Christopher Sower (younger)

His father, also named Christopher Sower (I), had founded a printing and publishing business and other enterprises in Germantown, Pennsylvania, which the son later continued.

[3] During the American Revolutionary War, when British troops occupied Germantown, part of the unbound sheets for Sower's Bible edition of 1776 was seized and used for littering horses.

Though Christopher Sower II did not espouse the British cause, and had actively denounced the Stamp Act which doubly taxed foreign publications,[2] he was arrested and imprisoned.

His considerable property was confiscated, but instead of having recourse to the law, he said: “I made them to understand that I should permit everything to happen to me that the Lord should ordain.” Sower's one protest was against being labeled a traitor.

[1] The remainder of his old age was spent, except when visiting churches within his jurisdiction, at Methacton, where, assisted by his daughter, he supported himself at binding and selling remnants of his publications.

No one in his denomination has been held in higher veneration, and his benevolence to the poor families of the soldiers earned him the title of the “bread father.” He was also an orator, and his reputation as a writer extended throughout the colonies.