Submitted by Leona Baker, Historical Society of Salisbury Township

In 1701, William Penn traveled the ancient Indian Minquas Trail, also known as the Conestoga Road, through Gap-in-the-Hills, a part of the land the English king had bequeathed to him. This trail wandered through thick forests, which had never heard the sound of ax or saw. Oak, ash, maple, walnut and chestnut trees grew in such close proximity that the path beneath was difficult to distinguish even on the sunniest day. Penn was on his way to Conestoga on the Susquehanna River to renew a treaty with the Native Americans.

The Penn Rock on today's Chestnut Street in Gap stands as a reminder that Native hosts had prepared a feast of greeting. Penn partied and stayed overnight near the local spring in company with Native American chiefs, who came to escort him the rest of the way to their village.

In 1710, Robert and Jean Gault from Ireland settled near the Welsh Mountain, close to the source of the Pequea Creek. The Gaults, credited to be the first real settlers to the area, had a hand in petitioning for the formation of Lancaster County and in founding the Pequea Presbyterian Church, built in 1724 on what we know today as Cambridge Road.

As pioneers moved into the valley, clearing the land was the primary need for those who wished to become prosperous farmers. The abundant quantity of wood was used for housing and heat and served as the sturdy base for the ubiquitous Conestoga wagon.

Within 100 years, there were few primeval forests left as more and more Europeans discovered the potential of this rich valley soil and swiftly running streams.

By the turn of the 20th century, fewer of those trees growing in Penn's time were to be found. E. Embree Wildman's 1933 edition of "Penn's Woods, 1682-1932" recorded one of those rare trees growing in the cemetery of Pequea Presbyterian Church in Salisbury Township.

Fast forward another 75-plus years. By 2000, most of those few remaining original trees were now rotting into dust, their ancient lives over. Alert citizens, recognizing an era coming to an end in the increasingly populous Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware region, formed the Penjerdel organization to preserve the remaining pre-Colonial history of the region. Volunteers gather and plant the nuts and seeds from those still surviving Penn oak trees. The relatively few that sprout grow into saplings that carry the genes of those long-gone forests which had greeted William Penn 300 years ago. The saplings are then offered to select civic organizations to continue being nurtured.

Aware of William Penn's 1701 meeting with the Susquahannocks in Gap, Penjerdel member Erik Burro, who portrays William Penn for the annual living history events in Salisbury Township, offered the Historical Society of Salisbury Township a 3-year-old sapling grown from an acorn of a Penn oak tree that had recently died in Salem, N.J.

With no remaining primeval forest in Salisbury Township, the historical society was honored to have a living connection to its founding pioneers, and to the vision that William Penn had of a peaceful coexistence for diverse races and cultures.

The community is welcome to join the historical society at the Pequea Presbyterian Church, 273 Cambridge Road, Gap, at noon on Sunday, Oct. 6, to celebrate the dedication of this bit of DNA from the region's past.