Christopher was born around 1693-95 in Germany at Laasphe on the Lahn, which was then in the county of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. Under its pious regent, the Countess Hedwig Sophia, this diminutive realm had become an asylum for sectarians and separatists from all Germany.
Sower, who was of humble origin, grew to manhood buffeted by winds of doctrine blowing from every quarter and thoroughly enjoyed the gusty spiritual climate.
He was a graduate of a German university, and studied medicine at the University of Halle.
Initially, Sower worked as a tailor in Germantown until the spring of 1726 and then bought and began to farm a fifty-acre tract, now part of Leacock township, Lancaster County, in the Conestoga Valley.
Here his proximity to Johann Conrad Beissel, whom he had known in Germany, proved ruinous, for in 1730 Mrs. Sower was converted to Beissel's doctrines and left her husband in order to live as a hermit.
He bought six acres of land in Germantown, built a large house, and in 1738 began his notable career as the printer and publisher in America. Where he obtained his press, type, and other apparatus, and the skill to use them, is unknown. The first issue of the press was Eine Ernstliche Ermahnung, an Junge und Alte (1738) and was followed by Der Hoch-Deutsch Americanische Calender 1739, his famous almanac, the last issue of which appeared in 1777. The first complete book from the press was the Zionitischer Weyrauchs Hegel oder Myrrhen Berg (1739), a huge hymnbook for the Ephrata Community, of which John Peter Miller was editor. The 400th hymn in the collection was the cause of a ludicrous controversy between Beissel and Sower.
On August 20, 1739 o. s. , appeared the first number of the newspaper, Der Hoch-Deutsch Pensylvanische Geschicht-Schreiber, which, with various changes of title, had a career as long as the almanac. These two publications were sold throughout the colonies and made Sower and his son influential among the Germans of Pennsylvania and Maryland.
His first publication in English was Extract from the Laws of William Penn (1740); from 1749 on, English as well as German publications regularly issued from the press. Most books bearing the Sower imprint were religious or educational. Sower made his own ink and may perhaps have cast type, although his best fonts came from the foundry of Dr. Heinrich Ehrenfried Luther at Frankfurt-am-Main; he is also said to have built a paper-mill in 1744. For many years he continued to conduct a shop in which he sold medicines, clocks, and other wares.
He was an agent for the Pennsylvania stoves invented by Franklin and manufactured by Robert Grace at Warwick Furnace. He was one of the leaders of the German Baptist Brethren.
He died at his home in Germantown and was buried on his own land behind his house.
Christopher Sower was well-known as the first German printer in America, his most famous and ambitious undertakings: his edition of the Bible, Biblia; Das ist, Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, Nach der Deutschen ubersetzung D. Martin Luthers (1743). Except for the Indian version of John Eliot, this was the first American edition of the Bible. In his zeal for social reform and religious dissent, his thirst for practical information and handiness at many trades and crafts, and in his remarkable talent for popular journalism, he was, with certain variations, a German Daniel Defoe.
Very early Sower spoke out against war and slavery; in 1754, scenting a political plot in Provost William Smith's proposed charity schools among the Pennsylvania Germans, he waged a bitter, victorious war against the plan.
He married the widowed Maria Christina (born Gruber) in 1720. The family lived in the village of Schwarzenau, which now belongs to the town of Berleburg.
