Palatine Bridge: Germany on the Mohawk

Palatine Bridge takes its name from a bridge built across the Mohawk River in eighteen oh two, in a valley settled by Palatine Germans, Protestant refugees from the Rhine Valley who began receiving land there in seventeen twenty-three. They came fleeing the devastation left by Louis the Fourteenth's armies, along with heavy taxes, hunger, and a brutal winter, recruited by the British Crown as frontier settlers who could help hold the valley against French and Iroquois pressure. They called their communities Palatine after the Rhineland Palatinate they had left behind.

This village grew at a Mohawk River crossing that became a strategic and commercial node. The Palatine settlers introduced farming techniques and a tenacious community culture that survived the Revolutionary War, during which Mohawk Valley Palatine communities were caught between Loyalist and Patriot violence. Their descendants shaped the agricultural character of the valley for generations.