Immigrant Peter Faust settled along the Swamp Creek in Upper Frederick Township about 1750. One of his descendents, Samuel Faust, at the turn of the 20th century, was one of the leading citizens of the area, an ex-member of the state legislature, a prosperous farmer and active in local political and educational affairs. His son, Samuel Faust, Jr., from time to time contributed to a publication titled “The Perkiomen Region,” a quarterly developed by the “Historical and Natural Science Society of the Perkiomen Region.”
This quarterly, which ran for a few years in the 1920s, was a small publication developed, in large part, by the Schwenkfelders. Although it was a small publication, it was anything but small in the local history it recorded. In the July 1928, edition, Samuel Faust, Jr., who had a keen interest in the history of his valley, wrote an article titled “Indians of the Perkiomen Valley” [actually Swamp Creek Valley] and the stories found there are well worth retelling. It should be kept in mind that the following is a story, a tale of almost a century ago, and not necessarily historical fact.
Faust writes: “About two miles west of where the Swamp Creek flows into the Perkiomen [at Zieglersville] there is a stretch of land about a mile long where the creek bottom is about 300 to 400 feet wide and very flat known as the lowland [The Goschenhoppen Historians’ Henry Antes Plantation is part of this area], and along a little ravine there used to be a camping ground of a small tribe of Indians.
In the early days this camping ground was only temporary. When the Revolutionary War was going on it was not very safe even for the Indians to travel over the lines of the opposing armies but part of the tribe, at least one family, decided to make this place their permanent home until the war was over. This family consisted of one man, one squaw, and five children. They remained at this place for a number of years after the war was over.
This Indian took great pride in the fact that the Americans had won the Revolutionary War simply because he had not taken any part in the fighting. But after the war was over he got some old flintlock musket, an old rusty dagger, and an old broken sword and traveled around carrying these old discarded weapons with him feeling as though he had won the war single-hand. But a few years after the close of the war this family was afflicted with some serious disease, possibly diphtheria, and the whole family, seven in number, died in a very short time; tradition has it, in less than 48 hours.
They were all dead when some member of the old Krause family found them. So the good neighbors gave them a decent Christian burial, burying with them all their earthly possessions and weapons. The people talked a lot about this burial and particularly about the old musket, dagger and sword. About 25 years later a party of young men took a notion to dig up their graves and remove anything of value they could find. But after they dug about two feet of earth they very suddenly ‘got cold feet.’ They ran away without even taking their grubbing hoes and shovels along. Sometime afterward the good neighbors found out who had done the digging and the party of men were made to right their wrong.
When the writer of this article was a young boy some old resident volunteered to show the exact spot where the graves were but as a boy he was not interested in Indian graves. Now when he would be interested there is nobody to show him where they are located.”
Thus it ever was. The young tend not to be interested in history as you need a bit of history yourself before history becomes interesting.
The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Township Historical Society. Contact Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with questions or comments.