Pastorius had no glass, so he made windows of oiled paper.
Bom wrote to Rotterdam October 12, 1684: “I have here a shop of many kinds of goods and edibles. Sometimes I ride out with merchandise, and sometimes, bring something back, mostly from Indians, and deal with them in many things. I have no regular servants except one Negro, whom I bought. I have no rent or tax or excise to pay. I have a cow which gives plenty of milk, a horse to ride around, my pigs increase rapidly, so that in the summer I had seventeen when at first I had only two. I have many chickens and geese, and a garden, and shall next year have an orchard if I remain well, so that my wife and I are in good spirits.”
Bom died before 1689, and his daughter, Agnes, married Anthony Morris, the ancestor of the distinguished family of that name.
The first person to die in the new settlement was Jan Seimens. The first time that fire caused a loss in the village was in 1686. A small church was built that year. It is strange but true, that this was a Quaker meeting house, and also that before 1692 all the original thirteen, except Jan Lensen, had in one way or another been associated with the Quakers.
An event of importance was the arrival of William Rittinghuysen, a Mennonite minister, who with his two sons, Gerhard and Claus, and a daughter, came from Holland. In 1690 he built the first paper mill in America on a branch of the Wissahickon Creek.
On April 18, 1688, Gerhard Hendricks, Dirck Opden Graeff, Francis Daniel Pastorius and Abraham Opden Graeff sent to the Friends’ Meeting the first public protest ever made on this continent against the holding of slaves. There was then started something which became the greatest question of all time in America.
On January 14, 1690, 2950 acres, north of Germantown, were divided into three districts, called Krishelm, Sommerhausen and Crefeld.
The village had now become populous enough to warrant a separate existence, and on May 31, 1691, a charter of incorporation was issued to Francis Daniel Pastorius, bailiff, and four burgesses and six committeemen, with power to hold a court and a market, to admit citizens, to impose fines, and to make ordinances.
It was ordered that “on the 19th of one month in each year the people shall be called together and the laws and ordinances read aloud to them.”
The seal was devised by Pastorius and he honored the weavers by selecting a clover, on one of the leaves being a vine, on another a stalk of flax, and on the third a weaver’s spool.