Last year Ken Egolf gave me info on Michael Egolf who purchased 300 acres on Middle Creek in about 1769. There was nothing to indicate what Michael this was. I worked out that the land on Middle Creek was probably in what is now Snyder County. At that time it was Penn Township in a very large Cumberland County. I know there may be other Egolffs around but I assumed this was the Michael born 1725 in Engstadt, Germany - the baker of Philadelphia and later, maybe of Schaefferstown and Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Ken and June have given me a lot of this information but the assumptions are mine. But then as I was finalizing my Egolf story - which I write for the education and entertainment of my children - I tried to imagine me a baker on Middle Creek in 1769. My hands are soft from working with dough in my Philadelphia bakery where I had plenty of unskilled apprentices and other help to cut wood and fire the oven. The last time I had cut wood I was a very young lad working for my father, a cooper. in Engstadt - he had ovens to condition his barrels to accept the hoops. But that was thirty-five years ago. Here I was trying to cut down a tree to clear land for a patch of farmland and I didn't even have an axe. Nor had I ever cut down a tree. I had soon discovered that there was no way I could support myself, on this Frontier on Middle Creek, as I had done so successfully for years in Philadelphia. There were less than a hundred people in Penn Township and they were so far apart that they could neither see nor smell the smoke of a neighbor's fire. There wasn't anybody to whom I could sell bread. If I had the oven. If I had the milled grains - and I knew there was barely enough corn for the family that grew it. And I wondered to myself - winter is coming - I have no hut - I have never before planted a seed in the ground - I am not much of a hunter. Maybe I can fish - if I had a hook and line. But I don't really like that much fish. And I remembered that the land contract required that I have my family on this property by 1771. And I asked myself what am I doing, a 44-year-old city boy, a baker out here on the frontier? If I wanted to go west I should go to a village where my baked goods will be appreciated. And then I realized that I was from a long line of survivors - I had too much commonsense to come out to this wilderness and expect to make a living for my family - baking bread on Middle Creek. And with a feeling of great joy and relief I awakened to find that it was all in Hal's imagination. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ But if he wasn't the Michael from Philadelphia who was he? Best regards Hal