round good citizenship of the German
immigrants in Pennsylvania generally, McMaster remarks: "Wherever a
German farmer lived, there were industry, order, and thrift. The size of
the barns, the height the fences, the well-kept wheat fields and
orchards, marked off the domain of such farmer from the lands of his
shiftless Irish neighbor." "They were," says Scharf in his _History of
Maryland_, 2, 423, "an industrious, frugal, temperate people, tilling
their farms, accustomed to conflict with savage and other enemies on
the border, and distinguished for their bold and independent spirit."
(Jacobs, 235.) Also in the cause of liberty and humanity the German
immigrants in America stood in the front ranks.

34. First Anti-Slavery Declaration in America.--The importation of
negro slaves to America was practised by the English and Dutch since the
sixteenth century, without disapproval on the part of the Puritans and
Quakers, who boasted of being the fathers of liberty and the defenders
of human rights. The inhabitan