John George Jungmann

John George Jungmann, missionary, b. in Hockenheim, Palatinate, 19 April, 1720; d. in Bethlehem, Pa., 17 July, 1808. In 1732 he came with his father to this country, and settled at l Oley, Berks co., Pa. At that place he witnessed, in 1742, the baptism of the first three Moravian converts from the Indian nation, and was so deeply impressed that he resolved to devote himself to missionary work among the aborigines. He labored with zeal and distinguished success at Gnadenhuetten, Pa., at Pachgatgoch, Conn., at Wyalusing. Pa., at Friedenstadt, on Beaver river, Pa., and in the Tuscarawas valley, Ohio, first as a lay evangelist, and after 1770 as an ordained deacon of the Moravian church. In consequence of the complications that were produced along the western border by the Revolutionary war he retired in 1777 to Bethlehem for a few years, but in 1781 resumed his work in Ohio. It was of but short duration. Jungmann and all the other missionaries were taken prisoners by the Huron halfking and his band of British Indians, carried with the whole body of converts to Sandusky, and eventually brought to Detroit by order of the commandant of that post. The massacre of nearly one hundred Christian Indians in 1782 broke up the flourishing mission in Ohio, the converts scattering in every direction. When at last they returned to their teachers, Jungmann helped to found a new station on Clinton river, in Michigan, and then, in 1785, after thirty-five years in the service of the Indian mission, retired to Bethlehem.

Source: Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. III, ed. by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1888, pp. 488.

Contributed by: Nancy.