Count von Pless, the Chamberlain of the Danish court, and new owner of six New World plantations, petitioned the Moravian Brethren for men to act as overseers of the land and the religious welfare of the natives. Zinzendorf objected to this proposal; he did not like the idea of missionaries involved in the commerce and politics of the island, but was overruled by the rest of the Brethren. .
In June 1734 Tobias Leopold and seventeen others arrived in St Thomas. Some were to remain on St Thomas, others were to colonize and evangelize the abandoned St Croix. Dober sailed back to Europe to assume the mantle of chief elder of Herrnhut. .
The journey of the new missionaries to St Thomas was a horrible one. Forced to winter over in Norway, and enduring terrible conditions aboard the ship, several of the missionaries were ill before they reached St Thomas. Once there, they found the conditions not much more in their favor; several succumbed to yellow fever before setting foot on St Croix. In the following six months eight of the original eighteen missionaries died, including Tobias Leopold. In February 1735 eleven reinforcements set out from Herrnhut, including physician Dr. Grottausen, who was the first to die. Within two months of landing on St Croix, four of these newcomers would fall victim to various tropical illnesses. Most of those that survived the initial illness, "during the years [1735] and [1736] returned home in a miserable plight, three of them suffering shipwreck en route" (Hamilton, 54). In December 1736 the last Moravian on St Croix traveled to St Thomas to join Frederick Martin, who had been in charge of the mission there for almost a year. Martin had found some success on St Thomas. He and his assistant had found themselves preaching, at times, to some two hundred slaves.
1736 marked the first of the Moravian baptisms on St Thomas. As Martin and his associated were not ordained, these were preformed by Augustus Spangenberg.