Post, Christian Frederick

Post, Christian Frederick a distinguished but somewhat erratic Mioravian missionary, was born in 1710 at Conlitz, in Polish Prussia. He immigrated to America in 1742. He preached, after his arrival in this country, among the Indians, with whom he was connected by marriage, his first wife, Rachel, having been a baptized Womrpanoag, and his second wife, Agnes, a baptized Delaware. His earliest missionary labors extended over parts of New England and New York. In 1745, while among the Mohawks, he was arrested on the false charge of being a French spy, sent to New York, and there confined for seven weeks in the jail of the City Hall. His companion, David Zeisberger (q.v.), shared the same lot. The protest of Governor Thomas and other influential Pennsylvanians at last secured their release. After the death of his second Indian wife-his third wife was a white woman— he returned to Europe, and thence, in 1752, sailed to Labrador, attempting to bring the Gospel to the Esqtinaunx. Having come back to Pennsylvania in 1754, lie established himself in the Wyoming Valley, where he instructed the Indians and entertained traveling missionaries until the breaking out of the French and Indian War. In the course of this war, in the summer of 1758, at the instance of the government of Pennsylvania, he undertook a perilous journey through the Indian country as far as Ohio, inducing the Western tribes which were in league with France to bury the hatchet and send deputies to a congress at Easton. This congress resulted in a general pacification, which embraced all the nations except the Twightwees. Undaunted by the dangers of his first tour, he thereupon visited the Indian country a second time, and induced the Twightwees also to conclude peace. Post thus conferred an incalculable benefit upon the colonies, and indirectly helped to bring the North American continent under the sway of the Anglo-Saxon race. The journal of his first tour, which caused a great sensation at the time, was published in London in 1759, in a work entitled An Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawnee Indians from the British Interest, etc. It is also found in the Penn. Archives, 3, 520-544. After the war Post began (1761) an independent mission on the Tuscarawas, Ohio. The breaking out of the Pontiac conspiracy compelled him to retire. He went to the South, and in the beginning of 1764 sailed from Charleston to Mosquitia, where he preached to the natives. In 1767 he visited the colonies, but returned again to Mosquitia. After that we lose sight of him until 1784, when he is found residing in Germantown, Pa. There he died, April 29, 1785, and was buried in the Lower Graveyard of that place by the Rev. William White (afterwards bishop White), rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia. (E. de S.)