sentences:  Economic distress and a lack of future prospects have also made some locals turn their backs on their homeland and seek their fortune in faraway lands.As early as 1709, and again later in 1742, citizens from Herschweiler and Pettersheim took part in the first great wave of emigration from southwestern Germany to the New World and settled in Pennsylvania, "America's Palatinate".Beginning in 1765, some accepted Empress Empress Maria Theresia's and Emperor Joseph II's offer of settlement in the southeast of their empire.