Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/182

 I examined it critically and found a date too early for the Dunkers of Ephrata. Then I found some initials and recognized the chirography of Johannes Kelpius. Comparison made the inference certain. The hymn book of the Hermits of the Wissahickon with hymns written by Kelpius, Seelig and Koster lay before me and one of the most important discoveries I ever made occurred amid the waste in my own library.

I made a visit to Samuel Pennypacker, a farmer living at the upper end of The Trappe, who entertained me at dinner sitting on a long bench before a table without cloth or napkins, and with the food for the family in one large dish in the center. He gave to me an old Bible which he said was of no use to him and which had been thrown with some other stuff into a worn-out clothes basket in the garret. It proved to be the Bible which belonged to my great-great-great-grandmother's grandfather, printed at Heidelberg in 1568, containing a family record and many interesting manuscript notes, which has now been in the family for ten generations and much antedating every other family possession.

I sadly wanted a letter of Washington written at Pennypacker's Mills and sought for it long and earnestly. Once it seemed to be within my grasp. The letters of Israel Putnam, taken out to Ohio by Rufus Putnam, were found in a garret there and published in a Chicago newspaper. Washington had written to him to send on a reinforcement of a thousand men from Peekskill. Fearing his letter had miscarried, he wrote again in almost the same words. Here were two letters almost in duplicate, and the second one was dated at Pennypacker's Mills. I groveled before the owner, offering him money, another letter of Washington of greater importance, and whatever inducements I could think of, but he was obdurate and my efforts were all in vain. Moses Pollock kept a book store in the second story of a building on the south side of Commerce Street 168