Page:Historical and biographical sketches.djvu/23

Rh the emigrants were delayed between Rotterdam and London, and Claypoole was in great uneasiness for fear the vessel should be compelled to sail without them, and they should lose their passage money. He wrote several letters about them to Benjamin Furly at Rotterdam. June 19th he says, “I am glad to hear the Crevill friends are coming.” July 3d he says, “before I goe away wch now is like to be longer than we expected by reason of the Crevill friends not coming we are fain to loyter and keep the ship still at Black wall upon one pretence or another;” and July 10th he says, " “It troubles me much that the friends from Crevillt are not yet come.” As he had the names of the thirty-three persons, this contemporary evidence is very strong, and it would seem safe to conclude that all of this pioneer band, which, with Pastorius, founded Germantown, came from Crefeld. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg says the first comers were platt-deutch from the neighborhood of Cleves. Despite the forebodings of Claypoole the emigrants reached London in time for the Concord, and they set sail westward on the 24th of July. While they are for the first time experiencing the dangers and trials of a voyage across the ocean, doubtless sometimes looking back with regret, but oftener wistfully and wonderingly forward, let us return to inquire who these people were who were willing to abandon forever the old homes and old friends along the Rhine, and commence new lives with the wolf and the savage in the forests upon the shores of the Delaware.

The origin of the sect of Mennonites is somewhat involved in obscurity. Their opponents, following Sleidanus and other writers of the 16th century, have