Inheritance We are descendants of the Schwenkfelders, religious rebels who fled Silesia (now southwest Poland) in the early 1700s. They worshiped in their homes without church, priest or catechism. The sect was at odds with Luther and the Pope. Bibles and land were seized. Children were taken from families so that they would not grow to doubt the transubstantiation of the host or subordination to the state or Rome. Unrepentant Schwenkfelders were chained to oars on Mediterranean galleys and conscripted to fight Ottoman invaders. They were denied burial in consecrated ground - made to lay their dead under cow paths outside their village of Harpersdorf. Early in the 18th century, they loaded possessions into wheelbarrows and fled westward in darkness. Three Dutch merchants of Harlem, the Van Buychanse brothers, provided succor and hired a ship to take one hundred forty Schwenkfelders to Pennsylvania, America's most tolerant colony. The inspiration for the Van Buych...