Christian Frederick Post (an anglicanization of Christian Friedrich Post) (1710 Polish Prussia - 29 April 1785 Germantown, Pennsylvania) was a missionary of the Moravian Church to the indigenous peoples of the Americas who played a brief but significant role in Colonial diplomacy.
He came to Pennsylvania in 1742, and worked at forming groups of German heritage into a church federation, but was unsuited to the task. His facility in learning the native languages suited him better to organizing native groups. [1] Between 1743 and 1749 was a missionary to the Moravian Indians in Province of New York and Connecticut Colony. His and his co-workers' activities were viewed with suspicion by the settlers: he was expelled from New York and Connecticut once, and another time he was jailed in New York for seven weeks. [1]
He returned to Europe in 1751, and thence was sent to Labrador, but afterward he came again to Pennsylvania, and was again employed in the Indian missions. Following the 1755 Penn's Creek Massacre, in 1758 he undertook an embassy in behalf of the Pennsylvania Colony to the Delawares and Shawnees in Ohio. He established an independent mission in Ohio in 1761, where he was joined in 1762 by John Heckewelder; but the Pontiac War forced them to abandon the project. In January, 1764, he sailed for the Mosquito Coast, where he labored two years, and he made a second visit there in 1767. He afterward united with the Church of England. He was elected to the American Society in 1768. [2]
He retired in 1784, leaving the Miskito Indians to live in Germantown. [1]
He was married three times. His first two wives were native converts: Rachel, a Wampanoag, married him in 1743 and died about 1745, and Agnes, a Delaware, married him in 1747 and died in 1751. In 1763, he married Mary Margaret Stadelman Bolinger who survived him, dying in 1810. He had four children with his native wives; all died in infancy. [1]
Tuscarawas County is a county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 93,263. Its county seat is New Philadelphia. Its name is a Delaware Indian word variously translated as "old town" or "open mouth". Tuscarawas County comprises the New Philadelphia–Dover, OH Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Cleveland–Akron–Canton, OH Combined Statistical Area.
The Lenape, also called the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada.
Benjamin Chew was a fifth-generation American, a Quaker-born legal scholar, prominent and successful Philadelphia lawyer, slaveowner, and chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Province of Pennsylvania and later the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Chew was known for precision and brevity in his legal arguments and his excellent memory, judgment, and knowledge of statutory law. His primary allegiance was to the supremacy of law and the constitution.
Germantown is a town in Columbia County, New York, United States. The population was 1,936 at the 2020 census, down slightly from 1,954 in 2010. Germantown is located in the south-western part of the county along the east side of the Hudson River.
William Henry was an American gunsmith, engineer, politician, and merchant from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1784, 1785, and 1786. Henry is also noted for his contributions in development of the first steam engines.
David Zeisberger was a Moravian clergyman and missionary among the Native American tribes who resided in the Thirteen Colonies. He established communities of Munsee (Lenape) converts to Christianity in the valley of the Muskingum River in Ohio; and for a time, near modern-day Amherstburg, Ontario.
Shamokin was a multi-ethnic Native American trading village on the Susquehanna River, located partially within the limits of the modern cities of Sunbury and Shamokin Dam, Pennsylvania. It should not be confused with present-day Shamokin, Pennsylvania, located to the east. The village was the focus of missionary efforts, and then was the staging area for raids on English settlements in Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. It was burned and abandoned by the Lenape in May, 1756. A few months later, Fort Augusta was constructed on the site of the village.
The Christian Munsee are a group of Lenape, an Indigenous people in the United States, that primarily speak Munsee and have converted to Christianity, following the teachings of Moravian missionaries. The Christian Munsee are also known as the Moravian Munsee or the Moravian Indians, the Moravian Christian Indians or, in context, simply the Christian Indians. As the Moravian Church transferred some of their missions to other Christian denominations, such as the Methodists, Christian Munsee today belong to the Moravian Church, Methodist Church, United Church of Canada, among other Christian denominations.
The Moravian mission at Shekomeko was founded in 1740 by Christian Henry Rauch to convert the Mahican Indians in eastern New York.
Shikellamy, also spelled Shickellamy and also known as Swatana, was an Oneida chief and overseer for the Iroquois confederacy. In his position as chief and overseer, Shikellamy served as a supervisor for the Six Nations, overseeing the Shawnee and Lenape tribes in central Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River and protecting the southern border of the Iroquois Confederacy. While his birth date is not known, his first recorded historical appearance was in Philadelphia in 1728. In 1728 he was living in a Shawnee village in Pennsylvania near modern Milton, and moved in 1742 to the village of Shamokin, modern day Sunbury, at the confluence of the West and North Branches of the Susquehanna. Shikellamy was an important figure in the early history of the Province of Pennsylvania and served as a go-between for the colonial government in Philadelphia and the Iroquois chiefs in Onondaga. He welcomed Conrad Weiser to Shamokin and served as Weiser's guide on his journeys into the frontier of Pennsylvania and New York.
Netawatwees or King Newcomer was Sachem and spiritual leader of the Delaware. His name, meaning "skilled advisor" or "first in council," is spelled in a variety of ways including Netaut Twelement, Na-taut-whale-mund, Neattawatways, Netahutquemaled, and Netodwehement.
Teedyuscung was known as "King of the Delawares". He worked to establish a permanent Lenape (Delaware) home in eastern Pennsylvania in the Lehigh, Susquehanna, and Delaware River valleys. Teedyuscung participated in the Treaty of Easton, which resulted in the surrender of Lenape claims to all lands in Pennsylvania. Following the treaty, the Lenape were forced to live under the control of the Iroquois in the Wyoming Valley near modern-day Wilkes-Barre. Teedyuscung was murdered by arsonists in the night of April 19, 1763. This marked the beginning of the end of the Lenape presence in Pennsylvania. Teedyuscung's son Chief Bull conducted a raid on the Wyoming Valley that was part of a greater Indian uprising. As a result, the Lenape were forced to move west of the Appalachian Mountains by the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
Johann Martin Mack, also known as John Martin Mack, was a native of Württemberg, Germany and Moravian bishop, who was involved in founding the city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He also was Württemberg's first evangelical missionary.
John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder was an American missionary for the Moravian Church.
John Frederick Cammerhoff was a Moravian bishop and missionary.
The Moravian Historical Society in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1857. Its mission is to preserve, interpret, and celebrate the rich culture of the Moravians. It is the third oldest historical society in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Moravian Historical Society is housed in the 1740-1743 Whitefield House on the Ephrata Tract in downtown Nazareth. The Moravian Historical Society is affiliated with the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the repository for records of the Moravian Church in North America, Northern Province.
Kuskusky, also known as the Kuskuskies Towns, Kuskuskie Towns, or Kuskuskies' Indian Town, with a wide variety of other spellings, were several Native American communities inhabited near New Castle, Mahoning, and Edinburg, Pennsylvania, and Youngstown, Ohio, during the mid-18th century. It was not one town, but three or four contiguous towns of the Mingoes, Lenape, and Seneca, located along the Beaver River, at and above the junction of its east and west branches, the Mahoning River and the Shenango River. It is usually referred to in the plural.
Saucunk or Sawcunk was a town established by the Lenape and Shawnees. It was the site of a Catholic mission and was visited by Conrad Weiser, Christian Frederick Post and George Croghan. Saucunk was abandoned after the Battle of Bushy Run in 1763.
Tamaqua or Tamaque, also known as The Beaver and King Beaver, was a leading man of the Unalachtigo (Turkey) phratry of the Lenape people. Although the Iroquois in 1752 had appointed Shingas chief of the Lenape at the Treaty of Logstown, after the French and Indian War Tamaqua rose in prominence through his active role as peace negotiator, and was acknowledged by many Lenape as their "king" or chief spokesman. He was among the first to hand over English captives at the end of the French and Indian War and was active in peace negotiations at the conclusion of Pontiac's War. By 1758, he was recognized as one of three principal leaders of the Lenape, being the primary spokesman for the western Lenape in the Ohio Country. He founded the town of Tuscarawas, Ohio, in 1756 and died there in 1769 or 1771.
The Gnadenhütten massacre was an attack during the French and Indian War in which Native allies of the French killed 11 Moravian missionaries at Gnadenhütten, Pennsylvania on 24 November 1755. They destroyed the mission village, and only four of the sixteen residents escaped. Following the attack, Benjamin Franklin was commissioned by the Pennsylvania Provincial Council to construct forts in the area, and in other parts of the Province of Pennsylvania, to defend against Native American attacks, which were becoming increasingly frequent due to the French and Indian War.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . New York: D. Appleton.