LEWIS DAVID VON SCHWEINITZ. 



1780-1834. 



DURING colonial times in America, and even down into the 

 present century, science advanced over a much-obstructed 

 path. Not having then attained to its present power and es- 

 teem, there were but few of its votaries whose whole time and 

 best energies it could command. The explorations by which 

 the animals, plants, and minerals of the vast Western continent 

 were made known to science were accomplished in large part 

 by naturalists who either followed some other vocation as a 

 means of livelihood, or were mainly occupied by some other 

 career to which they felt more strongly bound. Franklin was 

 a printer and later a statesman, being an electrician only at odd 

 times ; John Bartram was a farmer ; Mitchill, Hosack, and 

 Barton were physicians ; while Muhlenberg and the subject of 

 this article were clergymen. 



Lewis David von Schweinitz was born, February 13, 1780, 

 at Bethlehem, Pa., then a Moravian Church settlement which 

 had been founded by his family in 1741. His father, Baron 

 Hans Christian Alexander von Schweinitz, came from an an- 

 cient and distinguished family residing on the ancestral estate 

 called Leuba in the present limits of Saxony. That he was a 

 man of stable character may be inferred from the fact that he 

 performed the responsible duties of a treasurer general for the 

 Moravian Church in America. The mother of Lewis was Dor- 

 othea Elizabeth, daughter of Baron (afterward Bishop) John 

 de Watteville, and Benigna, daughter of Lewis Nicholas, 

 Count Zinzendorf. It was to Zinzendorf and Watteville that 

 the renewal and resuscitation of the ancient church of the 

 Unitas Fratrum, or Moravian Brethren, in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury was mainly due. In 1722 two families of the Brethren 

 crossed the frontier of Moravia by night and made their way 

 to the estate of Count Zinzendorf in Saxony. Here they were 



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