Herman Isacks op den Graeff
original founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania, early abolitionist
Herman Isacks op den Graeff, also Herman op den Graeff, Opdengraef, Opdengraff as well as Op den Gräff (1642 in Krefeld – 1704 / 1708 in Delaware County, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was one of the so-called Original 13, the first closed group of German emigrants to North America and an original founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was an outspoken anti slavery man and abolitionist.
Biography
Krefeld
Herman op den Graeff was born to Isaac Herman op den Graeff (1616–1669) and Margaret 'Grietgen' Peters Doors (around 1620–1683). Former Mennonite leader Herman op den Graeff was his grandfather. The Op den Graeff family were originally Mennonites.
Quaker missionary work in the lower and middle Rhine River valley during the 1660s resulted in the conversion of a number of Mennonites in and around Krefeld. Among these converts were Derick op den Graeff and his family. The Quakers were not as readily tolerated by the people of Krefeld. Their organized activity brought them into a dispute with the local clergy. In 1679, the Synod of Mörs (Moers) with Quakers from England and Holland as well took place in Krefeld and in the same year Herman op den Graeff and five other leading Quakers were forcibly exiled from Krefeld.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Herman Isacks op den Graeff” as original founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania, early abolitionist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107597567. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1642, 1704, 1708 and 1616.
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This entry incorporates text from “Herman Isacks op den Graeff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.