Books from the Beehive

BOOKS FROM THE “BEEHIVE” MANUSCRIPT OF FRANCIS DANIEL PASTORIUS

Lyman W. Riley

The following document was prepared by Lyman W. Riley (1918-2000), who was a Curator of Special at the University of Pennsylvania Library, as an aid to using the Beehive. The document was OCRed is presented here as he prepared it, with the addition of some German titles missing from his original typescript. This page is his introduction. For the book list, click here.

Introduction

Francis Daniel Pastorius (1651-1719) is best known as the “Founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania” and is celebrated for being one of the four who presented the 1688 condemnation of slavery (written in his hand) to Philadelphia Friends.¹

Pastorius had a good academic background. He wrote a number of pieces, but published only a few. His most substantial work is the still unpublished “Beehive,” the name he gave to his folio—, sized, two-volume commonplace book, a collection of memorabilia, miscellaneous notes, lists, etc. This manuscript has been for many years part of the manuscript collection of the University of Pennsylvania Library.

What follows here is a brief outline of Pastorius’s life,² including a discussion of the religious influences upon him that are reflected in the extensive list of books that takes up 22 pages in the Beehive and includes 1029 titles. Approximately one-half are by Quaker authors. Whether merely the appearance of these titles in the manuscript makes him a Friend can be questioned, but the combination of his background, his coming to William Penn’s town, and the books he collected or made notes about, make it very likely that he considered himself and was accepted as a Friend. A page in the manuscript is headed “No Quakers *Anonymous Pag. 59.1 Out of some other Authors, who did not Profess (much less possess) the same Truth with us.”²

Personal libraries are considered significant evidence about an individual’s outlook on life. And the painstaking way in which Pastorius recorded these titles indicates the importance he gave to them.

Following is an outline of Pastorius’s life and a brief description of a period in it that probably had a significant religious influence on him and made him ready to join the new Quaker community.

Pastorius was born in Sommerhausen, Franconia, Germany, on September 16, 1651, son of Melchior Adam Pastorius and his wife Magdalena. Melchior, in the service of Georg Friedrich, Count of Luxembourg, converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism soon after coming to Sommerhausen from the university city of Würzburg, in 1649. He moved to Windsheim in 1658. There Melchior practised law and filled city posts. But obviously his great love was literature. Four of his works were published, and others have survived in manuscript.³ His son Francis obviously was influenced by the interests of his father.

Windsheim is famous in religious history as the center of the fifteenth-century group called “Brothers of the Common Life,” of whom Gerard Groote and Thomas à Kempis are best known, and in whose school Erasmus was educated. Whether Francis Daniel was influenced during his boyhood by the heritage of this town is of course open to question, but in view of his later religious development the coincidence is interesting——and he did include in his Beehive list of books Thomas à Kempis’s “The Imitation of Christ” and a work by the fourteenth—century mystic Johann Tauler is in a similar list in his “Res Propriae” manuscript.⁴ He went to the Latin school at Windsheim and from 1668 to 1676 attended lectures at the universities at Altdorf, Strasbourg, and Jena, spent some time at the university at Basel, and studied for eight months at Regensburg.⁵ He received a degree in jurisprudence from Altdorf in 1676 and for two years practiced law, like his father, at Windsheim. He then moved to Frankfurt, in the Rhineland, probably for religious rather than professional reasons. Frankfurt was a center of trade and culture in western Germany. And prominent there during the preceding twelve years (from 1666) had been the preaching of Philip Jacob Spener (1635- 1705), leading spokesman for Pietism in Lutheran Germany. Spener was in Frankfurt until 1686 so Pastorius knew him and his circle during his two years there.⁶

In 1680 Pastorius became tutor and travelling companion of a young nobleman, Johann Bonaventura von Bodeck. For two years, June 1680 to November 1682, he journeyed through the Netherlands, England, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere in Germany. For the most part he was required by his position to visit places and people that his young Charge wished to see. Pastorius was repelled by the worldliness of the cities he saw, and the frivolities of their inhabitants. In England, at Cambridge, and again in the Netherlands, however, he did become acquainted with some religious recluses and was apparently much impressed by their utter resignation to God. Upon his return to Frankfurt it was a great relief to him to join again the circle of earnest Pietists. In later years he even looked upon his university experiences as useless, where he learned things better forgotten.⁷

In 1677 George Fox, William Penn, and Robert Barclay, leaders of the Quaker movement in England, had visited Amsterdam and travelled up the Rhine, visiting a number of cities on the river, including Frankfurt. In 1681 Penn was granted the vast holdings in North America that were to become his Holy Experiment. That year he published Some Account of the Province of Pennsylvania, in America, inviting settlers of all faiths to the new land; it was also published in Dutch at Rotterdam, and in German at Amsterdam. The Pietists of Frankford were much interested, and formed a company to purchase land for a settlement of Germans. Pastorius was made the agent for the group, evidence of his standing in the Frankfurt Circle and of his own interest in emigrating.⁸ He went to England, where in 1683 he confirmed the purchase of 15,000 acres, which had been arranged previously in Rotterdam. Penn was at that time in Pennsylvania. Final settlement had to be made in the province itself.

Pastorius, with other German emigrants, sailed from England June 10, 1683, and arrived at Philadelphia on August 20. Land purchased for the German settlement was made available also to a group from Krefeld, who arrived in October, 1683. The members of the German company from Frankfurt never emigrated in sufficient numbers to take all the land set aside for them by Penn. In the settlement of Germantown, October 24, 1683, 6,000 acres were laid out by Penn on the east side of the Schuykill, 3,000 for the German Company, and 3,000 for the Krefelders. The Krefelders carried out what the Frankfurt Company had intended, and in 1686 the latter was re—organized. By 1700 differences between the Company had Pastorius had developed, and he was dismissed as its agent. After 1700, of course, and during much of the eighteenth century, thousands of Germans came not only to Germantown but to other settlements west of Philadelphia.

Pastorius served Germantown as bailiff, collector of rents, clerk, recorder, and tax assessor and collector.⁹ From 1698 to 1700 he also was master of a school in Philadelphia granted by the Provincial Council and operated by Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. According to his biographer, Marion Learned, Pastorius had mixed success as schoolmaster; a few records show that certain students and parents resented some of his conduct in the school. A community school, not a Friends school, opened in Germantown in 1702. Pastorius was the first master and taught there at least until 1710, and perhaps later. ¹⁰

He had married Ennecke Klostermann on November 6, 1688, and they had two sons, Johann Samuel, born 1690, and Heinrich, 1692. Pastorius and his family lived in Germantown until he died, in late 1719.

Such, in brief, is the life of Francis Daniel Pastorius. As to what kind of person he was, the evidence is only indirect. His writings show him to be, like his father, intelligent and well—educated, and also familiar with a variety of languages.¹¹ A look at the communities he lived in, and the people he knew, can suggest how his ideas probably developed and guided his life. Another look, at the many books he became acquainted with, indicate where his interests lay.

Pastorius probably did not meet William Penn until he came to Pennsylvania, but he certainly knew of the Quaker leader some years before, since Penn had visited the Rhineland and the Netherlands in 1677. And we have seen that Pastorius welcomed with relief his return to his Pietist friends, in 1682, after his “Grand Tour,” the two-year sojourn in another world.

The seventeenth—century movement known as Pietism was primarily Lutheran, but it represented a wider emphasis on religious experience or feeling, against all types of formalism; for the Pietists, religion was the inward response of the individual to God.¹² The writings of the medieval mystics were popular with them; the devotional life was central to their faith. Pietism taught a personal, moral reformation. It was a Biblical faith, but the Bible was to be interpreted by the individual inspired by the Holy Spirit. It was in many respects a lay movement, returning to the original Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. And it was also perfectionist. There was constant tension between the actual and the ideal, the old and the new. Pietists were Calvinists in their protest against the world, but it was not in order that the community of believers might build a City of God but so that the individual might lead a new life, in a new personal situation. This impulse produced a wide variety of religious groups, many of them short—lived; included also were the missionary movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and social activities such as, in England, John Howard’s prison reform and William Wilberforce’s emancipation agitation.

The leading figure of this new spirit in German Protestantism was the Lutheran preacher Philip Jacob Spener, who rejected the whole neo-scholastic tradition of Protestantism; instead of Luther’s and Calvin’s “justification,” he taught “regeneration.” “Rebirth,” “inner man,” “illumination,” were key words in Spener’s immensely popular preaching. The problem of salvation was looked at from a human point of view, “biologically” rather than exclusively from the viewpoint of an omniscient, omnipotent God. Christianity was a life rather than acceptance of particular beliefs. The orthodox attacked such views as these as Pelagian, Papist, Socinian, Arminian, and Quaker.

Spener (1635—1705) was only 16 years older than Pastorius. He had both studied and taught at the University in Strasbourg, where the religious emphasis, especially Biblical studies, had great influence on him, and had also studied at Basel—-two of the institutions in which Pastorius spent some time. Thus Pastorius was ripe for the Pietist circle he found at Frankfurt. And from this group it was natural that he should be attracted to Quakerism, and he probably had a rather long-standing acquaintance with Quakers and Quaker beliefs and practices before he came to Pennsylvania.

The extensive list of books in the Beehive, if not a catalogue of Pastorius’s own library, is at least a record of books he was intimately acquainted with. De Ella Toms supposes many were borrowed, and suggests that he had access to James Logan’s library; she quotes from a 1718 letter of Pastorius to Lloyd Zachary: “I indeed did read, pick & cull several hundreds, whilst in this country, & yet bought none, but they were lent me by W. Penn, S. Carpenter, I. Norris, R. Preston, Gr. Owen, &c. to whom (tho’ most of them deceased), I still am obliged for their kindness.”¹³ The transcriptions of titles are, for the most part, complete enough to identify the book, even in the cramped space allowed, with date of publication and often indication of format (fol., folio; 4°, quarto; 8°, octavo; 12°., twelvemo,). Even the departures from what we today consider the rules of cataloguing indicate that Pastorius knew what he was doing. In the considerable number of entries difficult to identify easily, the sentences or phrases used are sometimes not just part of the title but an indication of the subject of the book.

Dates of publication vary from before 1640 and as late as 1717, only two years before his death. Some are not dated, but references (if found) are to editions not later than 1719.

The following listing preserves as nearly as possible the way in which the books are recorded. In much of the manuscript numbered lines are drawn across each page. Pastorius made an attempt to group entries alphabetically by author, but this was not followed consistently. The pages were obviously prepared as a catalogue, since many of the numbered lines were left blank for later entries.

As far as possible I have added footnotes that identify the entries by citations to standard bibliographical sources either by page or number only, or with brief additions that give a more complete indication of author or title. [N.B. The Digital Beehive presents Riley’s footnotes as the fourth column entry.]

In this paper more items than I wanted (104 of the total 1114) have as notes the phrase “No listing found,” i.e. I could not find a bibliographical record. Research on this problem will continue and I hope some time to have available a supplement (to be interfiled) that will one way or another provide published listing of all the titles. Especially difficult to read in the manuscript, and hence to identify, are some works by authors well known in the Pietist circles (see pages 79 and 80: eighteen entries not transcribed).

The paging in the following list presents a problem. Pastorius himself headed pages with notations such as “Pag. 53^2nd, 56^1st, 60^1st, 60^2nd,” etc., and toward the end of the manuscript (which is now, after leaf preservation, bound as two volumes), where the book list given here takes up only two pages, he called them “Pag. 375” and “Pag. 376.” Much later the entire manuscript had other page numbers added, evidently by another owner, beginning, for this book list, with “106, 107” etc., and ending in the second volume with “627” and “628.”

At least most of Pastorius’s own numberings are recorded here, as well as the later ones. However, since in the following typed copy each manuscript page usually fills up several typed pages, numbers for page 106, for example, are given as “106, 106A, 1068, 106C, 106D,” etc. and, in addition, the 116 typed sheets are numbered 1-116. Notes about certain pages, therefore, contain references such as “46 (113B),” or “56 (115),” or “107 (617A). This is somewhat complicated but it does seem necessary to include in some way both the paging of the manuscript and the typescript. [N.B. The Digital Beehive Team is in the process of finding a new, digital means of writing references.]

Pastorius’s Beehive list of more than one thousand titles is a miscellaneous one; many subjects are covered. However, he made one general division: Quaker and non—Quaker. Introductory pages have headings such as “Some Treatises of God’s People called Quakers in General,” “No Quakers,” “Friends Writings,” “Books written by such as are no Q^rs,” or “Writings of Some called Quakers, & other good Authors.” Quaker titles number 414, non-Quaker 700. On page 89 (121D) Pastorius characteristically adds a note: “NON QUIS, SED QUID. In this volume, as ye find, Friends & No—friends speak their mind. But Reader, Of these Two, care more for WHAT, than WHO.”

Friends writings are for the most part what one would expect. For example, 21 titles are George Fox’s, James Nailer (sometimes spelled “Nailor”) has 11, and, not surprisingly, William Penn is represented by 32. The range over other seventeenth—century Quaker authors is a wide one.

In transcribing the titles and finding a bibliographical listing, the place of printing, if not noted, is assumed to be London, which, seeing the subjects and places where the books were used, seems acceptable. Exceptions are noted. There are a few American printings-—for instance, a Reiner Jansen printing (p. 14 [108C]). Some of these are products of the George Keith controversy, e.g. p. 20 (109A), printed by William Bradford of Philadelphia.

As noted earlier, since Pastorius died in 1719, no later publication dates are possible. The range of dates is mainly from the 1640’s to the early 1700’s. In a few cases, a 16th—century publication date is given (pp. 53, 54, 57 [114C, 114D, 115A]). It is, of course, possible that Pastorius had, or had used, these “older” books, but it is just as likely that he recorded the date of the first edition as given on an engraved title page, or in an introduction. In one case of a later book, he cites it as published in 1655 but the book has no imprint, only a note, “Written in 1655,” (p. 19 [109], item no. 182). The most intriguing of the items of early date are the books by Sebastian Franck, recorded in the original German: “Chronica Zeit-und Geschicht—buch,” 1531, and “Cosmography,” 1534, which are the dates of the first editions (p. 54 [114D]).

Two notes: Not all the individual items mentioned in this introduction are identified by pages in the typescript, only some that seem to be of unusual interest. And: A word that appears often in the text is “y^e,” which is the form, in this period, for “the,” since “y” was adapted from the Old and Middle English letter called “thorn,” i.e. “th.”

Most of the works in the Beehive list are in English. On the first page of the manuscript Pastorius wrote: “In this Volume I only collected the Best out of English (or Englished) Books as you may see from the foll. 55 to 64. Excepted never the less some few lines out of the Dutch writings of Sebastian Franck, a honest & notable man in his Time. Vid. fol. 59, num. 114, 118,” (i.e p. 54, [114]).

In Pastorius’s manuscript “Res Propriae,” there are also entries for books–at least 500.¹⁴ Many of these are non—English publications, expecially Dutch and German. He heads it: “Alvearalia… or such Phrases and Sentences, which in haste were Booked down here, before I had Time to Carry them to … my English - Folio Bee—hive.” Of these entries, 16 are for volumes of pamphlets bound together, and each of the pamphlets is identified. Thus the number of items described in the list increase to over 550.

Few of the non—English titles described in the “Res Propriae” manuscript appear also in the Beehive, but of the estimated 250 or so English titles, about one-half are also part of the Beehive list.

One of the pamphlet volumes in the “Res Propriae” (Learned p. 277, item no. 19) begins “In einem Band,” and is followed by 18 titles. It happens that this particular volume is in the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, a 1951 gift. It has a contemporary leather binding, and includes a two—page index of the volume’s contents, in Pastorius’s hand. Most of the pamphlets are in Dutch, some in German, a few in English. But the volume itself contains 39 titles, not 18.¹⁵

Pastorius was familiar with a number of languages. On page 21 (109B), item no. 214, on baptism, has the Greek word for baptism printed, in Greek letters, as on the title page of the volume itself. This is the only instance I found of the use of Greek in the manuscript transcription of a of book title, but other entries, when checked for a listing in published catalogues, obviously had Greek in the title but were recorded differently in the manuscript. And Pastorius did use Latin in some of his notes, e.g. “Vide supra num. 90 … & infra p. 61^2d .” (p. 42 [112C]).

It seems obvious that Pastorius was familiar with these books even if he did not own all of them. As noted earlier, he regularly gives publication dates and formats. Frequently he omits words in a title, probably to save space. For instance, item no. 67 on page 5 (106D) is recorded as “Thomas Upsher’s a Mournful Word to the Merry-hearted in Zion,” but its complete title begins “To Friends in Ireland and elsewhere, a Mournful Word.” No. 77 on p. 7 (107A), “Robert Barclay’s Christian Labours & Writings colleted in fol. 1692” is “Truth Triumphant … Christian Labours….” No. 81, p. 7 (107A), and “William Smiths Collections in fol. 1675” is “Balm from Gilead. A collection of the Living Divine Testimonies ….” Fol., 1675.

Another practice that tends to puzzle the modern reader are some notes evidently clear to the original user but a problem for later readers: for instance, on p. 37 (111E), in a column of authors with names beginning with “W,” a work by Moses West, “Treatise concerning Marriage,” is followed immediately by “M.W.’s a Lamentation over England,” which turns out to be by Morgan Watkins.

Although religious subjects and historical figures make up perhaps the majority of titles, one can go through the pages and see, as well, a surprising variety of books noted, revealing the wide range of interests of this seventeenth-century figure who had the intention of giving to his sons a comprehensive picture of the world they lived in.

Classical works appear: Plutarch and Seneca; also “Letters to Pythagoras” by Averroes, a 12th-century Arabian author best known as a commentator on Aristotle (p. 76 [119C]). Other early authors: Grotius on international law; Sir Walter Raleigh on government and the military; the dramatists Beaumont and Fletcher; Cervantes and Cyrano de Bergerac; reformers—-John Bellers’s “Colledge of Industry” and Johann Amos Comenius on education; Daniel Defoe’s “True Born Englishman” and “Robinson Crusoe.” There are books by Robert Boyle, and others on science, including a study of eclipses. Among the medical books are “Nich. Culpeper’s Pharmacopaea Londingnsis, or the London Dispensatory (the Physicians Library) in 8 1675;” Thomas Tryon‘s “The good house-wife made a Doctor, Health Choice & sure Friend, & cheap & easy Remedies”; a “Dissertatin of the Small Pox” 1696; “Dr. Carleton’s magnetique Cure of wounds” 1640.

There is a transcript of the lengthy title of the 8 volumes of “Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy,” 1687, by Giovanni Paolo Marana (Mamut the Arabian) (p. 60 [115D]). There are also books for sportsmen—-on riding and racing, hunting, bowling, tennis – and “The School of Recreation.” Also, by Francis Quarles, “Emblemes (5 books) and Hieroglyphickes (1 book)“ 1696 (p. 63 [116A].

Not every book included was therefore recommended. Pastorius added some negative notes, e.g., with a book on wines, “N.B. For this you’ll meet with good liquors, but bad Latin.” (p. 70 [117B]). And on p. 44 (113):

*a Rational Catechism, in 8° 1687. the rationality of the Matter of this book I leave to the reasonable Reader; but the manner of his new Orthography, ex gr. to write som for some, give, love, resolve; due, true, because, &c. without the final e; blac, sic, nec without k; bridge, Pledge, lodge without the d. Carrage for Carriage, enugh for enough, &c. &c. I needs must dispraise.

A section of two pages (83—84 [122B-120C]) is headed: “Jocular Books Fit for the Fire. Consumant Flamae petulantes undg^t. Libros! Vide Acta Apost. cap. 19 [verse] 19,” and it includes “Coffee—House Jests … The Comical History of the States & Empires of the Worlds of the Moon & Sun … by Cyrano Bergerac … Wil’s Cabinet, Containing the whole Art of Wooing and making love … Comical history of the late past times in Droll … Tom Thumb, Guy of Warwick, Valentine and Orson, or suchlike foolish books.”

An interesting entry is a 12mo volume of 1675 (p. 62 [116]): “Edward Phillip‘s Theatrum Poetarum, Or a Compleat Collection of the most eminent Poets of all Ages antient & modern.“ Also, names of almanacs occur throughout, descriptions of nine “Broad Sheets in folio” including epistles of Philadelphia and London Yearly Meetings, two George Keith documents, and notes about legal questions.

Another unusual entry (p. 64 [116B]): “Francis Rouse’s some time … Provost of Eaton Colledge, Academia Coelestis, the Heavenly University, or the highest School, where alone is that highest Teaching, the teaching of the [and, inserted, a heart-shaped drawing].”

And one entry is especially worth noting because of Pastorius’s part in the 1688 Philadelphia Friends Meeting’s protest against slavery : “John Hepburn’s Essay to prove the unlawfulness of making slaves of men … 1715. Out of this I collected chiefly into my theological tracts …” (p. 57 (115A]).

This Beehive list of books——a complicated one and somewhat difficult to transcribe and identify–-can, I hope, provide a little more insight into the life of this early and important settler in Pennsylvania.

NOTES

Below are the standard catalogues used in identifying the Beehive books, with the short forms that appear in the footnotes. Further attempts to find listings may be made by examining other sources, and, also, by trying again to interpret the sometimes puzzling way titles are recorded by Pastorius. Some other cases lacking a record are because of the difficulty of deciphering the handwriting.

BMC: British Museum, General Catalogue of Printed Books. London, 1959-1965, (and Supplements, 1968-1975). 268 vols.

Bristol: Bristol, Roger, Supplement to Charles Evans’ American Bibliography. Charlottesville, VA. 1970.

Evans: Evans, Charles, American Bibliography, A Chronological Dictionary of … Books, Pamphlets and Periodical Publications Printed in the United States of America … 1639 … to … 1820. 12 vols. New York, 1941-1942.

Pollard & Redgrave: A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, A Short—title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland … 1475—1640. 2nd ed. 3 vols. London, 1976—1991.

NUC: The National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints. 754 vols. American Library Association, 1968—1980, (and Supplement, 1981).

Smith: Joseph Smith, A Descriptive Catalogue of Friends’ Books. 2 vols. London, 1867.

Wing: Donald Wing, et al. Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in Scotland, Wales, and British America and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700. 2nd ed. 3 vols. New York: MLA, 1972—1988.