Johannes Klinger was born 4 February 1727/28 in Pfaffen-Beerfurth, Germany. His parents were Johann Wilhelm Klinger and Anna Catharina Heist. He emigrated in 1749. He married Christina Elizabeth Foos, daughter of Nicholas Foos and Elisabeth Glass, 25 October 1753 in Skippack, Pennsylvania. They had six children. He married Margritha in about 1767 and they had seven children. He died in 1784 in Pikestown Township, Chester, Pennsylvania. Ancestors, descendants and relatives lived mainly in Germany and Pennsylvania. .

It is a great privilege for me to endeavor to tell you this story about my Great-Great-Great Grandfather's life; about his ancestors, his family, and his work for God. I have gathered genealogy information used herein since I first learned of my Shook roots in 2000. My non-fiction story is based on found legal documents and documented history that would apply to anyone in the same situation and time period. There is much information out there and so much of it is incorrect in one way or another. I do not claim to have found it all, or even that I have the true grist of what I do have. I do strive to give you my sources for everything that I included here. You can then make up your own mind as to what is fact and what is unproven.

Abraham Devins (1747-1816) married Elizabeth Hover about 1767, and about 1793 they immigrated from Ontario County, New York to Toronto, Onta- rio. Descendants and relatives lived in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskat- chewan, Alberta, British Columbia and elsewhere. Many descendants immigrated to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Florida and elsewhere in the United States. One of appendices contains a listing of thirty sets Devins twins between 1812 and 1987.

First published in 2004.Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) -- German Jesuit, occultist, polymath - was one of most curious figures in the history of science. He dabbled in all the mysteries of his time: the heavenly bodies, sound amplification, museology, botany, Asian languages, the pyramids of Egypt -- almost anything incompletely understood. Kircher coined the term electromagnetism, printed Sanskrit for the first time in a Western book, and built a famous museum collection. His wild, beautifully illustrated books are sometimes visionary, frequently wrong, and yet compelling documents in the history of ideas. They are being rediscovered in our own time. This volume contains new essays on Kircher and his world by leading historians and historians of science, including Stephen Jay Gould, Ingrid Rowland, Anthony Grafton, Daniel Stoltzenberg, Paula Findlen, and Barbara Stafford.-

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.