He had them laid out in the Dutch Township fronting on the Perkiomen, where he was living April 6th, 1710, and where he died before March, 25th, 1731. On the 27th of August, 1709, he gave to his daughter Margaret and her husband Thomas Howe, a tailor of Germantown, three hundred acres of this land. In consideration of the gift Howe “doth hereby promise to maintain the within named Abraham op den Graeff if he should want livelihood at any time during his life, and to attend upon him and be dutiful to him.” It is to be hoped that this covenant was more faithfully kept than sometimes happens with such promises when men in their old age drop the reins into other hands. His children beside Margaret, were Isaac, Jacob, and Anne, wife of Hermann In de Hoffen. In their youth he sent Isaac and Jacob to school to Pastorius. It is probable that after the Keith difficulty he did not renew his association with the Friends, and that his remains lie with those of the In de Hoffens (Dehaven) in the Mennonite graveyard on the Skippack near Evansburg. His name has been converted into Updegraff, Updegrave and Updegrove, but those who bear it are not numerous.
The fine traits of character displayed by the German settlers of Pennsylvania in their fortitude under persecution abroad, and their persistent energy in overcoming the difficulties they encountered in a new land, among a strange people, speaking a different language, have met with little recognition. Their peculiarities have attracted more attention than their thrifty habits and correct morals. The events of their lives, though they might often teach a lesson well worthy of our remembrance, have been buried in oblivion. And a hard fate, more malicious in its mischievousness than the gnomes of their native mountains, has, in many instances, by awkward and
