John Lederer

John Lederer was a 17th-century German physician and an explorer of the Appalachian Mountains. He and the members of his party became the first Europeans to crest the Blue Ridge Mountains (1669) and the first to see the Shenandoah Valley and the Allegheny Mountains beyond. A map documenting his discoveries was integral to subsequent understanding of the interior.

Johann Lederer was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1644. He studied medicine at the Hamburg Academic Gymnasium where he matriculated in 1662. Lederer immigrated to Virginia in 1668. By this time he spoke French, Italian and Latin in addition to German, but had to learn English.

Believing that the riches of California lay just beyond the mountains west of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, colonial governor of Virginia, commissioned Lederer to make three expeditions into the Appalachians between 1669 and 1670. Berkeley wanted him to find a passage to the West and the Indian Ocean, which Europeans believed was a few weeks' travel away.

On 9 March 1669, Lederer left Chickahominy, an Indian village near the headwaters of the York River, and travelled northwest to Eminent Hill. During this expedition, lasting until 24 March, he and the three members of his small party became the first Europeans to crest the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the first to see the Shenandoah Valley and the Allegheny Mountains beyond.

In May 1670 Lederer left Fort Charles (now Richmond) and followed the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains south into what is now North Carolina. He was accompanied by Major Harris, commanding twenty white men, and five Indian guides. Twenty-one members of the party turned back, but Lederer pushed on with Jackzetavon, one of his five Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock guides. They explored North Carolina to the Catawba River near what is now Charlotte. They returned to Virginia by mid-July, when they reached Fort Henry (now Petersburg), a frontier post on the Appomattox River.

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