The Refugees
Posted by Daniel Mast on
Both My Sons is a story of family and war in the early Pennsylvania forest, 1755 Greenywalt is a miller from the Kraichgau region of South Germany. In 1710 he and a band of 27 other Mennonists flee war and persecution along the Rhine to make a start in the New World. They set up their cabins in the deep forests of eastern Pennsylvania, along the Pequea Creek in modern Lancaster County.
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Klaus Grünewald is a fictitious character in the novel Both My Sons. In the book, when he arrives he is nicknamed ‘Greenywalt’, which is an approximate English pronunciation of his German name. His character is a combination of several pioneers who came to Penn’s Woods in the early 18th Century.
In fact, there are Greenawalts in Lebanon County today. However, since the Greenywalt of Both My Sons is a fictitious character, he is not related to any of them.
If you attend the Book Launch at Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society you will learn how Ken Yoder Reed created the character. http://www.lmhs.org/events/field-trips/
What Greenywalt/Greenawalt is this? I am interested in a Peter Greenawalt of Lancaster Co.