John Joachim Zubly, minister and political pamphleteer, was born and educated in St. Gall, Switzerland, and, in 1744, ordained at the German Church in London. Shortly thereafter, he immigrated to the British Colonies in North America and arrived in Georgia in 1745. He served in Savannah as assistant to the Reverend Bartholomew Zouberbuhler, a German-Swiss minister, for two years and then moved to Purrysburg, South Carolina, to join his father, David, who had established his own ministry there in 1736. Zubly married Anna Tobler, also a German-Swiss immigrant, in November 1746, and together they had three children, John (who died in 1780), Anne (born in 1756), and David (who died in 1790). Some time after Anna Zubly's death in 1765, Zubly wed Anne Pyne.

In 1760, Zubly returned to Savannah as minister of the Independent Church, a meetinghouse composed chiefly of dissenters from the Church of England. Zubly prospered in Savannah, and he quickly became a prominent...