Diller Genealogy - Page 03

The following data is extracted from The Diller Family, By JL Ringwalt.

I have sought in vain in Rupp's book of 30,000 names of original German immigrants in Pennsylvania for an exact record of the time when Caspar Diller went to Lancaster County. The date of the various settlements in that county indicate that it was some years later than the beginning of the last century. Rupp's history of Lancaster County says the original Diller immigrants arrived there about 1731, and this theory is, in substance, although not explicitly, adopted in the interesting history of the Three Earls, read by Mr. Frank R. Diffenderfer at the Centennial Celebration in New Holland, on July 4, 1876. Some members of the family now residing in the vicinity of New Holland think the date of immigration was about 1729. It is certain that the original Caspar Diller was in Lancaster County in 1738, because the land records of Lancaster County show that, on May 28, 1738, Amos Lewis conferred to Caspar Diller a part of a 500 - acre tract patented to him (Lewis) June 15, 1733, viz., 250 acres. There is also a record showing that Caspar Diller, and Barbara, his wife, on November 17, 1744, conferred to their son, Adam (presumably Philip Adam) 100 acres of the 250. There is a tradition communicated to me by my uncle, George W. Ringwalt, that when the original Caspar Diller immigrated he brought with him two sons and three daughters (his other children being born in this country), and if we suppose that he was the father of Philip Adam Diller (the progenitor of the New Holland and Hanover, York County, branch of the family) whose Bible record says he was born in Pfalx, or the Palatinate, about 11 1/2 miles from Heidelberg, in 1723, and that this son of Caspar came to this country with his father some time previous to 1738, all discrepancies will be reasonably well accounted for.

There is nothing forced or unnatural in the supposition that the first Caspar Diller, after being driven with his father from Alsace to Holland and going thence to England, subsequently went to Germany be fore he emigrated to America. This course was pursued by many of the sorely persecuted French Protestants and German Palatines. The introduction to "Rupp's Collection of upwards of Thirty Thousand Names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French, and other Immigrants in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1776," says that of the large number of refugees "that came to England in 1708 and 1709, seven thousand, after having suffered great privations, returned, half-naked and in despondency, to their native country. Ten thousand died from want of sustenance, medical attendance, and from other causes. Some perished on ships. The survivors were transplanted to English colonies in America."
Thinking that possibly Caspar Diller might have been among the number of those who were sent to New York by Queen Anne, about 1710, I examined the lists of many of those persons, published in the Archives of New York,

Source: The Diller Family, By JL Ringwalt

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