Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Roth, John

ROTH, John, clergyman, b. in Sarmund, Prussia, 3 Feb., 1726; d. in York, Pa., 22 July, 1791. He was educated in the Roman Catholic church, but in 1748 united with the Moravians. In 1756 he was despatched to Pennsylvania, and three years later he entered the Moravian Indian mission, serving for fifteen years in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Returning to Pennsylvania in 1773, he was employed in rural congregations till his death. Roth made a special study of the Unami dialect of the Lenape language, and composed in it an extensive religious work, “Ein Versuch der Geschichte unsers Herrn u. Heylandes Jesu Christi in das Delawarische übersetzt der Unami, von der Marter-Woche an bis zur Himmelfahrt unsers Herrn, im Yahr 1770 u. 1772 zu Tschechschequanüng an der Susquehanna,” which is still in manuscript. His son, John Lewis (1773-1841), was the first white male child that was born in Ohio.