John G. Heckewelder

John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder was a Moravian Missionary in the Ohio Country in the American Revolution and the early years of the new nation.

Heckewelder was born in Bedford, England in 1743. He spent his early years attending Unity of Brethren (Moravian Church) schools in England as well as in Pennsylvania after his parents immigrated to British North America in 1754. Heckewelder's father apprenticed him to a cooper in 1759, but the young man dreamed of becoming a Moravian evangelist. In 1762, missionary Christopher Frederick Post granted this wish, asking Heckewelder to assist him with the Christian Delaware Indians located in western Pennsylvania. He spent the next eight years serving as a messenger for Post and David Zeisberger, another Moravian missionary.

In 1772, Heckewelder accompanied Zeisberger to eastern Ohio to establish a village for the Christian Delawares. The village, Schoenbrunn, prospered, and the missionaries quickly founded other communities, including Gnadenhutten and Lichtenau. During the American Revolution, the Moravians and their native converts faced persecution from both the English and the Americans, neither of whom believed the Moravians' declarations of neutrality. British officials arrested both Heckewelder and Zeisberger in 1781 for treason. Taken to Detroit for trial, the two men eventually convinced the authorities of their innocence. While the two men were absent from their missions in eastern Ohio, a detachment of Pennsylvania militia killed ninety-six Christian Delawares in what became known as the Gnadenhutten Massacre.

In 1786 Heckewelder retired from his missionary activities. He hoped to spend the remainder of his life with his wife, Sarah Ohneberg Heckewelder, whom he had married in 1780 in Salem, Ohio. They were the first white couple to marry in Ohio. Heckewelder's knowledge of Native American customs and languages forced him out of retirement, as the newly formed United States enlisted his aid in negotiating several treaties with Native Americans in western Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan during the 1790s and the first decade of the 1800s. In 1810, Heckewelder began to write of his experiences with the Indians, dedicating the remainder of his life to recording his knowledge of Native American customs. He died in 1823.