The author discusses several aspects of life of the German and Swiss immigrants to America, based on his research of his ancestors: the mechanics of name changes; the world in which his ancestors lived and the circumstances that led them to migrate; the rapid spread of Protestantism; the rise in literacy. Includes: changes in Germanic surnames; changes in city an villages names; Mennonite and Quaker settlements of Pennsylvania; Protestantism behind the German migration; and the push and pull of the Germans--in America, war, kings and queens, the Rhine, crossing the Atlantic, and the prairies of Kansas.