The weekly paper The Pennsylvania Dutchman began in Lancaster County, and it targeted the Pennsylvania German population throughout the state. An August 1932 edition carried the story of Congressman George Kremer, of Union and Snyder County. It described some verbal sparring between him and Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia.

First, some background on Kremer, in a biographical sketch carried in the newspaper article.

“George Kremer must have been a character. An outspoken Pennsylvania Dutch farmer and storekeeper of Union and Snyder Counties, he was a member of the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1812-1814, and a Democratic Member of Congress from the Union-Northumberland Districts from 1823 to 1827. Born November 21, 1775, in Middletown, Dauphin County, he had come to Selinsgrove in 1792, to work in the gristmill, store, farm, and warehouse of his uncle, Simon Snyder, afterwards Governor of Pennsylvania. After a long life of public service, he died in retirement on his farm near Middleburg in what is now Snyder County, September 10, 1854. The town of Kreamer in Snyder County perpetuates his memory.

“While in Congress in 1824, irritated by speeches filled with Latin and Greek, he arose and gave his brethren a sample of Pennsylvania Dutch! Our source for the story is John W. Forney, quoted in the History of that Part of the Susquehanna and Juniata Valleys, Embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1886), Volume II page 1561. Let’s hear it:

"After one of the peculiar speeches of the eccentric Virginian (Randolph), which he interlarded with copious quotations in Latin and Greek, Kremer rose, and, in a strain of well-acted indignation, poured forth a torrent of Pennsylvania German upon the head of the amazed and startled Randolph. His violent gesticulations, his loud and boisterous tones, his defiant manner were not could more annoying to the imperious Southerner than he could understand a word that was spoken.

"And when Honest George took his seat, covered with perspiration, Randolph rose and begged the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania to enlighten the House and the country by translating what he had just uttered. Kremer retorted as follows: 'I have only to say, in reply to my friend from Virginia, that when he translates the dead languages, which he is constantly using for the benefit of us country member , into something like English, I will be equally liberal in translating my living Pennsylvania Dutch into something that the House can understand.' The laugh was completely against Randolph.”

Another version of the incident, or perhaps a different episode, appeared in the Congressional Debates which was recorded by A.L Guss in a sketch of Kremer given on the same page of the Snyder County History already cited:

“An examination of the Congressional Debates shows to story about quoting German to be well founded. It was March 13, 1824, on a clause in the general appropriation bill to grant $25,000 for the erection of the north portico of the White House. Mr. Cushman of Maine, in his speech said: “’I ask in the language of the Roman orator, but not with the same views, Quam republicam havemus? In qua urbe vivamus” (What kind of republic do we have? In what city do we live?)

“Kremer in his reply said: He thought it (the proposed portico) was a monument of pride and extravagance and not of republican principles. He could not undertake to answer the gentleman’s fine speech. TO him a great part of it was unintelligible and in reply to some quotations he (Cushman) had made in it, from a dead language, he should answer in his own mother German tongue: ‘Ich habe es nicht verstanden.’ (I didn’t understand it.)

“Kremer went on to say that the nation was now in debt. He did not believe that any man had a right to entail debt on posterity. As to the portico, it was. in his opinion, as unnecessary as a fifth wheel to a wagon. He did not think Congress had a right even to put up a necessary building till we were able to pay for it."

The U.S. House of Representatives History, Art and Archives Collection has a sketch of Congressman and Pennsylvania Dutchman George Kremer. It includes these details:

This hand-colored engraving shows country shopkeeper and Pennsylvania Representative George Kremer relaxing in a chair and reading a journal with the headline “Reform.” The artist portrays him as “the people’s man,” possibly with a touch of sarcasm, for Kremer was known as a backbench bumpkin. He was best known in his day for wearing a leopard-skin coat on the floor of the House. Today, he is remembered as the author of a fiery anonymous screed against Speaker Henry Clay, intimating that he would sell his support in the 1824 Presidential election to the highest bidder.