page_title: Francis Daniel Pastorius
section_title: Writings
hierarchical_section_title: Francis Daniel Pastorius / Writings
caption_attribution_description: English: Seal of Germantown Pennsylvania, 1691
context_page_description: Francis Daniel Pastorius was a German born educator, lawyer, poet, and public official. He was the founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania, now part of Philadelphia, the first permanent German-American settlement and the gateway for subsequent emigrants from Germany.
context_section_description: He wrote extensively on topics ranging from beekeeping to religion. He was "the first poet of consequence in Pennsylvania . . . [and] one 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'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.
   Penn State University Press published in 2019 a reader on Francis Daniel Pastorius.
caption: Seal of Germantown, PA (1691)
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