First he had dreamed about the men, and then he had actually seen them. The whole thing was way too weird. A new thought came to him. Maybe God actually was trying to show him something. He sure seemed to be answering whenever Johnny asked Him for help.
Surely it’s just a coincidence, or maybe my karma at work.
Thinking about his karma didn’t seem to raise the mystical excitement he had once felt as he sat listening to the guru next door going on and on in his high-pitched, singsong voice about karma and dharma and the great wheel of life. Now when he thought about it, it all seemed like just a bunch of gobbledygook.
Johnny pulled up in front of the library and walked up the stone steps. He walked inside and looked around. A familiar smell brought back a not-so-pleasant memory of childhood days in Levittown when he had gone to the library to escape from his father’s indifference and his mother’s drunken ramblings. Then he spotted the front desk and went over to it. An older white-haired lady looked up from her work.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m looking for Jenny Springer.”
The woman’s face took on a slight look of surprise.
“May I ask what for?” she asked with an unfriendly smile.
“She’s going to help me with a genealogical project regarding my family history,” Johnny said.
The woman gave him the once-over, pointed down a hallway, and went back to her work. Johnny walked toward the back of the building until he came to an alcove off the main hallway. Jenny was seated at a desk with a stack of papers in front of her. She looked cute in her black kappe with the errant golden curls peeking out—a little out of place in a library, but still cute.
“Hi there,” Johnny said.
Jenny looked up and then glanced at the clock on the wall. “You’re early. You’ll have to wait a few minutes while I finish this project for Mrs. Blake.”
She went back to her work, and Johnny took a seat in a chair on the opposite wall of the hallway. He looked around. There were lots of pictures and information on the walls, and through a large open door at the end of the hallway he could see shelves stacked with books and what looked like bound journals and three-ring notebooks.
In about ten minutes, Jenny closed the notebook she was writing in and put it aside.
“Let’s get started,” she said. “Sit over here.”
Johnny moved over to the chair Jenny pointed out. “Where do we begin?” he asked.
“Tell me everything you know about your father’s side of the family, as far back as you can remember.”
Johnny started in. “My dad’s name is Ronald Hershberger, and his father’s name was Peter.” Johnny paused, and then he went on. “Peter’s father was Jonas, and I know my mom told me what my great-great grandfather’s name was. Let me think. Oh yeah, Joshua—his name was Joshua. But that’s as far back as I know.”
“That will help,” Jenny said. “Wait here. I have to grab some record books. We have the biography and genealogy master index here, and it’s quite helpful. I’ll be right back.”
Johnny sat waiting until Jenny returned with a stack of documents and books.
“Can you remember any birthdays or dates of death?”
“Well, my dad was born in nineteen twenty-one—September twelfth to be exact. My grandfather Peter died five years ago in April of nineteen sixty. I remember because the cherry trees were in bloom back home. I don’t know much more than that. Oh, one thing, my birth name was Jonathan, but my dad didn’t like it so he started calling me Johnny when I was a kid. I think I was named after someone, but I’m not sure.”
Jenny opened a large notebook. “I’ve traced my side of the family back to the large wave of Amish settlers that came to Pennsylvania in seventeen twenty-eight and even further back to the Hershbergers and Springers that lived in Europe. Let’s see if we can find a connection from my side of the Hershberger line.”
She began to read. “My grandfather Hershberger is Jonas, his father was Ezekiel, and his father’s father was Joshua. My great-great-great grandfather was also Joshua, and his father was Jonas.”
Jenny paused for a moment. Then she began scanning through the pages. After several minutes, she looked up.
“This is very interesting. My great-great-great grandfather, Joshua, had a brother named Jonathan, but I don’t see him in any of the Amish genealogies. Maybe there’s a connection there.”
Jenny pulled out an official-looking volume.
“This is what we call the BGMI. It has exhaustive records of most of the families in the United States. This is the volume for Ohio and the Northeastern United States.”
Jenny looked in the index and then leafed through several pages until she came to an entry. Her face took on a slightly bemused look.
“Here it is. Jonathan and Joshua Hershberger. Twin brothers who moved to the Ohio River valley with their family before the Revolutionary War.”
She read further. “Jonathan had a son named Matthew. Matthew had a son named Jonas. Jonas had a Joshua, Joshua had a Peter, and Peter had a Ronald. And then came you, Jonathan Hershberger, born in Garden City, New York, April twenty-seventh, nineteen forty-three.”
Jenny smiled at the amazed look on Johnny’s face.
“That’s right! April twenty-seventh!”
“That was easy,” she said. “It seems that you and I are very, very, very distant cousins.”
“You mean my family is originally Amish?” Johnny asked.
“From what it says here, I’m presuming so. Most of the Hershbergers I’ve encountered in the history books between seventeen twenty-six and eighteen hundred were originally from Switzerland. They were Anabaptists, either Mennonites or Amish, who came to Pennsylvania when William Penn proclaimed religious liberty and offered land to willing settlers. There were slight variations of the spelling of the name, but they were all from the same family. So when you told me your name was Hershberger, I guessed that somewhere back in the seventeen hundreds, your ancestors were Amish from Switzerland.
“And there’s more. When I was researching my family, I came across an old volume written by one of my family members. It’s called The Family of Jonas Hershberger, and it tells the story of the Hershberger family starting when they came to Pennsylvania and continues after they moved out to Ohio in seventeen fifty-three. Let me get it.”
Jenny left again, and when she returned, she had another bound volume. This one was thinner and a bit dusty.
“I’ve read through this one, and I think it has the answer to your questions, Jonathan.”
“You’re the first person who has ever called me that. I rather like it,” Johnny said.
“Let’s see, it was back several chapters after the genealogy in the beginning.”
Jenny turned several pages until she came to a piece of paper stuck between two pages. “That’s right, I marked it. This is really interesting.”
“Before you get into the story, can you give me a little background?” Johnny asked. “I mean, I know nothing about the Amish, where they come from, or what they believe.”
“Yes,” Jenny said. “It’s important that you have a backdrop to the story, or it won’t make any sense to you.”
Jenny turned back a few pages in the volume. “Yes, we’ll start here.”
Then Jenny began to tell Johnny the story of his family.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Meeting
“JONAS HERSHBERGER ARRIVED IN PENNSYLVANIA with his father, Mathias, and his mother in seventeen twenty-eight, when he was three years old,” Jenny began. “His father bought land from William Penn outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and established a prosperous farm. Do you know who William Penn was?”
“Yes,” Johnny said. “He was the Quaker who started Philadelphia. He’s on the Quaker Oats box.”
“Actually, he started more than just Philadelphia. In sixteen eighty-two, Penn bought all of Pennsylvania from the British Crown to start a colony. He needed settlers to popula
te his colony, so he went around Europe, especially Holland and the countries along the Rhine River, asking people to come. Thousands of Amish and Mennonites came to America and purchased land from Penn for their farms. Our ancestors were among them.
“Jonas grew up on that farm with his ten brothers and sisters. He was the youngest son, and since there was not enough land to be shared between all the brothers, he left Pennsylvania in seventeen fifty-three when he was twenty-eight years old. Jonas and his wife settled along the Ohio River near what is now Wheeling, West Virginia, but it was still Ohio territory then. They eventually had three sons and two daughters.”
“Whoa, Jenny,” Johnny interrupted, laughing. “This is incredible. Where did you learn all this?”
“It’s all here in this book by my great-grandfather, Ezekiel,” Jenny said. “I’ve read it so many times I almost have it memorized.”
“You’re really into all this history stuff, aren’t you?” Johnny asked. “How come?”
Jenny hesitated. “You’d have to know my own story to understand.”
“Will you tell me?”
Jenny had been so absorbed in telling Johnny the story that she hadn’t noticed he had pulled his chair close to hers and was leaning on the desk, almost touching her. Distracted, she reached to turn the page of the book and brushed her hand against his. To her astonishment, a strange sensation ran up her arm. Flustered, she stood up and accidentally knocked the book off the desk onto the floor, along with some of the papers she had been working on. She knelt down to pick them up and knocked her head against Johnny’s knee. Her black kappe came off, spilling the long, golden curls that escaped her bun out onto her shoulders. She felt her face burning.
A surprised Johnny smiled and tried to pick up the book. When Jenny looked up at him, she was transfixed by his eyes. Then suddenly, surprisingly, she was crying.
Johnny stared down at her, perplexed. He wanted to comfort her, but his hands hung like lead weights, and so he sat still, not knowing what to do.
Jenny got up and went into the restroom across the hall. She closed the door and stood for a long time, sobs shaking her shoulders.
What’s wrong with me?
She remained there until her breathing quieted and her heart stopped pounding.
There was a quiet knock on the door. “Jenny, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I just got ferhoodled for a minute.”
“Ferhoodled?”
“It’s an Amish word. It means flustered. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Jenny wet a paper towel and washed the tears off her face. She straightened her kappe and then looked in the mirror. Her face was pale and her eyes sad.
She opened the restroom door and peeked out. Johnny was sitting next to the desk. He stood up quickly.
“Gee, I’m really sorry if I said something to upset you,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Ja, wohl, it wasn’t you,” Jenny said, returning to her chair. “It’s something personal I’m struggling with. Sit down and let me finish the story about your family.”
As they sat down at the desk, Jenny looked at the book and then back at Johnny again. His face was kind, and there was concern in his eyes. Then she was talking in a rush of words.
“I’m not really a Hershberger. I don’t even know if I’m Amish or who I am.”
Johnny looked puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
Jenny sat with her hands in her lap and her shoulders hunched. The story began to spill out of her.
“I’m adopted. I was rescued from a car wreck when I was a little girl. My mama found me. The man who was driving the car died and didn’t have any identification. The car had been stolen and there were drugs in it. The police tried to find out who I was but they never did. My parents took me in and later adopted me. Lately I’ve been having the same dream over and over about the wreck and the man and about a sad woman who I think is my birth mother. And I’m also starting to remember things, little details about the time before I came here.”
Jenny saw the quizzical look on Johnny’s face, and she wondered why she was telling him all this, but she went on.
“I asked my papa to help me but he thinks I’m better off to put it all behind me. I think my mama and papa are afraid that if I find my real parents I’ll leave Apple Creek. I’d never do that, but this need to know the truth is gnawing at me. I’m not the happy person I used to be and I don’t think I will be until I find out who I really am.”
“Is that why you are so interested in history and genealogy?”
“I think so,” Jenny answered tentatively, gaining a little composure. “I’ve always had an interest in history, but lately it’s become an obsession. I met the newspaperman who wrote the story about the car crash, and he gave me some ideas about how to continue the search. But my papa and I had a huge fight about it, and now he’s angry with me. I love him so much, but sometimes he can be very set in his ways.”
“Look, if there is anything that I can do to help you, I will,” Johnny said. “I don’t think it was just a coincidence that I almost ran over you. I believe in fate, don’t you?”
“It’s God who directs our paths, not an impersonal fate,” Jenny said stiffly.
“Whatever you want to call it, I just feel like it’s no mistake that we met, and my offer stands.”
Jenny smiled as best she could. “I’ll remember that, and there may come a time when I will ask you.”
What am I doing? This man is an Englischer. I shouldn’t even be talking to him. His ways are not our ways!
“Go on with the history,” Johnny said. “If you think you can.”
“Yes, I can. But before I read from the book I need to finish giving you some background. Jonas brought his wife west to Ohio. Back then this area was the most beautiful wilderness. There were several Indian tribes living here. The most notable were the Delaware, a fierce tribe who had been pushed out of their lands to the east by the white settlers and who had been on the warpath for many years, starting with the beginning of the French and Indian war. By the time Jonas arrived in Ohio, the war had been going on for seven years. The French had suffered serious losses, but the Indians still roamed the woods attacking outlying homes and small settlements. Jonas and his wife settled near what would become Fort Henry and started a family. Soon a small community of Amish believers settled around him.”
“Wasn’t that kind of dangerous, living out there without any guns?”
“Oh, the Amish had guns,” Jenny said. “They just didn’t use them to kill people. Besides, some Englischers came to the same area and eventually built a fort. They didn’t have the same reservations about shooting their enemies.”
“I guess people make a lot of assumptions about the Amish without knowing what they’re really like,” Johnny said.
“Yes, they do,” Jenny replied tartly. “And one of the assumptions they make is that the Amish don’t mind being interrupted.”
Johnny looked at Jenny in surprise. Jenny tried to muster a stern face, but they both burst into laughter.
“You are a real contradiction, Jenny Springer.”
“I’m sorry, Jonathan, it’s just my way. I’ll try to be nicer.”
“I like it…when you…when you call me that,” Johnny said, suddenly awkward.
On an impulse, he reached out and took her hand. She tried to pull back, but he gripped her hand, and then just as quickly, she stopped resisting. She looked at the floor, blushing.
“Please, don’t,” she said quietly, but she didn’t try to pull away. “I don’t even know you, and I’m Amish. We don’t allow such behavior except when people are courting.”
It was Johnny’s turn to blush. He pulled his hand back. “I’m sorry, I just feel like we could be good friends. Now go on. I’ll stop interrupting you.”
“Where was I?”
“Jonas had just arrived at the farm in Ohio with his wife,” replied Johnny.
“Yes, at the farm…” Jenny opened
the book, found the place she had marked, and began to read.
“Over the years, after he arrived in seventeen fifty-three, Jonas had three sons and two daughters. Two of the sons were twins—Joshua and Jonathan—and the other son was named Christian. The daughters were Ruth and Miriam. His wife was named Martha. They lived in relative peace until the twins were seventeen years old. Then came the event that changed the history of the Hershberger family forever.
“On June nineteen, seventeen seventy, the young people of the neighborhood gathered at the home of Jonas Hershberger to have a social. They remained until late in the afternoon. After the young folks departed, the family retired. About that time the dog made an unusual noise, which awakened Christian, the youngest son. He opened the door to see what was wrong and received a gunshot wound in the leg. He realized in a moment that they were being attacked by Indians and managed to close and lock the door before the Indians could enter. In an instant all the family were on their feet. Ten Indians were outside near the barn.
“Several guns and plenty of ammunition were at hand. Jonathan and Joshua, the twins, picked up their guns and were about to defend the family, but the father, Jonas, firmly believing in the doctrine of nonresistance and remaining faithful in this hour of severest trial, refused to give his consent. In vain the sons begged him, but he told them it was not right to take the life of another, even in defense of one’s own. Jonathan ever after claimed that the family could have been saved as he and Joshua were excellent marksmen and the Indians could not have withstood a solid volley of musketry.”
Jenny looked up from the book. Johnny was staring off into space as if he weren’t even in the room.
“Jonathan, are you listening?”
Johnny’s eyes jerked spasmodically and then focused and came to rest on Jenny. “While you were reading, it was like I was there,” he said slowly. “There in the house with them. It was so real, just like my dream.”
“What are you talking about?” Jenny asked.
“The night before I left San Francisco, I had a dream…I guess you could even call it a vision. I was with men in a field, and they wore strange clothes. They had beards but no mustaches and straw hats, and they were working in a field, and I was with them. The earth was cool on my feet because I wasn’t wearing shoes, and then I felt, I don’t know, like roots growing out of me, down deep into the ground. I guess I woke up then, and when I did I had the emptiest, loneliest feeling.”
The Road Home Page 10