Mill and Water Wheel

One summer evening when Christy was just three years old, the family members were all out working in the garden. A sudden summer storm arose and the family ran for shelter onto the large porch that was attached to their home. While they were standing there watching the storm, someone noticed that Christy wasn't there. "Where is Christy," they shouted. Just at that moment someone spotted something red floating down the millrace. "That looks like Christy's dress", someone yelled. (You need to know that in those days little boys wore dresses. I guess it was easier to change their diapers.)

With that someone grabbed a rake and ran down to the millrace and pulled it out. Sure enough it was Christy. Fortunately he was no worse for the experience. I am sure he was quite frightened. I suppose his mother must have been beside herself. Christy lived on to raise his own family of two sons and four daughters. He died in 1921 at the age of 73, and was buried at the Weaverland Mennonite Cemetery at Weaverland, Pennsylvania, where his immigrant ancestors had settled two centuries earlier. He worked as a carpenter and was ordained as a deacon at the village of Weaverland. In German the name of the settlement was Weber Thal.

It's really fortunate for me that someone spotted Christy floating down the millrace. If not for that person, you wouldn't be reading this story today, for I would never have been born. Have you ever thought about how small the odds were that you would ever to be born? Each person's birth is contingent upon millions of events, any of which might never have occurred.

Whoever you were, I tip my hat to you for spotting great-grandfather Christy in that millrace one hundred and fifty years ago. Thanks for saving Christy and a whole lot of future Weaver descendants.