Francis Daniel Pastorius

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Francis Daniel Pastorius

Bas-relief portrait of Francis Daniel Pastorius, c. 1897.
Born September 26, 1651(1651-09-26)
Sommerhausen, Franconia
Died c. 1719-1720
Pennsylvania
Occupation lawyer, poet, abolitionist, founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania
Spouse Ennecke Klostermanns (1658-1723)

Francis Daniel Pastorius (September 26, 1651 – c. January 1, 1720) was the founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania, now part of Philadelphia, the first permanent German settlement and the gateway for subsequent emigrants from Germany.

Born in Sommerhausen, Franconia, to a prosperous Lutheran family, he was trained as a lawyer in some of the best German universities of his day, including the University of Altdorf, the University of Strasbourg, and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. He started his practice in Windsheim and Frankfurt-am-Main. From 1680 through 1682, he worked as a tutor accompanying a young nobleman during his Wanderjahr through Germany, England, France, Switzerland and Holland.

In 1683, a group of Mennonites, Pietists, and Quakers in Frankfurt approached Pastorius about acting as their agent to purchase land in Pennsylvania for a settlement. Pastorius took passage to Philadelphia. There he negotiated the purchase of 15,000 acres (61 km²) from William Penn, the proprietor of the colony, and laid out the settlement of Germantown, where he himself would live until his death.

As one of Germantown's leading citizens, Pastorius served in many public offices and wrote extensively on topics ranging from beekeeping to religion. He was also a skilled poet whose work appears in the New Oxford Book of Seventeenth-Century Verse (ISBN 0-19-214164-3). Though raised as a Pietist Lutheran, he grew close to Quakerism. In 1688, he and three Germantown Quakers joined in signing a protest against slavery, the first one made in the English colonies.

Also in 1688, Pastorius married Ennecke Klostermanns. They had two sons. Pastorius died sometime between December 26, 1719, and January 13, 1720. His life was celebrated by the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier in The Pennsylvania Pilgrim.

Despite the Quaker sympathies of Pastorius, his name was appropriated in 1942 by the Abwehr of Nazi Germany for "Operation Pastorius," a failed sabotage attack on the United States in World War II that included a target in Philadelphia.

[edit] References

  • Bowden, Henry Warner. Dictionary of American Religious Biography. Westport, CT:Greenwood Press, 1977. ISBN 0-8371-8906-3.
  • George Harvey Genzmer, "Pastorius, Francis Daniel," in Dumas Malone (ed.), Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 7, Part 2, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934 (1962 reprint), pp. 290-291.
  • Concise Dictionary of National Biography, Part 1, London: Oxford University Press, 1965 reprint, p. 1010.

[edit] Writings by Pastorius

  • Deliciæ Hortenses, or Garden-Recreations, and Voluptates Apianæ, ed. Christoph E. Schweitzer (Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1982).

[edit] External links

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