dents of this Hermann, nothing is known.[1] A tradition, current among some of the descendants, asserts that the family were French-Germans, but the name itself would seem to indicate a Dutch origin. A recent able writer upon the subject has suggested the query as to how far the founders of the Quakers were familiar with the doctrines of the German Anabaptists, and intimates the opinion that the former sect was an outgrowth of the latter.[2] At all events, the plainness of dress and of speech, the opposition to warfare, lawsuits, and the taking of oaths, and others points of resemblance, rendered a transition from the one belief to the other comparatively easy, so that George Fox, Robert Barclay, and William Penn, found little difficulty in the establishment of Friends' meetings along the Rhine. The testimony of the yearly meeting at Amsterdam, 5 mo., 1693, says of Stephen Crisp, a noted preacher, that “In the year 1667 he visited the small company of Friends then living at a place called Kreysheim in the Palatinate,” and “Another time he made a journey into the County of Meurs to the town of Crevel, where a meeting was set up.” A priori we would expect the first German emigrants to Pennsylvania to come from these towns, as was the case; and if we should make the farther inference that they were
- ↑ When this article was written I had no knowledge of the Scheuten genealogy. That valuable MS. says that Hermann op den Graeff was born November 26th, 1585, at Aldekerk a village near the borders of Holland. He moved to Crefeld, and there married a Mennonite girl, Grietjen Pletjes daughter of Driessen, August 16th, 1605. He died December 27th, 1642, and she died January 7th, 1643. They had eighteen children, among whom was Isaac who was born February 28th 1616, and died January 17th, 1679. He had four children Hermann, Abraham, Dirck and Margaret all of whom emigrated to Germantown.
- ↑ Authoress of the Pennsylvania Dutch.
