The history of Germans in Louisville began in 1817. In that year, a man named August David Ehrich, a master shoe maker born in Königsberg, arrived in Louisville. Ehrich was the first native-born German in Louisville, but as early as 1787, Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) settlers arrived in Jefferson County from Pennsylvania. While they maintained German customs from their ancestors who came to Pennsylvania several generations before, they were not native Germans. The Blankenbaker, Bruner, and Funk families came to the Louisville region following the American Revolutionary War, and in 1797 they founded the town Brunerstown, which would later become Jeffersontown, Kentucky. Further early immigration of Germans took place as they slowly followed the Ohio River after arriving in the United States