Descendants of Peter Fry
of the Palatinate of the Rhine

Generation #1

Peter Fry of the Palatinate of the Rhine

Research Note: This research continues to look for a relationship between this Fry family and Andreas Frey of the Duchy of Wurttemburg b. 1698 who immigrated 8/17/1733 to Philadelphia PA aboard the ship Samuel.  

Peter Fry was born in 1687, probably in the Palatinate of the Rhine. Information for Peter and his family is found in the manifest for the ship Loyal Judith which arrived in Philadelphia on 9/3/1742. Of note, the surviving passenger list only cites males over 16 who were required to swear allegiance to the British Crown. Unfortunately, no information is available for females or dependent minors.

To date, there is no information for Peter or his son Johannes Peter either before or after their immigration date. However, the circumstance of their immigration does provide a historical context.

The many ships out of Rotterdam which arrived at Philadelphia in the first half of the 18th Century were populated by ethnic German immigrants called Palatinates. These ethnic German immigrants started the last leg of their journey in one of the principalities along the Rhine River. But in truth, most of their histories began in the Germanic Cantons of Switzerland. Thus, the monikers Switzer and Palatinate and Deutsch/Dutch are synonymous.

Having fled religious persecution in Calvinist Switzerland, our Anabaptist Germanic families initially sought refuge in the Protestant Palatinate of the Rhine where they settled for one and two generations, living amongst and intermarrying with the locals and in many cases adopting the Lutheran religion. But, this was only a temporary solution.

Having settled in the lands along the Rhine, our ethnic German ancestors were subjected to depredations during the continuous warfare with Catholic France. By the time they were ready to uproot their families again, William Penn and his European letters offered them a place to settle in the new world: Pennsylvania.

The Palatinate Migration Stream is the name given to the flood of ethnic Germans who fled the ethnic German lands from Switzerland and the many principalities along the Rhine River, arriving in America in the early 1700s. And, Peter and his family were part of that migration stream. [Palatinate Immigration]

• Born 1687 in the Palatinate of the Rhine

• Married c. 1720 in the Palatinate of the Rhine (Germany) to an unknown spouse

• Immigrated 9/3/1742 aboard the ship Loyal Judith to Philadelphia PA

• Settled in Pennsylvania

• Date and place of death unknown 

    Children

    1. Johannes Peter Fry b. 1723 the Palatinate of the Rhine

Generation #2