Daniel Wister (44)
Election date: 1761 (Elected to the Young Junto.)Daniel Wister (4 February 1739–27 October 1805) was a merchant and a member of the Young Junto, elected in 1761. Born the son of a wealthy Quaker merchant in Philadelphia, Wister attended the Academy of Philadelphia and a Lancaster County school where he learned to speak and write in German, skills he used throughout his career. He then set up a merchant business of his own in a building that featured a lightning rod left by its previous tenant Benjamin Franklin. During the Stamp Act crisis, Wister signed the Non-Importation agreement, verbally defended Franklin among Philadelphia’s German residents, and physically defended Franklin’s wife from a mob threatening her home. A gourmand who enjoyed horseracing and the theater, Wister was not a typical Quaker, and when he fell deeply into debt, he was disowned by the Friend’s Monthly Meeting. During the British occupation of Philadelphia, he relocated his family outside the city where his daughter Sally penned a journal still used by historians. After inheriting his father’s lands in Germantown, Wister began cultivating flowers, naming varieties after APS members Timothy Matlack and Franklin. His son Charles Jones Wister was also an APS member. (PI)