General Notes

The founder of the Opdengraeff line, Herman, was a wealthy weaver and merchant and a Mennonite leader and bishop, one of the signers of the 1632 Mennonite Confession of Faith. He appears to have been an extreme mystic with more than a touch of egomania. Both he and his wife were born to Mennonite families as yet few in number in a group of villages on the border between Germany
and Holland, these families were closely interrelated. Oddly for a prosperous and religiously ascetic merchant's family able to put stained glass windows in their house which stood for a very long time, almost half of his eighteen children did not live long enough to see age two; most of those who died did not live to see age one. There was not just the pattern of children dying young but at any age that reflects some susceptibility to contagious disease, in people who ate poorly, took poor care of themselves or had allergies or the pattern of several people dying together that marks an epidemic when alot of people were dying, and it was a prosperous little village and not the ghetto of a city.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Herman and his wife moved to Krefeld in 1609. Herman was one of two delegates of the Krefeld Mennonite Church to sign the Dordrecht Confession in 1632 and served as preacher in the congregation at Krefeld. A certain Reformed member in the Morses Synod bitterly complained that "some simple non-Mennonites felt themselves drawn". In 1637, contributions were requested for the oppressed Reformed Church in Sweebrucke, Herman contributed from his own means in the name of the small Krefeld congregation 25 Reich Thanker, while the Reformed Congregation in Krefeld contributed only 22.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the vast forest of Genealogyland, there is new evidence that Hermen Op Den Graff (1585 - 1642), the celebrated Bishop of the Krefeld Mennonites and a Signer of the Dordrecht Confession of 1632, was a Morganatic (or natural son) of John William De La Marck (1562 - 1609), the Graeff Von Alten (Count of Altena). This particular John William De La Marck is listed as the younger son and heir of William V of Cleves (1516 - 1592) and Mary of Habsburg (1530 - 1584), who was the Princess Imperial, Princess of the Romans and Duchess of Cleves, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I of
Habsburg (1503 - 1564), niece of Charles V of Habsburg (1500 - 1558), the Holy Roman Emperor who presided over the sufferings of the Reformation.