Krisheim, they quote him as saying “that the so-called Quakers, especially here in the Palatinate, have fallen off and gone out from the Mennonites.”[1]
These were the people who, some as Mennonites,[2] and others, perhaps, as recently converted Quakers, after being unresistingly driven up and down the Rhine for a century and a half, were ready to come to the wilds of America. Of the six original purchasers Jacob Telner and Jacob Isaacs Van Bebber are known to have been members of the Mennonite Church; Govert Remke,[3] January 14th, 1686, sold his land to Dirck Sipman, and had little to do with the emigration; Sipman selected as his attorneys here at various times Hermann Op den Graeff, Hendrick Sellen, and Van Bebber, all of whom were Mennonites; and Jan Streypers was represented also by Sellen, was a cousin of the Op den Graeffs, and was the uncle of Hermannus and Arnold Kuster, two of the most active of the early Pennsylvania members of that sect. Of the emigrants Dirck, Hermann, and Abraham Op den Graeff were Mennonites, and were grandsons of Hermann Op den Graeff, the delegate from Crefeld to the Council
- ↑ This rare and valuable pamphlet is in the library of A. H. Cassel.
- ↑ In this connection the statement of Hortensius in his Histoire des Anabaptistes, Paris, 1695, is interesting. He says in the preface: “Car cette sorte de gens qu'on appelle aujourd hui Mennonites ou Anabaptistes en Holande et ceux qui sont connus en Angleterre sous le nom de Koakres ou Trembleurs, qui sont partagés en plus de cent sorter de Sectes, ne peuvent point conter d'autre origine que celle des Anabaptistes de Munster quoi qu'a present ils se tiennent beaucoup plus en repos, et qu'ils n'ayent aucune ambition pour le gouvernoment ou l'administiation des affaires temporelles, et mesme que le port ou l'usage de toute sortes d'armes soit entierement defendu parmi eux.”
- ↑ Johann Remke was the Mennonite preacher at Crefeld in 1752.
