Johann Christian Bechler (1784-1857) was born in Oesel, in modern Estonia. He was educated in Germany and travelled to the US at the age of 26 to teach in the Moravian community of Nazareth, PA, first at a boy’s school and later as a professor at the Moravian Theological Seminary in nearby Bethlehem. He served as a priest in churches in Pennsylvania and New York and in 1829 was transferred by the Moravians to present-day Winston-Salem, NC, an area the Moravians called Wachovia.  He became a bishop in 1835 and later Europe, where he worked in Russia and the Netherlands. Belcher was a gifted organist, teacher, and composer. All of his music was written in America, and includes hymns, settings of liturgical texts, some 30 anthems with orchestral accompaniment (several in modern editions), piano/vocal works, and several woodwind compositions.