USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > Bethlehem > A history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741-1892, with some account of its founders and their early activity in America > Part 27
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During the summer of 1749, visits by persons of prominence in business circles or in public office were of frequent occurrence. One such visit, noted in September, was that of Thomas Penn's Secretary with "Justice Anthony Morris of Furnace Mill, on the road to Phila- delphia." This visit had some connection, as it seems, with planning and prospecting then in progress, with a view to the founding of a new town at the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers and the eventual erection of the new county which was being agitated.
An epoch in the industrial development of Bethlehem came with the arrival, on June 25, 1749, of four young men from England ; William Dixon, Joseph Healy, John Hirst and Richard Poppelwell, to make the first attempt at manufacturing woolen cloth. They were weavers from the Yorkshire mills which were, at that time,
3 This church settlement, to which there will be further reference in these pages, had a very promising beginning, with its important mill, store and group of other industries, its community house, tavern and even a boarding-school, for a few years. It also has an inter- esting history during the Revolutionary War. A combination of causes led to its decline, and it was given up, as a church-settlement, in 1803. Several of the old buildings and the cemetery remain as objects of interest in the modern village which yet bears the name Hope.
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being operated with vigor by men in connection with the Moravian Church in England.+
Among the members of the Moravian Church won in America who became residents of Bethlehem, the most important man, after Antes and Captain Garrison, was Timothy Horsfield of Long Island. He removed to the place on November 8, 1749, and took possession of the new stone house that had been built for him during the summer, "outside of Bethlehem, beyond the grave-yard."5
Much attention was given during the year 1749 to plans for the extension of the work among the Indians. Under the new policy inaugurated by de Watteville, more effort was to be devoted to this, as a special undertaking of the Moravian Church, while the evan- gelistic activity among white settlers was to assume a more defined and localized character, with the abandonment of Zinzendorf's Pennsylvania Synod scheme. Bethlehem. was no longer to be considered a center from which a comprehensive plan of operations among all denominations was to be executed, but the headquarters where the activity which the previous course of things had put into the hands of the Moravian Church was to be prosecuted. Naturally then, the Indian missions became relatively more prominent, as a department of activity, for in this the Moravian Church then stood practically alone. The devoted David Brainerd, whose efforts among the Indians along the Delaware and in other regions are referred to occasionally in the Bethlehem records, departed this life on October 9, 1747. The Rev. John Brainerd, his brother, who took up his work in the previous April among the Indians of Crossweeksung, and had located at Cranberry, N. J., failed to establish it satisfactorily there, in consequence of complications about the land, which,
4 Among contributions received from Europe by the Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel, for the benefit of Indian missions, were several invoices of wares from these York- shire mills.
5 This house, then "outside" the village, is yet standing on the north side of Market Street opposite the old cemetery, and is marked by a tablet attached to it in Bethlehem's sesqui-centennial year, 1892. The addition built to the west side of it in 1753, for the first general store and trading-place of the settlement, was removed several years before the town became 150 years old. Horsfield was the successor (1752) of Antes as Justice of the Peace at Bethlehem. When he located here he put his Long Island home at the disposal of the Church. A school for boys was opened there in the spring of 1750, under the supervision of Jasper Payne and James Greening, in connection with evangelistic efforts in the vicinity. In December, 1750, John Doehling, the teacher, moved the school into " a house near the ferry."
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
together with the interference of persons inimical to the mission and desiring its disintegration, led the converts, for the most part, to leave the place and scatter before the close of 1749. During the year there are various allusions to them, and to their intention of seeking a new location at or near Gnadenhuetten. Mr. Brain- erd, coming for a while under the influence of those untiring assailants of the Brethren who were distinguishing themselves in his denomination by their zeal in this sort of activity, declared that "if what Gilbert Tennent had written about the Moravians was true, he had rather see the Indians remain heathen than become Mora- vians." Fortunately the rabid things which this redoubtable defender of the faith and the State against the Moravian menace, and others who had joined in the campaign, said about them were not true. Brainerd evidently so concluded when he visited Bethlehem in October with the Rev. Mr. Lawrence who preached in the Irish settlement. He took friendly counsel about the Indian problem with the missionaries at Bethlehem, against whom he had some months before warned his Indians, after reading Mr. Tennent's statements. Just before his visit, a number of the Indians from Cranberry who had become so dissatisfied that they could no longer be persuaded to remain, had come to Bethlehem and then proceeded on their way, intending to visit Gnadenhuetten. Bishop Cammerhoff, finding these Indians at Bethlehem on October 21, when he returned from a journey, and fearing the complications that might ensue from their visit to Gnadenhuetten, set out at once for that place to have a consultation with the missionaries stationed there and to caution the Indian congregation to be on their guard, to show themselves friendly but to answer discreetly, and not let themselves be persuaded into any plan for joining interests. The danger that lay in this became apparent later, when it transpired that this disaffected remnant of David Brainerd's once flourishing Indian congregation was worked upon by emissaries from the tribes that had been drawn into alliance with the French. Many of them, like sundry Moravian converts, not remaining true to their profession, became agents to sow discord and bring the peaceable and loyal Indians under suspicion. Some of the Cranberry Indians halted about eight miles from Bethlehem, on the Gnadenhuetten road, and spent the winter there. Their occasional presence among the Indians at Bethlehem and at Gnadenhuetten, at that early stage of the slowly-working intrigues to alienate the Delawares, as well as the Shawanese, from
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English interests, was dreaded almost more by the Brethren than that of strange and savage Indians. Their converts would be far less likely to heed the counsels of the latter than those of Indians who came to them as fellow-Christians. This is also the reason why renegade Moravian Indians, during the following years, were much more troublesome than savages who tried to allure the faithful ones. This first contact with the disaffected Indians from Cranberry thus proved to be the beginning of a series of perplexing experiences which culminated in the horrors of 1755. Therefore it is introduced at this point.
During the summer of 1749, it also became clear that the hope entertained for a while, of being able to resuscitate the missions in New York and Connecticut, was vain. Although Moravian minis- trations among those who stayed there in preference to emigrating, and who remained faithful, continued at intervals for more than ten years longer, the blind intolerance that ruled the counsels of the Province of New York would not let the work live. Therefore, further bands of the converts followed those who had first come to Bethlehem. The faithful young missionary, David Bruce, brought a company of twenty-nine from Wechquadnach to Bethlehem, the middle of May, 1749, less than two months before his lamented death at that persecuted mission. These, added for a season to the number yet sojourning in Friedenshuetten, at Bethlehem's feet, near the Monocacy, and another little company, temporarily living to the north of the place "above Burnside's land near the creek," consti- tuted quite a congregation of them gathered, at this time, in the vicinity.
They, with a delegation of the Gnadenhuetten Indians, participated, on June 9, in a highly interesting service at Bethlehem, which, in a more tangible manner than the polyglot service of song referred to in the preceding chapter, indicated the broad range of Moravian missionary efforts. On May 6, the missionary Zander, whose wife Magdalena Miller formerly of Germantown, had died at sea on the voyage, arrived in Bethlehem with his two little children from Berbice in South America. With him came the missionary Grabenstein, and two young men from Berbice, Lorenz Van Willer and Christian Eggert. The last-named became a resident of Bethlehem. They had landed at Bristol, R. I., the middle of April, after a protracted voyage. They brought with them, besides a four-year-old mulatto boy, Ari, an Arawack Indian girl, Elizabeth, sixteen years of age.
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An Arawack boy, John Renatus,6 brought from Berbice in 1748 by Matthew Reuz, was also in Bethlehem at this time.
The missionary Stach was yet sojourning at the place with his Greenlanders. They were preparing to leave and a farewell service was to be held. When two Indian helpers came from Gnadenhuetten, on June 4, to see the Greenlanders and bring them fraternal greetings from their congregation, they were commissioned to invite as many of the Gnadenhuetten Indians as could come, to attend this farewell service on the 9th. They, as well as the Indians of Beth- lehem, were greatly interested in the Greenlanders, examined their native costume with much curiosity and tried to find what similarity there might be between their language and their own, as also that of the Arawacks. This unique service, with which a lovefeast was connected, took place in the chapel of the Brethren's House. The Greenlanders, in their native dress, were the central figures of the group. Next to them sat the Arawacks and, in a circle around them, were gathered all the Indians present, Delawares, Mohicans, Wam- panoags, and others, with a few negroes, and such missionaries who then happened to be in Bethlehem. The outer circle of the group consisted of the children and adults of Bethlehem. One of the features of the occasion was the singing of several hymns that had been translated into their respective languages-the same hymns simultaneously to the same tunes; the white congregation joining in English and German, and the whole being led by wind and stringed instruments. One record calls it "an incomparable concert." At the evening service, the Greenlanders appeared once more in their own peculiar garb. The missionary Stach spoke to them about the significance of the occasion and then, in the Greenland tongue, said the final words of farewell in their name to the congregation.
He went with them to Philadelphia, the next day, to call on Gov- ernor Hamilton at his special request, and proceeded from there to New York. Christian David, who had been busily engaged in getting the timber to New York for a store-house he was commissioned to build in Greenland-helping the carpenters meanwhile at the new house of Nazareth, the main structure of the group that in later years was known as Old Nazareth-followed them to Philadelphia on the 12th, and from there also went to New York, where Captain
6 Renatus was taken to Europe by Zander and Grabenstein in October, 1749, and Eliza- beth died at Bethlehem, June 18, 1750.
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Garrison had the Irene in readiness to sail. The passengers were Matthew and Thomas Stach, with their wives-Thomas had been married, June 2, to Elizabeth Lisberger-Christian David and Catherine Paulsen. They left the dock on June 21, and, after taking on a supply of drinking water at Staten Island, put to sea early on the morning of the 23d. This was a remarkable expedition and one of those voyages that justified the statements made about the Irene, that she was "as strong as a tower," and was "a very superior sailer ;" also the testimony given Captain Garrison, that he had few equals at the time as a skillful navigator. They made the voyage to Green- land in twenty-six days, lay there fourteen days, during which time Christian David built the provision-house for which he had taken the timber along, all ready framed to be set up, and in six weeks after this task was completed, they were safely back at New York, with the Greenland missionaries Frederick Boehnisch and wife on board, to go to Europe on the Irene when she sailed again. Christian David left the ship at Sandy Hook and hastened ahead to announce their safe return. To the astonishment and joy of every one, he suddenly appeared in Bethlehem on September 13. None were thinking of the Irene as yet possibly back from Greenland. Without delay, Captain Garrison made preparations for another voyage to Europe, and, the first week in October, was ready to sail. Bishop John de Watteville's work in America was finished, and he prepared at once to take passage on the church-ship. Bishop Spangenberg and his wife had closed their temporary labors in Philadelphia and came to Bethlehem. Early on the morning of October 6, they bade farewell to the place and left for New York to make the final prepar- ations for the voyage, with Bishop David Nitschmann and wife, who also returned to Europe. They were followed by one of the Beth- lehem wagons containing the last baggage of the company. With the wagon went David Wahnert and wife, the missionaries Boehnisch and wife, Zander and Grabenstein, the Arawack boy John Rena- tus, the widow of the missionary John Hagen, and a young man, Gottfried Hoffman, who had come with Grube's company in 1748 and now returned to Europe. A merchant, Lefferts, is also men- tioned as taking passage with them from New York. Bishop de Wat- teville and his wife left Bethlehem on October 7, accompanied by various officials. Henry Antes, who, at first, intended to take leave of them at the Delaware, there concluded to make it his gallant duty
17
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
to himself drive the chaise that he had procured for the accommoda- tion of "Sister Benigna," all the way to New York and look after her personal comfort. It seemed very empty at Bethlehem after their departure, with so many others accompanying them to New York, remarks the chronicler. After some delay, the Irene left her dock, October 15, and finally sailed off from Sandy Hook at sunrise on the 16th. There the gentle and devoted Cammerhoff took his last leave of them on earth and returned on a pilot boat. He journeyed afoot to Philadelphia to make another official tour, and threw himself with greater energy than before into the arduous labors of his remain- ing brief term of service. These labors were mainly in connection with the Indian missions which were now to be prosecuted with renewed vigor. Some incidents of this work during the following year, which belong essentially to the course of events, and with which he was conspicuously associated, may be mentioned here. At two Synods held before the close of 1749, one in August in Philadelphia, and another in November at Warwick in Lancaster County, the Indian missions constituted the most prominent subject deliberated on. Moreover, in July, 1749, de Watteville had, in company with Span- genberg, Cammerhoff, Pyrlaeus and Nathanael Seidel, met the deputies of the Six Nations in Philadelphia, when they were there for an interview with the Governor. On that occasion, de Watteville renewed the covenant made with them by Zinzendorf in 1742, and the way was prepared for sending missionaries among them, not- withstanding the hostility in New York and the precarious condition of things generally, as regards government relations to this dominant Indian confederacy. In connection with that covenant the Indian deputies, who honored de Watteville as the son-in-law and messenger of Johanan-the name by which Zinzendorf was known among them- adopted him into one of their clans and gave him the name Tgari- hontie-the messenger.7
7 As a matter of curiosity, the names by which various others were known among the Indians may be here mentioned. Spangenberg, in 1745, received the name Tgirhitontie (row of trees); Zeisberger, in 1745, that of Ganousseracheri (on the pumpkin); Cammerhoff, in 1748, that of Galichwio (good words); Pyrlaeus, in 1748, that of Tranniatarechev (between two seas); Mack, in 1748, Ganachrageja! (the first man or leider); Seidel, 1748, Arenuntschi (the head), Rauch was known as Z'higochgoharo. Anton Schmidt, when he went to Sha- mokin, was given the name Rachwistoni. John Joseph Bull, who was commonly known as Shebosh (running water), was also called Hajingonis (twister of tobacco). Post bore the name Ahamawad. On one occasion the explanation was made to some of the missionaries by the Indians that all were given names, in this way, because their German and English names were too difficult to be pronounced by them. Their judgement on this question of comparative difficulty would hardly find universal acceptance.
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Those consultations led also to a conviction that it was important to make the life at Gnadenhuetten as agreeable as possible for their Indian converts, and to put forth every effort to hold them together at that point, while endeavoring to prevent the scattering of those who yet lingered about Bethlehem. This was felt to be increasingly desirable amid the prevailing public conditions and in view of the signs of the times, which the Brethren did not fail to discern, even if their quiet perseverence in the effort to push out farther into the Indian country with their evangelistic work, seemed to some of their friends to indicate that they were not aware of the critical devel- opments. Those who took a sinister view of their movements became more firmly persuaded that there must be some kind of an under- standing between them and the secret conspirators which made them feel safe among the Indians everywhere. There were some restless spirits at Gnadenhuetten who needed patient, watchful care, and some of those at Bethlehem were not reliable. Not only was it the desire of the Brethren to keep a firm hold on all these for their own good, but also to prevent them from becoming agents of mischief. Hence, when dissatisfaction began to be expressed by some at Gnadenhuetten with the stiff clay soil of the ridge, and the idea was also fostered among them that they ought to have more land, steps were at once taken to remove this cause of discontent and possible pretext for yielding to the persuasions of schemers who were tampering with them, and for removing to Wyoming. In March, 1750, a tract of 130 acres of rich bottom-land was purchased of Secretary Peters, on the east side of the river, for £75. There, in May, 1754, their nineteen cabins transferred from Gnadenhuetten, were set up again in another vil- lage which suited them better and was called New Gnadenhuetten. The mission compound on the other side continued to be occupied by the corps there stationed to carry on the work. At the very time when the new tract of land was pur- chased, an event occurred at Gnadenhuetten that first brought con- spicuously to the front the famous Indian who, above all others, was associated with the plots and intrigues of the following years. In connection with the baptism of certain Indians, on March 16, 1750, the statement is on record that "another Indian, a half-brother of Nicodemus and Peter, Tadeuscont, called among the English Honest John, who had long been acquainted with the Brethren, had repeat- edly asked to be baptized." It is stated that it was declined "for the present," there being misgivings about his case. Finally, after much
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
hesitation, he was baptized at Gnadenhuetten, together with his wife, on March 19, by Bishop Cammerhoff. His position among the Indians, his commanding personality, his tribal and family preten- sions, and his previous character as a reckless man who gloried in his contempt of all restraints and of the opinions of others in refer- ence to his conduct, served to render the occasion a peculiarly impressive one for the Indian congregation. Teedyuscung8 received the name Gideon, which would have been eminently suitable if he had proven to be such a man as Wasamapah the Mohican. His wife was named Elizabeth.
At this period, pilgrimages to and fro between Bethlehem and another point on the border of the Indian country became frequent. This was the village of Meniolagomeka, in the valley of the Aquan- shicola Creek, north of the Blue Mountains, where Zinzendorf had stopped on his first tour in 1742, and various missionaries had occasionally visited. In 1749, the chief of the village was baptized at Gnadenhuetten and in 1752, a regular mission was established there. It came to an untimely end in May, 1755, when the Indians were compelled to remove because the land was wanted. They retired to Gnadenhuetten and recruited that station, from which twenty of the people had been lured away to Wyoming by Teedyus- cung in May, 1754, in spite of all the efforts of the missionaries. The journal of a Synod held at Bethlehem in March, 1750, records that at that time there were 102 baptized Indians at Gnadenhuetten and about 20 at Meniolagomeka.º
8 There is hardly a limit to the variations in the spelling of his Indian name to be found in print and manuscript, then and since-Deedjascon, Dadjuscong, Tadeuscong, Tadeus- cund, Tadyuscong, Tedeuscont, Teedeuscund, Teedeuscung, Teedyuscung, etc. The last, having become one of the most common forms, will be used in these pages, without attempting to decide which is the most correct. Cammerhoff, in the record of his baptism in the Bethlehem register, calls him " ein kar efoxny grosser Sünder." The Greek expression is used in Acts 25 : 23-" principal men"-and Cammerhoff means what St. Paul says of himself, I. Tim. 1 : 15, the chief of sinners. Unfortunately, as subsequent events proved, Teedyuscung did not cease to be this after his baptism. At this very time he was un- doubtedly trying to inveigle the Gnadenhuetten Indians.
9 The site of this village in Smith's Valley, on the north side of the Aquanshicola, eight miles west of the Wind Gap, is marked by a granite monument erected by the Moravian Historical Society and dedicated October 22, 1901. It stands near the side of the road that leads up from the creek towards Kunkeltown on the farm of the aged Benjamin Schmidt, who generously manifested his interest in this desire to preserve the historic associations of the spot from oblivion.
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The increase of travel between Bethlehem and the Indian country, occasioned by the opening of this new station, added to the uneasy suspicions of the people living in the neighborhood between, espe- cially so the frequent coming and going of Indians which could not be prevented. But far more excitement was caused by the malicious stories set afloat through New York and Pennsylvania by evil- minded persons, and believed by many anxious people who had no means for ascertaining the truth, in connection with an extraordinary journey undertaken by Cammerhoff in company with David Zeis- berger to Onondago, in the summer of 1750. Cammerhoff started from Bethlehem with some companions on May 14, was joined by Zeisberger far up the country and, after they had journeyed about sixteen hundred miles by canoe, afoot and on horse-back, they got back to Bethlehem at midnight on August 16, with Cammerhoff's health permanently impaired and his constitution broken. This jour- ney was undertaken with government sanction and passport, and was in pursuance of a preliminary understanding had with the depu- ties of the Six Nations at the treaty of the previous August. Its sole object was to gain a foothold for permanent missionary work among people under their control. It was a journey of such extra- ordinary hardship and attended with so much adventure that the narrative reads like a romance. The result was such public sensation created by the wild fictions circulated in reference to it, that an official examination by the government of Pennsylvania became necessary to clear these heroic men and the authorities at Bethlehem from the suspicion engendered. This, of course, did not change the minds of those who were determined to think evil and to believe no good of their movements. Thus, with the renewed efforts for the evangelization of the Indians, at a time when the ominous outlook in the matter of relations to them kept the minds of so many in a state of constant dread, the eye of suspicion was anew turned upon Beth- lehem.
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