In his wanderings Jacob fell in with a people called _Pietists_. In many respects they resembled the Puritans. He was converted among them. The change was so great when he returned home, his language so strange, that his friends could not understand him. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.” His singular experience, his exposure of formal religion, his boldness in reproving sin, raised a storm of persecution. The minister withstood him, and denounced him as a heretic. His answers were so pertinent that his father gave him a severe reprimand, inquiring, “Boy, do you answer a minister in that way?” The Church exercised civil as well as ecclesiastical authority, and young Boehm was convicted of heresy, and sentenced to prison. An elder brother was appointed to conduct him to the prison-house. He did not watch his brother very closely, and as they were near the line that separated Switzerland from France the prisoner crossed over, and was forever free from his domestic and priestly persecutors. He journeyed along the banks of the Rhine till he entered the Dukedom of Pfaltz. This was the Palatinate bordering on Belgium. From this region were the ancestors of Philip Embury. There young Jacob became acquainted with a people called Mennonites. They took their name from Menno Simon, who was cotemporary with Luther. They were a simple-hearted people, and he united with them, and became a lay elder. He had several children, of whom Jacob, the third, was my grandfather. He was born in 1693, and emigrated to this country in 1715. Many of the Mennonites emigrated from Switzerland and Germany. My grandfather was induced to come to America from the glowing description given of this country by Martin Kendig, one of the seven families who had settled in what is now Lancaster County, Pa. He landed in Philadelphia, from thence went to Germantown, then to Lancaster, and finally settled in Pequea, Conestoga Township. Soon afterward he married a Miss Kendig. My grandfather was a lay elder in the Mennonite Society. Soon after his arrival he bought a farm and built him a house. He was also a blacksmith, the first in all that region. His wife was very industrious, and when necessary, she would leave her work and blow and strike for him. I recollect him well. When I was five years old he walked over the fields showing me various things, and trying to entertain me. Not knowing anything about the infirmities of age, I wondered why he did not walk faster. He died in 1780, aged eighty-seven. My grandmother was an excellent woman, particularly fond of me because I was the youngest grandchild. They had a number of sons and daughters. My father, Martin Boehm, was the youngest. He was born November 30, 1725, and married in 1753 to Eve Steiner, who was born on Christmas day, 1734. Her ancestors were from Switzerland, and settled near my grandfather’s.