Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

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Zeisberger, David 1721-

Missionary; born in Zauchtenthal, Moravia, April 11, 1721; came to America in his youth, and joined his parents in Georgia, who had come before. He was one of the founders of Bethlehem, Pa., in 1740, and soon afterwards became a missionary among the Indians. During the operations of Pontiac he assisted the “Christian Indians,” as the converts were called, and finally led them to Wyalusing, Bedford co., Pa. In 1772 he founded a Christian Indian settlement on the Tuscarawas, Ohio, where he was joined by all the Moravian Indians in Pennsylvania. That settlement was destroyed in 1781. He founded another settlement in Huron county, near Lake Erie (1787), and on the Thames, in Canada. In 1798 the Moravians returned to their former settlements in Ohio, where grants had been made them by Congress, and established a new station, which they called Goshen, and there Zeisberger preached till his death, Nov. 17, 1808. He left in manuscript a Delaware grammar and dictionary and an Iroquois dictionary. The former is in Harvard University library, and the latter in the library of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia.