The Story of One Family’s Journey From the Palatinate to America. . . While the people of the Palatinate Region in Germany were suffering through war and oppression during the 1600s and 1700s, North America was offering farmland and freedom to those who worked for it. In America, it was not about who you were but what you could do. The stage was set for a massive immigration to "The Promised Land." Among those coming to America was young Johannes Peter Dietrich, the founder of a prolific Deatrick/Dedrick line in the new world. Peter’s journey would take him across the ocean to Philadelphia, down the Great Wagon Road to the Shenandoah Valley, and through the Cumberland Gap to the southern Indiana frontier. He would join the fight for freedom in the Revolutionary War; farm the fertile land of Virginia; and clear the wilderness forests of Indiana. His descendants would carry their fight for freedom, as they saw it, during the Civil War. The story of the Deatricks of Indiana and the Dedricks of Virginia all begin with one man. Take a step back in time and enjoy the saga of a family whose story is as monumental as the great land Peter Dietrich adopted as his new home so long ago.