The Amish Seamstress

by Mindy Starns Clark

  They followed the Great Wagon Road, which was a main route of travel for southbound settlers of the era. Starting at the port of Philadelphia, the roadway passed through Lancaster and York, Pennsylvania, down through the Shenandoah Valley, at that time ending around what is now Salem, North Carolina. Over the coming years, the Great Wagon Road would continue to expand and eventually provided passage all the way to Augusta, Georgia.

  I looked at Verna, my eyes wide. “The GWR in her letter is the ‘Great Wagon Road.’ ”

  We shared a grin. I couldn’t believe we had found the answer to at least one of our questions so quickly.

  After that, she put the book away and asked for the Bible, so I handed it to her. She struggled to balance it on her lap as she opened it, so I scooted in beside her and steadied the book.

  “Is this the Westler family Bible?”

  She shook her head. “No, this came from my mother’s side. In fact, it was first owned by my great-great-grandmother and was passed down to my grandmother and then my mother and then me.” She smiled. “Which is a good thing, because the Westlers didn’t immigrate to this area until the mid-1800s. My maternal line goes much further back.”

  I felt tingles run down my spine. Her maternal line was mine as well.

  She flipped through several pages at the front until she came to a family tree. It was a chart of sorts, with printed blank boxes that had been filled in by hand. “As you can see, my great-great-grandmother did a good job of cataloging her forebears, and my great-grandmother and grandmother added to that, but eventually they ran out of room.”

  I nodded, my eyes taking in the various handwritings of the script. Sure enough, the tree went on for several pages and was full to the end.

  She flipped back to the first page of the family tree. “Here we go. Look! Does that say Bernard?”

  She pointed to a box near the top. I leaned forward, squinting. “I think so. Looks like Bernard…Vogel. Yes! I thought it was a V on the envelope.”

  “Vogel,” she repeated, deep in thought. “I was right. Bernard Vogel and his wife were the ones who came over from Europe on the Virtuous Grace. They settled in the area in—” She lifted the Bible, which wobbled a little, closer to her face and peered through her glasses. “Actually, this doesn’t say. But look at this. Here’s the name Abigail! Abigail was his daughter.”

  Verna and I grinned at each other.

  “So this letter was written from daughter to father,” I said. “Abigail to Bernard. That makes sense. I would touch base with my daed if I went on a trip.”

  Leaning toward the Bible, which we’d left open on the coffee table, I studied the line in the chart that had her name on it. The handwriting was deeply slanted and hard to read, but it looked as though she was born in 1743, and in the box for her spouse had been written in the name Gorg Bontrager.

  I shivered at this connection to the past, astounded that it had been this easy. Zed and I could definitely put a character named Bernard Vogel in his movie. And if I could learn more about Abigail and Gorg, maybe they could go in it too.

  My excitement at the thought soon faded into sadness as I remembered what Verna had told me, that we had ancestors from that time who were Paxton Boys sympathizers. Abigail and Gorg, and Bernard for that matter, could have been the ones she meant.

  Abigail had several brothers listed, and for some reason I really wanted it to be one of them instead. Something about reading Abigail’s letter made me feel close to her. I couldn’t imagine an obedient daughter who kept her disposition positive despite the hardships of Colonial travel could be the kind of person to endorse violence.

  I asked Verna where I might find pen and paper and then settled back down next to her and began carefully recording all the names from the Bible, from Abigail on down, going through all three pages. When I reached the end, Verna helped me take it from there, and we filled in the remaining generations, including my grandmother, Delva, my mamm, Peggy, and then me, Isabel Mueller.

  I counted back up the family tree. Abigail Vogel Bontrager was my eight-greats-grandmother. The thought of all the stories between me and her took my breath away. I knew I’d never learn them all, but I would do anything to learn Abigail’s.

  I thought of the final words in her letter: I have never been more sure of anything in my life, nor has Gorg. We hope you are feeling the same. What were they so sure of? Whatever it was, I had a feeling it held the key to unlocking these secrets of the past.

  SEVEN

  Verna and I continued working through her boxes but found nothing else of note the rest of the day. I hated heading into the weekend with more boxes left to search, but my time was up. I didn’t have a choice. Of course, Suzie wouldn’t have minded my sticking around for the afternoon, unpaid, but I had orders to fill and lots of sewing to get done, so I really did need to go home.

  At least my patience had its reward. When I returned the following Monday, Verna and I resumed our search, digging in eagerly. After about an hour, we came across the biggest find of all.

  I knew the moment I saw it that it was something important, because the name “Abigail” on the front jumped out at me right away. Lifting it carefully, I realized that it was a pamphlet of some kind.

  “What is this?” I held it up.

  The cover, fragile to the touch, was made of a thick and yellowed coarse paper on which had been printed the words A Reflection of My Experience Concerning the Indians of Long Ago. Under that was the name Abigail Vogel Bontrager. Around the edges was a border design, with a single feather sketched into the top corner, as decoration.

  “I’ve seen this type of thing before,” Verna said, leaning forward to peer at it more closely. “I believe that’s what’s known as a ‘chapbook.’” She went on to explain that chapbooks were small, crude publications made for the common people who wanted to read but couldn’t afford bound books. “I believe they were still popular during Abigail’s time, and probably for another hundred years after that.”

  At her words, my heart surged with excitement. I couldn’t believe I was holding this piece of history in my hands.

  I could scarcely breathe.

  Verna didn’t even touch it, probably for fear it might fall apart. Instead, she studied it for a long moment as I held it up. Then she told me to look inside.

  “Be careful with it,” she urged.

  Hands trembling, I settled back into the couch, set the booklet on my lap, and opened the cover. The interior pages were of a thinner stock but also yellowed. The first page of the chapbook repeated the title and author from the front, with “D. Campbell, Philadelphia,” and the year 1819 underneath.

  “Who’s D. Campbell?” I asked.

  “A publisher or printer, I imagine.”

  I ran my finger across the date. “Wait. What year was Abigail born again?”

  Verna couldn’t quite remember, so I took a moment to pull out the page where I’d listed the family tree. “Here it is. She was born in 1743, so by 1819, she would have been…seventy-six. She wrote this chapbook when she was seventy-six years old!”

  Verna was quiet for a long moment. “An old woman, looking back on her years. I can see that.”

  Something in her voice sounded wistful, and I was glad she’d had the chance to share at least some of her own stories with me these past few days. Perhaps that was part of what old age was for, to look back on one’s life with the wisdom and perspective not available in youth.

  “What should we do?” I asked, gently flipping through the first few pages. At first glance it seemed to be filled with mistakes, spelling and otherwise, at least from the perspective of a twenty-first-century reader. But then I reminded myself that they wrote differently back then, and that these likely weren’t mistakes at all but rather conventions that had changed over time.

  “Why don’t you read it aloud?” Verna said.

  For some reason, the thought made me nervous. Taking a deep breath, I made myself more comfortable, and then I cleared my
throat and began.

  In our years together, my husband Gorg and I shared an unconfessed sin—one we would commit again and again if the situation arose. This is the story behind that sin.

  I stopped, eyes wide, and looked at Verna in alarm. Sin? What if the sin referred to here was the endorsement of violence against the Indians? My heart sank.

  “Calm down, child,” Verna said as if reading my mind. “We don’t know where she’s going with this yet.”

  I nodded, feeling just a little queasy. Why did the past have to be so messy sometimes?

  Taking another deep breath, I started again, rereading the first paragraph out loud and then going on from there.

  I was born in 1743 on my father’s farm in what is now known as Manor Township, near the original land grant of William Penn, a man who boldly promised religious freedom. I was the youngest of five children who lived to adulthood, and the only girl.

  I looked up at Verna. “Manor Township? That’s not far from here at all. Maybe three or four towns away?”

  She nodded. “The boundaries may have differed somewhat back then, but you’re right.”

  I continued.

  There were no schools, but my beloved father taught all of us to read and write, to do sums and subtractions, and all that he knew about the world. Though German was his native tongue, he insisted that we use English, both the written and the spoken word, as much as possible. We were also taught to respect all people, knowing they are all immortal beings created by God, according to Scriptures.

  I glanced again at Verna. “Well, that’s encouraging. Maybe the sin she refers to at the beginning is something else.”

  “See? You need to stop jumping to conclusions.”

  I smiled. “I know, but remember, she is writing this in retrospect at a much older age.”

  Feeling a new wave of apprehension, I kept going.

  Only a few miles from our home, also in Manor Township, was the region known as Conestoga Indian Town. William Penn had left the land there for the Conestoga Indians in his grant. Over the years, the property had dwindled down to a small portion of his original intention, though he had signed a treaty promising not to permit any “Act of Hostility or Violence, Wrong or Injury, to or against any of the Said Indians.” Until the commencement of the French and Indian War, that treaty was honored by our people, and indeed all Pennsylvanians, who faithfully protected the gentle Conestogas from harm.

  So far, this chapbook was sounding just like the account of the same period in one of the books Zed had loaned me. The next few paragraphs talked about William Penn and his intentions for the region, as well as how things progressed on that front once he’d passed away and his sons took over. It became a little boring, but then the narrative took on a more personal tone. I perked back up as I read it aloud.

  My earliest recollections of Indian Town are the times I would go with my mother when she bought baskets there. The Indians’ homes were cabins, not wigwams, and they had gardens nearby, much as we did, though theirs had no fencing and seemed much less controlled somehow than ours. I remember seeing thick stalks of corn, vines heavy with plump pumpkins, and many other varieties of squash growing in vivid splashes of yellows and greens among the leaves.

  One year in the spring, when I was still a child, I saw a girl there, peeking around the corner of a cabin, who looked to be about my same age. She had long black hair and wore a cotton dress. I asked my mother if that girl was an Indian, and she said yes, but I wasn’t so sure. Her skin was paler than that of the other Indians, who bore a dark countenance.

  I remember that I waved at her and she smiled in return. We never spoke or interacted in any other way, but over the next few months I thought of her often. Near the end of August, when Mother said she was going back to Indian Town, I made sure to go with her. Again we bought baskets. Again the girl came around the side of the cabin to stare at us.

  I waved. She smiled. I was normally quite shy and quiet, but for some reason I took off running toward that girl. Startled, she stepped backward but did not flee. When I reached her, I took her hand, squeezed it, and said hello. She squeezed mine back and then surprised me by speaking in English, pointing toward a field of flowers beyond the gardens and asking if I wanted to come and play.

  I paused in my reading to look to Verna. “English? An Indian child?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose with so many settlers around, the Indians were bound to learn the language.”

  I cleared my throat and continued.

  With my mother’s permission, I went with the girl and we spent the following hour or two there together, getting along quite well. We picked thick handfuls of helenium with their vivid yellow and orange blossoms, and then we sat down in the field and she showed me how to weave the stems into a chain. Once our chains were long enough, we looped them into circles and wore them as crowns and necklaces and bracelets.

  The next time we visited, the following spring, I approached the girl and spoke with her. Again, she seemed shy at first but this time, as she warmed to me, she told me her name. It was lovely and musical but so unusual that I wrote it into the dirt with a stick, spelling it the way it sounded, KAH-nen-kwas. She seemed so delighted by that, I rubbed out the letters and tried again, this time using what I assumed to be the more correct spelling, Konenquas. She took the stick from my hand and, underneath what I had written, she did the best she could to scratch out the same letters. Taking the stick back, I wrote my name as well, and again she repeated it below.

  Konenquas and Abigail.

  The Indian and the Amish girl.

  We talked for a long while that day. She told me her mother had died the winter before, following her father to the afterlife, and I felt overcome with sadness. I asked who cared for her now, but she simply gestured around her, indicating, I supposed, the whole village. For some reason, that made me feel even closer to her. Not only were the Conestogas Christians, but apparently they were as dedicated to community as we Amish were.

  “How sad, but also how lovely,” Verna murmured.

  I kept going.

  The following spring, Mother was busy at home and kept putting off a visit to Indian Town, so I finally went with my older brother instead. That time I took along a shawl I had made as a gift for Konenquas. She was very grateful for it. With a broad smile, she ran into her cabin and came back with a small pottery bowl for me.

  On the way home, my brother commented on our exchange and asked if I knew that my friend’s father had been a white man, a trapper who had married into the tribe and lived with them until his death several years before from cholera. I hadn’t known, but it made sense, given Konenquas’s paler color of skin. It also explained why she knew English better than some of the other Indians.

  I talked my brother into going back to Indian Town a few weeks later, and that time I brought along my handwork. Konenquas and I sat together, me knitting and her weaving a basket, as we chatted. We talked about many things, including the Lord Jesus, of whom she already knew thanks to the Quakers. I taught her a Scripture verse too, one my father had compelled me to memorize the week before. I tried teaching her how to spell more words in the dirt, but we didn’t get very far before my brother insisted that we go. The next time I visited, I brought along a copy of the entire alphabet, upper and lower case, which I had carefully written out on paper just for her.

  Konenquas was clever, and over my coming visits she managed to learn not just the alphabet but quite a few written words as well. Back at home, we hadn’t much ink or paper to spare, but I gathered for her what I could and brought it along on my visits. I also taught her more Bible verses, which she memorized with ease.

  In the following years, I was able to visit Konenquas often. If my mother wasn’t going to Indian Town, one of my brothers would give me a ride, or occasionally my father would take me and then spend that time helping the Indians with repairs to their cabins. Father was always generous with his carpentry skills.

  Over t
he next few years, I came to think of my friend Konenquas with the same fondness and familiarity as I did my closest Amish friends. Our lives were so different and yet, in all ways that were important, quite the same. We loved the Lord and our families and our communities. As we reached our teens, we also both began to long for homes and families of our own. When we were in our late teens, not long after Gorg Bontrager had begun to court me, I learned that Konenquas also had her eye on a special young man, an Indian brave known for his hunting skills. She married sooner than I, but we still felt the camaraderie of being young and in love with men whom we adored and wanted to be with for a lifetime.

  I paused there, thinking about that for a moment. What an amazing friendship they had forged, despite their differences.

  Glancing back down, I saw that there were only two pages left to the whole book, and that the next paragraphs moved away from the personal and back into a more factual recounting of historical events.

  Verna needed a break before we got into that final section, so I set the chapbook aside, went into the kitchen, and put the water on. I stretched my neck and back until the kettle whistled, my mind a million miles away. We couldn’t risk having beverages near the chapbook, so once our tea was ready, Verna and I sat in companionable silence at the table, both of us lost in thought as we sipped. After that, I cleaned and dried our cups and put them away, washed my hands, and then we returned to the living room and the last remaining part of our ancestor’s tale.

  As I began to read, my heart sank. I’d already known the facts of the massacre and the events leading up to it, of course, but reading them in context—by someone who lived through it—was still quite disturbing. The words were all about the rising tensions between settlers and Indians, not just in Pennsylvania but throughout the region. By Abigail’s account, violent acts and misdeeds occurred on both sides—killings, kidnappings, and more—as slowly and steadily the settlers continued to advance westward, often taking for themselves lands along the way that had previously been granted to the Indians by treaties. The Conestogas remained peaceful, but as other Indian tribes grew more resentful of the British, especially the Senecas, they mounted more and more attacks against the Colonists on the western frontier.