lies, they arrived in Philadelphia. On the 24th, in Germantown, they all drew lots for their respective locations, and immediately began to build the huts and dig the caves in which, with, as may be imagined, considerable inconvenience, they passed the following winter. Germantown was laid out into fifty-five lots of fifty acres each, running along upon both sides of the main street, and in 1689 Dirck op den Graeff owned the second lot on the west side going north, Hermann the third, and Abraham the fourth, with another half lot further to the northward. All three were weavers of linen. Richard Frame, in a description of Pennsylvania in verse, published in 1692, refers to Germantown:
| “ | Where lives High German People and Low Dutch |
| Whose Trade in weaving Linnen Cloth is much. | |
| There grows the Flax, as also you may know | |
| That from the same they do divide the tow;” |
and Gabriel Thomas, in his account of the “Province and Country of Pennsylvania,” published in 1698, says they made “very fine German Linen, such as no person of Quality need be ashamed to wear.” It may be fairly claimed for Abraham op den Graeff that he was the most skilled of these artisans, doing even more that his part to have the town merit its motto of “Vinum Linum et Textrinum” since on the 17th of 9th month, 1686, his petition was presented to the Provincial Council, “for ye Govr's promise to him should make the first and finest pece of linnen cloath.”[1] Upon a bond given by him to John Gibb in 1702 for 38l. 5s., afterward assigned to Joseph Shippen, and recorded in the Germantown book, are, among others, these items of credit: “Cloth 32 yds
- ↑ Colonial records. Vol. i, p. 193.
