In the 1850s, when the Bohemian settlers left Europe, What we now think of as Germany was made up of many individual states ruled by local royalty. The Bohemians would not have associated Austrians (Austrian-Hungarian Empire) with German speakers from other areas. In fact, not all of the Germans even spoke as their first language what we now think of as German. My Dechow ancestors were from Mecklenburg in the far north on the Baltic. Plattdeutsch or low German, a language as different from German (high German) as Friesian, was spoken there. I recall my parents talking about who among the old settlers spoke high or low German or Bohemian. Those immigrants from Mecklenburg, as some of the “Germans” at North Unity and Port Oneida were, would have descended from Polabian ancestors, a group of Slavs who moved to the Mecklenburg area east of the Elbe in the 7th century and were closely related to the Bohemians. The Polabians or Wendish tribes were conquered and many slaughtered by the Saxons in the eleventh century. Thereafter the groups merged although remnants of the Polabian language lasted until the mid 1700s and many Polabian names remain to this day; Dechow is a Polabian and not a German name in origin, The Bohemians shared common roots with many of the people of what we now think of as eastern Germany, and although the religious differences arose with the Reformation, Lutherans are much closer to Catholics than other Protestant denominations. Also for these German immigrants, feudalism and the 30 Years War were still within living memory. This is all the more reason for unity and tolerance. Ellanora Shada, who came as a girl with her parents to North Unity and was a a Bohemian catholic from North Unity, married John F.T. Dechow, a German Lutheran from Port Oneida in 1865. This was only one of many marriages between Catholics and Lutherans in my family. The communities did much more than just live side by side.
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