The Enduring Impact of the Palatine Migration on Columbia County

The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, in collaboration with the Hudson Area Library, hosted a presentation with Germantown Historian Thomas Shannon on the Palatine Germans who settled in our area. All across Columbia and surrounding counties are traces of the 1709 Palatine Migration to New York. This history has not always been so clear causing one writer, in 1878, to claim “that to study their history seems like looking for a lost age and a lost people, a romance of the past,”. The finest historical narrative of the Palatines to date, Becoming German by Philip Otterness, follows those who left for Schoharie in 1712. By contrast, this talk will cover the local aftermath of the Palatine Migration, the persistence of many family names, more than a century of co-existence with Livingston Manor, and the factors that eventually swept away much of the outwardly obvious Germanness of southern Columbia County, with an emphasis on those traces that have survived. The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made partially possible through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Foundation, HRBT Foundation, and Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation. Recording by Karl Frederick Mattson, 542films.