During this same day Whitefield offered to hire as builders the Moravians who had arrived from Savannah on the sloop with him.
Whitefield and the Moravians then visited the ground, when the latter, by the cast of the lot, according to their custom, felt directed to engage in the enterprise.
Seward, several days after the purchase of the site was made, sailed from Philadelphia for England, partly to convert some securities into cash and also to solicit further contributions. He was accidentally hit on the head while at Caerleon, Wales, from the effect of which blow he died a few days later, October 22, 1740.
The Moravians arrived in that part of Northampton County, which is now within the limits of Upper and Lower Nazareth and Bethlehem Townships, and there commenced to erect a large stone house which Whitefield proposed to use as the school for Negroes. This tract its proprietor named Nazareth.
Here the Moravians worked for the remainder of the year and by their efforts had built two houses. But at this time there arose a dispute between Whitefield and those employed on the buildings. It is believed Whitefield disapproved of Boehler’s doctrinal opinions and, unable in an argument conducted in Latin to convince him, discharged the workmen.
The Moravians were allowed to stay on the property for some time by Allen’s agent, but the whole project failed, largely through Seward’s death. Whitefield again secured the title and cheerfully assigned it to the Moravians.
The Moravian workmen were compelled to seek a new home. This they found when their Bishop, David Nitcshmann, secured a tract of 5000 acres at the confluence of the Monocacy Creek and the Delaware River, on which, in March, 1741, they began to build Bethlehem. This eventually became the principal settlement of the Moravians in the province.
George Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England, December 16, 1714, and entered Oxford in 1732. He was a religious enthusiast in very early life, fasting twice a week for thirty-six hours and while an undergraduate became a member of the “Holy Club,” in which the denomination of Methodists took its rise.
Whitefield became intimately associated in religious matters with John and Charles Wesley. He was made deacon by the Bishop of Gloucester on Sunday, June 20, 1736, two weeks before his graduation, and attracted attention even by his first sermon; he drew such crowds in London and Bristol that people hung upon the rails of the organ loft and climbed in the windows.
The Wesleys accompanied Oglethorpe to Georgia in 1736 and the following year John Wesley invited Whitefield to join him in his work in America. He came in May, 1738, and after laboring for months as a missionary in the colony of Georgia he returned to England and was ordained priest at Oxford, Sunday, January 14, 1739. On his way a second time to Georgia he first visited Pennsylvania.