Background
Jansen's date of birth is unknown, but it is believed he was a native of Alkmaar, Netherlands.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Reinier Jansen
Edit ProfileCareer
Jansen came to Pennsylvania in 1698. On his arrival, he went first to Germantown, where he was described as a lace-maker, but within a year he was settled in Philadelphia as a merchant. Jansen reached America about the time that a press and supplies for a printing office were received from England by the Quakers. There was then no printer in the Province, and in answer to the request of the Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia, Jansen agreed to operate the press for the Society. He was a Quaker and may have been responsible for the Dutch translation of Marmaduke Stephenson's Call from Death to Life, published in Holland in 1676. The first books he printed for the Quakers in his adopted city bear the date 1699. Three of these have survived: An Epistle to Friends, by Gertrude Dereek Niesen; The Dying Words of William Fletcher; and God's Protecting Providence. That he was inexperienced in the printing art is confessed in the preface written by Caleb Pusey to Satan's Harbinger Encountered (1700), which bears Jansen's imprint. When he came to America, Jansen left a son in Holland, evidently in charge of his original business of lace-making. He was not without funds, for he made at least two purchases of land in or near Philadelphia. His death occurred in Philadelphia on March 6, 1706, and he was buried in the Friends' Burial Ground.
