The burly commercial traveler who had started the general conversation stroked his long black beard.
"I guess it is time for all of us to retire. I don’t think we need to ask this lady again, ’Do you believe in ghosts?‘"
XVII
A Stone’s Throw
When land warrants were allotted to Jacob Marshall and Jacob Mintges, of the Hebrew colony at Schaefferstown, there were elaborate preparations made by these two lifelong friends to migrate to the new country of the Christunn. That the warrants were laid side by side made the situation doubly pleasant, a compensation in a measure for any regrets at leaving the banks of the beautiful Milbach. The country was becoming too closely settled, opportunities were circumscribed, and the liberality of the Proprietary Government should be taken advantage of.
When the two groups of pioneers were ready to start for the new home, it was like some scene from the patriarchal days of the Old Testament. The long, lean, gaunt, black-bearded Jews, black-capped, cloaked to their heels, and carrying big staffs, led the way, followed by their families and possessions of live stock, farming and household utensils. Each head of a family had an Indian and Negro servant or two, which added to the picturesqueness of the caravans. Dogs, part wolf, herded the flocks of sheep, goats and young cattle, while the women rode on mares, the foals of which trotted along unsteadily at their sides.
Rachel, Jacob Marshall’s handsome daughter, was mounted on a piebald filly; on her back was slung her violin, a genuine Joseph Guarnerius, with which she discoursed sacred music around the campfire in the evenings, just as her ancestors may have done on some harp or cruit in remote days in Palestine or in the Arabian highlands.
These German Jews, who came to Pennsylvania in 1702 to re-convert the Indians, whom they believed to be the lost tribe of Israel, back to the ancient faith of Moses, while destined to fail as proselyters, became one of the potent root sources of the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch, “The Black Dutch” of the Christunn, Philadelphia, New York and the World.
The Pennsylvania Dutch are the most adaptable race in the world, altering the spelling of their names, their genealogies and traditions with every generation. They find success in all callings and in all walks of life like the true Nomads that they are. A Pennsylvania Dutchman’s lineage is kaleidoscopic any way–possibly German, Jewish, probably Indian, with sure admixtures of Dutch, Quaker, Swiss, Scotch-Irish, Greek, Bohemian, Spanish or Huguenot. And there were some propagandists shallow enough to try to line them up with Kaiserism in the days just anterior to the World War, and call them “Pennsylvania Germans.”
Their very swarthiness and leanness, the intenseness of their black eyes, gave the lie to any Teutonic affiliations, despite the jargon that they speak. And what a race of giants they have produced–Pershing, Hoover, Gorgas, Schwab, Replogle, Sproul, the Wanamakers, Newton Diehl Baker, Jane Addams–a group as potent as any other in the sublime effort of making the world “safe for democracy.”