NITSCHMANN, David, Moravian bishop, born in Zauchtenthal, Moravia, 27 December, 1696; died in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 8 October, 1772. In 1724 he emigrated to Herrnhut, Saxony, where he devoted himself to the work of an evangelist. In 1732 he went to the West Indies as one of the first two foreign missionaries of the Moravian church, who declared their readiness to sell themselves as slaves if there should be no other way of reaching the negroes. Three years later, on 13 March, 1735, he was consecrated to the episcopacy at Berlin by Bishop Daniel Ernst Jablousky, with the concurrence of Bishop Sitkovius, of Poland, the two surviving representatives of the ancient episcopate of the Unitas Fratrum, which had been maintained amid many persecutions for more than two and a half centuries. After this he was almost constantly on official journeys both in Europe and America. Toward the end of the year in which he was consecrated he visited the colony that the Moravians had established in Savannah, Georgia, sailing across the Atlantic in the same vessel with John and Charles Wesley, who were deeply impressed by the fearlessness that he and his companions displayed in the midst of a terrific storm. At Savannah, 28 February, 1736, he ordained Anthony Seifferth, and this was probably the first ordination by a Protestant bishop within the bounds of the United States. John Wesley was present, and was so impressed with the simplicity and solemnity of the occasion that he imagined himself in one of the assemblies that were presided over by the apostles. In 1740 Nitschmann paid a second visit to this country, and founded Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the chief seat of the Moravians in the United States. Four years later, while on his way back to Europe, the ship in which he was sailing was captured by a Spanish frigate, and he was taken to St. Sebastian and detained as a prisoner until 1745. In 1748 he visited the American Moravian churches a third time, and in 1755 he came to stay in this country, working with unabated zeal until the infirmities of old age called for rest. His life was one of extraordinary activity and great success. He labored in different parts of Germany, in Livonia, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, in England and Wales, in the West Indies, in Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York, and North Carolina, and in various regions of the Indian country. In the course of these labors he undertook not less than fifty sea-voyages.