The Eckerlins had immigrated to Pennsylvania along with other Anabaptists from the Schwarzenau, Wittgenstein community of modern-day Bad Berleburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, in what was then the Holy Roman Empire.

[6] In May 1751, Israel traveled to Logstown to meet with George Croghan, and requested leave of the Iroquois Confederacy to settle on the Youghiogheny River.

[14] Soon the Eckerlin brothers had reestablished themselves in a new community, referred to as Dunkard Bottom, on the Cheat River in what is now Preston County, West Virginia.

[11]: 49 The community was visited in June 1756 by Samuel Eckerlin's friend Ezechiel Sangmeister, who was unhappy with life at the Ephrata Cloister and wanted to live on the frontier.

[16]: 349 Suspected of sympathy with the French, Samuel Eckerlin was detained in 1757 while on a supply trip to Fort Pleasant, near present Moorefield, West Virginia.

He was brought to Williamsburg by Dr. Thomas Walker, who protested that Eckerlin had no connection with the French and convinced Governor Dinwiddie to release him.

Samuel returned to the Dunkard settlement accompanied by Captain Robert MacKenzie and some soldiers, supposedly sent with him to investigate the truth of his story.

However, the governor had secretly ordered the arrest of the other Brethren living at Dunkard Bottom, writing to George Washington on 24 October 1757: On arriving at Dunkard Bottom, they discovered that Ottawa warriors sympathetic to the French had attacked the settlement, killing 28 settlers and taking Israel and Gabriel Eckerlin prisoner, together with their servant Johann Schilling.

"[18] An article in The Pennsylvania Gazette on 5 January 1758, quoted from a letter dated 27 December 1757: "Captain M’Kenzie, who was sent out for the Dunkers, told me Yesterday, he found nothing on the Spot they inhabited but some Spears, broken Tomahawks, and the Ashes of their Hutts.

There they were treated kindly and stayed at the Jesuit College in Quebec City before being sent to La Rochelle, France, where they converted to Roman Catholicism.

It states, inaccurately: "Thomas Echarlin (Echarly) and two brothers settled here, 1784; first white men of record in Preston County.