[culture] [families] [food] [graveyards] [history] [people] [photos] [places] [religion] [resources] [Reese]
The historic Moravian Church, usually regarded as the most ancient of the Protestant churches still in existence, can trace its origin back to John Hus, who was burnt at the stake on July 6, 1415. The Moravian Church has been known by a confusing number of names : the original Bohemian name of Jednota Bratrska, the Latin name of Unitas Fratrum, and such other names as the Brethren's Church, the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, the Church of the United Brethren, and the Moravian Church. This last name was adopted to distinguish the Moravians from the Church of the Brethren, commonly known as the Dunkards, and the United Brethren.
In 1457 a number of Hus's followers calling. themselves "the Brethren found refuge near Kunwald on the domain of Lititz In northeast Bohemia. Lititz was the property of George Podiebrad, who became King of Bohemia the following year. But at Lititz, too, they suffered from the persecution of Rome, for with the growth of the Brethren Rome forced the king to withdraw his support. This time they fled to the mountains of Reichenau. To ensure apostolic succession, one of their leaders, Michael Bradacius, was consecrated as bishop in 1467 by Stephen, an aged bishop of the Waldenses who was able to trace his ordination back to the Roman Catholic bishops at the Council of Basel. Two years later, in 1469, Rome burned Stephen at the stake for this act. Another leader, Matthias of Kunwald, was ordained by Michael.Thus the episcopate was established in this group of the Brethren. Except for the Episcopal Church, the Moravian Church is the only Protestant church with an apostolic succession.
During the latter half of the fifteenth century the Brethren continued to increase. By 1517 they had nearly 200,000 members in Bohemia and Moravia. Their first collection of hymns, the earliest of all Protestant hymnals, had been published in 1501. By 1520 three out of the five printing presses in Bohemia belonged to them. The Bohemian version of the Bible, on which eight of their most learned scholars had labored for fifteen years, was published at Kralitz in 1593. The sixteenth century, however, brought further persecution. In 1549 many of them were driven into exile by Ferdinand I; but the real attempt to wipe them out did not come until the Counter-Reformation of the seventeenth century. Ferdinand II, who ascended the throne of Bohemia in 1617, had promised his Jesuit preceptor to blot out Protestantism inBohemia. With the disastrous defeat at the battle of White Mountain,
on November 8 1620, the Protestant cause in Bohemia was lost. The bishops and mInIsters of the MoravIan Church were banished, it's churches and schools were closed, its property confiscated. June 21, 16121 is still remembered among the Moravians as "the day of blood" because of the slaughter of prisoners on that day. At first the persecution was centered on the Moravians, but soon the Reformed Church and a little later the Lutheran had their turn. Thousands fled, for the choice was exile or death. The Protestants who stayed and who were true to their faith were tortured and killed. The population of Bohemia shrank by two-thirds. Ferdinand fulfilled his promise to the Jesuits: the Moravian Church in Bohemia was wiped out. Many members of the church, however, were in exile: in Poland, Silesia, Hungary, Hollan,. and even in England. At the University of Oxford money was raised for the relief of the Moravians. Under the leadership of their eminent bishop Comenius, probably the greatest scholar of the age, the most important group of exiles settled at Lissa in Poland, only to be scattered anew by the war between Sweden and Poland. Not many of the congregations survived. After the sack of Lissa in 1656, Comenius, impoverished, fled to Holland, where he died in 1670. Most of the Moravians in Poland, especially after 1670, joined, the Reformed church, with which they felt a sense of kinship. Yet here and there in exile,and even in Bohemia and Moravia, there were a few "hidden seed" through which the church continued an underground existence. Even the episcopal succession was preserved when it was passed on from Comenius to Jablonsky, his grandson.
Because the Moravian Church in separating from Rome, unlike the Lutheran and Reformed churches, had been careful to guard the Episcopal succession, its position as "an ancient Protestant Episcopal church was formally recognized by the Parliament of Great Britain in an act passed on May 12, 1749, "for encouraging the people known by the name of Unitas Fratrum or United Brethren to settle in his Majesty's colonies in America." In this act Parliament declared the doctrine of the Moravian Church "to differ in no essential article of faith from that of the Church of England, as set forth in the Thirty-nine Articles." Thus the Moravian Church was given Parliament's blessing, an advantage enjoyed by no other church except the Church of England and to some extent the Lutheran.
ln 1722 Nicholas Louis, Count Zinzendorf and Pottendorf, offered a remnant of the Moravians a refuge on his estate, the domain of
Berthelsdorf in Saxony, which he had just acquired from his grandmother, Countess Henrietta von Gersdorf. There the Moravians built the village of Herrnhut to house three hundred members of their faith.
Count Zinzendorf was a young, idealistic nobleman who was much excited by the ideas set afloat by Pietism. He had always been sensitive to mystical influence. At the age of six he had spoken of Christ as his brother. At the University of Halle he had helped to establish the Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed, whose members were pledged to worthily in the steps of Jesus and to exercise charity toward their neighbors.
The more dubious features of the Moravian religion were the ones that most attracted Zinzendorf. The emphasis on Christ's sacrificial death, itheblood atonement, moved him deeply. Like many other Moravians, both at Herrnhut and later at Bethlehem, he dwelt upon the blood and wounds of Christ with too exuberant a fancy. To other Protestants much of this extravagance seemed fantastic and even shocking. The language of love when applied to Christ seemed both irreverent and in bad taste. When Zinzendorf likened the true Christian's relation to Christ to that which exists in marriage; when he declared that all souls, which he described as essentially female, were married to a "conjugal Lord Jesus" ; when he insisted that the relationship between. Christ and the saved soul was the most intimate possible in all human, relationships, most Protestants were genuinely puzzled, while a few of, the more sinful were vastly amused. Communion, too, took on a sensuous coloring: the Lord's Supper was described as an "embrace" in which Christ pressed the communicant to His heart and kissed her with His pale lips.
Yet Zinzendorf, despite his vagaries, was a man with some measure of greatness. He had character. He had boundless energy. He was ruled by the heart, it is true; he was so generous and forthgiving that he was willing to spend every penny he had to turn his ideals into reality.
Zinzendorf's fondest dream was the union of all Protestant churches each church to preserve its distinctive character yet to unite for the common good. In examining the Augsburg Confession of 1530, the articles of the Reformed Synod of Bern of 1530, and the German issue of the confession of the Brethren of Bohemia and Moravia published under the direction of Luther in 1533, he came to the conclusion that all Protestant churches could reach a Christ-centered point on which all could agree. In the Synod of Sendomir in Poland in 1570 the Moravian and Reformed and Lutheran churches had joined together to form an evangelical federation. Later the three churches had entered into a similar agreement in Bohemia. This had permitted three distinct modes of worship and discipline, yet the members of one church were encouraged to attend services at the other two. Zinzendorf thought of himself as a Lutheran and believed that he had been authorized by the University of Tubingen to serve as a Lutheran minister. The Moravians, he thought, might be used as a connecting link, since they consIdered themselves close to the Reformed Church, and yet in Germany they were recognized as belonging to the group united by the Augsburg Confession. This seemed proof to Zinzendorf that there was no essential difference between them and the Lutherans. Later, in Pennsylvania, he attempted to unite these three churches and the Mennonites, Dunkards, Quakers, Schwenkfelders, and the Ephrata community as well. "In each religion," he wrote, "lies a thought of God which cannot be received through any other religion. ...Not any religion has the whole; she must take the best out of other religions to assist her if she wants the whole."
In 1736 Zinzendorf was banished from Saxony for ten years for harboring fanatics and promoting views contrary to Lutheranism-or, as Frederick William I of Prussia put it, "because he wished to live piously though a count." He was ordered to sell his estates and leave the country. The Moravians and Schwenkfelders were banished with him. The next year, however, the banishment was revoked and the Moravians were permitted to remain at Herrnhut. But in the meanwhile their attention had turned to America. As early as 1732 Moravian missionaries had been sent to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. In 1733 a mission was established in Greenland and another dispatched to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands; early in 1734 one was sent to Lapland and late that year, one to Georgia; and in 1735 one was set up in Surinam. The Moravians were busy with foreign missions long before other Protestant denominations got started. It was not until 1806, when five students at Williams dedicated their lives to the spreading of light in the "darkness of Asia," that the Moravians were joined by other Protestant churches in America.
When the Moravians were faced with exile, Georgia looked like a hopeful site for a colony. Zinzendorf had first tried to persuade the Schwenkfelders to settle there, but when they insisted on going to Pennsylvama a group of Moravlans went Instead. The place chosen for the colony was part of the present site of Savannah. Headed by Spangenberg, a bishop endowed with wisdom and also with common sensee, this little band of Moravians proposed to convert the Cherokees and the Creeks as well as found a colony. At first their prospects for success were bright. Spangenberg, a graduate of the University of Jena, all they could hope for in a leader. And from the beginning the Moravians had friends in high places. On the voyage Spangenberg had made a favorable impression on his fellow passengers, General James Oglethorpe and John and Charles Wesley.
At first things went well. A school for Indians was opened the following year, 1736, on an island in the Savannah River five miles above the settlement. The same year, on March 10, Bishop Nitschmann ordained Anton Seiffert at Savannah, the first ordination by a bishop of the Christian church in the thirteen colonies. In fact, Nitschmann,who had been consecrated as bishop in 1735 by Bishop Jablonsky, courtpreacher to the King of Prussia, was the first bishop to come to America to perform his episcopal duties here. But disaster followed on the ,heels of this happy start. A number of the settlers came down with fever, some of them dying. War broke out between England and Spain. The Moravians, who disapproved of war, refused to fight and were consequently looked upon with disfavor. Some of them returned to Europe, while the rest gratefully accepted the offer of the Methodist missionary, Whitefield, to go with him on his sloop to Philadelphia. The freedom of religion in Pennsylvania and the pacifism of the
Quakers made Penn's colony particularly attractive to them. On April 13, 1740, they sailed from Savannah; this was the end of the Moravian colony in Georgia.
The Moravians were invited by Whitefield to settle on "the Barony of Nazareth," a five-thousand-acre tract of land near the forks of the Delaware and the Lehigh. The deed to this tract carried with it "the Franchise, Royalty, Right, Privilege, Liberty and Immunity to erect the said 5,000 acres of land, or any part or parts thereof, into a manor and to have and to hold Court Baron therein with all things whatsoever which to a Court Baron belong." The dignities and privileges of the manor were to "be holden of the said John Penn and Thomas Penn in free and common socage as of the Seigniory of Windsor free and discharged of and from the debts and legacies of the said William Penn;Sr., yielding and paying therefor one Red Rose on the !24th day of June yearly, if thc same shall be demanded, in full of all services, customs and rents." Although the Moravians never attempted to exercise any
of the rights of this charter, the only manor in Pennsylvania sold by, the Penns with the rights and privileges of a court baron attaclled to it, it was rendered invalid only by the Revolution. It had been granted originally in 168!2 by Penn to his daughter .Letitia.
On the Baron of Nazareth, Whitefield mtended to found a school for Negroes and a village for destitute Englishmen. Early in May, 1740 the Moravians set to work to clear the land and to build a log house shelter from the winter. Unfortunately, Whitefield and the Moravians did not see eye to eye on religion. Even in Georgia he had begun to argue in defense of predestination with Peter Boehler, a Moravian clergyman who had been educated at the University of Jena and who had later taught there. As Whitefield could not speak qerman and Boehler could not speak English, the argument was conducted in Latin. For all that, it was hot and furious. Finally Whitefield lost his temper and ordered the Moravinns off his land. When he cooled off he permitted them to stay in the log house they had built, for winter had already set in; but the Moravians, to be on the safe side, bought five hundred acres of land where the Monocacy flows into the Lehigh, the present site of Bethlehem. In the following spring Whitefield discovered he was unable to pay for his barony and offered it for sale to the Moravians, who promptly bought it. The large stone house named Ephratah, which Whitefield had started, was left unfinished. A band of brick in the stone shows how much had been completed when he sold the barony to the Moravians.
The first Moravian Christmas Eve service in Pennsylvania was celebrated in the log house at Nazareth. The Reverend Peter Boehler had prepared a choral liturgy with verses of his own composition, which was followed by a love feast of corn cake and coffee made of roasted rye. After the Christmas Eve vigils there was Communion, the first Moravian Communion in Pennsylvania.
The next year, 1741, the first building at Bethlehem was erected. This was a log structure, half house, half stable, twenty feet by forty, one story high, with sleeping quarters under the steep-pitched roof. Here were held the famous Christmas Eve vigils of 1741, when Zinzendorf, inspired by the singing of an old carol, named the settlement in honor of the birthplace of the Christ child.
With Count Zinzendorf's arrival real progress began to be made ; Bethlehem began to take form as a community. The congregation was organized in 1742, the same year as the one in London. The Gemeinhaus, a community house, had been built the year before. A large log building, forty-five feet by thirty, it was enlarged in 1743 and is still standing. A grist mill was built in 1743, and the large stone structure known as the Bell House was started in 1745. This last building, with its bell tower, was a most ambitious edifice for so young a settlement. The first town clock was placed in the graceful belfry, which was crowned with an unusualIy beautiful weathervane of a Iamb with a banner, the historic emblem of the Moravian Church. At the same time other buildings were erected, while the clearing of the forest went steadily ahead.
But from the very start missionary work came first. At one time Zinzendorf went so far as to decide that it was more important to convert the heathen than to sow grain to keep themselves alive. Yet "!iall work was looked upon as religious. In 1742 they divided their number into two groups, the Pilgergemeine, who were to work among the Indians and the whites; and the Hausgemeine, who were to erect, buildings and put the settlement on its feet, to tarry "by the stuff."( I Samuel 3o: 24) .Some of the members volunteered to serve in one group or the other; the rest were chosen by lot. Some of the itinerant workers known as "Fishers" sought out places in need of attention others going from house to house visited a circuit known as their Pennsylvania Wheel ( Ezekiel I: 15 and 20) and also as the Pennsylvania Chariot (Acts 8: 26-39) .Far and wide through the American colonies these missionaries wandered: they reached isolated parts of' Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia where no Christian minister had ever been seen; they penetrated the Alleghenies; they went as far north as Canajoharie in New York and Broadbay in Maine; they
visited New Haven, Newport, Long Island, Staten Island, and near-by New Jersey.
The lot of those who tarried "by the stuff" was not an easy one. Besides the arduous labor of clearing the land and erecting buildings they had to put up with the deep mistrust of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in the neighborhood. A crisis arose in the summer of 1746 when one rainy day after another prevented them from harvesting their grain until at last there came a perfect day, the Sunday of July 31. The Moravians decided to make use of the good weather and get in their grain, only to be charged as "Sabbath breakers" by the incensed Scotch-Irish. Although the Moravians were finally exonerated the Scotch-Irish came to the conclusion that Moravian ways were not Presbyterian ways and continued to view these queer people from abroad dourly.
In 1742 Zinzendorf made a zealous attempt to draw the Pennsylvania Dutch Protestant churches and the Quakers together into a union. He called a series of conferences, as many as seven in six months. At the first of these, thirteen faiths were represented, but to the fourth only the Lutheran, Reformed, and Moravlan churches sent repesentatives. The smaller religious groups such as the Mennonites, the Dunkards, and the society of Ephrata were especially suspicious of Zinzendorrs intentions. They strongly suspected that his purpose was to bring them "under his own hat." In this they were less than fair to Zinzendorf, who had in mind not so much the creation of an overhead authority as the nurturing of spiritual ties between the sects. Yet Zinzendorf's choice of Moravian hymns and his frequent use of the lot bid him open to suspicion. The Lutheran and Reformed groups were more interested, understandably so since Zinzendorf paid them the compliment of treating them with respect as two historic churches.
Both the Lutheran and the Reformed churches had been neglected by the mother churches abroad; both were in desperate need of clergymen. As Zinzendorf put it, "It had become proverbial, respecting anyone who cared not for God and His Word, that 'he was of the Pennsylvania religion.' " In Europe both the Lutheran and Reformed churches became alarmed and sent ministers to save their congregations from the designs of Zinzendorf. Zinzendorf's brave plan came to naught. Its only effect was to intensify suspicion among the various churches.
In other ways as well Zinzendorf showed himself a visionary and a Utopian, particularly in the government he organized to get the pioneer colonies of Bethlehem and Nazareth started. This was a communistic society. Known as the General Economy, it was in full force from 1745 to 1762 at both Bethlehem and Nazareth, the two settlements being governed as one unit. Every man, woman, and child became part of one household; everyone worked for the good of the whole. They gave their time and labor, receiving in return shelter, food, and clothing. No one was paid any wages. The church owned all the land, all the buildings, even the very tools with which the people worked. Yet no pile was forced to surrender his private property. Anyone who disliked the system was free to leave. As it was pointed out, there was no wall around Bethlehem.
Bishop Spangenberg and his wife were at the head, with committees set up to manage the details of government. There was a committee on building, a committee of domestic supplies, a food committee, a clothing committee, a committee on medicine and sanitation, a comittee on education, even a police committee. Bishop Spangenberg's wife was in charge of female industry: the spinners, weavers, knitters, seamstresses, milkmaids, laundresses, nurses, teachers, even the mothers.Some women helped to herd the cattle, though this and carrying water were tasks usually allotted to the old men and boys. Visitors to Bethlehem In 1761 spoke of being awakened by one hundred cows, a number of them with bells, a venerable goat and two she-goats, driven in
town by two sIsters. There was a general steward to do whatever buying was necessary, which was very little since to a great degree
Bethlehem and Nazareth relied on the products of their own fields and orchards, their cattle and their poultry.
In manufacturing, too, Bethlehem became as nearly self-supporting as it was possible for so small a place to be. There was no private industry; everything was directed and owned by the community. By 1747 there were thirty-two different industries, which together with the farmlands were able to support the two settlements and fifty itinerant missionarles as well. Twelve years later, in 1759, though Bethlehem had only 618 inhabitants and Nazareth 268, there were 2,454 acres of land, under intensive cultivation and nearly a hundred different industries and trades. Many of the products were sold in other parts of the colony.Bethlehem, which was designed as a center of industry and trade in. In contrast to Nazareth, which was intended as an agricultural community, was a busy workshop. There was a gristmill, a sawmill, a fulling mill, a tannery, a pottery, a hattery; there were blacksmith and carpenter shops; there were spinning wheels and linen looms-even a silk mill; there was a bleaching yard and a washhouse. At Bethlehem
they made even their own buttons for their coats, their organs for their churches, and their bells for their belfries. By 1759 there were ninety-seven buildings: seventeen choir houses in which people were housed by age groups, five schools, twenty buildings where trades were carried on, five mills, two inns, and forty-eight farm buildings.
Spangenberg was head of the church in temporal affairs and also in charge of the missions to the Indians and to a large extent of those to the West Indies and Surinam. For a time his power suffered an eclipse and Bishop Cammerhoff succecded him-an unfortunate choice, for Cammerhoff was one of the most enthusiastic and sentimental of Moravian visionaries. He may have had some of Spangenberg's godliness but he had none of his common sense. Visitors to Bethlehem and Nazareth were greatly interested in these novel settlements. Hannah Callender, a Quakeress, who visited Nazareth in 1758, mentions the waterworks there, the milkhouse, and the fine oxen; yet-a very human touch!-she most admired the trout in the spring, so tame that they were fed by hand. A communal feature at Bethlehem that caught the fancy of a later visitor, Isaac Weld, was the spring house. In November of 1796 he wrote:
.
The spring house in Bethlehem is common to the whole town : a ahelf or board in it is allotted to each family, and though there is no watch pIaced over it, and the door be only secured by a latch, yet every person is certain of finding, when he comes for it, his plate of butter or bowl of milk, etc., exactly in the same state as when he put it in.
The whole community was divided into age groups called choirs, each living apart. The children were placed in the nursery as soon as they were old enough to be taken from their mothers' arms. There they were taken care of by widows and single women and sometimes by married women who were not strong enough for other work. At three years of age they were put in the choirs for little boys or little girls. After 1762 only the children of missionaries who had to be away from Bethlehem and Nazareth were placed in the nurseries. If the parents were living in Bethlehem or Nazareth, they cared for the tiny children themselves. Older boys and girls, however, were placed in separate choirs, which were actually boys' and girls' boarding schools. In 1755 there were nearly three hundred children in the various Moravian schools, with eighty teachers and helpers instructing them. There was a choir for the single sisters, one for the single brethren; there was a choir for the married sisters and brethren, though these commonly lived in houses; there was a choir for the widows.
Each choir had its own house with a life devised for that particular group even to its own hymns and liturgies. Although every detail of life had been thought out, there was a certain amount of freedom. In the older girls' choir the rising bell rang at five, for this was the eighteenth century, with only candles, the stars, the moon, and the sun for light. Morning prayers were held before breakfast, which was at six; there was a further "piec:e" to stay the appetite at nine; dinner was at eleven-thirty; there was a love feast or tea or some social relaxation of one kind or another between three o'clock and vespers; supper was at five; evening prayers were at eight; and at nine the house was locked for the night.
The love feast mentioned above was a tenn used loosely by the Moravians to describe informal gatherings with light refreshments. It was partly devotional in character and partly social. A love feast could take the fonn of a treat for children, a welcome or a farewell to guest, or simply an afternoon get-together; it could be part of a wedding or a funeral, or even a harvest-home festival. Some sort of food was always served. Probably it was these love feasts that brought Moravian baking to such a high state of excellence. The love feasts were graced with the delicious Moravian buns and butter semmels-or if it was near Christmas, the white or brown Christmas cookies, or both with a cup of chocolate, mint tea from the garden, or some imported bohea from China. Bishop Spangenbcrg looked upon love feasts with favor as a means of offsetting the hard pioneer life. They were a good
builder of morale. Dress, too, was regulated. The women dressed in gray or brown, with white for gala occasions. The dresses were plain with tight-Iaced bodices, white kerchiefs, and full skirts. Capes were worn outdoors when the weather was cool. The close-fitting white caps, known as Schnepplehaube, came to a point in the middle of the forehead and were tied under the chin with bows: red bows for little girls, rose bows for older girls, pink bows for unmarried women, blue bows for married women, and white bows for widows. At Nazareth the caps had a crimped border with scallop shells to cover the ears. The men, all of whom were clean-shaven, wore broad-brimmed hats with low crowns, straight dark coats without lapels, and the eighteenth century knee-buckled breeches.
In the years of the General Economy zeal was at its height. In the early years there were prayer bands to maintain "hourly intercession" as introduced at Herrnhut in 1727. Nineteen classes were organized for prayer turns or watches from five in the morning to midnight, with the turns from midnight to five taken over by the night watch. On Saturday the prayer turn was kept by a band that closed the watch on Sunday morning by going out to the graveyard and singing a hymn in commemoration of the Resurrection. Returning they sang hymns at the choir-house doors and then went to the chapel for prayers. In these
early years, too, Saturday was looked upon as the Sabbath and observed as a day of rest; but Sunday was regarded as peculiarly the Lord's Day, at which time there was preaching and public worship. During the eighteenth century the rite of foot washing was practiced"f]
especially on Maundy Thursday. These were years of enthusiasm, hard work, and sacrifice that enabled the Moravians to build a Christian community in the wilderness and to do notable missionary work in converting the Indians. It was one of the most successful experiments communal living that America has ever seen. Although abandoned by general consent in 1762, the General Economy gave Bethlehem and Nazareth their start. During this time each person got the necessities of life, his children were educated, and he was cared for in sickness and old age. There was security for all, poverty for none. There was even
a considerable measure of social equality, despite the fact that Zinzendorf was a count and his daughter a countess. Oddly enough, this little settlement in the Dutch country had an unusual concentration of nobility. Among the nobles there in the early days, in addition to Count Zinzendorf and his daughter, were the Baroness von Seidewitz; Anna von Pahlen, a pious young Livonian
baroness who was the wife of Bishop Cammerhoff; Baron Johannes von Watteville, who married Zinzendorf's daughter, the Countess
Benigna; the Baroness Anna Dorothea yon Watteville, who became the wife of Hans Christian von Schweinitz; and Juliana Benedicta von Gammeru, the daughter of Baron Christian von Raschan. Still another member of the nobility, Anna von Marschall, the daughter of Baron Frederick yon Marschall, became identified with the Morayian settlement in North Carolina. Perhaps it was the presence of such nobles that accounted for the high degree of culture at Bethlehem from the beginning. These people
refused to be mere backwoodsmen. Although the life at a settlement that was in the process of being carved out of the wilderness had to be plain and unpretentious, gentle manners and high standard in education and the fine arts, especially music, were not permitted to lapse. As early as May, 1746, a summerhouse was built on Wunden Island in the Monocacy with a rustic footbridge over to the island. The women worked with their hands, but a fair number of them sat for their portraits too. It is always possible to get along without some of the necessities of life as long as there are a few of the luxuries. For the Morayians music was a must. The children in the choir houses ate their dinners off wooden trenchers, but they were taught to play the violin, the viola da gamba, or the flute or French horn, and to sing in a chorus. This was quite as important as the three R's and even more so. The first settlers brought musical instruments with them. On January .'25, 1744, a spinet, brought over on The Little Strength from London, reached Bethlehem. "In dulce Jubilo" was sung at a love feast on August .'21, 1745, in thirteen different languages: Bohemian, German, Latin, Greek, English, French, Swedish, Dutch, Wendish, Gaelic, Welsh, Mohawk, and Mohican; and there were three persons there of three more nationalities, Danish, Polish, and Hungarian, who did not sing.
On October .'27, 1745, Spangenberg composed a hymn for the spinng sisters. Soon all the other crafts had their own songs: the sheperds, the plowmen, the reapers, the threshers, the knitters, the seamtresses, the washwomen-all of them. Everyone worked; everyone sang. The Church Diary for July 8, 1754, has the following entry: "Our musicians of the church choir, performing hymn tunes, accompanied the harvesters as far as the river, on their way to cut the rye on the new farm, which was put under cultivation last fall near the Crown; as the weather was fine, all who could assist, repaired to the fields, men, women, and children." This was no uncommon thing; this was the way things were done in Bethlehem. The same year a band of women,.each with a sickle, went to the harvest fields to cut grain to the music of flutes and French horns. Fnendly Indians escorted the women to ensure their safety. The men, working in a group elsewhere, also went to work to the accompaniment of music. Before the oxen or horses drawing the harvest cart loaded high with sheaves of wheat or rye went a small band of musicians with French horns, flutes, and cymbals sounding hymns of jubilation and thanksgiving for God's goodness, songs in which the workers joined as they brought home the harvest. No one day was set aside for music; there was music every day. If they set out to cut timber, or dig a cellar, or raise a barn, a band of musicians went with them. They sang as they went to work in the morning and as they came home in the evening. Even the early immigrants at the end of their long journey from Saxony or Bohemia or Holland or England or some other far-off land sang hymns of thanksgiving to the sound of the oars as they rowed across the Lehigh, their eyes on their goal of Bethlehem.
The impromptu evening concerts of the young men became a regutar feature of the life. In fine weather during the summer months the young men entertained the rest of the community, sometimes with a small orchestra, sometimes with a chorus. For nearly a hundred years, from 1744 till well along in the nineteenth century, these concerts were given, first on the balcony of the Bell House, then on the roof terrace of the Brethren's house, the people sitting on the grass under the trees, listening to the music and watching the fireflies in the meadows by the river. In winter the concerts were held indoors in the Single Brethren's house; there the married people went to hear the music and to play or smg. Music was the life of the town.
At the start much of this music was religious, but as taste developed
secular music became more and more popular. Occasionally lighter music was played, especially by the young men in their serenades. A particularly sober young clergyman took it upon himself to reprimand the young men for descending to music of this character. One night at dinner he turned to them and asked, "Do you use the same instrument in church to play sacred music which you used last night?"
. "Yes," the youngmen admItted,"we do."
"What do you think, brother," the young clergyman asked, turning to an elderly clergyman at the table. "Is it proper to do so?"
Well, you will use the same mouth to preach with tonight that you now use in eating sausage, won't you? inquired the old clergyman.
Bethlehem seized on any excuse for music. Visitors to the town were often greeted by a band of musicians playing outside the inn. Even the night watchman as he made his rounds sang out the hour. There was a couplet set to music for each hour from eight to six :
Past eight o'clock! O Bethlehem! do thou ponder
Eight souls in Noah's ark were living yonder.
Tis nine o'clock! Ye brethren, hear it striking,
Keep hearts and houses clean to our Savior's liking-
Now, brethren, hear! The clock is ten and passing,
Now rest but such as wait for Christ's embracing.
And so on till five:
Tis five o'clock! Five virgins were discarded,
When five with wedding garments were rewarded.
The clock is six and I go off my station,
Now, brethren, watch yourselves for your salvation.
The original, of course, was in German, with better rhyme and meter.
The great ado with which the Moravians celebrated birthdays also added to their enjoyment of life. The "birthday child" was awakened by singing outside the door of the room in which he slept. Often a birthday hymn was sung at the breakfast table as well, and always in school. There was a small birthday table arranged with flowers and simple home-made gifts: a painted box, an illuminated text, a silk pincushion, a little basket of fancy paper, and often a poem of sorts written by some friend or relative. In the afternoon there would be a love feast with a birthday cake, or if the weather was good a picnic on Calypso Island in the river.
Death. too, was marked by ceremony. though there was no mourning. The trombone choir in the belfry announced the death of any member of the community. Thrce chorales were played, the second indicating the choir to which the dead person belongcd, for each choir had its own chorale. The trombone choir led the funeral procession from the church to the grave. When the Indian convert John Wasamapah. often known as Tschoop. died, the Memorials of 174:6 record that "the remains were conveyed to the graveyard amid the strains of solemn music."
Despite the many quaint features Bethlehem was one of the most progressive towns in the American colonies. Its waterworks, built in 1754:, were the first public waterworks anywhere in the country. By the use of three force pumps. water was pumped up seventy feet to a tower. The pipes were made of carefully selected trunks of hemlock that had been floated down the Lehigh from Gnadenhiitten. A fire company now the Perseverance, was organized in 1762. Its fire engine, 'bought in London at a cost of £4,3,12S" was the earliest in the United States. At its first trial, on November 22, 1763, it sent a jet of water over the Single Brethren's House. Bethlehem has still another first, die Apotheke, or apothecary shop, opened in 1743 by Dr. Frederick Otto
and now the oldest drugstore in America. Bethlehem's main hostelry, the Sun Inn, was one of the best and one of the most famous in the country. It had private suites consisting of a sitting room and two bedchambers, with a servant in attendance on each suite. The inn boasts that all the Presidents of the United States from Washington down to Lincoln stayed there. Though Bethlehem was in the wilderness, so to speak, it was by no means a backwater.
The Moravians even had ships of their own to bring their people to America. There were no redemptioncrs among the Moravians. The first of these ships was the Catherine. purchased for L600 and specially fitted out to transport the first "sea congregation," which sailed from London on March 16, 174:2. This first sea congregation consisted of 56 people in addition to the minister at its head: 16 married couples, married men without their wives, and 22 single men, Throughout the voyage "hourly interccssion" was maintained night and day by prayer bands.
The second sea congregation sailed from Cowes on September 17, 1743, in The Little Strength, a ship the Moravians had bought and fitted out in England. All the crew except one sailor and two boys were Moravians. This sea congregation was made up of 56 married couples, 4 single men, 1 single woman, 1 widow, and 1 infant. Thirty-three young couples, thirty of them just married, were headed for Nazareth. Of these, twenty-fourhad been mnrriecl at the same time at "the great wedding" at Marienborn on May 27, 1743. After a voyage of ten weeks and one day The Little Strength docked at New York on November 27th. At once the passengers set out on foot overland to Bethlehem, a great undertaking, especially for the women, many of whom were weak from the long voyage. Eight days later the first of the travelers reached Bethlehem. This was a youth who had given out on the way and for whom a horse had been procured. During the evening service of the next day the rest straggled in, one group after another, all hardly able to take another step. Everyone at Bethlehem as up waiting for the new arrivals, and when the last one finally got
there a love feast was held in the chapel. "The chapel was quite filled, it is recorded; "and all rejoiced like children at this new influx to our little manger. The Bethlehem brethren served the newcomers, and bathed their galled and weary pilgrim feet, for they had bad weather, roads, and lodging, and often scarcity of food on the journey."
After the capture of The Little Strength by a Spanish privateer on May 1, 1744, a third ship, the Irene, was purchased. The Irene was a brave ship-"as strong as a tower," declared Spangenberg-with a lion as her figurehead. She was a square-rigged vessel of the sort called a "snow," with a keel of 85 feet. She was of 80 tons burden, and so commodious that a person could walk upright between her decks.Though the Moravians were pacifists of sorts, the Irene was mounted with two guns. In addition to a master and two mates, she carried a crew of nine men, two of them Jean and Jacobus van der Bilt. The Irene was launched on May 29, 1748, near Port Richmond on Staten Island at a .cost of nearly £1,800. The third sea congregation arrived at London in the Irene on January 11, 1749, and put out to sea on March 1st, bound for Pennsylvania. The Irene, too, was eventually captured by a French privateer off Cape Breton on November 30, 1757. She was succeeded by a fourth Moravian ship, the Hope, launched on November 21, 1760. Of 120 tons burden the Hops carried four cannon and a crew of thirteen men.
One of the most glorious and one of the saddest of chapters in Moravian history is their attempt to convert the Indians. In this they had far greater success than any other Protestant church. Here their courage, self-sacrifice, humanity, and endurance are shown at their finest. Only the greed, the ruthlessness, the "manifest destiny" of the white man prevented the success of the Moravians in Christianizing the Indians. Possibly the common belief that the Indians were descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel addcd to the Moravians' zeal. Be that as it may, the Moravian missionary society, the Society of the United Brethren for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen, organized on August 19, 1745, is the earliest missionary society in America; yet even before that the Moravians, both in Georgia and Pennsylvania and elsewhere too, had been working among the Indians. Zinzendorf had met deputies from the Six Nations in August, 1742, at the home of Conrad Weiser in the Tulpehocken settlement and persuaded them to consent to the Moravian missionary plans. He had met with other Indians at Shamokin, the Indian village that stood on the present site of Sunbury; here Madame Montour acted as his interpreter. He had journeyed through the forests to the mission at Shekomeko, about twenty-five miles from Rhinebeck on the Hudson. On September 15, 1742, he baptized the first Indian converts at Bethlehem: Wanab, to whom he gave the name David; and Tassawachamen, whom he called Joshua. Joseph Bull of Oley, a white man, was also baptized at the same time. The three converts knelt around a tub from which water was dipped out with a bowl and poured on their heads. Earlier, on January 12th of the same year at the conference Zinzendorf had called in Oley, three Indians had been baptized: Shabash, Otabawanemen. and Kiak. At this ceremony, performed in the barn of Isaac De Turck, the Indians had been given the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
All the Indians were dealt with generously. Indians as well as white people were paid for whatever lands the Moravians occupied. The Moravians never attempted a "walking purchase." At Nazareth the
Indians were paid for their huts, a peach grove, and a little field of wheat that were on the land of the Moravian settlement. In 1744 a school for the study of Indian languages was opened at Bethlehem under the direction of Christopher Pyrlaeus. In New York, however, Moravian missionary efforts met with disapproval. The New Yorkers believed that such success among the Indians could be accounted for
only if the Moravians were French agents. Consequently all Moravians were banned from the colony in 1743. Two missionaries, Christian Frederick Post and David Zeisberger, who had gone to live with the Mohawks in order to learn their language, were arrested on February 23, 1745, and locked up in the New York jail until April 10, when through the efforts of Conrad Weiser and Governor Thomas of Pennsylvania they were released to take part in negotiations with the Indians. Even the French and Indian War did not stop the Moravian attempt to convert the Indians. lne missionary work was extended year by year until it covered most of the tribes east of the Mississippi, especially the Algonquins and the Iroquois.
Indians were always made welcome at Bethlehem. A stone tavern or lodge for the entertainment of Indian visitors was built in 1752 on the west bank of the Monocacy. Farther up on the Lehigh, on the
present site of Lehighton, was the mission of Gnadenhiitten. The massacre at Gnadenhutten on November 24, 1755, when the Moravian missionaries there were either killed or taken captive, was a terrible blow to Moravian hopes. After the destruction of this mission many of the Indian converts fled to Bethlehem, where the Moravians gave seventy of these "brown hearts" shelter for a year and then built the Indian village of Nain for them.
With the outbreak of the French and Indian War, Bethlehem doubled in size: 556 refugees, both white and red, were housed there by January, 1756. Friendly Indians acted as guards for the town and
rangers in the woods. They brought in game from the forest, sometimes three deer a day; they set up bush nets in the river and caught shad and rockfish by the thousand. Even this did not provide enough food for the greatly increased population, for the harvest of 1755 had beenunusually poor. Between the first of the year and the fall of 1756, the Moravians bought five thousand extra bushels of grain for their own needs and those of the refugees. For this the provincial government reimbursed the Moravians only in part. Fortunately clothing and food were collected in Philadelphia and sent to these "displaced persons."
There is a tradition that hostile Indians had planned to attack Bethlehem on Christmas Day, 1755. The Indians were about ready to start the attack when the trombone choir on the belvedere of the Brethren's House broke the silence of the dawn with the playing of the Christmas chorale: The startled Indians lurking in the forest listened to the solemn straIns of the melody thrIce repeated and took It for the
voice of the Great Spirit warning them away. Only months later did Bethlehem learn of its escape when a Minsi convert told them what had happened. This is one of the town's most cherished traditions. It may
be merely a fanciful story; it may be the truth.
All through the French and Indian War the Moravians were in an unhappy position. Although liable to attack by hostile Indians, they were regarded by other whitre colonists with mistrust because of their friendliness to the Indians. Some of this suspicion was fantastic. The calendar they used, which was the modern one instead of the antiquated English one commonly in use then, though eleven days behind the time was advanced as proof that they were secretly papists and in league with the French-this because it was a. pope who had corrected the calendar and brought it up to date.
Though in many ways the outbreak of hostilities was afar greater blow to the Moravians than to any of the other white settlers, Bethlehem took the war more quietly than most of the other frontier settle.
ments. There was none of the panic in Bethlehem that there was in Reading. The outlying Moravian villages of Christianbrunn, GnadenthaI, Friedensthal, and even Nazareth and Bethlehem were all threatened. The Moravians appealed for soldiers to save these settlementsand also prepared to defend themselves. In this respect they differed from the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Brethren, and the Amish. As they put it, they were not kriegerisch warlike, but neither were they Quakerisch (Quakerlike.) Although they rejected all aggression, they believed in defending themselves. Throughout the war they kept the authorities in Philadelphia informed of the movement of any considerable band of Indians that came to their knowledge. Furthermore, some of the Moravian missionaries, especially Christian Frederick Post, were invaluable in winning the support of the Indians.'"
Much of the success of the Moravians in converting the Indians was due to the fact that they looked upon the Indians as fellow human beings. They treated them with absolute justice. They translated their
hymns and religious books into the Indian languages. They taught them their music. They took such pains that at Friedenshutten on the upper Susquehanna the Indians were able to set up on Christmas Day, 1767,; a spinet made by the Mohican, Joseph, with the help of the missionary, John Jacob Schmick, and to use it to accompany the Moravian hymns that they sang in their own tongue. The Moravians received the Indians into their churches. Occasionally they intermarried with them. Christian Frederick Post twice took an Indian wife, largely because he believed it would help him in his missionary work. When their Indian converts died, the Moravians buried them in their graveyards side by side with their own pcoplc. Onc hundrcd and thirty-six IndIan converts are buried in the old Moravian graveyard in Bethlehem. The Moravians well deserved the tllanks of George Washington for their "disinterested endeavors. ..to civilize and Christianize thesavages of the wilderness."
The old Moravian graveyard at Bethlehem, in which many of the Indians were buried, is one of the more fascinating burying grounds of the country. It is a peaceful spot shaded by old trees with stones flat
on the ground-the "breaststones" that mark the Moravian graves instead of headstones. To show the equality of all in the eyes of the Lord, each stone is the same size. In the Moravian graveyards the dead
are buried, not family by family, but pretty much in the order in which they die, though the little boys are buried in one section and the little girls in another, while the single men have a section to themselves, as have the single women, the married men, and the married women. The tombstone marking the grave of each unbaptized boy is inscribed with the word Beatus (blessed) , that of each unbaptized girl Beatus a singularly gracious custom. Sometimes there are epitaphs on the stones, but none to match the tender one on the tombstone of a little boy in the Moravian graveyard at Nazareth:
Thy little suff'rings now are o'er, Thy little head shall ache no more; Thy little race on earth is ron, Farewell but for a time, my son.
Bishop, plowman, Indian convert, organ-maker, seamstress, missionary, locksmith, miller, dairymaid, shepherd, choir leader, baker: here is a cross-section of early America. There are men and women from every position in society, from all occupations. There are men and women from the Rhine, from England and France, from Moravia, from Switzerland, from Norway and Sweden and Denmark, from the shores of the Baltic, from the three corners of the world; and there are Indians from the Loyalhanna, Shamokin, and the Chenango. This was an eighteenth century melting pot, a pattern in little of the America to come.
Bethlehem and Nazareth were not the only Moravian settlements in the American colonies. In 1753 a tract of a hundred thousand acres in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina was purchased from the Earl of
Granville and named Wachovia after one of Zinzendorf's estates. Here the villages of Bethabara, Bethania, Hope, Friedland, and Salem were founded. Bethabara was intended to be the chief town, but it was soon surpassed by Salem. Today Bethabara is a quiet village with a fine old Moravian church of stone and brick with a dunce-cap steeple, while Salem as part of Winston-Salem is a bustling city. Winston-Salem is still one of the principal Moravian centers. A heritage from its past are the fine old buildings, almost as many as at Williamsburg. Originally the steep roofs were covered with red tiles, only one mark of their continental origin. The onion-shaped dome crowning the cupola of the church, arched hoods over doorways, and vaulted cellars are wholly unlike the prevalent Georgian architecture of the South.
In 1756 a little settlement in northern Lancaster County was named Lititz in honor of the barony in Bohemia that had been the ancient refuge of the Moravians. A Gemeinhaus had been built in 1748 and
the congregation organized in 1749; but it was not until 1754, when George Klein gave the church 491 acres, that a village was formed. A Single Sisters' House was started in 1758 and one for single brethren
the following year. By the "lease system" only Moravians were reimitted to live in Lititz. Although the General Economy was never adopted at Lititz, it was essentially a Landgemeine, a country congregation. Life at Lititz was almost as idyllic as that at Bethlehem. The church diary for July 3, 1763, records that the rye harvest commen and the Single Sisters were busy cutting it (with sickles) ." An entry for April, 1774, reveals something of the placid nature of the town: "A meeting of the Brethren was held to consider the question whether anything could be done to prevent the running at large in the street of cows." In the main, life was earnest. The single sisters engaged in spinning and weaving in addition to taking a turn in the harvest fields, they knitted and embroidered and made lace; they made dresses and wove chip hats; they fashioned little boxes and made confectionery. A small store was opened to sell the products of their labor. Frivolous pastimes such as checkers and chess were forbidden. and even "figmill," a game played with yellow and red grains of corn on a board was frowned on. A regulation of 1765 forbade the smoking of "segars on the street, but this was because of the fear of fire that haunted Lititz rather than a concern for morals. It was also ordered that live coals must be carried in a covered pot when taken from one home to another. A further regulation directed that chimneys be swept three times a year ( a shilling and fourpence for two-story houses, ninepence
for one story) with the exception of those on the Gemeinhaus and the two choir houses, which must be swept every eight weeks (a shilling and sixpence per chimney).
With the end of the General Economy in 1762 the communistic features of the life at Bethlehem and Nazareth were discontinued. The various industries were sold to individual members, who bought the
stock and fixtures and leased the buildings; but a number of the farms, the store, and the Sun Inn continued under the control of the Church authorities. Both Bethlehem and Nazareth remained church
towns, little Christian republics, in which only members of the church were permitted to reside permanently. Municipal affairs were handled by the congregationaJ council, which made many of the appointments to the various positions, including the postilion to carry the mail to Philadelphia, the nurse to assist the physician, the night watchman, the sexton, the almoner, and a dozen or more others. Many of these positions were filled by lot, for the Moravians made use of the lot more than any other Protestant church.
The excessive use of the lot is one of the more curious features of Moravian life. The rest of the world may beJieve that marriage is a lottery, but only the Moravians took this truism literally. The theory
and the use of the lot in marriage is clear: thus man was assured of divine guidance in choosing a wife. A scoffer might suggest that in marriage by lot man was able to blame God for the choice of his wife
rather than take the blame himself. In Bethlehem the two sexes were separated from early childhood: boys and girls grew up seeing very little of one another. Most emphatically the Moravians did not believe
in coeducation. The young men and the young women lived in separate choir houses. Even in church they were assigned to different sides of the building, for in the Moravian church, like many another of the
day, the men sat on one side and the women on the other. Rarely did the two sexes mingle. One such occasion was the snitzing bee held on fall evenings in the Snitz House, a little log structure that had been
ouilt in 1749. Here the single sisters pared the apples and cut them into slices or snitz, while the single brethren placed the trays of snitz in the drying oven. Even then they were well chaperoned. The chances are that when a young Moravian came to marriageable age and wished to take a wife, he knew no girls. Of course, if he had been smitten by one of the single sisters he met at a snitzing bee or saw in church, he could submit her name; but very often he left the choice of the girl to the proper authorities, the Bruder-Pleger, or caretaker of the single brethren, and the Schwester-Pleger, or matron in charge of the single women. Together they would consider the young man's character and choose a proper mate for him. But whether he submitted a name or left the choice to his elders, the next step was the use of the lot to determine whether or not his name might be presented to the girl. This was a fifty-fifty chance. If the lot went against him, his hopes of marrying that particular girl were dashed; he was never given a second chance. If he wished he could ask the authorities to choose again for him, or he could wait until another girl took his fancy, or he could go to Nazareth or Lititz and try his luck there. Even if the lot was in his favor, it was up to the young woman to decide whether or not she wished to marry him. Although she was under no compulsion to take him, so much weight was attached to the divine element in the use of the lot that she often let herself be guided by the lot. These marriages seem to have turned out well, to have been as happy as those made for more romantic reasons.
Yet the Moravians did not take marriage as a matter of course. To them marriage was part of the good life; it made for contentment in man. Earthly marriage was regarded as a preparation for heavenlymarriage. Sex relations were natural, right, and even holy. The married man who lived in the world was their ideal, not the ascetic who withdrew from it.
This utopia in Pennsylvania had come into being largely because Zinzendorf, who was a wealthy man, was willing to advance large sums of money to the church. It was Zinzendorf's money that enabled the Moravians to purchase large tracts of land and erect substantial buildings on them. This early advantage turned into a liability when the church in Europe followed the lead of impractical enthusiasts to attempt a new settlement at Herrnhaag and to embark on ambitious manufacturing and trading ventures in England. To save the church Zinzendorf stepped into the breach in 1753 with all his property and credit. On Zinzendorf's death in I 756 the church found itself indebted to his heirs..Though the church paid $90,000 to the heirs for their interest in the Pennsylvania estates, far more onerous was the enormous debt had been contracted. By 1764 about $550,000 had been paid off, $773,162 still owing. Of this debt the Moravians in Pennsylvania to shoulder a large part. Not until 1801 was the church rid of
burden.
In spite of the heavy debt Bethlehem continued to progress. In 1770 the Widows' Society of Bethlehem was founded, probably the oldest existing beneficial society in the United States. The same year John Martin Mack was consecrated bishop, the first Moravian bishop-in fact the first bishop of any Christian church-to be consecrated in America.
The Revolution found Bethlehem in the thick of things. It was on line of march from Pennsylvania to New York. In July, 1775,Pennsylvania troops passed through on their way to New England were soon followed by troops from Virginia. Then came British
prisoners on their way south. On January 30, 1776, four sleighs filled with the wives and children of prisoners captured at St. John's pulled town. Their suffering in the bitter cold so moved the Moraviansthat they collected warm clothing and blankets for them. This was only the start. The Moravians, often counted with the "peace sects" of Pennsylvania, had hoped to sit out the war in quiet. The church had decided that all its men would take the same stand, to refuse absolutely to have any part in active military service but to pay any fine levied in them. This position did not endear them to their militant rebel neighhbors, the Scotch-Irish and the Lutherans and Reformed among Pennsylvania Dutch. In near-by Emmaus twenty-five Moravians were imprisoned and put on bread and water for a month.
Bethlehem and Nazareth did not have to go to the war; even though these towns saw no fighting the war came to them. Nowhere else in the colonies were buildings so perfectly suited for use as hospitals as those at Bethlehem. Furthermore, Bethlehem was just the right distance behind the lines. In December, 1776, the general hospital of the Continental Army was moved to Bethlehem. On December 5th the first gons loaded with wounded, shivering in the piercing cold, came rolling into town. These poor men were quickly moved into the Single Brethren's House. Here they were nursed by the Moravians, Bishop Ettwein serving as chaplain in the hospital. At first all was in disorder with no food and the wounded men famishing. These the Moravians
fed from their own stores until the commissary supplies reached Bethlehem three days later. On December 15 General Gates, the ranking division commander undcr Washington, arrivcd; and on Dccember 17 General Sullivan, with thrce thousand to four thousand troops. Even before the army came, the town had been filled to overflowing with refugees from Philadelphia, but with the army pouring into town all was at sixes and sevens. Every house, every barn, every shed was packed with men. The Sun Inn was jammed with high-ranking officers: Generals Arnold, Glover, and Sterling were all there. The church at the Christmas Eve services was crowded as never before. Most of the soldiers were forced to encamp outside the town, where they burned up the fence rails for miles around. Later on Bethlehem put in a bill for this wood: 17,000 fence rails, 200 posts, and 594 1/4 cords of firewood-and was awardedL1,750 in Pennsylvania money. In all fairness to the Moravians it must be pointed out that this L1,750 was the total amount of Bethlehem's war claims, It never made any attempt; to collect a penny for the use of its buildings as hospitals or for its:
citizens' services as nurses. That much Bethlehem was glad to give free. Fence rails, however, were another matter.
Crowded though it was, Bethlehem went its unruffled way. The coolness, the absence of all hysteria, made Bethlehem invaluable as a hospital site. There was no demoralization. In February, 1777, large quantities of military stores were brought to the town. On March 17, 1777, the hospital was moved, and Bethlehem breathed a sigh of relief. One hundred and ten dead were left behind, buried on a bluff across the Monocacy.
All that summer many members of Congress visited Bethlehem; Henry Laurens, soon to become president of Congress; John Hancock, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Richard Henry Lee, and ten other members. On September 7 there arrived 218 prisoners, mostly Scotch Highlanders. Then came the defeat at Brandywine, and once more Bethlehem became the general hospital for the Continental Army. The most noted patient was the wounded Lafayette. For a time it looked as though the whole town might be taken over by the army and the Moravians forced out. To guard against this the members of Congress who were then in Bethlehem made their wishes known to army:
BETHLEHEM, September the 22d, 1777.
Having here observed a humane and diligent attention to the sick and wounded, and a benevolent desire to make the necessary provision for the relief of the distressed, as far as the powers of the Bretheren enable them We desire that all Continental Officers may refrain from disturbing the persons or property of the Moravians in Bethlehem, and particularly that they do not disturb or molest the Houses where the women are assembled. Given under our hands at the time and place above mentioned.
Nathan Brownson Richard Henry Lee
Nath'l Folsom Wm. Duer
Richard Law Corn'l Hamett
John Hancock Henry Laurens
Samuel Adams Benj. Harrison
Eliph't Dyer Jos. Jones
Jas. Duane John Adam.
Henry Marchant
Wm. Williams
DELEGATES TO CONGRES8.
Yet the town was grossly overcrowded, especially after the battle of Germantown, when wounded in vast numbers were brought to Bethlehem. Some, it is said, were "laid upon the ground in the rain to die" a statement more shocking than true, since the Moravians were doing everything in their power to give shelter to the men, to nurse the wounded and alleviate their pain. The Moravians went through the town again and again, collecting all possible blankets and clothing. Some of the soldiers were housed temporarily in tents. All these were moved to the garret of the Brethren's House when hard rains came on the end of October. Another hundred were in a frame building that had been thrown up to give them shelter. When there was no longer place to put another man, fifty wagons loaded with sick and wounded arrived from Princeton. In the Brethren's House, where it had been estimated two hundred men could be properly cared for, seven hundred had been jammed. Though the facilities were the best the army could obtain, they were woefully inadequate. It was impossible to keep the men or the place clean under such crowded conditions. The stench was frightful, especially in the attic, which was virtually without ventilation. A malignant fever known as "putrid fever" broke out and spread rapidly. Men died-five, six, even as many as twelve a night.So unsanitary were the conditions that Dr. William Smith of the hospital staff later declared that four or five patients had died on the same straw before it was changed. At first the Moravians aided by soldiers made coffins for the dead, but soon men were dying faster than coffins could be built. Many of the civilians died, too, nurses and orderlies in the hospital and people in the town. At dawn each day the dead-cart piled high with bodies left the Brethren's House for the hill across the Monocacy, where the dead were buried in trenches. There unnamed, even unnumbered, they lie among the cedars on a bluff above the creek. There may be as many as five hundred soldiers buried there;
there may be more. No one knows.
In addition to all the sick and wounded, nine hundred wagons of baggage and munitions with all their wagoners had come to Bethlehem. Washington's baggage and the bells of Christ Church in Philadelphia were among these. Even the Liberty Bell on its way to Allentown passed through the town. And, to top it all, two hundred and eighteen British prisoners were quartered there. The military population was forever, shifting, for the town was a thoroughfare for troops. Bethlehem had become the crossroads of America. Fresh regiments that had not yet smelled powder came marching jauntily into the Platz, buttons shining, banners flying; others, battle-stained and weary, plowed grimly through the streets of the town. For Pulaski the Moravian sisters embroidered a handsome crimson-silk guidon, which he still carried as his standard when he fell at Savannah. Martha Washington visited Bethlehem and accompanied by a group of American officers attended the service.s in the church. George Washington, too, came to town and worshiped in the Moravian church. One general after another turned up in Bethlehem: Greene, Knox, Sterling, Schuyler, Gates, Amold, Armstrong, Reed, De Kalb, and von Steuben. There was even captured Hessian general and his wife, Baron Riedesel of the Brunswick corps. Later on, in the summer of 1783, John Paul Jones came Bethlehem and stayed for a month.
After the Revolution a period of tranquillity set in. Bethlehem was known throughout the Republic for its schools and its music. In as it was a large, quiet cloister, yet it was not unaware of the world; to a certain degree it was even cosmopolitan. Many of its inhabitants were people of culture. Moreover, the influx of visitors during the Revolution had made a knowledge of English common. Practically everyone in Bethlehem was bilingual. By 1783 there was English preaching in church every Sunday. There was a steady stream of visitors, from Philadelphia and the greater world. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, thc Prince of Wied, and Joseph Bonaparte were some of the visitors with the most dazzling titles.
Yet pleasant though the town was, it was stagnating. More and more it was becoming an agrceable country town where Philadelphians could escape the heat of a Philadelphia summer. It was quiet, it was inexpensive, it was cultured, it was even quaint. Its inhabitants had good manners; there was almost an Old World courtesy. Its inn was one of the best in America. Its only rival in the neighborhood was the Gasthof zur Rose, better known as the Rose, at Nazareth. The British Officer Aubury, in his Travels in America, published in London in 1789, speaks of the Sun Inn as "equal to the first tavern in London" and praises it for its excellent wine. Many of the brief notations of the guests made by the clerk are tantalizing vignettes of the days of the early Republic :
July 12, 1801.-A lady dressed in black. July 15, 1801.-A company of French gentlemen with a servant. Four Suplers, 4 breakfasts, 4 dinners, 5 bottles porter, 2 bowls punch, 1 pint Lisbon. August 12, 1801.-A gentleman in a Windsor chair. August 26, 180l.-A company from Maryland in chairs, viz: one gentleman, two children, and one negro servant. Six suppers, 3 breakfasts, 3 dinners, 2 glasses brandy, 2 1/4 pints Teneriffe, 1 1/4 glass sangaree. August 28, 1801.-A company of actors. Twelve suppers, 12 breakfasts, 9 dinners, 12 gills brandy. September 12, 1801.-A gentleman and a lady in a phaeton. November 28, 180 1.-General Lee, 6 horses and 4 servants. Five dinners, 1 bottle Madeira, 5 quarts beer, 5 1/4. pints brandy. October 3, 1802.-A gentleman in a .'Sopus wagon."
The coming of the nineteenth century meant little to the quiet, sleepy town. With its women still wearing the Schnepplehaube, with marriages still arranged by lot, with the whole town turning out on Whitmonday for an excursion to Calypso Island down the river, the town seemed anchored in the eighteenth century. Bethlehem was a place where time stood still. But for all that it was not an American Cranford; it had more life than that. The Philharmonic Society produced oratorios; the girls' school was still the best in the country, and there were men of eminence living in Bethlehem (Moravians, too!) . Lewis David de Schweinitz, the botanist, and John Heckewelder, the missionary to the Indians.
What brought about the change? What had transformed Bethlehem from a vital, stirring town to a sleepy backwater? In large part it was, the decision made at the synod of 1769 at Marienborn that the church in America was merely a subordinate, outlying branch of the Unity, to be managed by a board responsible to the elders' conference in Europe. For eighty years no American synod was empowered to convene. Thus the American church was effectively hamstrung. Everything had to be referred to the European church for decision, to me who knew little of America or American conditions. Their view was narrow, conservative view, timid and completely out of keeping with the spirit of the growing Republic. Their eyes were fixed on the exclusive closed church village of Herrnhut, not on the vastness of continent. This was the great opportunity and the great failure of the Moravian Church. If it had seized this chance boldly, its members today might be numbered by the million instead of by the thousand. In ideas there was much that was good. Wesley borrowed some of them Schleiermacher and Goethe felt their influence. Indirectly the world
has been affected by them, but directly the impress of the Moraviain Church since the end of the eighteenth century has been slight.
Two specific features to which particular objection was raised the Moravians themselves were the excessive use of the lot, especially marriage, and the regimentation of the choir system. The contagion of independence infected the quiet town. The great facts of the American and French revolutions could not be denied-even in a cloister. As a result of these protests the Single Brethren's House was given up on April 16, 1814. More surprising was the revolt of the women, who had seemed to be occupied with their work or such mild diversions as applebutter cookings or carpet-rag parties. Suddenly in 1815 they inform the authorities that henceforth they were going to wear English hats instead of the traditional Schnepplehaube. No permission was asked of anybody; it was a blunt statement of fact. Before such a revolt the authorities were helpless. Shortly thereafter, in 1818, the use of the lot
in marriage was abandoned. The Moravians of Bethlehem and Nazareth and Lititz were becoming increasingly aware of their American citizenship; they were no longer thinking of themselves as a "peculiar people' set off from the rest of the world. These growing pains were accompanied by a loss of members: small Moravian settlements such as Donegal in Pennsylvania and Hope and Woolwich in New Jersey had to be abandoned. On the other hand, the mission for the Negroes at Salem met with encouraging success until the North Carolina legislature passed a law that forbade all education of Negroes.
Year by year the revolt went on. The American separation of church and state prevailed in the Moravian towns as well as elsewhere in the nation. Membership in the church and the town were no longer one and the same. The towns were "opened up." Anybody could move in Lutheran, Reformed, Roman Catholic, or Greek Orthodox. At the same time the Moravian Church in America was freeing itself from the church in Europe. Practical independence was established by 1848. Absolute independence by 1857. Once more the church began to branch out: churches were founded at Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Utica, New York. A mission was sent to the Eskimos in western Alaska.
As the century wore on, Bethlehem lost much of its distinctive character and became simply one more small American town. Railroads were built, and the outside world was much closer than it had ever been before. Then in the fifties steel moved in and Lehigh University was founded. The town began to grow untIl by the end of the century it had been transformed into a city. At first the Moravian community looked askance at the great steel mills and the university on the other side of the river, but by 1918 it had become reconciled to living in the same world with them and the two settlements were combined to form one city, the Bethlehem of today. This is the city of Moravianism and the Bach Choir, and of miles of steel mills along the Lehigh.