The Germans in the Making of America

How many of these same descendants know that to this people belong, by ancestry more or less remote, some of the first scientific men of America, such as the Mühlenbergs, Melsheimer, the “father of American entomology”; Leidy and Gross, the great surgeon; Herkimer, the hero of Oriskany; “Molly Pitcher,” the heroine of Monmouth; Post, the Indian missionary, to whom Parkman himself pays a noble tribute; Heckewalder, the Moravian lexicographer of the speech of the Delawares; Armistead, the defender of Fort McHenry in the war of 1812, whose flag, “still there,” inspired the Star Spangled Banner; Barbara Frietchie, and General Custer? Surely, this people merit that some slight account be drawn from the mostly unknown books and documents where they have for years reposed, known only to the antiquarians and often veiled from English readers by the German language, in which many of the best and most valuable are written, and given to the English-speaking world of America.