This book tells one of the most under-told of American heroic stories. 

First Explorer is a biography of the Swiss humanitarian Francis Michael (1675-1749?) who was first to explore beyond the Atlantic coast and who in the early 1700s resettled thousands of European religious and war refugees to America in colonies that he created for them.

The lasting legacy of the young foresighted adventurer is his opening a new continent, joining it to an older one, and moving thousands from one to the other, delivering them unto opportunity, religious freedom, and peace that they had not had where they were coming from. 

Realizing this took a grand vision as broad as anyone's of his era, superior execution to pull it off, and the heart of a great humanitarian to drive it all. Vision, ability to deliver, and heart Francis Michael all had in large measure. That and he was eastern America's first great explorer.

All in a decade, Michael would create an organization of refugee rescue and relocation on a scale never before conceived, found friendly American colonies to receive refugees, and arrange refugee transport to the distant new continent by a public-private partnership far ahead of its time. 

In his early life, Francis Michael, born Frantz Ludwig Michel, took British citizenship and the name Francis Michael, settled at his first colony at King William, Virginia, and raised four sons, the youngest of whom is the author's ancestor.

Francis Michael devoted the rest of his life as a humanitarian bettering or outright saving the lives of thousands of European religious and war refugees. What he created would take on a permanent life of its own in the eighteenth century and eventually evolve to become the United States Federal Refugee Resettlement Program, very active today.