The Printer of Germantown — Christopher Sauer Jr.
The printshop smells of lampblack and linseed oil. Outside, Germantown is arguing about muskets and independence. Inside, a man is setting German type by candlelight and does not argue at all.
It is 1763.
He does not just print pamphlets. He prints scripture in the language his people actually speak, because the German immigrants around him cannot read English and he believes every man and woman deserves to hold the word in their own tongue.
He does not just carry on his father’s press. He extends it. The second complete Bible printed in America in a European language comes off his press in 1763, in the typeface his neighbors can actually read.
He does not just hold his ground. He pays for it. When Continental soldiers come, they take the press, the shop, and the unbound sheets of his third Bible edition. The sheets become cartridge paper for muskets. He dies poor in 1784.
His Spark of Liberty was the page in your own language. The conviction that faith and learning belonged to the people who needed them, in the tongue they were born into, not in the English of a ruling class.
Now, “Where History Comes to Life.”
He ran the most important German-language print operation in colonial America, carrying forward the work his father began. He held to his Brethren pacifism when the Revolution came, even as it cost him everything he had built. The Bibles survived. He died in 1784.
His name was Christopher Sauer Jr.
Now We Know Em
by Christopher B. Gordon
The Speedwell’s Confession, Book One of the Sparks of Liberty series, is live on Amazon Kindle and free with Kindle Unlimited. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ5QH7L8
#NowWeKnowEm #SparksOfLiberty #TurningPointPress #QuietHands #GermanAmericanHistory #ColonialPrinting #AmericanBible
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