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Wait! There’s more to this story! How did Greenywalt, the Immigrant Mennonist, end up in Penn’s Woods? Page 35 of Both My Sons takes us back to the Kraichgau in Germany, where Klaus Grunwald is fourteen, the son of the Elector Palatinate’s forester. His father has been murdered by a jealous neighbor and Klaus loses both his father and his own career as a future forester. Buy Both My Sons

Casselman River Area Amish and Mennonite Historians Annual MeetingSeptember 16-17, 2016at Maple Glen Mennonite Church, Grantsville, Maryland         Most of the Amish immigrants who arrived in the Casselman Valley of Somerset County, Pa., before 1800 emigrated from the Greater Berks County area in eastern Pennsylvania. The term Greater Berks, as used here, refers to Berks and surrounding Counties (Lancaster, Lebanon, Chester, Dauphin) to which the Amish people had migrated already before 1800.          Scheduled sessions and speakers at this annual meeting held at the Maple Glen Mennonite Church, 74 Maple Glen Drive, Grantsville, MD 21536, are:          The Amish Population of...

Angry Scots-Irish settlers bring the mutilated bodies of settlers and dump them on the steps of the Lancaster Courthouse to incite the locals to action.  The courthouse bells ring daily during the months of October and November 1755 with news of new outrages against the settlers.Both My Sons opens with the Paxton Boys depositing the scalped body of their leader, Greenywalt’s elder son Ichabod, on a market table at the Courthouse. Buy Both My Sons

In July, 1755, General Edward Braddock leads 1,300 British regulars plus militia irregulars against the French and their Native American allies. Braddock’s army, fighting in the open field style of Europe is ambushed by the enemy near Ft. Duquesne. His army is massacred and Braddock dies of wounds received in the battle. Emboldened by their victory, the French and Native American allies sweep eastward against the British settlements of Pennsylvania in October 1755. In Both My Sons, Janey Cameron and her grandchildren flee the incoming threat. (19th Cent lithograph) Buy Both My Sons

The Scots-Irish are mad. They have been settling on a land corridor around the German settlements of SE Pennsylvania.The Quakers who run the Pennsylvania Assembly, with the support of the German settlers, hold to a policy of pacifism and refusal to raise militia or build forts to defend the province.With leadership by ‘Fighting Parson’ John Elder, the Scots-Irish take things in their own hands. Elder forms the Paxton Boys, who follow Braddock into battle. In Both My Sons, Greenywalt’s son Ichabod is a leader in this militia.Pix—Lithograph of Paxton Boys’ massacre of Native Americans at Lancaster, PA in 1763 (Wikipedia)...