Colonial Stamm Families

North American Migration 1730 - 1848

For the early migrations of the Stamm family, we are indebted to Edward Ronsheim’s The Stamm Family of Ohio and Kentucky (1954). Ronsheim reports that the Stamm family followed the Moselle River to the north and the Rhine south into Switzerland. There appears to have been at least three waves of Stamms entering the United States. The first immigrations to America occurred just after to 1700 and consist of the Pennsylvania branch of the family. The second wave occurred in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s settling in Ohio and Kentucky.

The Stamms entering America in the early 1700’s were motivated primarily by the call of religious freedom. Although Ronsheim asserts that the earliest Stamms were Lutheran, many of the families came for Switzerland and were adherents to anabaptist sects like the Mennonites. Of course, many of the Stamms of the Hesse had been Catholic. The combination of religious prejudice and the nearly constant wars of central Europe caused a great many of these families to flee to America, and more specifically to the pacifistic colony of Pennsylvania. According to I. Daniel Rupp’s A Collection of Upwards of Thirty Thousand Names of Immigrants in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1776, between 1682 and 1702 fewer than two hundred German families emigrated to North America. Almost all of these families settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania. These were mostly Plattdeutsch (Low Germans) from Cleves, a Duchy in Westphalia. Daniel Pastorius and family are generally cited as the first Germans to settle in the Americas. They arrived on August 20, 1683.

The first twenty-five years of the eighteenth century saw between forty and fifty thousand Germans emigrating. Many of these Germans went first to England, where they suffered great privations. Fully seven thousand souls, half starving and despondent, returned to Germany. Ten thousand died in England of their privations. Three thousand of the Germans in England were moved to Limerick, Ireland and became relatively prosperous citizens. Over four thousand of the Germans who had gone to England were shipped to the new world. But less than 2,300 survived the passage. Slowly settlements of German speakers sprung up from North Carolina to New England. Most of Germans arrived as indentured servants with an obligation to work for the crown of England. New York, typical of the colonial governments, severely abused this conscript labor: denying adequate food and housing. This treatment by the English caused many to “escape” to the relative freedom of Pennsylvania’s forested wilds.

Freed from the repressive colonial governments, the Germans in Pennsylvania built prosperous farming communities. Governor Thomas in 1738 wrote, “This Province has been for some years been the asylum of the distressed Protestants of the Palatinate, and other parts of Germany; and, I believe, it may truthfully be said, that the present flourishing condition of it is in a great measure owing to the industry of those people; it is not altogether the fertility of the soil, but the number and industry of the people, that makes a country flourish.”

The earliest recorded Stamm in the new world was Conrad Stamms, “one of the 45 Palatines and their families” who reached Pennsylvania on the 5th of September, 1730. Conrad Stamms, along with one hundred and thirty other persons, arrived on the ship Alexander and Ann, captained by William Clymer. A list of the other earliest arriving Stamms would include:

1730, September 5   - Conrad Stamms on the Alexander and Ann
1734, September 23 - Peter Stam, age 21, born c. 1713, on the Hope out of Rotterdam
1740, December 3    - Adam Stam, age 24, born c. 1716 on the Samuel
1741, September 5   - Peter Stam and Johann Stam on the Francis and Elizabeth out of Rotterdam
1742, September 21 - John Adam Stam and Werner Stam (brothers) on the Francis and Elizabeth
1743, September 5   - Johann Jacob Stamm on the Charlotte
1743, September 30 - Johannes Stamm on the Phoenix
1774, September 30 - Adam Stam on the Union out of Rotterdam

Other records give some indication of the areas of settlement for these “first Stamms.” Jacob Stom was given a land grant of 100 acres in Philadelphia County on September 30, 1748. Other pioneer Stamms in America include: Henrich Frederick Stamman (age 43 via the Neptune) and Adam Stamm who sailed the Union into Philadelphia on September 30, 1774. The records of the German Reformed Church of Philadelphia list several Stamm marriages (Maria Sibilla Stamm to Heinrick Pfohlenz on December 17, 1761, Elizabeth Stamm to Abraham Zieger on July 21, 1791, and Johann Rudolph Stamm to Maria Kuhn on December 31, 1796) By 1800, the federal census of Pennsylvania listed 58 Stamms. Most of these families settled in Berks County surrounding the city of Reading, but other pre-Revolutionary War Stamms settled in all of the Atlantic colonies and even along the Mississippi in Louisiana.

The September 21, 1742 arrival of brothers John Adam Stam and Werner Stam represent one of these early families. Natives of Switzerland, the brothers sailed onboard the Francis and Elizabeth captained by George North. There were 141 male emigrants on the vessel and most settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania.