Evangelist Whitefield Bought Site for Negro School at Nazareth May 3, 1740

The Reverend George Whitefield was an exceeding earnest worker for the good of souls. He came to America and spent much of his time in Georgia, where he preached effectively and established an orphan house and school near Savannah, laying the first brick himself for the building, March 25, 1740. He named it “Bethesda”—a house of mercy. It afterward became eminently useful.

Whitefield undertook to found a school for Negroes in Pennsylvania, and with it a settlement for persons converted in England by his preaching and subjected to annoyance on that account.

An agreement for a site was made with William Allen, May 3, 1740, when 5000 acres of land were purchased, situated at the Forks of the Delaware, the consideration being £2200. The title was made to Whitefield and then assigned to his friend William Seward, who was a man of considerable wealth, as security for Seward’s advancing the purchase money.

Two days afterward Whitefield preached in the morning at the German settlement on the Skippack Creek to about 5000 persons, and in the evening, after riding twelve miles to Henry Antes’, he preached to about 3000. The Moravian Boehler followed with an address in German.

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, 313unable 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.

Whitefield and his friend, William Seward, arrived in Philadelphia in the evening of Friday, November 2, 1739, on horseback from Lewes, where they had disembarked.

He read prayers and assisted at Christ Church in the services of the following Sunday, and preached there in the afternoon and every day for the rest of the week with increasing congregations. He dined at Thomas Penn’s, and was visited by the ministers of the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches and by many Quakers. He preached twice to more than three thousand persons.

He made a trip to New York, and on his return preached from the yard of the Reverend William Tennent’s church on the Neshaminy to about three thousand, and from the porch window of the Presbyterian Church at Abington, and again several times at Christ Church.

When Whitefield was to preach his farewell sermon in the afternoon of November 28, the church not being large enough for those expected he adjourned to the fields, and preached to 10,000. Twenty gentlemen 314on horseback accompanied him out of town. At Chester he spoke from a balcony to 5000, of whom one-fifth had come from Philadelphia.

He was energetically philanthropic. His main purpose in going back to Georgia was to carry on his work among the poor orphans.

On Boston Common he preached to 20,000 at one time, and was distinctly heard.

Although he was active in the establishment of the Methodist denomination, he disagreed with Wesley on points of doctrine, and was finally an evangelist without the discipline of any denomination.

Whitefield crossed the ocean many times, and made tours from Georgia to New Hampshire. In September, 1769, he started on his seventh tour there, and the day before his death he preached two hours at Exeter, N. H., and the same evening preached in the open air at Newburyport, Mass. He died of asthma the next day, September 30, 1770, and was buried under the pulpit of the Federal Street Church in that town.