Christian Frederick Post (166)

Christian Frederick Post (c. 1715–29 April 1785) was a missionary and a colonial ambassador to western tribes, and a member of the American Philosophical Society via his 1768 election to the American Society. Post was born in Polish Prussia, joined the Moravian Brotherhood, and emigrated to the community at Bethlehem, PA in 1742. His missionary itinerancy first took him to Goshenhoppen, PA and then to a group Christian Mohicans in New York, where he founded a school and he found love, marrying the first of his two Native American (and three total) wives. His missions to various tribes carried him throughout New York, Labrador, and the Wyoming region, and the accrued expertise and cultural sensitivity in Indian relations led to his appointment as an ambassador (1758–59) to the French-allied tribes in the Ohio Valley during the Seven Years’ War (1754–63). His role as an intermediary proved crucial. Through the remainder of the war, Post worked less as an agent than as a disinterested ambassador and interpreter for both sides; his interest remained focused on reigniting his missionary ministry. What happened instead was the great conflagration that grew into Pontiac’s War, which forced him to fly back to Bethlehem and to abandon his Indian ministrations altogether. He worked his way to Honduras, of all places, working as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for the next twenty years, of all things. He proselytized there in the Anglican tradition, serving a mixed-faith congregation on a small S.P.G. stipend and what few alms locals offered. Pillaged by the Spanish in 1783, a weary Post begged a health leave, spending only a few months in Philadelphia prior to his death. Episcopalian William White, rector of Christ Church and APS member, performed his services. (PI)