The town of Waterford was, according to tradition, founded by an Irishman, one Asa Moore, who is reputed to have built his, the first house there in 1732, naming the new settlement for the place of his nativity. Later it received many English, Scotch-Irish, Germans and, particularly, Quakers to whom it largely owed the prosperity and progress it was then to enjoy.
During the interminable wars of the seventeenth century--in ghastly refutation as they were of those blissful dreams of the solidarity of Europe and that international brotherhood of peace and culture so fondly entertained by the Erasmian school only a few generations before--few parts of that same Europe had suffered more hideously than the land known as the Palatinate along the Rhine. The so-called Thirty Years War, from 1618 to 1648, brought devastation particularly to its lower portion. In 1688 its whole territory was invaded again by the French of Louis XIV--an invasion which, for sheer savage brutality to the people there and the inconceivable atrocities perpetrated on them, is difficult to parallel in the annals of civilized nations but which, with its certain legacies of distrust and hatred, is somewhat conveniently forgotten by the professional French patriot of today. The land was reduced to little more than a desert and such of its inhabitants as survived, to the utmost want and privation. For nine years, until the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), the French scourging of the land ground it to dust. A few years of quiet followed, in which the poor Palatines sought to restore their ruined towns and farms but fate seemed resolved on their annihilation. In 1703 another war, that of the Spanish Succession, broke out and raged until 1713 and the Palatinate again and again was overrun by hostile armies. It was during these years and after, that those left with the breath of life in their bodies appeared to give up hope of ever again occupying their homeland in peace. A great emigration began, ten thousand fugitives first going to England where they were received kindly by Queen Anne and her people and given much aid; but, in an England where work was none too plentiful, the Germans soon became an economic and social problem. About 3,800 were sent to Ireland where, in Munster, their descendants are still to be found; but many more were sent to America, some to New York but the greater number to Pennsylvania. In the latter Colony they were so well received that they sent back word encouraging others to follow them; and soon the harassed Germans began to arrive in such swarms that between 40,000 and 50,000 are believed to have come to Pennsylvania between 1702 and 1727, wholly changing its complexion. The Colony's Governor, George Thomas, writing to the Bishop of Exeter in 1747 stated his belief that the Germans then comprised three-fifths of the population of that Province. But of the early arrivals many of the most impoverished worked out toward the cheaper and still wild lands on the then frontier and thence south through the strong and fertile regions of western Maryland.