Notes |
- Family tradition says that Peter was a teacher and Huguenot. In 1685,
after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, an edict issued by Henry
IV of France in 1598, granting religious freedom and political
equality to the Huguenots. This revocation was a sentence of civil
death on them all; it crushed more than half the commercial and
manufacturing industry of the kingdom. Life in France became
extremely perilous for the Huguenots and many were leaving the
country. During a meeting held to choose a safe haven for their
people, the look out came crying, "The enemy is upon us, save
yourselves. Family tradition says that Peter hastily went home, took
his ready cash, silverware and other valuables in a four-horse wagon
and so quickly left that he forgot his hat. A friend called to him,
"Peter Froman, where is your hat?". He replied, "It is better to have
a head without a hat than a hat without a head." He placed his
valuables in a ship, leaving his horses and wagon standing on the
street.
After escaping from France, Peter went to Germany where he married a
French girl and settled in the Heidelberg or the Strassburg, Alsace
area which was under German control at that time.
His daughter Regina was said to have been born in Alsace. Although
there are records of several Peter Froman/Vrooman in New York and New
Jersey, no satisfactory proof has been found to show that Peter
Froman came to America, but we know his grown children were with Jost
Hite in Pennsylvania by 1731. If they were in America earlier, they
probably followed, rather closely, the trail of Hite's group from
Kingston, Ulster Co., New York to the Perkiomen (Skippack),
Philadelphia Co., (now Montgomery) PA, to York, Lancaster Co., (now
York), PA, and finally to the Shenandoah Valley in Frederick Co., VA.
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