John Okely (167)

John Okely (26 May 1721–15 May 1792) was a minister, land broker, scientist, and public official, and a member of the American Philosophical Society via his 1768 election to the American Society. A youthful Moravian convert, he arrived in America in 1742 and soon set to itinerating country, town, and city, to win other souls. Made deacon in 1751, he left the circuit for Bethlehem to serve the Moravian Society as their land broker in dealings public and private. Okley facilitated local housing and supplies during periods of the Seven Years’ War (1754–63), a role he reassumed during the Revolution. In the months preceding those hostilities, he served as a justice of the peace (1774), and as a member of the Northampton County Committee of Observation as well as the Committee of Correspondence (1774), before serving the county at the Provincial Convention in Philadelphia in early 1775. His revolutionary fervor put him at odds with his congregation: he was neither a regular presence at worship, nor did he blindly defend Moravians suspected of disaffection. A related disaffection grew as the war closed and the peace settled out in 1787: Okley and the Brotherhood disputed ownership of a tract surveyed to him as their agent, and, when Okley lost the court case, he penned paper attacks on the Society as “Thomas Troublesome.” Excommunicated in 1788, he left for Lancaster. Through it all, Okely promoted useful knowledge in a variety of forms: he shared with APS his method for cultivating currents and vinting them into wine (published in the first APS Transactions in 1771); he facilitated a knowledge and cocoon interchange between the Brethren raising silkworms at Bethlehem with the nascent Silk Society in Philadelphia in 1770; he served publicly in evaluating settlers’ claims in 1784; his suggestions for farm improvements led to his becoming an honorary member in the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture in 1785. He died in 1792. (PI)