Johann Adam Zehner arrived in Philadelphia on 7 November 1754 aboard the ship John and Elizabeth from Amsterdam. Having no money with which to pay his passage, he was allegedly redemptioned by a Pennsylvania pioneer farmer named Mertz, whose daughter he later married. He became a member of the Longswamp Reformed Church in Berks County and married Anna Maria Mertz about the middle of 1759. He moved his family north across the Blue Mountains and applied for a parcel of land in what is now West Penn Township, Schuylkill County, on 6 September 1768 and eventually received a patent on it. He and Maria raised 15 children. More than 3,000 of their descendants now populate nearly every state in the union. The question is, where did Adam come from?