Dielman Kolb was born on November 10, 1691 in Palatinate, Germany. He belonged to a family distinguished for honest industry and sincere religious faith. The father, Dielman Kolb, and the mother, daughter of Peter Schumacher who had emigrated to Germantown, in 1685, both died in the Palatinate, but five of the next generation, including three preachers, eventually followed the example of the grandfather and migrated to Pennsylvania.
Dielman Kolb, Jr. , became a preacher among the Mennonites of Mannheim in the Palatinate while continuing, as was customary, his trade of weaving. He received religious exiles from Switzerland and helped them on their way until the position of Mennonites in the Palatinate became insecure, whereupon he followed his brothers to America.
On August 10, 1717, with his wife, he landed at Philadelphia. They were soon settled in the district of Salford, later included in Montgomery County, where the thrifty Kolb, farming and continuing to ply his trade of weaving, became an important landholder. Assured of his own position in the New World, Kolb continued to assist others. He corresponded with the Committee on Foreign Needs at Amsterdam, which supplied funds for transporting Swiss and German exiles to America, and he may have visited the Netherlands on this business. He and his brothers were among the Germans who in 1731 secured a bill of naturalization from the Assembly of Pennsylvania, thus acquiring the right to hold and transfer property.
Unusually well educated for his day, he was interested in extending both educational and religious opportunities in Pennsylvania. He preached at Salford, at Goshenhoppen, and in other neighboring communities.
Kolb was a friend of the schoolmaster, Christopher Dock, whom he persuaded to write a treatise on his teaching methods. In 1745, with Bishop Heinrich Funck, in behalf of the Mennonites of their section who wished to strengthen their children in the ancient principles of their faith, he arranged for a German translation of Tieleman Jans Van Braght's Bloedigh Tooneel, a history of Christian martyrdom, with special emphasis on the Mennonites. Although the work of translating and printing was done by the Brotherhood of Dunkers at Ephrata, Kolb and Funck were responsible for reading the 1, 512 pages of proof, word by word, comparing the German and Dutch to be sure that no errors were made.
Kolb married Elizabeth Schnebli in 1714. They had a child, Elizabeth, the wife of Andrew Ziegler.
