Their ancestors argued about the correct German dialects, the best food and the correct customs, and these old squabbles crossed the Atlantic with them.
A generation after Mattias Fehrenbach became the first European to settle in Maryhill, the village was known as a place where rivalries ran so deep that visiting priests were said to be uneasy about their own safety.
“There was a lot of quarrelling,” said Frank Rider, a member of the Maryhill Historical society, as he noted that people from Baden, where Fehrenbach came from, felt surprisingly little affinity with other German speakers from Swabia, Rhenish Prussia or the Alsace.
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