fluence which has been exerted by the Quaker may be ascertained, he will thenceforth occupy the conspicuous position in the annals of the country to which he is entitled, but which he has as yet scarcely begun to attain.
Of recent years, since the long-continued struggle with slavery in the United States ended in its overthrow during the rebellion, the protest against that institution sent by four German Friends of Germantown to the quarterly meeting in 1688, which was the first glimmering of the dawn of the contest, has grown to be famous. The men who prepared and signed this remarkable document slumbered in almost undisturbed obscurity until the scholarly Seidensticker published his sketches, and Whittier using the material thus collected, gave the name of Pastorius to the world in his beautiful poem. It is a little sad that Pastorius, whose life in America was spent here and who belonged to a mental and moral type entirely our own, should become celebrated as the Pennsylvania Pilgrim, as if he could only obtain appreciation by the suggestion of a comparison with the men who landed at Plymouth; but no poet arose along the Schuylkill to tell the tale, and we must recognize with gratitude, if with regret, how fittingly others have commemorated the worth of one whom we neglected.
It is the purpose of this article to gather into one sheaf such scattered and fragmentary facts concerning the lives of two others of those four signers as have survived the lapse of nearly two hundred years. In the council of the Mennonite Church which set forth the eighteen articles of their confession of faith at the city of Dordrecht, April 21st, 1632, one of the two delegates from Krevelt or Crefeld was Hermann op den Graeff. Of the antece-
