Career
He came to Pennsylvania in 1742, and worked at forming groups of German heritage into a church federation, but was unsuited to the task. His facility in learning the native languages suited him better to organizing native groups. Between 1743 and 1749 was a missionary to the Moravian Indians in New York State and Connecticut.
His and his co-workers" activities were viewed with suspicion by the settlers: he was expelled from New York and Connecticut once, and another time he was jailed in New York for seven weeks.
He returned to Europe in 1751, and thence was sent to Labrador, but afterward he came again to Pennsylvania, and was again employed in the Indian missions. In 1758 he undertook an embassy in behalf of the Pennsylvania Colony to the Delawares and Shawnees in Ohio.
He established an independent mission in Ohio in 1761, where he was joined in 1762 by John Heckewelder. But the Pontiac War forced them to abandon the project
In January, 1764, he sailed for the Mosquito Coast, where he labored two years, and he made a second visit there in 1767.
He retired in 1784, leaving the Miskito Indians to live in Germantown. His first two wives were native converts: Rachel, a Wampanoag, married him in 1743 and died about 1745, and Agnes, a Delaware, married him in 1747 and died in 1751.
