Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James
Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton
and Company, 1887-1889 and 1999. Virtualology.com warns that these 19th Century
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WOLLE, Peter, Moravian bishop,
born on the island of St. John, West Indies, 5 January, 1792; died in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, 14 November, 1871. His father, a Moravian missionary in the West
Indies, came to this country in 1800, and placed his son in school at Nazareth,
Pennsylvania Peter was afterward one of the first three graduates of the
theological seminary of the American Moravian church, and after his ordination
had charge of the churches at Lancaster, Philadelphia, and Lititz. While
laboring at Lititz he was consecrated to the episcopacy, 26 September, 1845. He
was an active member of the executive or governing board of the northern
district of the church for nearly twenty-five years, and at his death was senior
bishop of the Moravian church in Europe and America. He possessed a thorough
knowledge of music, and by direction of the synod revised and rearranged the
hymn-tunes that are now in use in the Moravian churches.
--His nephew, Francis Wolle, botanist, born in Jacobsburg, near Nazareth,
Pennsylvania, 17 December, 1817, was educated in the Moravian parochial school
in Bethlehem, and then became a clerk in his father's store. Subsequently he
taught, first at Nazareth hall and then in the higher departments of the
Moravian parochial school in Bethlehem. He became in 1857 vice-principal of the
Moravian seminary for young ladies, and in 1861 principal of that institution,
which place he held until 1881. He was ordained a clergyman in the Moravian
church in 1861, but is now retired. In 1852 he patented in the United States,
and later in France and England, a machine that he devised for making paper
bags. It was the first of its kind, and covers the fundamental principle of the
many similar machines that are now used. From early boyhood he made natural history
a study, particularly entomology, which later gave place to botany. At first he
studied phaenogams, then cryptogams, especially musci, hepaticae, and finally
the freshwater algae of the United States. He has contributed papers on his
specialties to the " Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club," and similar
periodicals. His works, which are recognized as authorities both in this country
and abroad, are "Desmids of the United States, and List of Pediastrums,"
with 1,100 illustrations by the author (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1884), and
"The Fresh-Water Alga of the United States," with 2,300 illustrations by the
author (2 vols., 1887).
