Clearly NOT Doing My Job!

So, last night, my son and I were watching "Who Do You Think You Are."  To be honest, I was taping it and we kind of had it on in the background.  And my little cherub says, "How come our family never did anything interesting?"  Seriously!  As my friend and I like to say when something gets our dander up, and the evolutionary instinct to fight or flight (in this case, fight) I went puffer fish!  "What do you mean?  Are you kidding me?" Then I'm sure all he heard was, "blah, blah, blah.....blah, blah, blah."  Until I came to the bit about our family being early settlers in Germantown, Pennsylvania and, well, here's "the rest of the story"

Thones Kunders was one of the original settlers of Germantown. In 1683 his and 12 other families emmigrated from Krefeld, Germany and settled in the region they named Germantown. Kunders was a dyer by trade and lived until 1729.

While Kunders is significant in his role as an early settler, his home holds its own story in the history of Germantown and of the United States. The Germantown Society of Friends held their first meetings in Kunders's house. The members of the society were Quakers and Mennonites. At this time some Quaker families in Germantown decided to practice slavery. This concerned several members of the Society as even before the 17th century slavery was considered (at least by some) morally wrong. On February 18, 1688 the first protest against slavery in the new world was drafted in Kunders's house.

See http://www.ushistory.org/germantown/lower/kunders.htm for more information and a copy of the document.  

I think he was a bit surprised by my reaction (and the manner in which I recounted the history.  Admittedly, I was a bit animated) Next summer we'll have to plan a trip to Philadelphia so I can show him some of his history.   Sheesh!