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 57
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
bore that name among some, on account of its famous mill, which was an important objective point, and the superior mechanism of which particularly interested many observant travelers. He also speaks of the "religious pictures" which he saw in the church. When he went to the house of the single men he found the super- intendent, Jacob Van Vleck, copying music, and states that "he had in his room an indifferent piano forte made in Germany." He also found him to be "not only a performer, but a composer." On the organ of the house, Van Vleck "played some voluntaries in which he introduced a great deal of harmony and progressions of bass." The Marquis says that he found him "better informed" than those he had before met with, but adds, "yet it was with some difficulty I got from him the following details." He then gives a concise state- ment of the general organization of the Brethren, the economic system, the property arrangements, the discipline and social order and, of course, the much-discussed subject of marriage, in connec- tion with which, however, he does not refer to the use of the lot to settle the question of a proposed marriage. While some of his state- ments are quite amiss, they are, on the whole, substantially correct on these various subjects, and are interesting as made from the stand- point of an outside observer, using his own terms for things which were then translated into English expressions different from those in current use among the Brethren, as applied to offices and official affairs. He found the Brethren's House much the same as the Sisters' House in its internal order. His attention was attracted by a novel arrangement for "awakening those who wish to be called up at a given hour," and describes it. He says, "all their beds are numbered, and near. the door is a slate on which all the numbers are registered. A man who wishes to be awakened early, at five o'clock in the morn- ing (this was not early at Bethlehem except in winter) for example, has only to write the figure five under his number. The watchman who attends the chamber observes this in going his rounds, and at the time appointed, the next morning, goes straight to the number of the bed, without troubling himself about the name of the sleeper." He also took a view of the surroundings from the belvedere on the roof. He visited the Bethlehem farm. He says it was "kept in good order, but the inside was neither so clean nor so well-kept as in the English farm-houses, because the Moravians are more bar- barous than their language." The translator, as an Englishman, doubtless enjoyed rendering this latter remark, which rendering
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appears to be a defective translation of the author's meaning. Then after eating breakfast, at ten o'clock, with which he was "still better satisfied" than with his walk, he and those with him proceeded on their journey at noon; halting twenty miles away, towards Phila- delphia, at Kalf's tavern, a German house, very poor and filthy." This kind of comments by travelers on country taverns in Pennsyl- vania generally, in those days, was the common rule.
The first new visitor of the following year, 1783, to be specially mentioned, was Attorney General John Gardiner, of the Island of St. Kitts, the first week in June. Counsellor Gardiner was a son of Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, of Boston, proprietor of the "Plymouth Purchase" on the Kennebeck River, in Maine, the region in which the Broad Bay work had previously been carried on by Moravian evangelists. John Gardiner was acquainted with Moravian clergy in England, had his son, who later became rector of Trinity Church, Boston, educated in the Moravian School at Fulneck, England, was a warm friend and supporter of the Moravian missionaries in St. Kitts, and for some time was engaged in negotiations with the Mora- vian authorities with a view to the founding of a settlement on the Kennebeck.15 He was received with much pleasure at Bethlehem, spent six days at the place, was accompanied, on his departure, as far as Nazareth, by Ettwein, and from there proceeded to Boston. At the end of June there is a reference to the celebrated Judge Edmund Pendleton, of Virginia, who had sojourned some time as an invalid at Bethlehem and left, much benefitted in health. Four weeks later Dr. Otto was called to attend the Swedish Baron von
Hermelin-an eminent mineralogist, on a tour of scientific investi- gation-who was taken ill on the road six miles away. brought to Bethlehem for treatment and remained until August 7.
He was
From July 22 to August 29 of that year, 1783, the famous Captain Paul Jones was most of the time at Bethlehem. He was accompa- nied to the place by the well-known Philadelphia merchant, Samuel Wharton, who seems to have just returned from his eventful sojourn in Europe, where, after fleeing from England, he had sought the befriending offices of Dr. Franklin in France. The diarist says he became acquainted with the English Moravian, James Hutton, dur- ing the intercourse of the latter with Franklin. Captain Jones had occasion to participate during his stay, as a voluntary emergency police captain, in an exciting incident at the Crown Inn. After the
15 See Transactions, Moravian Historical Society. IV, 53-65.
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
evening service of the Children's Festival, August 17, Fuehrer, inn- keeper at the Crown, came over and reported the suspicious move- ments and unruly acts of two individuals who had followed to his tavern a traveler who carried a sum of money which, under fear of these men, he had given into Fuehrer's care. Meanwhile they attacked the traveler, deprived him of his letters and papers, inflicted bodily injury upon him and threatened to kill him, when he escaped in the darkness, the assailants then intimidating the other persons at the tavern and taking possession of the place. There being no magistrate at Bethlehem, Captain Jones took matters into his hands and made arrangements to hold and guard the ruffians until an officer could be summoned. The next day a neighboring Justice was sent for, the affair was investigated, the assaulted trav- eler appeared, the prisoners, who were both found to be tavern- keepers on the road to Philadelphia, were bound over to court, and at the trial, on September 18, the worthy squires concluded that the affair was trivial and the case was dismissed. The apparent reason for their leniency is doubtless to be found in the fact that the trav- eler's errand proved to be one associated with Moravian mission- aries and Indian missions to which their worships-most of them- cherished the old repugnance, cultivated among some classes of people in Northampton County. The aforesaid tavern-keepers who followed the traveler to Bethlehem proposed, as it seems, to earn fame in the service of their country by hunting down a traitorous emissary of the Moravians and unearthing some dark plot. When the papers taken by them from their victim, after he first escaped from their hands, were examined by Captain Paul Jones and others at the tavern, the traveler turned out to be a trader, Ebenezer Allen, who, on August 2, had brought to Bethlehem letters sent, June 22, from Niagara by that faithful assistant of the missionaries John Joseph Bull, alias Shebosh, frequently mentioned in former chap- ters, and John Weigand, of Bethlehem, on their way as messengers of the Moravian authorities to the fugitive missionaries Zeisberger, Heckewelder and Sensemann, settled with the remnant of their con- verts at New Gnadenhuetten, on the Huron River-now Clinton- in the present State of Michigan.
The whole affair had a connection, therefore, with occurrences on the ragged border-edge of the great Revolutionary struggle, out in the wild West, which once more involved the Moravians and gave the heaviest blow to their Indian missions that had yet been
JOHN MARTIN MACK
JOHN HECKEWELDER
DAVID ZEISBERGER
ABRAHAM LUCKENBACH
OWEN RICE (1ST)
1778-1785. 523
suffered. This blow was the cold-blooded slaughter of ninety Mora- vian Indians, men, women and children, together with six other Indians, by a band of lawless white guerillas at Gnadenhuetten, on the Tuscarawas River-then called the Muskingum, being a con- fluent of that stream-in the present State of Ohio, on March 8, 1782. That atrocious deed, although it has had its apologists, has passed into history as one of the blackest stains on the records of the border country of that time. Yet it was probably no worse than some men in Pennsylvania were ready to perpetrate, and would have perpetrated, in 1764, if there had been as little restraint around them as there was around those in Ohio. If the deed had been executed upon those savages who had been guilty of the terrible outrages in the West that excited many almost to frenzy, it would have admitted of some palliation, under the awful circumstances of the time. As it was, however, historians who can apologize for it, can bring them- selves to defend any dastardly wickedness men were ever guilty of, should it suit some purpose of the writers to do so. The Indians at Gnadenhuetten had no more to do with the atrocities which that band of rangers wished to avenge, than had the most innocent women and children in the settlements. The details of that deliberate butchery of a lot of defenseless, submissive, praying Christian men, women and children, penned up for the purpose and then led out, one after another, to be slaughtered like cattle, are to be classed with the most inhuman deeds that men professing to be civilized have ever been known to commit in warfare. The affair sent a thrill of indignant horror through the country, and into the highest circles of Govern- ment, leading to Congressional action, with a view to investigation and punishment; but, as events proved, there was little to be done under the crudely-organized administration and distracted condi- tions of the time. At Bethlehem, when the first intimation was received, a month after it occurred, the people were appalled and grief-stricken. This awful calamity to the missions hastened the end of the enfeebled and suffering old President of the Executive Board, Bishop Nathanael Seidel, who passed away on May 19. 1782.16
16 In his decease, the most conspicuous man yet remaining of those who figured promi- nently in the early days of Bethlehem passed away. Amid the scenes of the Revolution others of prominence had departed : John Bechtel, in April, 1777; Valentine Haidt, the painter of pictures, in January, 1780; Frederick Boeckel, Farmer General, the same year; "neighbor" John Jones, in June, 1781; Captain Nicholas Garrison, Sr., in Sep-
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
Ten days before the disturbance of August 17, 1783, at the Crown Inn, which has given occasion to this digression, another tourist arrived at Bethlehem whose visit led also to an interesting published description of the place. This was Dr. John David Schoepf, a sur- geon from Baireuth in Bavaria, who had been serving in the British army. The diarist refers to him as having been with the Anspach soldiers, and having remained in the country to study its natural resources. His special object was to collect medicinal plants in order to extend the range of materia medica.17 The scientist, the lover of nature, and the man capable of being pleased and of pleas- ing, are revealed in his account. It treats, more than do any previous narratives of the kind that have been referred to, of the natural sur- roundings of Bethlehem, and enables readers of the present time to form a better idea of the beautiful scenery along the Lehigh in olden times. In his description of an August visit to Bethlehem, the 'placid and charming Lehigh," around the banks of which "gather in bewitching beauty all the fascinations of a truly delightful region," and the formation of the ridges and heights that constitute the Lehigh Hills with their bluish rock, their foliated gneissoid rock and their underlying gray limestone, first come in for mention. Among the "beautiful shrubs and trees which, with their shadow and boughs overhanging the bank far into the stream, impart to the picture a glow of richest exuberance," are mentioned kalmia, rhododendron, cephalanthus, sassafras, azalea, liriodendron, magnolia, and others which people in Germany "long to have in gardens and parks." This
tember, 1781 ; Henry Miller, the printer, in March, 1782; Michael Haberland and Henry Beck, associated with the early work in Georgia, and George Klein, the "Father of Lititz" and first stage-line manager from Bethlehem to Philadelphia, all in 1783. Among those who departed in 1785 were the Rev. John George Nixdorff, the Rev. Christian Otto Krog- strup, and the old school-master Adam Luckenbach, ancestor of all the numerous families of that name at Bethlehem, who, although never actually a member of the Moravian Church, was treated as such at his death.
17 The results of his researches were embodied in "Materia Medica Americanis Septen- trionalis Pottissimum Regni Vegetabilis," published at Erlangen in 1787. The distinguished Pennsylvania botanist, the Rev. Gotthilf Henry Ernest Muhlenberg, seems to have rendered him valuable assistance, as did also Dr. John Matthew Otto, of Bethlehem, whom he men- tions several times in his Incidents of Travel. See on Dr. Schoepf. The German Wars in the United States, by Rosengarten. The entire section of the Incidents of Travel, which relates to Bethlehem and the neighborhood was reprinted as Appendix No. I in A History of the Rise, Progress and Present Condition of the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies at Bethlehem, Pa .- " Bethlehem Seminary Souvenir"-1858, 1870, and is, therefore, access- ible to more readers than the descriptions of other travelers that have been quoted from.
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is what a traveler in 1783 found where now the cinder banks burn under the August sun. To the mind of the genial writer "the ferry- man and his two assistants seemed to reflect the cheering aspect of the landscape, being friendlier and more accommodating than the generality of settlers in the vicinity."
He then enumerates the principal buildings of the town and com- ments on the cleanliness, order and industry. He observed that while there were few English in the place, nearly all were conversant with both languages, and that there was English preaching every Sunday. He says, "As most of the Brethren, and especially their ministers, are of Saxon origin, it is a matter of no surprise that the purest and most correct German of which America can boast is spoken here at Bethlehem, and in the other Moravian settlements." Ettwein was absent on a journey, but in Huebner he "found an agreeable and amiable gentleman and an ardent lover of botany." He bestows the customary praise upon the inn, refers to Baron Hermelin, the Swedish mineralogist who was there sick, and notes Dr. Otto's skillful treatment, under which he was recovering. The various "factories and mills," the water-works, and the new brewery are alluded to and in part described. The observant visitor refers to "an iron nail of the thickness of the little finger and three inches long," found in digging a cellar, "ten feet below the surface of the ground and fifteen or twenty feet from the bed of the river," at a place where no excavations were known to have ever taken place before. He speculates on the possibility of its having come from the wrecked vessel of European navigators, before the days of Columbus, and having been brought inland by Indians; and on the length of time requisite to have thus buried it under that depth of soil through deposits by the annual rise of the waters. The skill of Bethlehem's artisans and the variety and excellence of their products are praised. He acknowledges his indebtedness to Dr. Otto "for a variety of information respecting the medicinal proper- ties of indigenous plants." "What a glorious land would America be," he says, "if all its inhabitants conformed to the pattern afforded by the Society at Bethlehem." Referring to the position of the people in the matter of bearing arms and the trouble to which it had subjected them, he says, "Their love of peace and quiet cost the Moravian Brethren dear during the late war of the American Revo- lution."
The long war could at that time be thus spoken of as at an end. On January 20, 1783, the preliminary Treaty of Peace had been
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
signed. On April II, Congress had ordered a cessation of hostili- ties, and this had been announced on the 16th by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. The final treaty was signed, September 3. Its ratification by Congress took place, January 14, 1784, and was proclaimed on January 22.
On December II, 1783, the people of Bethlehem joined devoutly and joyfully in services of thanksgiving, in accordance with public proclamation. With grateful hearts they looked into the future and, in their restricted sphere, deliberated upon plans for the new era and the changed conditions, as in the wider sphere, men upon whom the responsibilities of state rested gave their attention to the proper formation of government, to dealing with the glorious and the grievous results of the war and to the development of nation- ality. The Moravians were prepared to approve themselves faithful and law-abiding citizens under a new government, as they had striven to be under the old one. The prospects for the prosecution of their old missionary calling among the Indian tribes were not highly inspiring, for the ruin that had been wrought in the Tusca- rawas Valley, in Ohio, had left them, thus far, nothing that could be done but to hold, if possible, the remnant that survived. But plans for a new forward movement were being discussed, in spite of the discouragement, under the inspiration given by the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of Moravian missions, in that same sadly memorable year, 1782.
There were also other problems of readjustment and reconstruc- tion to be considered in a variety of greater and lesser things. The ordeal of the preceding years had not been without its internal effects, not only in their scattered town and country congregations, but also in their exclusive settlements. Some of these effects at Bethlehem were far from pleasing and salutary. Associations and impressions that could not be avoided had left their mark on many of the young men in particular, in ways that caused the fathers of the village grave concern. Among some the old simplicity, the old loyalty to the ideals of the place in its central missionary purpose, its religious, social and industrial life, had departed. That solidarity which had once made the Single Brethren so effective in united strength and zeal, in every effort upon which their energies were directed, was seriously weakened. Thoughts and ways picked up out- side were adopted by some who at the same time lacked the caliber, the stamina and the experience in the outside world that were
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1778-1785.
requisite to make them sturdy and reliable men, if emancipated from the old tutelage and left to act independently. Even some contami- nation of morals was painfully evident, here and there, among those whose years of transition from boyhood to manhood had fallen in the time of the Revolution, when evil influences could not be kept at a distance. Not only the toning up of discipline and order, but the revival of industries and the rehabilitation of the economic sys- tem, to make the diacony of the Single Brethren flourish again on the old basis, were attended with difficulty.
Throughout, in the matter of general and local government, in the management of property and finances, in the conduct of trades and handicrafts, in pastoral oversight and educational work, the problem of the time was complicated. Those who dealt with it had to face the fact that, on the one hand, after the Revolution, it could be said that, in many respects, old things had passed away and all things had become new in the country in which they were placed, while, on the other hand, their intimate organic connection with the European settlements of the Church, and the nature of their subjec- tion to immediate control by the central Executive Board in Europe, bound them to conformity, even in the minutest details, to principles, and methods which were fixed for both sides of the ocean alike, and were not altered by the great changes produced by the American Revolution. Along with all this was the fact that through the exten- sive acquaintance that had been formed during the Revolution with leading men in all parts of the country, who regarded the Moravian settlements with admiration and conceived that more such would be desirable, in opening up and developing the country, they were met by numerous inducements and even urgent requests to colonize in different regions and increase the number of such settlements. This also gave rise to questions that had to be considered. Then, fur- thermore, the impression made upon so many intelligent people by the educational system and methods of the Moravians, and the desire of many such to find good schools in which to place their sons and daughters-for there was a woeful scarcity of such-resulted in applications from one quarter and another for permission to bring children to Bethlehem to be educated.
The boarding-school for girls had been maintained through all the demoralization, on a small scale, but not on a plan that admitted the daughters of people generally, or afforded the facilities they sought. That for boys at Nazareth Hall had been temporarily closed in Sep-
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
tember, 1779, under the dire stress of the time, and the six boys remaining in it had been transferred to Bethlehem and placed in the little school that was again domiciled in the large stone house which in its palmy days had quartered a much greater number before they were moved to Nazareth Hall, when the school there was first opened in 1759. Hence it came that the question of re-organizing and enlarging the plan of school work to meet these applications, as an important branch of Christian service to the public in the new era that had been entered, was added to the other questions to be considered.
Very naturally the Unity's Elders' Conference, at the close of the Revolutionary War, concluded to send a representative to America to direct the various new measures that had to be introduced, while thoroughly inspecting affairs, both externally and internally, and doing what seemed best to foster the spirit and fix the form then thought desirable. Bishop John deWatteville, commissioned to undertake this task, proceeded with his wife, early in September, to Holland, took passage on the ship Neutrality, Captain Carl Siever, in the harbor of the Texel, and sailed, September 27. They were accompanied by the Rev. John Daniel Koehler, destined for Salem, N. C., and his wife; an attendant named Sponar, and a woman, Jus- tina Graff. Their voyage was an exceedingly long one, full of hard- ship and peril. Reaching the vicinity of Sandy Hook early in Janu- ary, and being tossed about there until nearly the end of the month, they headed for the West Indies; were shipwrecked off the Island of Barbuda, spent some time in Antigua, and finally sailed in another vessel for Philadelphia, where they landed, the end of May, and reached Bethlehem, June 2, 1784. Their nearness to New York and then their shipwreck in the West Indies had become known and their arrival had been awaited with the utmost anxiety, especially, of course, by deSchweinitz and his wife, the son-in-law and daughter of de Watteville, and the joy in welcoming them was correspondingly great. This was Bishop deWatteville's second visit to America, but the third made by his wife, who must have been much impressed by the changes that had taken place at Bethlehem since she first saw the spot when, a maiden of less than seventeen years, she accompanied her father, Count Zinzendorf, to the Forks of the Delaware in 1741.
De Watteville's duties, during his stay of three years in the United States, embraced more or less extended visits to all of the congre-
1778-1785. 529
gations in the Northern States and a protracted sojourn in North Carolina, where a separate executive government for the Wachovia work was organized which survives to the present time, dividing the Moravian Churches in America into two Provinces. The seat of government of the Northern Province continued to be at Bethlehem. After the death of Bishop Nathanael Seidel, Ettwein, first Vice-Presi- dent of the Executive Board, who had been engaging for a while in official duties at Lititz, returned, on May 31, 1782, to Bethlehem, to fully take the President's place, with Huebner as Vice-President, until instructions about the permanent filling of these positions should be received from Europe. A General Synod was held at Berthelsdorf, Saxony, that year and, although no deputy from America was present, American affairs were specially considered by a committee, and various enactments relating to them resulted. Ettwein was to be the successor to Seidel, and he became the candi- date for the episcopacy to fill the vacancy. Bishop Graff, of Salem, N. C., had died, August 29, 1782, a little more than three months after Seidel's decease, and the venerable Matthew Hehl, of Lititz, was the only Moravian bishop left in America. Ettwein's consecra- tion was deferred, however, until the arrival of deWatteville. It took place on June 25, 1784, in connection with the anniversary festival of Bethlehem. Bishop Hehl, at that time already in the eightieth year of his age, died on December 4, 1787. Ettwein was then the only Moravian bishop in America until 1790, when the Rev. John Andrew Huebner, of Bethlehem, and the Rev. John Daniel Koehler, of Salem, N. C., who had come to America with Bishop deWatte- ville, were consecrated to the episcopacy. Seidel had, as set forth in a previous explanation of the executive office, been regarded as the American "Provincial Helper" of the Unity's Elders' Confer- ence. Their several Helpers at the head of the Elders' Conferences of the American church-settlements had, together with the Admin- istrator of the Unity's estates in America, constituted a kind of cabinet of the Provincial Helper, called the Provincial Helper's Conference, all being appointees of the Unity's Elders' Conference, selected by them, subject to confirmation by lot. Now, under the order instituted by de Watteville, this individual position of Provincial Helper, as "Oeconomus" of the American settlements and congre- gations, was to cease, and the conference as a body were to jointly administer affairs, under directions. The title Provincial Helpers' Conference also ceased for a number of years and the long, unwieldy
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