The Amish Seamstress (13 page)

Finally, my pulse surging, I noticed one thing that looked like a handmade envelope, with writing on one side. The creases were so worn that the packet was falling apart. I held it toward the light from the window and struggled to read the faded ink.

“Is that a letter?” Verna asked. “Who's it to?”

“I think it's addressed to a Bernard…something with a
V
, Conestoga Township, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

“Oh, goodness. Bernard. He's one of the ones we've been looking for. If I'm not mistaken, he and his wife lived here during the time you're interested in. They came over on the
Virtuous Grace
.”

Sucking in a breath, I carefully opened the packet and removed a single page of handwritten text on old, old paper. A letter.

It was dated February 25, 1764, and was written in a feminine hand. My heart racing in excitement, I read it out loud to Verna:

Dear Papa,

At long last we have arrived safe and sound. The relentless rain made stretches of the GWR muddy and full of ruts, but still our dispositions remained positive. Though our guide was rough and unrefined, the rivers high, and some of the mountain passes quite steep, the terrain was magnificent, and the forests we traveled through were straight from the pages of a fairy tale
.

Despite the fact that we are not Moravian, your gracious friend and his community here have welcomed us with open arms. We are grateful for their kind hearts and generosity during this time of unrest. Br. Gunter's orchard is less mature than those at home in the North, but with a greater variety. The fruit will do fine here for a while, I feel sure
.

The good Lord has been with us every step of the way, and for that we are very grateful. Please keep us informed of any developments
.

I have never been more sure of anything in my life, nor has Gorg. We hope you are feeling the same
.

Your loving daughter,

Abigail

I handed the letter to Verna and she read it silently. Then she handed it back to me and I reread it again, taking in every word.

“Do you remember seeing this?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Not necessarily, though I do recall seeing the name Abigail on something else, something printed.”

I glanced toward the box, hoping it was filled with more treasures like this.

“What do
you
make of it?” Verna asked.

“Well.” I took a deep breath and studied the page in front of me. “I'm not sure. It's fascinating, of course, but I wish I knew more of what she was talking about.”

I sat back and looked at the page again, trying to decide what we did know. For starters, the date was fairly significant. I glanced at Verna. “The Conestoga Massacre happened in December 1763, and this was written about two months after that. I have to wonder if by ‘this time of unrest,' that's what she's referring to. The Indian conflict and the war of words, as you called it.”

Verna squinted through the lenses of her glasses. “But it sounds as though she's writing from somewhere else. The Indian conflict happened here in Pennsylvania.”

I shook my head. “Obviously, this letter is about a trip. My guess is that she and this Gorg person had been here but then traveled away. What's the GWR?”

Verna thought for a moment. “Some kind of travel route, I suppose? A roadway of some kind?”

“GWR,” I mused. “The Georgia–West Virginia Route?”

“The George Washington Roadway?”

We considered the date and decided it would probably be a bit premature to name a road for a man who hadn't yet risen to his full prominence. Still, the GWR had to be some kind of road.

“She mentions a Moravian,” Verna said, turning to look at the shelves along the wall where she kept her history books. “I seem to recall something about the Moravians…” She rose and moved over to the books, tilting her head to scan the spines.

I returned my attention to the letter. “Do you recognize the name Gorg?”

“No, but if he's also an ancestor, I probably knew who he was at some point.” She turned and looked at me, an idea alight in her eye. “The old family Bible, of course. It's on the table in my room.”

“You want me to get it?”

“Please. Second door on the right.” She plucked a book off the shelf, and as I headed down the hallway, she shuffled back over to her chair.

Verna's bedroom was sparsely furnished with a single bed, a bureau, and a table by the window, on which was a brush, a bottle of lotion, and a massive black Bible. I carefully picked up the Bible, noticing that its cover was old and brittle, and hurried back to the living room. When I got there, though, Verna had the history book open on her lap and seemed to want to show me something first, so I set the Bible aside for a moment and gave her my attention.

“I thought so,” she told me, placing her finger on the page.

Leaning forward, I read the heading she indicated,
The Moravians Venture Out from Bethlehem
.

“This whole chapter is about the Moravians,” she explained, “and their migration from Pennsylvania down to North Carolina in the mid-1700s.”

“North Carolina? Do you think Abigail would have traveled from here to all the way down there?”

“Well, I wasn't so sure at first, until I read this third paragraph.”

Curious, I skimmed the words she indicated, which were about a group of Moravian brothers of varying skills and professions who had traveled together to North Carolina in 1733 to establish a new settlement there. That was interesting, but I couldn't figure out what had Verna so pleased until I got to the end. It said:

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.

S
EVEN

V
erna 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.