Rittinghuysen were appointed to take up “a free will offering,” and to have the little house built. This is all we know, but it is surely a satisfaction to see a ray of sunlight thrown upon the brow of the helpless old man as he neared his grave. After thirty years of untracked wanderings on these wild shores, friends had come across the sea to give him a home at last. His name was Cornelis Plockhoy.[1]
On the 24th of June of the same year Johannes Kelpius, Henry Bernhard Koster, Daniel Falkner, Daniel Lutke, Johannes Seelig, Ludwig Biderman, and about forty other Pietists and Chiliasts arrived in Germantown, and soon after settled on the Wissahickon, where they founded the Society of the “Woman in the Wilderness.” The events in the strange life of Kelpius, the Hermit of the Wissahickon, have been fully told by Seidensticker and Jones. Together with Johannes Jawert and Daniel Falkner he was appointed an attorney for the Frankfort Company in 1700, but he never acted. Falkner had more to do with the affairs at Germantown, being bailiff in 1701, and in Montgomery County Falkner's Swamp still preserves the remembrance of his name. In 1700 he went to Holland, where he published a small volume in German, giving information concerning the province, to which he soon returned.[2]
George Gottschalck from Lindau, Bodensee, Daniel Geissler, Christian Warner, and Martin Sell were in Germantown in 1694, Levin Harberdinck in 1696, and in 1698 Jan Linderman came from Muhlheim on the Ruhr. During the last year the right of citizenship was conferred
