German-American Day (tribute to Immigrants)

from the Writer's Almanc (Garrison Keillor, Minnesota Public Radio):

October 6 is German-American Day. On this date in 1683, English Quaker William Penn brought the first group of German settlers to America. He was granted the territory -- a parcel of land nearly as large as England itself -- as payment for a debt that the crown owed to his father. The king dubbed the land "Pennsylvania," meaning "Penn's Woods," in honor of the senior Penn. Penn the son called Pennsylvania his "Holy Experiment," and he set about to find a group of righteous men to form a new society founded on Quaker ideals of nonviolence, freedom of religious worship, and equality for all. "Freedom of religion" and "equality" were conditional terms, however. While other religious traditions were tolerated in Pennsylvania, participation in government was restricted to Protestants; Catholics, Jews, and Muslims could not vote or hold office. And Penn's promises of equality didn't really extend to everyone: women couldn't vote, and Penn himself was a slave-owner.
He advertised his new colony in the Free Society of Traders, writing, "The air is sweet and clear, the heavens serene, like the south parts of France, rarely overcast." He found one group of suitably righteous men, 13 in all, in the lower Rhine Valley. They lived in the town of Krefeld, and most of them were Quakers or Mennonites. He brought them, with their families, to America aboard the Concord. They were the first German immigrants to the Colonies, and they founded the settlement of Germantown. Germantown became the birthplace of the anti-slavery movement in America five years later, when several town leaders sent a two-page condemnation of slavery to the governing body of the Quaker church.
German-American Day was first celebrated in the 19th century, but fell out of favor due to anti-German sentiment during World War I. President Reagan reinstated it in 1983 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the arrival of the settlers in Philadelphia.