Background
Caspar Wistar was born on February 3, 1696, in Waldhilsbach, Baden-Wurttemberg, the son of Johannes Caspar and Anna Catharina Wüster. His father was huntsman to Carl Theodore of Bavaria.
Caspar Wistar was born on February 3, 1696, in Waldhilsbach, Baden-Wurttemberg, the son of Johannes Caspar and Anna Catharina Wüster. His father was huntsman to Carl Theodore of Bavaria.
According to his short memoir written in the 1740s, Wistar received little education since his village was too poor to employ a schoolmaster, though he did learn how to read and write.
Coming of age, Caspar emigrated to America, his ship reaching port at Philadelphia, Sept. 16, 1717. Though he lacked capital, he saved enough to undertake successfully the manufacture of brass buttons, advertised as "warranted to last seven years. " In 1725 he joined the Society of Friends.
Some years later Wistar began the making of window and bottle glass. In 1738 he purchased for this purpose large pine-wooded tracts of land in Salem County, West Jersey, a location that offered abundant fuelage, an ample supply of silica, and adequate water transport facilities. He had sent across the sea for four experienced Belgian glass-blowers, and on July 30, 1740, the glass-house was "brought to perfection so as to make glass. " This proved to be one of the earliest successful cooperative undertakings in the country. Wistar furnished all the materials for glass-making, and the workmen received one-third of the profits. Other glass workers, natives of Belgium, Germany, and Portugal, sailed from Holland for "Wistarberg" in 1748. Though it is credited with being the first flint-glass works in America, no advertisements are known which indicate that flint glass was manufactured at Wistarberg either during these earlier periods or later.
From 1730, Caspar Wistar also bought land and sold it to new immigrants from Germany. His land deals made him one of the richest men in Pennsylvania.
When Caspar Wistar passed away on March 21, 1752, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of dropsy, Richard his second son took over the glassworks for his father and ran them successfully until 1782.
On May 25, 1726, Caspar Wistar married Catharine Jansen, daughter of a prominent Quaker family. They had three sons and four daughters.