320 
Dr.  Christopher  Witt. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm 
July,  1905. 
garden,  the  older  members  of  the  Warmer  family,  with  whom  they 
had  been  on  intimate  terms,  had  died  and  the  two  old  men  probably 
thought  that  some  younger,  reliable  help  was  needed  or  desirable. 
The  introduction  of  a  mulatto  servant  into  a  superstitious  German 
community,  in  connection  with  the  well-known  practices  and  attain- 
ments of  the  Doctor,  naturally  suggested  the  idea,  then,  that  the 
Hexenmeister  had  made  a  new  compact  with  the  evil  one  and  that 
the  latter  had  allowed  one  of  his  assistants  to  come  to  earth  and 
attend  the  now  ageing  man.  At  all  events,  the  Doctor  and  his 
famulus  were  generally  referred  to  as  the  "  Hexenmeister  and  his 
Teufelsbursche." 
It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that  the  Germantown  of  the 
eighteenth  century  also  contained  men  of  more  than  average  learn- 
ing and  ability.  Among  these  Francis  Daniel  Pastorious,  a  friend 
and  student  of  Philip  Jacob  Spener,  the  originator  of  the  "  Collegia 
Pietatis,"  settled  in  Germantown  in  1683,  and  was,  no  doubt,  the 
direct  cause  of  attracting  Kelpius  and  his  follower  to  the  Province  of 
Pennsylvania.  The  life  and  achievements  of  this  early  scholar  have 
been  immortalized  by  Whittier  in  the  "  The  Pennsylvania  Pilgrim." 
Pastorius,  it  is  said,  was  also  interested  in  botany,  and  furnished 
plants  and  seeds  to  correspondents  in  Europe,  particularly  in  Ger- 
many. The  gardens  belonging  to  Pastorius  and  Dr.  Witt  adjoined, 
and  as  they  were  also  friends  in  addition  to  being  neighbors,  there 
is  considerable  probability  that  they  vied  with  each  other  in  obtain- 
ing the  most  numerous  and  the  most  varied  collection  of  plants. 
Another  of  the  well  educated  inhabitants  of  Germantown,  and 
also  a  close  friend  of  Dr.  Witt,  was  Christian  Lehman,  a  man  of 
varied  accomplishments,  who  is  said  to  have  been  conversant  with 
the  Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew,  German  and  English  languages,  and  to 
have  cultivated  the  higher  mathematics,  astronomy  and  chemistry 
with  great  success.  Christian  Lehman  came  to  America  with  his 
father  in  173 1.  He,  too,  appears  to  have  been  interested  in  botany, 
and  it  is  said  that  he  was  the  first  to  introduce  English  walnut  trees 
into  this  country.  An  advertisement  in  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette  for 
August  4,  1763,  announces  that  Christian  Lehman,  in  Germantown, 
has  for  sale  "An  assortment  of  English  double  hyacinth  roots  of  a 
variety  of  colors,  as  well  as  sundry  other  sorts  of  flower  roots  of 
various  prices.  He  also  keeps  constantly  for  sale  some  of  the  best 
English  walnut  trees,  as  well  as  other  fruit  and  flowering  trees  of 
a  size  fit  to  plant  out." 
