SEIDEL, Nathaniel, Moravian bishop, born in Lauban, Silesia, 2 October, 1718 ; died in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 17 May, 1782. He emigrated to this country in 1742, and became the most indefatigable of the early Moravian evangelists among the white settlers and the Indians. For eighteen years his life was an almost uninterrupted succession of journeys. He began such itinerant work with a visit to the aborigines of the Susquehanna in 1743; after that he repeatedly traversed Pennsylvania as far as Sunbury, the eastern counties of New York, New England as far as Boston, and Maryland as far as Frederick county. All these journeys were performed on foot. He was often in great danger, and on one occasion barely escaped falling into the hands of two savages, who pursued him through a forest for hours. In 1750 he proceeded to Europe and gave Count Zinzendorf an account of the work in America, returning in 1751 and continuing his itinerant labors until 1758, when he sailed to the West Indies and visited the mission on the Danish islands. He came back the same year and soon afterward led a company of Moravian settlers to North Carolina, where the church had purchased a large tract of land. It was a hard and perilous journey of forty days. In midwinter he returned to Bethlehem. His next, tour was to Surinam, in South America, where in 1755 he selected a site for a mission. On his return he again began to itinerate among the settlers and natives, and continued such labors until 1757. In that year he visited Europe a second time, and on 12 May, 1758, was consecrated to the episcopacy at Herrnhut. His first visitation took place in the West Indies in 1759. Two years later he returned to Bethlehem, having been appointed presiding bishop of his church. The onerous duties of this office he discharged with great faithfulness for twenty-one years until his death. He continued to take a warm interest in the Indian mission; and the massacre of nearly 100 converts, in the spring of 1782, at Gnadenhuetten, Ohio, by a band of whites, on the groundless suspicion of having been engaged in outrages in Pennsylvania, so affected him that his health gave way and he died two months later. An old record says of him" " His episcopate was precious and excellent . his memory will live in this country, in the West Indies, and among the Indians of North and South America."