Greetings Folks... and Pennsylvania wedding chest or coffer,carved applied decor dated 1750

Both names on the chest sound more German to me than Dutch. Dutch chests from the 18th century are a bit more plain most of the time.

 

Pennsylvania Dutch is a misnomer taken from Deutsch, so German.
There is a slight cultural crossover from the time when German religious refugees stayed in the Low Countries though.

 

Ah ok, thanks for the clarification. The combination of Dutch (from the Netherlands in English) and Deutsch (from Germany in German) is very complicated indeed.

 

Graag gedaan EL. Yes, it is easy to see how the two words were mixed up, especially in the early days when they first arrived in North America.

 

Yes it is, very complicated.
Fact is, most of the immigrants to Pennsylvania during the 18th-19th century were German SPEAKERS but came from all over the map in Europe, Germany of course the largest group but many german speakers from France ( Huguenots), Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria & god knows where else!
The term "Pennsylvania Dutch" is mostly a myth and today is mostly a marketing type dealio. It's just good for business.
Another factor was WWll, NO ONE in PA or anywhere in USA wanted to be associated with Germany during this time for obvious reasons, the "Dutch" thingy worked well in this time frame!
My grandmother (an ethnic german) somehow became a native american during that war, even though one of her sons never came home and is buried in the American cemetery in Normandy, France. She insisted until the day she died that she was NOT of German descent ( she was), obviously granny took that war very hard.

 

It is complicated, but historically there is a definite connection to Netherlands. You can see this in the names of some of the original 13 Quaker and Mennonite families that founded Germantown. These early immigrants who came from Krefeld were from religious sects not tolerated by the Catholic church. Some were purely German, from the Palatinate, others from Luxembourg and France, but some were from the Netherlands/Germany border area, such as the Op Den Graeff families. These people came to Krefeld because it was ruled by the religiously tolerant Prince of Orange of the Netherlands. Although many of these early Pennsylvania families spoke German, others spoke Dutch. The term Pennsylvania Dutch may have come into use to distinguish descendants of these early Krefeld families from the purely German influx of the 1800's. My grandmother's family traces back to the Krefeld immigrants, and there's a mix of both German and Dutch names.

There were also the Dutch from Orange County New York that migrated to the bordering areas of Pennsylvania in the 1700's, but I don't know if they attached the Pennsylvania Dutch label to themselves.

 

Yeah, it's weird to imagine today but once upon a time, it was dangerous to be a Protestant in some parts of Europe.

 

And it was dangerous to be a Catholic in others.
And then there was the simple thing of religious freedom. Until 1848 Catholics in the Netherlands were not allowed to have churches or any other visible sign of their faith. The offical right of authorities to ban Catholic processions was only lifted in 1983, after pressure from the EU. Catholicism was the last faith to have full religious freedom in the Netherlands.

The negative attitude towards Dutch Catholics stems from the Dutch war of freedom against the Spanish. The war was originally a revolt against high taxes and for religious freedom, but it was later seen as a religious war, which it never was. In fact, it was started by a group of noblemen led by Egmond and Horne, both Catholic.
After Egmond and Horne were executed by the Spanish, William the Silent of Orange became the leader. He was Protestant. He was nicknamed 'the Silent' by the king of Spain, his former friend and protector, because he spoke a lot but said very little.