Background
Daniel Falckner was born in Langen-Reinsdorf, Saxony, the second son of the Lutheran pastor, Daniel Falckner.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
https://www.amazon.com/Falckners-Curieuse-Nachricht-Von-Pennsylvania/dp/1314669575?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1314669575
Daniel Falckner was born in Langen-Reinsdorf, Saxony, the second son of the Lutheran pastor, Daniel Falckner.
While a licentiate in theology at Erfurt, he was associated with Philip Jacob Spener and August Hermann Francke, the leaders of the Pietist movement. In 1693 he joined a group of eccentric millenarians who proposed to retire to the wilderness of Pennsylvania and there await the coming of the Lord. Led by Henrich Bernhard Köster, Johannes Kelpius, and Johann Gottfried Seelig, the millenarians disembarked at Bohemia Landing, Maryland, In 1698 or 1699 he went back to Germany to recruit their ranks up to the mystic number forty and to report on their activities. In answer to a series of questions put to him by Francke, he wrote an account of conditions in Pennsylvania, which was published as Curieuse Nachricht von Pensylvania in Norden-America (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1702). This book undoubtedly helped to stimulate German emigration to the colony. On his return in 1700 he brought with him his brother Justus Falckner and a commission empowering Kelpius, Johann Jawert, and himself, acting jointly, to succeed Francis Daniel Pastorius as agents for the Frankfort Land Company, who were the proprietors of Germantown. Kelpius, disdaining the affairs of the world, declined to serve, leaving Falckner and Jawert to carry on, with doubtful legality, alone. Of the 25, 000 acres that William Penn had promised the Company, only 2, 975 hod actually been deeded to it; Falckner obtained the remaining 22, 025 acres, a tract of meadow land on the Manatawny River in New Hanover Township, Montgomery County. This region became known as Falckner’s Swamp. There he organized the first German Lutheran congregation in the province, built a log church, and served as its minister. In 1701 he was elected bailiff of Germantown, but the next year he was turned out. His vigorous conduct of the Company’s affairs ended, however, in disaster, the exact nature of which cannot be deduced from the fragmentary and ambiguous evidence now at hand. According to Pastorius, Falckner was a sot, a waster, and a rogue, and, acting in collusion with John Henry Sprögel, swindled the Frankfort Company out of its land. In this instance, however, Pastorius is not an unimpeachable witness; wherever Falckner emerges clearly from the obscure past he is a man of probity. Sprögel, with all four members of the Philadelphia bar in his pay, put Falckner in jail before he secured a deed to the Manatawny tract; on the whole it seems likely that instead of being in collusion with him Falckner was the most miserable of all Sprögel’s victims. At any rate, Sprögel got the Manatawny land, and Falckner, impoverished and disgraced, left Pennsylvania in 1709 and never returned. For the rest of his life he served as a minister to the scattered Lutherans of the Raritan Valley in New Jersey, to whom he had been recommended by his brother Justus. He had a high sense of the duties of his office, as is shown by his refusal to ordain John Bernhard van Dieren and John Caspar Stoever. For a time after his brother’s death he visited all the Dutch Lutheran congregations between Staten Island and Albany. He and Wilhelm Christoph Berkenmeyer worked together cordially, and the only but sufficient evidence for Falckner’s ordination is that the truculently orthodox Berkenmeyer accepted him as a colleague. Failing memory—he complained that his head was no better than a pumpkin—finally compelled him to retire. He lived his last days in the home of one of his daughters and amused himself by gathering medicinal plants in the woods.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
There he organized the first German Lutheran congregation in the province, built a log church, and served as its minister.
In 1693 he joined a group of eccentric millenarians who proposed to retire to the wilderness of Pennsylvania and there await the coming of the Lord. Led by Henrich Bernhard Köster, Johannes Kel- pius, and Johann Gottfried Seelig, the millena- rians disembarked at Bohemia Landing, Md. , June 19, 1694, and took up their quarters along Wissahickon Creek, near Germantown, Pa. , where their society was soon known as Das IVeib in der Wüste. Falckner was distinguished among them by a slight but unique aptitude for mundane affairs and so became the business head of the society.