They were Pennsylvania German in family background, city dwellers, upper middle class professionals, and business men.
Among the concerns of the founders was that railroad, factory, city, and public school would erode quickly most evidence of their culture, present in the United States and centered in Pennsylvania for over two hundred years.
It was a distinctive culture, largely based in an agrarian society of an earlier age, and they were determined to preserve the knowledge about it from obliteration.
They were proud of their forefathers who had contributed significantly to the development of Pennsylvania and the nation, and they were convinced that their contribution had been neglected by the New England and Virginia historians who had written most American histories to that date They were determined to repair the omission and to give to the Pennsylvania Germans proper credit for the winning of independence during the Revolutionary War and for the preservation of the Union during the Civil War.
During December, 1890 and January, 1891 articles appeared in several newspapers, such as the Lebanon Daily Report, the Lancaster New Era, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, suggesting an organization of descendants of the German and Swiss settlers of colonial Pennsylvania.
This led to a meeting hosted by Diffenderffer in his office on February 14, 1891, which was attended by Egle, John Stahr, J. Max Hark, R. K. Buehrle and E. O. Lyte.
It was attended by fifteen men representing nine counties: Carbon, Chester, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Luzerne, Northampton and York.
Frank R. Diffenderffer was a central figure in the organization of the Pennsylvania-German Society and assumed a leading role in the lead-up to the convocation.
There were 126 delegates, all male, from Philadelphia and 15 Pennsylvania counties: Berks, Carbon, Chester, Clearfield, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Luzerne, Montgomery, Northampton, Westmoreland, and York.
It defined the qualifications for regular membership as being “…of full age, of good moral character, and a direct descendant of early German or Swiss emigrants to Pennsylvania.”[6] In effect, this provision denied regular membership to persons who were born in Germany or who were born of nineteenth-century or later German immigrants.
Many members might speak, read, and even write in the dialect they might regard as their mother tongue, but in the proceedings of the Society they would use English.
He was Col. Thomas C. Zimmerman of Reading, who described enduring achievements of representative Pennsylvania Germans in various fields of human endeavor.
The Pennsylvania-German Society conducted its business after its foundation primarily through an annual meeting held in southeastern and south-central Pennsylvania.
At the annual meeting in 1895, Secretary Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Richards proposed planning a research program.
[11] The idea was implemented, and the Society published the first volume the following year: Pennsylvania: The German Influence in Its Settlement and Development, A Narrative and Critical History.
The Society published a series entitled Narrative and Critical History in 33 parts from 1897 to 1929 covering all aspects of Pennsylvania German immigration, culture, and religion.
[13] Despite having been a part of American society for roughly four generations, at a minimum, many assumed that Pennsylvania Germans were sympathetic with Germany and, more particularly, the greatly vilified Kaiser Wilhelm II.
[22] The report of the annual meeting looked back at the accomplishments of the last 35 years: In 1930, the Society was incorporated under a general act of the Legislature.
[24] A charter was approved by Charles I. Landis, the President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster County, on April 19, 1930.
[32] Although the issue of the ancestry requirement for regular membership of the Pennsylvania-German Society seemed to be decided at the foundational meeting and confirmed in its articles of incorporation, it was not.
Many discovered that it had an inner beauty which justified its use in prose and poetry, as well as in speech, and that it deserved to be studied and preserved in its pure form.
The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society published a revised edition of Buffington's and Barba's influential grammar in 1965 as volume 27 of its annual series.