The New International Encyclopædia/Schlatter, Michael

SCHLATTER, Michael (1716-90). A German Reformed minister. He was born at Saint Gall, and was educated there and at the University of Helmstedt. He entered the ministry, and in 1746 was sent by the synods of Holland to the German Reformed emigrants in Pennsylvania. He was pastor of the German Reformed churches in Philadelphia and Germantown, 1746-51, and organized churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. He assisted in organizing the Synod of the German Reformed Church in 1747, but in 1755 gave up pastoral work, so as to devote himself to the organization of schools among the Germans, in which English should be taught. In 1757 he was chaplain of an expedition to Nova Scotia against the French, returned in 1759, and preached at Chestnut Hill, now part of Philadelphia, and elsewhere. He was still a royal chaplain when the Revolutionary War broke out, but, espousing the cause of the colonies, he was imprisoned in 1777, when the British took Philadelphia. Consult his Life by H. Harbaugh (Philadelphia, 1857).