Francis Daniel Pastorius
Francis Daniel Pastorius was a significant figure in early American history, recognized as a leader of the Quaker Germantown settlement in Pennsylvania. Born in 1651 in Franconia, Germany, he received a comprehensive education, including a law degree, and became involved in the Pietism movement before relocating to America. In 1683, he helped establish the Germantown settlement after acquiring land from William Penn. Pastorius is notable for his prolific writing, primarily in German, with much of his work remaining unpublished and untranslated. Among his most important contributions is a geographical description of Pennsylvania, written in 1692, and he is also credited as likely the author of the first anti-slavery pamphlet in America, advocating against the institution on behalf of the Pennsylvania Quakers. His educational efforts included founding a coeducational school in Germantown, which offered bilingual instruction and night classes. Pastorius's writings often drew on folk wisdom and aphorisms, reflecting his commitment to moral education. He spent his final years in Germantown, where he continued to write until his death, with records indicating it occurred in early 1719 or January 1720.
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Subject Terms
Francis Daniel Pastorius
City Founder
- Born: September 26, 1651
- Birthplace: Sommerhausen, Franconia, Germany
- Died: c. 1719
- Place of death: Germantown, Pennsylvania
Biography
A leader of the Quaker Germantown settlement in Pennsylvania, Francis Daniel Pastorius was born in Sommerhausen, Franconia, Germany in 1651, the son of a prosperous city official. Although he lived in America for most of his life, Pastorius wrote primarily in German and much of his prolific output is unpublished and untranslated. His most academically important work is a geographical description of Pennsylvania written in 1692 and translated into English in 1850, but he is also most likely the author of the first American treatise in opposition to slavery, a pamphlet written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Quakers in 1688.
Pastorius received a varied education, studying at several universities including Altdorf, Strasbourg, Basel, Jena and Ratisbon, and receiving a law degree from Nuremburg. He practiced in Frankfurt-am-Main where he became involved with the Pietism movement. Joining with a group of Quakers and Mennonites, he formed the Frankfurt Land Company and purchased fifteen thousand acres of Pennsylvania land from William Penn, establishing the Germantown settlement in 1683. After meeting Penn, he converted fully to Penn’s form of Quakerism.
He began his American political career as the mayor of Georgetown, Pennsylvania, also serving as a bailiff and scrivener before becoming a member of the Provincial Assembly from 1687 to 1691. He married in 1688 and had two sons, Johann and Heinrich, to whom he dedicated his extensive work Bee-Hive, a compendium of wise sayings and observations, of which only selections were published. Much of the Bee-Hive contains poems built around an adage, and Pastorius is considered the first American Colonial writer to make use of the aphorism as a principle device, a practice characteristic of later Pennsylvania German literature. Much of Pastorius’s writing drew on such aphorisms, faith and folk wisdom, and was intended to edify and encourage moral strength and faithfulness.
After leaving the Provincial Assembly, he taught in Philadelphia’s Quaker School until 1700, and then founded a school in Germantown, where he taught until 1718. The Germantown school was noteworthy for being coeducational, for having night classes, and for offering bilingual instruction.
His Kurtze Geographische Beshreibung der lentzmahls erfundenen Americanischen Landschafft Pennsylvania, 1692 (A Particular Geographical Description of the Lately Discovered Province of Pennsylvania, 1850) is one of Pastorius’s more academic pieces and is certainly his most important published work. Written in German and intended for Europeans, Pastorius recounts both natural and cultural history. The document is similar to William Bradford’s earlier work Of Plimmoth Plantation as well as John Lawson’s later History of Carolina. Pastorius’s work is, in contrast with the popular conception that Christian colonial settlers perceived the Indians as brutal and savage, surprisingly sympathetic to the Indian populations of Pennsylvania, whom he saw as pious; although he recognizing their heathen “savagery,” he praised their simplicity, contentment and temperance, contrasting them with the “wicked and perverse” colonists, the “so-called Christians.”
Pastorius spent the last years of his life at home in Germantown, writing and gardening. Records conflict regarding the exact date of his death, some placing it in February or December of 1719 and others in January of 1720. The exact place of his burial is unknown, although the Germantown Friends’ burial ground is a likely guess.