John Joseph Bull was the son of John & Elizabeth Bull founding members of Saint James Episcopal Church. John Joseph Bull was born in Upper Providence township in Pennsylvania known as "the Manor of Gilbert " a area of land that William Penn had set aside for himself as Proprietor of the Province of Pennsylvania. The Manor of Gilbert was located along the northeast bank of the Schuylkill River extending below Perkiomen Creek. Edward Lane was granted 2500 acres of land in Providence township in 1701 by William Penn, he then donated land to build a Anglican Church they called Saint James Church. In 1709 he sold 122 acres of land to John Bull and his wife Elizabeth.

The first settlers in the area were Germans that had arrived before William Penn and his Quakers. The Germans called Perkiomen valley "Goshenhoppen" named after the first inhabitants the Native American people who called themselves the Lenape. The Germans out numbered the Welsh & English settlers and adhered to their German Reformed faith. German language was the primary language used in the colony during this period, the dialect eventually evolved into what is known today as Pennsylvania Dutch.

Biography - Diary of David Zeisberger
When Bull was 21 years of age he met David Zeigberger and in 1742 joined the Pennsylvania Bethlehem Moravian Indian Missionary Church.. The first Moravian missionaries came to the American colonies from Hermhut settlement in Saxony Germany in 1735 to minister to German immigrants, and to Native Americans & enslaved Africans. The Missionary in Ohio was established in 1761 and commissioned by the British Crown in order to detach the indians from French influence during the war between France and England.

John Joseph Bull was bapitized by the Indians and given the name Schebosh, which meant Running Water, and from then on he went by the name of Schebosh. He was devoted to the Indian Mission and a devoted friend and assistant to David Zeisberger the head of the Ohio Moravian Missionaries. He was often mentioned in Zeisberger's mission diaries. On the 12th of January 1747 he married Christine a Munsee Indian convert. They lived in Nazareth, Bethlehem & Christiansburnn in Pennsylvania before moving to Ohio to Scheoenburnn and then to New Salem.

The Ohio Moravian Missionaries were caught in the warring fractions during the Revolutionary war. The Christian Indians had declared themselves neutral in the war but were still viewed suspiciously by of the American colonists and the British loyalists and the Indians who sided with British. During the war David Zeisberger the leader of the Ohio mission was arrested and thrown into prison. In autumn 1781 Schebosh was taken prisoner by a scouting party commanded by Capt. John Biggs at Fort Pitt, after his release he went to the Moravian village of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania where he was joined with by his wife and daughter and her husband who had escaped the massacre in 1782 where his son Joseph was killed. It wasn't until July 1783 that he rejoined the Ohio missionaries.

Schebosh & Christine were married forty-one years. His wife died a year before his death on the 7th of September 1787 not long after settling into a new Indian Mission called "New Salem" on the Huron in Erie County, Ohio.. They had three children and six grandchildren. John Martin Schebosh died in infancy from small pox and is buried in the Moravian Nazareth cemetery in Pennsylvania their other son Joseph Schebosh was one of the first victims to be killed in the Ohio Gnadenhutten Massacre.

On March 8, 1782, Joseph & 27 men, 29 women & 39 children Christian Indians were killed, some while they were praying, by the colonial militia from Pennsylvania. Two Indian boys , one of whom had been scalped, survived to tell of the massacre. Missionary John Heckewewelder collected the remains and buried them on the southern side of the village. A century later a monument for the dead was erected and a reconstruction of village site was preserved and a replica of the mission reconstructed. The burial site is called the Gnadenhutten Native Burial Mound.. the burial site of the Indian martyrs, and is on the National Register of Historical places.

In 1792 after the Indian missionaries were forced to move out of Ohio, their daughter Christiana and her husband Jacob and their children moved to Fairfield, Ontario, Canada to a new village called Moravianville.

In the summer of 1872 residents and dignitaries of Gnadenhutten dedicated a 25 foot tall monument made of marble to mark the site of the massacre along with a estimated crowd of 2,000 people. In attendance were several Moravian Indians from Canada on of whom was John Jacob the great grand-nephew of Joseph Schebosh Jr. the first victim of the Massacre 90 years before. Ten years later a centennial memorial service was held at the monument with more than 10,000 people who listened to speakers... Theodore Roosevelt called the massacre a atrocity "a stain on the frontier character that time cannot wash away" In 2018 Gnadenhutten celebrated it's 236th anniversary.

In Ohio "Schoenbrunn Villiage State Memorial Park' is a reconstructed village of 1772 Schoebrunn (beautiful spring) mission that was built for the Delaware Indians. The settlement grew to include sixty dwelling and more that 300 inhabitants who drew up Ohio's first civil code and built its first Christian church and school house. Problems associated with the American Revolution prompted the missions closing by 1791. Schoenbrunn's story features a rare meeting of Indian and European cultures and a fascinating perspective on the American Revolution.