Page:Historical and biographical sketches.djvu/211

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ABRAHAM AND DIRCK OP DEN GRAEFF.
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among the attendants at these Quaker meetings, we would probably not be far from the truth. When Pastorius had concluded to cross the ocean, in order, as he says, “to lead a quiet and Christian life,” he visited during April, 1683, a number of his friends, to endeavor to persuade them to accompany him. At Cologne he found an acquaintance named Dotzen, who was willing, but he could not obtain the consent of his wife. The reasons she gave for declining were, that at home she went from place to place in a carriage, but in America “must she perhaps look after the cattle and milk her cows.” Madame Dotzen was evidently a clear-headed woman, who was too wise to exchange her present advantages and comforts for the uncertainties of a distant wilderness. From Urdingen he went to Crefeld on foot, and there talked with Thones Kunders and his wife, and with Dirck, Hermann, and Abraham up den Graeff, three brothers, who were grandsons of the Mennonite delegate. Did they have some dim and vague consciousness of the great work which they and their children under the guidance of Providence were to perform? Was it given to them to catch a glimpse of what that little colony, planted in an unknown land thousands of miles away, was in the course of a few generations to become, or was the hope of a religious peace alone sufficient to calm their doubts and allay their fears? Six weeks later they followed Pastorius. At Rotterdam, on the way, on the 11th of June, they bought jointly from Jacob Telner two thousand acres of land to be laid out in Pennsylvania. On the 6th of October, 1683, together with Lenart Arets, Thones Kunders, Reynier Tyson, Willem Streypers, Jan Lensen, Peter Keurlis, Jan Seimens, Johannes Bleikers, Abraham Tunes and Jan Lucken, their wives, cliildren and servants, in all thirteen fami-