Background
Philip Frederick Mayer was born on 1 April 1781 in New York an was the son of George Frederick and Mary Magdalene (Kammerdiener) Mayer. His father was a Swabian, his mother a native of New York State.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Philip Frederick Mayer
Edit ProfileEducation
Mayer graduated from Columbia College with first honors in 1799 and studied for the ministry under John Christopher Kunze, teaching meanwhile to support himself. The habit of early rising and morning study, formed in these years, remained with him through life and assisted his vigor of body and mind.
Career
Mayer was licensed September 1, 1802, by the New York Ministerium. After serving the Lutheran congregation at Loonenburg (Athens), New York, 1803-06, he accepted a call to the newly organized St. John's Church in Philadelphia, the second strictly English Lutheran congregation in the country. Of this large and influential church he was pastor for fifty-two years. Although at this time his denomination was generally committed to parochial schools, he was an earnest advocate of public education.
His reputation as a preacher was great and lasting, but like his German contemporary, Charles Rudolph Demme, he would not allow his sermons to be published. With his master, Kunze, and his step-father, Frederick Henry Quitman, he edited Dr. Martin Luther's Catechism Translated from the German; in 1806 he prepared another edition, with numerous changes, for his own congregation; and his final version of Luther's Short Catechism, with even greater revision, formed the chief part of his Instruction in the Principles and Duties of the Christian Religion for Children and Youth. His death occurred after an illness of several months.
Achievements
-
Mayer was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Bible Society, a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, and the president of the Philadelphia Dispensary and of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. In 1814 he declined the degree of D. D. from Harvard College on the ground that he was too young to receive such a distinction; later he accepted it from Columbia and from the University of Pennsylvania. One of his most treasured books was a Cruden's Concordance, inscribed in Latin, which Kunze presented to him on Trinity Sunday, 1801, to commemorate the preaching of his first sermon.
Personality
Mayer was indefatigable in visiting the sick and the afflicted of his immense congregation, refused to have an assistant, and took only a brief yearly vacation, when he would visit his mother and attend the meetings of the New York Ministerium. He was a close student of Biblical criticism and laid the exegetical foundation of his sermons with scholarly care.
The dignity for which he was noted was not incompatible with his sallying forth to market every morning with a capacious basket under his arm. He conversed easily in Latin and German.
His daughter Mary became the wife of Robert Montgomery Bird and the mother of Frederick Mayer Bird. His successor at Old St. John's was Joseph Augustus Seiss.
Quotes from others about the person
"It is doubtful whether any Lutheran pastor has surpassed him in purity and elegance of style in English writing. In literary culture he was thoroughly competent for the task. . Nine-tenths of this translation remains to-day as the accepted and enduring version; not more than one-tenth has been superseded in later revisions. "
Connections
On May 24, 1804, Mayer married Lucy W. , daughter of Daniel Rodman of New York, who with six of their eight children survived him.
