Michael Schlatter

Michael Schlatter (14 July 1716 St. Gallen, Switzerland – 31 October 1790 near Philadelphia) was an American German Reformed clergyman.

Schlatter was educated at the gymnasium of St. Gallen, after which he was tutored in theology, and then proceeded to the University of Leyden and then the University of Helmstedt in Brunswick. He then returned to his tutor for some time before being ordained in 1739. He taught for several years in Holland and then entered the German Reformed ministry. He officiated a few months in Switzerland, and then offered his services as a missionary to the German Reformed emigrants in Philadelphia in 1746, after learning of a request made to the Dutch Reformed Church for ministers by German Reformed clergyman John Phillip Boehm and went to Pennsylvania in that year, arriving on 6 August. He served as pastor of the united churches of Germantown and Philadelphia in 1746-51, organized a synod which met in Philadelphia in 1747, and made extended missionary tours among the German Reformed settlers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and New York State.

In 1751, he returned to Europe to report on his work. In Amsterdam, he published (1751) a journal of his experiences and transactions in America, with an account of the Reformed congregations and their dearth of pastors. Of this book, he made a German translation (Frankfort, 1752), and afterward it was rendered into English by Rev. David Thomson, of Amsterdam, and distributed throughout Great Britain. As a result of Schlatter's appeal, £20,000 was raised in England and Holland for the establishment of free schools among the Germans in America. He also secured the assistance of six young preachers, and 700 Bibles.

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