I have heard that the English language only made it by one vote as the
official language of the original 13 colonies.  I would like to know
what other languages were considered and if that is indeed a true historical fact.

Dear tanstafaal,

It is claimed quite often that in the early days of the United States
there had been a vote whether German or English should be the official
language of the newly founded country, in order to cut the cultural
connections to the odious former colonial power Great Britain and with
respect to the huge share of Germans in many parts of the 13 States.
Also, it is a frequent part of the story that German lost out to
English by only one vote or at least a very small number of votes.

However, this is only a legend. It is a fact that there has never been
such a vote neither did the United States ever have something like an
"official language" by law:

"The legend usually goes something like this: 'In 1776, German came
within one vote of becoming America's official language instead of
English.' (...) At first it may sound plausible. (...)  But a closer
look reveals several serious problems with this official-language
story. First of all, the United States has never had an 'official
language' ? English, German or any other ? and doesn't have one now.
Nor was there any such vote in 1776. Congressional debate and a vote
concerning German probably did take place in 1795, but dealt with
translating US laws into German, and the proposal to publish laws in
languages other than English was rejected a few months later."

Source: About.com - German the Official US Language?
http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa010820a.htm

The Frequently Asked Questions of the Usenet newsgroup sci.lang also
deal with this question, which comes up rather often:

" 'German lost out to English as the US's official language by 1
vote.' This entertaining story is also told of Greek, Latin, and even
Hebrew. There was never any such vote.  Dennis Baron, in THE ENGLISH
ONLY QUESTION (1990), thinks the legend may have originated with a
1795 vote concerning a proposal to publish federal laws in German as
well as English. At one point a motion to table discussion (rather
than referring the matter back to committee) was defeated 41-40.  The
proposal was eventually defeated."

Source: sci.lang FAQ, by Michael Covington
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/html/faqs/ai/nlp/sci_lang/faq.html

You can read an extensive essay by Dennis Baron, "The Legendary
English-Only Vote Of 1795", in which he proves that this story is
nothing but an urban legend, here:

watzmann.net: Urban Legend: German almost the official language in US,
by Daniel Huber, 2000
http://www.watzmann.net/scg/german-by-one-vote.html

Search terms used:
legend german "primary language" usa vote:
://www.google.de/search?q=legend+german+%22primary+language%22+usa+vote&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&meta=
"German lost out to English as the US's official language by 1 vote.":
://www.google.de/search?q=%22German+lost+out+to+English+as+the+US%27s+official+language+by+1+vote.%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=

Hope this answers your question!
Regards,
Scriptor

Great,thorough and prompt answer.  Very please and thank you.

Since virtually all the colonists were from an English speaking
country/countries and were under the rule of the British Crown, I
seriously doubt any language other than English was considered. But I
don't have any specific information.

I take issue with the statement that "the United States does not have
an official language". I agree that no legal instrument declares
English to be the official language of the country, and no legal
instrument expressly requires all government institutions to use
English. However, despite that, I think it is a true statement that
legally, English is the official language of the United States. We
need to take a slightly broader view of the term "official language",
but a view compatible with the way that term is used all over the
world.

For one thing, the Constitution and all laws are enacted in English
only. If there are translations, the translations are unofficial.

Suppose Congress for some bizarre reason enacted a law in some other
language, say German, exclusively. If the case went to court, the
court would probably declare the law invalid because it was not
enacted in English.

Or, suppose Congress enacted a bilingual law -- say it made some Act
in both English and Spanish versions side by side without any
indication that one version was to be authoritative. If there was a
court case that turned on some slight difference in meaning between
the English and Spanish versions, I have no doubt that the court would
say that the English version prevailed. Thus I think it is fair to say
that legally English is the official language of the United States
even though there is no legal instrument expressly making it such.