John Kilbuck was born in Franklin County, Kansas on May 15, 1861, into a family of the Christian Munsee band of the Lenape (Delaware).
Through his father, Kilbuck was the great-grandson of the Lenape principal chief, Gelelemend of the Turtle Clan, the first American Indian to sign a treaty with the United States.
The United States pushed to remove all the American Indians from east of the Mississippi River and offered land in the west.
Edith Romig was teaching in the mission school and was 19 years old when she met John Kilbuck at his return to Kansas.
Two years before, when John was still in the seminary, Sheldon Jackson had invited the Moravian Church to send missionaries to Alaska.
It wasn't until 1885 that the Kilbuck newlyweds and John's friend and classmate William Weinland and his new wife set out with Hans Torgersen for Alaska to establish the first Moravian mission station, named Bethel, which has since grown into an important city along the Kuskokwim River .
Reverend John Hinz, another missionary, had begun to translate scripture and other material into Yup'ik written with Roman (English) letters.
Uyaquq, a local "helper," convert and later missionary, translated some of these texts into Yup'ik using a script which he had created to write Yugtun.