Background
John Christopher Frederick Cammerhoff was born on July 28, 1721 at Hillersleben, near Magdeburg, Germany; of religious parents who dedicated him, even before his birth, to the ministry.
John Christopher Frederick Cammerhoff was born on July 28, 1721 at Hillersleben, near Magdeburg, Germany; of religious parents who dedicated him, even before his birth, to the ministry.
John was first instructed at home by private tutors, then attended the celebrated Protestant school of Kloster Bergen, and in 1738 entered the University of Jena where he came under Moravian influence in the persons of John Nitschmann and Count C. R. Zinzendorf.
Upon graduation from the University of Jena, out of deference to his parents' wishes, he accepted a position as tutor at Kloster Bergen, but he was increasingly repelled by the formality of Lutheranism and in 1743, with two fellow-teachers, Schumann and Zurmucklen, he sought admission into the Moravian Brotherhood and received an appointment in the Theological Seminary at Marienborn in Wetteravia. He found the religious views prevalent in that region entirely congenial, sharing to the full in the extreme emotionalism, the mystic emphasis upon the Passion, the delight in fantastic symbolism, and the conviction of being in a state of special grace which were characteristic of the Wetteravian group. He once more came under the direct influence of Zinzendorf, and after two years was made his amanuensis. At the early age of twenty-five, he was appointed assistant to Bishop A. G. Spangenberg in Pennsylvania. He was consecrated bishop in London two months after his marriage on July 23, 1746; and arrived in America toward the end of the year. Spangenberg distrusted the emotional fervor of his young assistant but felt powerless to prevent his introduction of Wetteravian methods, as he soon perceived that Cammerhoff was acting under secret instructions from their mutual superiors in Germany. The influence of the younger man rapidly increased. He maintained an extensive correspondence with Zinzendorf and other officials of the Church--his letters sometimes running to more than one hundred closely written pages, preached widely among the settlers of Pennsylvania and New York, and made extensive missionary journeys among the Indians. The supposedly stolid aborigines were quick to respond to Cammerhoff's child-like enthusiasm, and he came to enjoy their confidence to a marked degree, being formally adopted into the Turtle tribe of the Oneida nation, on April 15, 1748, under the name of Gallichwio, or "Good Message. " His longest journey was to the Grand Council of the Iroquis Confederacy at Onondaga, New York, in 1750, in which accompanied by David Zeisberger, he covered 1, 600 miles in three months, being exposed, in addition to the customary perils of the wilderness, to the dangers of four nights in an Indian village where all the males were crazed with drink. His health was broken by the hardships of this journey, and he died in the ensuing spring, at the age of twenty-nine. With his death the Wetteravian influence in this country came to an end.
He was married, on July 23, 1746, to Anna von Pahlen, a Livonian baroness.