Francis Daniel Pastorius (September 26, 1651) was a German-born educator, lawyer, poet, and public official. He was the founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania, now part of

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, the first permanent

German-American German Americans (, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. According to the United States Census Bureau's figures from 2022, German Americans make up roughly 41 million people in the US, which is approximately 12% of the pop ...

settlement and the gateway for subsequent emigrants from

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Early life

Coat of Arms of Francis Daniel Pastorius

Franz Daniel Pastorius was born in the Franconian town of Sommerhausen, to a prosperous

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

family. He received a Gymnasium education in Windsheim (also in Franconia), where his family moved in 1659. He was trained as a

lawyer A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as w ...

in some of the best German universities of his day, including the

University of Altdorf The University of Altdorf () was a university in Altdorf bei Nürnberg, a small town outside the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg. It was founded in 1578 and received university privileges in 1622 and was closed in 1809 by Maximilian I Joseph of Ba ...

, the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. Founded in the 16th century by Johannes Sturm, it was a center of intellectual life during ...

and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. He started his practice in Windsheim and continued it in

Frankfurt-am-Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

. He was a close friend of the

theologian and

Pietist Pietism (), also known as Pietistic Lutheranism, is a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a holy Christianity, Christian life. Although the movement is ali ...

leader Philipp Jakob Spener during the early development of Spener's movement in

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

. From 1680 to 1682, he worked as a

tutor Tutoring is private academic help, usually provided by an expert teacher; someone with deep knowledge or defined expertise in a particular subject or set of subjects. A tutor, formally also called an academic tutor, is a person who provides assis ...

accompanying a young nobleman during his Wanderjahr through

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and the

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. Pastorius' biography reveals increasing dissatisfaction with the

Lutheran church Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched the Reformation in 15 ...

and state of his German youth in the Age of Absolutism. As a young adult his

Christian morality Christian ethics, also known as moral theology, is a multi-faceted ethical system. It is a Virtue ethics, virtue ethic, which focuses on building moral character, and a Deontological ethics, deontological ethic which emphasizes duty according ...

even strained the relationship with his father

Melchior Adam Pastorius Melchior is the name traditionally given to one of the biblical Magi appearing in the Gospel of Matthew. There are many notable people with this name, or close variations. As a first name * Melchior Anderegg (1828–1914), Swiss mountain guide * ...

(1624–1702), a wealthy lawyer and burgomaster in Windsheim. These difficulties came to a head in 1677–1679, years of tumult in this imperial city. After Pastorius had completed his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

in law, returned to Windsheim and begun his law career, his family and friends (with Habsburg backing) suppressed a popular insurrection against abuses of oligarchic rule. It was in this context that he left his home in 1679, joined the Lutheran Pietists in Frankfurt, and repeatedly urged adherence to Christ's Golden Rule. He emigrated to Pennsylvania four years later, and never went back to Windsheim.

To Philadelphia

300px, Home of Francis Daniel Pastorius in Germantown, as it appeared circa 1919 In 1683, a group of

Mennonite Mennonites are a group of Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian communities tracing their roots to the epoch of the Radical Reformation. The name ''Mennonites'' is derived from the cleric Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland, part of ...

s, Pietists, and

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...

in Frankfurt, the so called Original 13, including Abraham op den Graeff a cousin of

William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer, religious thinker, and influential Quakers, Quaker who founded the Province of Pennsylvania during the British colonization of the Americas, British colonial era. An advocate of democracy and religi ...

, approached Pastorius about acting as their agent to purchase land in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

for a settlement. Pastorius took passage, aboard the ship America and arrived in Philadelphia on August 20, 1683. In Philadelphia, he negotiated the purchase of 15,000 acres (61 km²) from William Penn, the

proprietor Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, tangible or intangible. Ownership can involve multiple rights, collectively referred to as ''title'', which may be separated and held by diffe ...

of the

colony A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their ''metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often orga ...

, 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. He was the first mayor and also was a member of the

Pennsylvania General Assembly The Pennsylvania General Assembly is the legislature of the U.S. commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The legislature convenes in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg. In colonial times (1682–1776), the legislature was known as the Pennsylvani ...

in 1687 and 1691. In 1691, Thomas Lloyd, Deputy General of Pennsylvania had granted a

naturalisation Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-national of a country acquires the nationality of that country after birth. The definition of naturalization by the International Organization for Migration of the ...

to sixty-two of the first Germantown settlers as citizens of Pennsylvania (and therefore of England) with the status of a ''freeman'' including Pastorius and also other important members of the settlement, the brothers Derick, Herman and Abraham op den Graeff and

William Rittenhouse William Rittenhouse (1644 – 1708) was an American papermaker and businessman. He served as an apprentice papermaker in the Netherlands and, after moving to the Pennsylvania Colony, established the first paper mill in the North American col ...

. In 1702, he opened a school in Germantown which enrolled both boys and girls; the suffragist

Alice Paul Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragette, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the foremost leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the Unit ...

cited his enrollment of girls in her PhD dissertation from the University of Pennsylvania, and noted that his commitment was exceptional in a community that otherwise upheld a "Haus Frau" ideal.

Writings

He wrote extensively on topics ranging from

beekeeping Beekeeping (or apiculture, from ) is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in artificial beehives. Honey bees in the genus '' Apis'' are the most commonly kept species but other honey producing bees such as '' Melipona'' stingless bees are ...

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

. He was "the first poet of consequence in Pennsylvania . . . ndone of the most important poets of early America" (Meserole, p. 294). His extensive commonplace compilations provide insight into early Enlightenment culture in colonial Pennsylvania. He was also a skilled poet whose work appears in the New Oxford Book of Seventeenth-Century Verse. Pastorius' most important book was his manuscript "Bee Hive," which is now in the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

's rare book room. It is his commonplace book, which contains poetry, his thoughts on religion and politics, and lists of books he consulted along with excerpts from those books. Also of interest is his ''Geographical Description of Pennsylvania'', first published under the title, ''Umständige geographische Beschreibung der allerletzt erfundenen Provintz Pennsylvania'' (1700). This book also contains many of his letters home to Germany. His manuscripts include treatises on horticulture, law, agriculture and medicine. SealOfGermantownPa1691

Penn State University Press published in 2019 a reader on Francis Daniel Pastorius edited by Patrick M. Erben.

Personal

Pastorius married Ennecke Klostermanns (1658–1723) on November 6, 1688. They had two sons: Johann Samuel Pastorius (1690–1722) and Heinrich Pastorius (1692–1726). Though raised as an upper-class

, he converted to Lutheran Pietism as a young adult in Germany. He grew increasingly liberal in Pennsylvania, espousing universalism and moving close to Quakerism. Famed jazz bass guitarist

Jaco Pastorius John Francis Anthony Pastorius III, also known as Jaco Pastorius (; December 1, 1951 – September 21, 1987), was an American jazz bassist, composer, and producer. Widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential bassists of all time, ...

was his distant descendant.

Legacy

Anti-slavery stand

From among the Krefeld settlers, it was probably the Quakers who provided the impetus for the rejection of slavery. The 13 families from Krefeld had heard about the slave trade in the American colonies for the first time in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

on their trip to Pennsylvania. They could not imagine that they could own slaves in the land of brotherly love. However, the reality was different:

Puritans The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...

and Quakers, who otherwise advocated for universal human rights, had no problems with human trafficking and did not believe it was wrong. In 1688, some years after their arrival, he drafted, together with Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, and Abraham op den Graeff the first protest against slavery in America. Pastorius was a cosigner of the

1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. Francis Daniel Pastorius authored the petition; he and the three other Quakers living ...

, the first petition against slavery made in the

Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America. The Thirteen C ...

. The protest was signed in the house of Thones Kunders, one of the first burgesses of Germantown. Before the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

, when abolition of slavery was gaining strength, Pastorius was ripe for celebration. The Quaker poet

John Greenleaf Whittier John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Frequently listed as one of the fireside poets, he was influenced by the Scottish poet ...

celebrated Pastorius' lifeand particularly his anti-slavery advocacyin Whittier also translated the Latin ode addressed to posterity, which Pastorius prefixed to his Germantown book of records.

Operation Pastorius

Despite the Quaker sympathies of Pastorius, his name was appropriated in 1942 by the ''

Abwehr The (German language, German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', though the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context) ) was the German military intelligence , military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ...

'' of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

for " Operation Pastorius," a failed

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

attack on the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

that included a target in Philadelphia.

Biographies

For generations Pastorius has won the affections of historians. In the early twentieth century, German-American scholars embraced him and the University of Pennsylvania professor Marion Dexter Learned (1857–1917) wrote a lengthy biography; Learned had access to papers that have subsequently been lost. In 1953 DeElla Victoria Toms wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on the intellectual and literary background of Francis Daniel Pastorius. In 1985 John Weaver documented the cultural background of Pastorius' childhood and youth, and his reasons for emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1683. More recently Princeton University professor Anthony Grafton has written about Pastorius as a representative of European intellectual culture.Anthony Grafton, Jumping Through the Computer Screen, ''New York Review of Books''
Grafton's presidential address to the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world, claiming over 10,000 members. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic free ...

in 2012 was on Pastorius.Anthony Grafton The Republic of Letters in the American Colonies: Francis Daniel Pastorius Makes a Notebook, ''American Historical Review,'' February 2012
Anthony Grafton, Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe 152-185 (Harvard University Press, 2020). Weaver extensively revised his earlier research in a book (in PDF) available online and published in 2016. In 2012 Patrick Erben wrote ''A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania''. In 2017 Margo Lambert published "Mediation, Assimilation, and German Foundations in North America: Francis Daniel Pastorius as Cultural Broker."

Legacy

* The Pastorius Home Association, Inc. operates the Pastorius Haus in

Bad Windsheim Bad Windsheim (; East Franconian: ''Winsa'') is a historic town in Bavaria, Germany with a population of more than 12,000. It lies in the district Neustadt an der Aisch-Bad Windsheim, west of Nuremberg. In the Holy Roman Empire, Windsheim held t ...

, Germany and the Pastorius House in Germansville, Pennsylvania. * The Pastorius Monument is located in Vernon Park in Northwest Philadelphia, PA. * Pastorius Park is located in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, PA.

References

Other sources

* Bowden, Henry Warner (1977) ''Dictionary of American Religious Biography '' (Westport, CT:Greenwood Press) * Brophy, Alfred L.
"Ingenium est Fateri per quos profeceris: Francis Daniel Pastorius' Young Country Clerk's Collection and Anglo-American Legal Literature, 1682–1716," University of Chicago Law School Roundtable (1996)
volume 3: 627–721. * Dünnhaupt, Gerhard, "F. D. Pastorius" (Biography and Bibliography) in: ''Personalbibliographien zu den Drucken des Barock", vol. 4, (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1991, pp. 3075–3079) * Genzmer, George Harvey "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) * Gross, Leonard; Gleysteen, Jan (2007) ''Colonial Germantown Mennonites'' (Telford, PA: Cascadia) * Hombrecher, Hartmut (2023) ''Transatlantischer Kulturtransfer. Franz Daniel Pastorius' Schriften als Literatur und Praxis'' (Göttingen: Wallstein) * Meserole, Harrison T. (ed) "Seventeenth-Century American Poetry," Anchor Seventeenth-Century Series. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968, pp. 293–304)

Writings by Pastorius

* ''Deliciæ Hortenses, or Garden-Recreations, and Voluptates Apianæ'', ed. Christoph E. Schweitzer (Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1982). * ''Francis Daniel Pastorius Reader: Writings by an Early American Polymath'', ed. Patrick Erben (University Press: Penn State Press, 2019). * Marion Dexter Learned, “From Pastorius’ Bee-Hive or Bee-Stock,” Americana Germanica 1, no. 4 (1879): 67–110.

External links

Francis Daniel Pastorius Describes his impressions of Pennsylvania, 1683

Full text of Learned, Marion Dexter, ''The Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius, the Founder of Germantown'', Campbell: Philadelphia, 1908, x, 324p.

* ttp://triptych.brynmawr.edu/u?/HC_QuakSlav,8 Quaker Protest Against Slavery in the New World, Germantown (Pa.) 1688.
Philadelphia Public Art: Pastorius Monument
* Th

which include his personal papers and writings, are available for research use at the

Historical Society of Pennsylvania The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a historic research facility headquartered on Locust Street in Center City Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chron ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Pastorius, Francis Daniel 1651 births 1720 deaths Educators from Philadelphia Politicians from Philadelphia People from colonial Pennsylvania People from Würzburg (district) Poets from Pennsylvania University of Altdorf alumni University of Jena alumni University of Strasbourg alumni German emigrants to the Thirteen Colonies American abolitionists American Quakers Members of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly People from Philadelphia Quaker abolitionists