In December 1772, Brother David Zeisberger and his followers began construction of the Schoenbrunn schoolhouse in the Tuscarawas Valley on land the Delaware Native Americans had given him in the spring of 1771 for a Moravian mission to the Delaware, and with that land he laid out the town of Schoenbrunn, or "Beautiful Spring." The school served Delaware Indian children, who were taught from special textbooks Zeisberger prepared in the Delaware and German languages, and John Heckewelder, who taught there, is recognized as the first schoolteacher in Tuscarawas County. The Schoenbrunn church was completed in the fall of 1772, 41 days after the first log was cut, at the meeting point of the town's two main streets, and it oversaw the conversion and baptism of many Native American residents. Its steeple held what is believed to have been the first bell in the Tuscarawas Valley, and regular worship services continued there until the village was destroyed during the Revolutionary War. New Schoenbrunn was built about a mile farther up the Tuscarawas River in December 1779.