Page:Historical and biographical sketches.djvu/39

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THE SETTLEMENT OF GERMANTOWN.
35

Oct. 12th, 1685, in the “Francis and Dorothy” arrived Hans Peter Umstat from Crefeld, with his wife Barbara, his son John, and his dauo;hters Anna Magaretta, and Eve;[1] Peter Schumacher with his son Peter, his daughters Mary, Frances, and Gertrude, and his cousin Sarah; Gerhard Hendricks with his wife Mary, his daughter Sarah and his servant Heinrich Frey, the last named from Altheim in Alsace; and Heinrich Buchholtz and his wife Mary, Peter Schumacher, an early Quaker convert from the Mennonites, is the first person definitely ascertained to have come from Krisheim, the little village in the Palatinate, to which so much prominence has been given. Fortunately we know under what auspices he arrived. By an agreement with Dirck Sipman, of Crefeld, dated August 16th, 1685, he was to proceed with the first good wind to Pennsylvania, and there receive 200 acres from Hermann Op den Graeff, on which he should erect a dwelling, and for which he should pay a rent of two rix dollars a year.[2] Gerhard Henricks also had bought 200 acres from Sipman.[3] He came from Krisheim, and I am inclined to believe that his identity may be merged in that of Gerhard Hendricks Dewees. If so, he was associated with the Op den Graeffs and Van Bebbers, and was the grandson of Adrian Hendricks Dewees, a Hollander, who seems to have lived in Amsterdam.[4] This identification, however, needs further investigation. Dewees bought land of Sipman, which his widow, Zytien, sold in 1701. The wife of Gerhard Hendricks in the

  1. He brought over with him the family Bible of his father, Nicholas Umstat, which I have inherited through his daughter Eve.
  2. See his deed in Dutch in the Germantown book.
  3. Deed book E 4, vol. 7, p. 180.
  4. Raths-Buch.