I received today an email from someone who is also a direct descendant of Elias Ringer and Mary Ann Neetz. She informed me that she and her family have confirmed through DNA testing that Elias' father was Jacob Ringer (1757-1842) who served in the Revolutionary war and eventually moved to Indiana where he died and was buried. He married Elizabeth Ann Booher (1764-1842). 
During the Revolutionary War, a battalion was newly raised in the vicinity of his home. John was elected, by ballot, Captain of Company D, 2nd Battalion, York County Militia. Among other engagements, the Battalion participated in the battle of Brandywine and of Germantown. Captain John was severely wounded in the latter battle. Source: http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/gean/captjohnpaxton.html
The ship James Goodwill docked September 27, 1727, at Philadelphia from Rotterdam with fifty four Palatine families aboard. The ships master David Crockatt submitted a list of the names of the heads of the families to the provincial council on which he also recorded the number of adult men and a the total number of living persons in the family. Fifty three men took the oath of allegence before the governor and council that same day (Strassberger 10 ) after a long hard journey, these Swiss-German families gratefully disembarked to begin building a better life in a new land.
This shipload of families joined a steady stream of German Palatine's coming from the Rhinish Palatineate. The Palatinate duchys had been a fruitful area peopled with hard-working farmers. First the thirthy year war desolated the land. For another thirty years bad weather decimated the crops and froze the orchards. Finally the changing political attitudes led to the plundering of the poor serfs as petty prices and dukes sought money to pay the bills for their wars and for their decadent and luxurious courts ( Billington 97-8 ). And in the Palatinate, the working people suffered and starved.
William Penn viewed his colony as a sanctuary for any oppressed people, not just for Quakers, so he wrote brochures and sent representatives to Europe to invite the suffering German Palatinates to emigrate to Pennsylvania (Billington 100 ). The German Palatinates began the first of three major waves of migration. The first major flow of people began in 1680 and lasted until 1708. Members of dissident religions in the Palatinate had also emigrated to England to escape religious persecution, and in the years 1710 to 1720 this group left England for Pennsylvania. The third wave lasted from 1720 to 1730 when Germans and Swiss-Germans left the Palatinate directly for the American colonies (Strassberger xivxv). The ship James Goodwill left Rotterdam as part of the third and largest wave of German emigrants.
The difficult six month jouney began in the spring with the journey down the Rhine to Rotterdam. The Rhine boats were detained at each of the twenty six custom houses until it suited the custom house officials to examine the passengers and cargoes. The journey usually lasted four to six weeks during which time the passengers must pay their own living expenses over and above their fares. Many of them used most of their money before reaching Rotterdam. From Rotterdam the Germans sailed to an English port for the last stage of the journey. After a normal delay of two weeks, they embarked on the seven to 12 week voyage to the American colonies (Strassberger xxxiii-xxxv). Their difficulties and suffering on this journey cannot be minimized nor accurately described.
The first obstacle for many German emigrants started in the Palatinate when unscrupulous agents charged exorbitant fees for information and services. The families sold everything they had to raise money for the trip, taking with them only the bare essentials packed in a trunk. Even those people who left Rotterdam in fairly solvent financial condition arrived in Pennsylvania almost destitute.
Ships leaving for the american colonies were loaded with one hundred percent more passengers than they were designed to carry. The dense way the people were packed in, without proper food or water and with poor sanitary conditions, soon led to rampant diseases such as dysentery, typhoid, and smallpox. Children succumbed first to the ravages of diseases.The ships captains, worried about the reduction in paid passengers, soon settled on a formula. If a passenger died before the ship traveled half the distance to Pennsylvania , there would be no fare for the deceased. But if the passenger died past the halfway point, the family must still pay the full fare to America. Of course the captain determinewd the halfway point. The terrors brought on by frequent Atlantic storms aggravated the death rate. THe emigrants, generally unprepared for the hardships of many weeks on board ship, suffered both body and spirit.
Upon reaching Pennsylvania, the passengers again were delayed on board until a health officer could ascertain that no infectiuos diseases would be brought into Philidelphia. The end of the long journey to a home in a new land was in sight. The emigrants, who still had funds to pay their passage (or freight charge ) and the expenses of the journey or had relatives or friends in the colony to advance them the money, could disembark. the freight charges for each person amounted to six to ten louis d'ors. Since the value of each loui d'ors was about $4.50, the cost of passage for each person ranged from $27.00 to $45.00. Small children were figured as a half fare frieght charge. The emigrants without their passage money faced indentured servitude to pay off their debt. Even this situation represented hope for the future and a better life than they endured in the Palatinate.
No accurate figures exist for the early years, but an estimated 15,000 German Palatines lived in the province of Pensylvania by 1730. When Governor Patrick Gordon took office in 1726 he exspressed concerns about such large numbers of foreiners coming to the colony who did not owe allegiance to the crown of Great Britain. As a result the provincial council devised a plan where all non-English emigrants must take an oath of allegiance to the King of Great Britain before disembarking from the arriving ships (Strassberger xx-xxi ). The first shipload of passengers where the men took the oath arrived Sept 21, 1727, six days before the ship James Goodwill.
John Hanna came to this country in 1731. He located on Neshaminy Creek, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a few years; next we find him in East Fallowfield township, Chester County, where John purchased land June 1743. Next we find him in New Jersey. John was born in 1700; he was united in marriage to Jane Andre in Ulster. John died March 8, 1770. Jane (Andre) Hanna died in December, 1774. They had a son, John, born in mid-ocean, who became the highly esteemed pastor of Bethlehem, Kindwood, and Alexandria, New Jersey. He was united in marriage to Mary McCrea. John and Mary (McCrea) Hanna had a son, John Andre Hanna born 1762, who in after years became the noted lawyer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.On FindAGrave.com we find additional information about John Andre Hanna:
A 1782 graduate of Princeton College, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1783. A member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, he was appointed brigadier general of the Dauphin County Brigade in 1793 and was in command during the Whisky Insurrection of that year. He was elected as a Democratic Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania, serving from 1797 until his death in 1805According to Wikipedia, John Andre Hanna was a brigadier general of the Dauphin County Brigade and was in command during the famous Whiskey Rebellion where President George Washington led troops into Pennsylvania to collect whiskey taxes.
