Franz Daniel Pastorius (1651-1720)

Franz Daniel Pastorius was born in 1651 in Sommerhausen, Germany. He went on to study at several colleges but eventually earned his Doctor of Law from the University of Nuremberg. Pastorius lived and practiced law in the town of Bad Windsheim, where his father, Melchior, was mayor for 28 years.

Pastorius was a member of a religious sect called the Pietists. Together with his fellow Pietists, they planned to create a settlement in Pennsylvania as a religious haven. He met with William Penn and soon converted to Penn’s Quakerism. In 1683, the Frankfurt Land Company and a group of merchants from Krefeld, Germany commissioned Pastorius to form a settlement in America. They purchased 15,000 acres in Pennsylvania that soon became Germantown.

Pastorius led the group of Mennonite and Quaker settlers, and became Germantown’s principal leader and lawmaker, as well as a dedicated member of the Society of Friends. Pastorius opposed slavery, had it banned in Germantown, and in 1688 wrote and published the first anti-slavery protest in America.

An avid gardener, writer, and poet, he often wrote about the pleasures of gardening and beekeeping. He left 43 volumes of manuscripts after his death in 1720. Pastorius was truly a founding father of the Pennsylvania and the future United States.