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 8
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David Nitschmann, Senior, usually called "Father Nitschmann," who stood in the third known generation of this notable Moravian family, a native of Zauchtenthal, Moravia, wheelwright and joiner by trade, for some years a substantial citizen and a village officer of Kunwald near his birthplace, had, like some of his ancestors, suffered imprisonment and even bodily torture for conscience sake. From 1725, when he emigrated to Herrnhut, to his arrival in Pennsylvania, he had been entrusted with various important duties and had shared the sufferings of the luckless colony sent in 1734 to the Island of St. Croix where he left his wife among the ten who died. He was sixty-four years old when he came to Pennsylvania, but took the lead in opening the settlement, was the master-builder for some years, and was one of the most reliable and influential men in official position. He was the first of the Brethren who became a naturalized citizen of Pennsylvania in order, as the first of the nominal "proprietors" of the estates of the Church, when it had no legal corporate existence, to hold the title in fee simple to its property. His character combined a rare blending of force and amiability with sterling honesty and childlike piety, and as the patri- arch of Bethlehem until his death in 1758 he was held in peculiar reverence and affection ; but the title " Founder of Bethlehem" given him on the stone which marks his grave in the old cemetery is a misnomer, for this designation belongs to his nephew, the Bishop, also buried there. In the archives at Bethlehem there is an oil portrait of Father Nitschmann.
Anna Charity, his daughter, commonly only known by her first name, was the most note- worthy woman of her time who held official position in the Moravian Church. Although only twenty-five years old when she visited Pennsylvania, she was already invested with the dignity of an eldress. Under the system of that time she was raised to the position of a kind of sister superior of all the single women of the Moravian congregations and settle- ments. On May 4, 1730, she had instituted a special covenant of consecrated service among seventeen young women and girls out of which grew the so-called choir-system, i.e. the special organization of classes called "choirs" among the membership, which will be treated of more fully elsewhere. She became Zinzendorf's second wife and died at Herrn- hut in 1760, having returned to Europe in 1743. Juliana Nitschmann, wife of Bishop John Nitschmann, also a distinguished woman, who died at Bethlehem and whose grave occupies a conspicuous place in one of the walks of the old cemetery, is sometimes mistaken for Anna Nitschmann.
Johanna Sophia Molther, at this time only twenty-two years old, was the wife of the Rev. Philip Henry Molther, later bishop, who was to have accompanied the party to Penn-
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
itinerant preaching in the settlements, schools for the hosts of neg- lected children and missions among the Indians at several points, all to be carried on from a central settlement to be founded, and it was concluded that Bishop Nitschmann should proceed again to Pennsyl- vania and establish such a settlement. When the third General Synod met at Gotha in June, 1740, the persons were selected to accompany him in addition to Hagan, Rauch and Eschenbach already appointed to go to America, and steps were taken towards the formation of a considerable colony to consist in part of the personnel of the short- lived colony of Pilgerruh in Holstein which was to be abandoned in consequence of the opposition of jealous clergy influencing the author- ities. When therefore Nitschmann and his company arrived at the Barony of Nazareth, the choice of a location and arrangements for the purchase of land at once engaged attention, and the offer of Nathanael Irish was further considered. Boehler received a call to return to Europe and undertake important duties in England. He went to see the miller once more, introduced Bishop Nitschmann and commended him to the same courteous treatment that he had experienced. Mr. Irish assured them of his good will and renewed his offer of the tract on the Lehigh. Boehler left on December 27, visited Wiegner, Antes and friends in Philadelphia, and then, accompanied by Nitschmann, proceeded to New York where, after forming a little association of devout people similar to that of the Skippack Brethren in Pennsyl- vania, he sailed for England on January 29, 1741.16
sylvania, but missed the ship at London. She was by birth a baroness von Seidewitz, was one of the original pupils of the first school for girls at Herrnhut and was one of Anna Nitschmann's associates in the covenant of 1730. After more than a year devoted to arduous spiritual labors among her sex in Pennsylvania, like her young companion on this journey, she returned to Europe in 1742. She died at Herrnhut in 1801.
Christian Froehlich, formerly a baker and confectioner in the family of Zinzendorf, who recognized special capabilities in him, was called to accompany Bishop Nitschmann to Penn- sylvania. He figured in many ways during the first years at Bethlehem and elsewhere, and devoted some time to missionary work among the Indians and in the West Indies. Later he was engaged in secular employment some years in New York. He died at Bethlehem in 1776.
16 In connection with some of these and subsequent movements, until regular diaries were begun in 1742, there is occasional confusion of order and dates in some published narratives based on original and secondary manuscript sources; owing to the use in some of old, in others of new style dates ; while yet others state time indefinitely, e.g. "end of December " (i.e. O. S.), " second week in January " (i.e. N. S.), or even "middle of January," in refer- ring to the same occurrence-both approximately correct according to the calendar in mind. Double dating was commonly observed by the Brethren in Pennsylvania in their official
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PIONEER MOVEMENTS TO 1740.
Prior to his departure he rendered the pioneers a little service, held in affectionate remembrance, which was more in his sphere than some of his duties had been. It was the preparation of choral liturgies, em- bodying verses of his own composition, for the lovefeast they held with a frugal meal of corncake and drink of roasted rye on Christmas Eve-undoubtedly the first Christmas service in the Forks of the Delaware-and for the first Moravian celebration of the Holy Com- munion in Pennsylvania which followed the Vigils. The manuscript copies of these liturgies were preserved as tender mementos of that time when the band of pilgrims, enduring hardness as good soldiers, renewed their covenant before the vision of the manger and the cross.
Hope and courage were revived before they said farewell to the man who had been their devoted leader, for at last there was a fair prospect that they would soon set foot on a spot which they could call their own. Two days before that Christmas Eve, and after Bishop Nitschmann's interview with Nathanael Irish, three of them, Father Nitschmann, Martin Mack, and another, probably Anton Seiffert or young David Zeisberger, shouldered their axes and strolled down through the woods to the Lehigh to look about "the Allen Tract." Anticipating the purchase, they felled the first tree at the place selected by them as a desirable building-site, some distance from the river, aside of the "Indian path" that led up from the ford into the north-west trail to the mountains. It was on a wooded slope crowning a bluff that descended to the Monocacy, where the most copious spring of the region gushed out of the lime-stone bed at the foot of the declivity. Its flow could not be barred by the frost that browned its fringe of ferns, stripped its canopy of birch and maple and set the rippling surface of the near-by stream in a frigid glaze. Perhaps, as they noted the volume of its crystal jet forcing a passage upward
records until 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was finally adopted by England. This extended in some records to even following the cumbrous old practice of noting the double year in dating between January I and March 25 (Annunciation or "Lady Day") the old English legal New Year Day. Ordinarily when single dates occur in letters or journals of Brethren from Germany, where the new calendar was used in all of the states after 1700, it may be assumed, in the absence of parallel records for comparison, that new style is meant. Instead of December 27, as above, some old records give "middle of January" as the time of Boehler's departure from Nazareth, apparently taking December 27 for O.S. But this date is unquestionably correct according to N. S. It agrees with his autobiography in which he uses N. S. dates. He says he left "towards the end of December" and states that he spent his birthday (December 31) at Wiegner's. The dates taken in these pages are uniformly N. S. wherever the records make it possible to determine this point.
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
through the snow, marked where an easy path descended to the spot and inspected the banks of the creek with a view to constructing the first bridge at that point, they thought not only of a house but of a future town on the ridge above supplied by this abundant fount where multitudes through generations to come, prizing this primitive boon of their goodly place, like the ancient king whose name four of those first settlers bore, would often crave "water to drink of the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate."
CHAPTER IV.
THE SETTLEMENT FOUNDED AND NAMED. 1741.
After one step had been taken towards the occupation of the Allen Tract, in felling the first tree just before Christmas, no further advance was made for more than a month. The snow lay deep in the forest and the storms of a rigorous winter beat fiercely about the little log houses in which the pioneers waited during January, 1741, for the return of Bishop Nitschmann from New York. Meanwhile the daily presence of Indians kept the chief object of their coming to America in their thoughts, and those weeks were not passed in merely hibernating. While Christian Henry Rauch, their heroic brother in service, wintering in his lonely hut far off among the pines of Sheko- meko, was trying to reach the hearts of the wild Mohicans, these Brethren in the Nazareth woods made the first Moravian missionary efforts among the Delawares; notwithstanding the suspicious and sulky mood of this little band, doggedly clinging to Welagameka as their own, defying legal ejectment and looking upon every white man north of the Lehigh as an intruder. The most active in these first missionary attempts in the Forks was Christian Froelich, who had arrived in December. Having lived for a season in London, he had learned the English language, and as some of the Indians also spoke English, he could communicate with them directly. He succeeded so far in winning good will that the chief, Captain John, entrusted his ten year old son to him-"a clever lad," wrote Froehlich in his narrative -- with the intention that the child should be his permanent ward if the council of the village gave its approval. The zealous missionary was also invited to one of their religious festivals at Welagameka, and at the close of the chants and ceremonies obtained permission "to also pray in his manner." He knelt among them and poured out his soul in fervent intercessions and then spoke to them of Christ the Saviour,
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
THE FIRST HOUSE OF BETHLEHEM, 1741.
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1741-1742.
to all of which they gave reverent attention. These experimental efforts were persevered in as opportunity was found until the Indians finally left the place. Froehlich also took occasion to urge the realities of Christian faith upon Nathanael Irish, and the pious lay- man was permitted, as he afterwards wrote, to witness the softening of this man's heart which theological strife had hardened.
Bishop Nitschmann returned at the beginning of February. Various reasons led to a further consideration of inducements to settle else- where, and there was again temporary uncertainty. Other places in view were Skippack, Oley, Conestoga Manor and the so-called London lands in Lancaster County, even as far west as the banks of the Susquehanna, besides other points in the Forks of the Del- aware. Finally it was concluded to let the lot instead of their own judgment decide the question, and the result was in favor of closing with Mr. Irish for the five-hundred acre tract on the Lehigh.
Then, on February 4, a number of them began to fell timber for a large house, and the erection of a small one at the spot selected in December was proceeded with as rapidly as possible, while the snow yet covered the ground to the depth of two feet. Father Nitschmann took the lead in this arduous toil and his biographer states that none could easily keep pace with him.
After the work was properly started Bishop Nitschmann again visited Henry Antes to consult about the consummation of the land- purchase; Mr. Antes having offered to render all assistance in his power. As there was neither a legal corporation nor, as yet, a naturalized citizen of the Province among the Brethren, it was arranged that Antes should make the purchase for them ; and accord- ingly on April 2, 1741, William Allen and wife deeded to him this first real estate acquired by the Moravian Church in Pennsylvania. This new ownership of the tract of land on which more has transpired of historic interest than at any place in Northampton County, was the fourth in succession after that of the original Proprietor of the Province-strictly speaking, only the second, for, as part of a grant of five thousand acres passing from William Penn to John Lowther and wife, of London, and from Lowther to Joseph Turner, of London, it remained an unlocated claim until William Allen, who purchased it of Turner in 1731, had it located and surveyed with other portions in the Forks of the Delaware in 1736, the year before the famous walk brought it within the limits thereafter held to have been surrendered by the Indians.
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
Early in March-the published biography of Anton Seiffert gives May 9, which doubtless should be March 9, as the date-the workmen finished laying up the square-hewn logs of the first house. It was twenty by forty feet in dimensions, one story high, with sleeping- quarters for a number of persons in the attic under the steep-pitched roof. The building was divided by a log partition into a larger and a smaller section, the latter used to house the first cattle owned by the settlement. Such a combination of dwelling and stable under one roof, as a first make-shift, was not an unfamiliar thing to these settlers, for many an old cottage in the villages of their native land was so ar- ranged. Their common dwelling in the larger section served also as their place of worship for one year.1
As soon as it was so far enclosed as to afford sufficient shelter for hardy men willing to make the best of the rudest accommodations, some took up their abode in it to save the time which had been con- sumed each day in going to and fro, even the little distance across to the home of their friend Isaac Martens Ysselstein on the south side of the river, where the pioneers had passed a night on their way to the Nazareth manor the previous year, and where hospitable doors were at all times open to those who wished to remain over night nearer to their work than the house on Whitefield's land. The re- moval of the household to the new quarters took place gradually when the severe winter had come to an end.
After the opening of spring the little colony again came more into contact with the outside world. Frequent journeys-usually afoot- were made by one and another down through the Long Swamp where dwelt Joseph Mueller and other pious acquaintances; to Skippack where the first Moravians in Pennsylvania had their temporary home with Christopher Wiegner ; to Fredericktown in Falkner's Swamp, the
I A memorial-stone, placed in 1892, marks the site of this first house of Bethlehem, at the rear of the Eagle Hotel, on what is now "Rubel's Alley," but was previously called for some years simply "the old alley "-the first thoroughfare of the neighborhood and prob- ably identical with the old "Indian path." This quaint and historic domicile, which the people of Bethlehem should have been interested in preserving, was torn down in 1823 by a generation more utilitarian than sentimental, to make room for stabling when, in the march of improvement, the second village store was converted into the second hotel of the place, " der Gasthof zum goldenen Adler," now less euphoniously called the Eagle Hotel. The numerous pictures of the house which are extant - some meritorious as to execution and many not-are evolved from one or the other of two pencil sketches made while it was yet standing; one used for the well-known painting by Gustavus Grunewald, the other made and then reproduced in ink by the Rev. C. F. Seidel.
1741-1742. 63
home of Henry Antes, their most valued friend and counselor; to Germantown, where intercourse was maintained with those of the former Georgia colony who had located there, and many new friend- ships were formed; to Philadelphia, where men like John Stephen Benezet continued to be warmly interested in their designs and move- ments, where friend and foe were daily discussing them, the newest objects of attraction in the Province in the midst of the contagious religious excitement awakened by Whitefield, where indispensable commodities only to be had in the metropolis were purchased for their establishment and letters from Europe were eagerly awaited.
The two young women, Anna Nitschmann and Johanna Molther, who had arrived in December, ventured forth at the beginning of April with an escort, on their first tour among the settlements in pursuance of the object which had brought them across the ocean, becoming acquainted with families of various sects and preparing the way for that extensive itinerant work in the homes, and particularly among the children of all classes, in which later so many consecrated women engaged. Bishop Nitschmann was a very busy man at this time, con- tinually traveling up and down the country on both spiritual and ex- ternal business, and during his brief intervals of sojourn at the new settlement, joining his brethren in hard manual labor; having in his young days learned the carpenter's trade and maintained himself by means of it.
Naturally also numerous visitors were attracted to the place, some moved by friendly interest, others by curiosity which was not friendly in all cases; and the sensational reports spread abroad in reference to the nature and purpose of the undertaking were a striking evidence of the wrought-up popular mind of the time, continually agog for the next new thing to fall in with or attack, as the case might be, and ready to give currency to the most fantastic canards. Among the early spring callers were several representatives of the mystic fra- ternity of Sabbatarian Tunkers at Ephrata who had made a temporary convert of one of the Georgia colonists in 1739-Gottfried Haberecht -who forsook them again, however, and rejoined his brethren in the Forks in September, 1741. Some of the other Moravians from Georgia who had settled at Germantown and elsewhere, also came to see the new place and most of the Skippack Brethren made friendly calls in the course of the spring and summer.
Before the end of June the last of the pioneers had finally removed
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
from the Barony of Nazareth to the Allen Tract.2 The two log houses in which they had spent the winter were deserted and the foundation walls of the prospective stone-house left desolate, with the Indians of Welagameka once more in sole possession of the spot, at the very time when negotiations, of which these settlers knew nothing, were being concluded in England for the purchase of the Barony by representatives of the Moravian Church; Whitefield having been left by the death of his loyal business manager, William Seward, in such financial embarrassment, that he was unable to proceed with his Nazareth plans or even to retain possession of the land. Announce- ment of the purchase of this property for £2500 on July 15 reached the Brethren in the Forks, September 15, when Bishop Nitschmann came from Philadelphia with letters from Europe.
While elaborate plans for the Pennsylvania undertakings were maturing in Europe, the initial settlement in the Forks was a scene of stirring activity throughout the summer. The main tasks on which the strenuous efforts of the toilers were centered were the preparation of as much cleared land as possible for immediate cultivation, and the commencement of the large house for which they began on June 28 to
2 The complete personnel of the settlement, including those who were itinerating much of the time, was the following :
David Nitschmann, Bishop,
Anton Seiffert, House Chaplain, David Nitschmann, Sr., Master Workman,
Andrew Eschenbach, Itinerant Preacher, John Martin Mack, Assistant Foreman,
George Neisser, Messenger, John Boehner, Carpenter,
Christian Froehlich, General Helper, David Zeisberger, Carpenter,
David Zeisberger, Jr., General Helper, Matthias Seybold, Farmer,
Rosina Zeisberger,
Anna Nitschmann,
Johanna Sophia Molther, Johanna Hummel, The boys, Benjamin Sommers and James.
In addition to the personals to be found in Chapter III, the following notes may have a place here, as some of the names will not be mentioned again. Besides the two David Nitschmanns and Froelich only two of these first settlers ended their days at Bethle- hem, viz .: the elder Zeisberger and his wife Rosina in 1744 and 1746 respectively. Their son David, the great missionary, the last survivor of these seventeen persons-leaving out account the two boys, of whose end nothing is known-died after sixty-three years of mis- sionary service, in 1808, at Goshen, in the Tuscarawas Valley, Ohio, in the 88th year of his age. Seiffert was recalled to Europe in 1745 and after serving the Church in England, Ire- land and Holland, died at Zeist, Holland, in 1785. Eschenbach left the Church in 1747 and settled on a farm at Oley, Pa., where he died in 1763. Neisser, who had been working in wood for Antes-mill and wagon work-under contract which expired in May, rejoined the
DAVID NITSCHMANN, SR.
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1741-1742.
square the timber cut in the winter. No serious sickness, as in Georgia, disabled any of them to retard the urgent work which taxed their strength to the utmost, while their situation, like that of all such pioneers at the beginning, was one of scant comfort. But, unlike many others thus engaged, their daily life was not merely one of grim drudgery unrelieved by anything bright or softening. Circumstances outwardly the same are rendered widely dissimilar through difference in the spirit of the people. These settlers were plain folk, not reared amid the superior refinements of life, like some who followed them later, but from the first a choicer tone prevailed than would commonly be found with such plainness, which rude environment and the hard struggle for bare subsistence could not impair. They were imbued with a certain lofty ideality, imparted by the master-spirit of Herrnhut, which kept their high calling in their minds, preserved their sense of the finer social amenities from becoming blunt through contact with rough conditions, qualified and disposed them to find even some aesthetic enjoyment in the novelty of their situation and the natural attractions of their surroundings. The unaffected bonhommie com- bined with innate dignity which distinguished a man like Father Nitschmann ; the gentle simplicity of David Zeisberger's mother-the
Brethren in the Forks, June 28. He was a man of education, was the first school-master, diarist, and general scrivener, post-master and law-expounder of the settlement, a musician of ability, an enthusiastic specialist in Moravian history and biography, leaving manuscripts of value purchased of his widow in 1807 for the archives of the Church, served in various pastorates, last in Philadelphia, where he died in 1784. When the Moravian grave-yard at Franklin and Vine Streets in that city became a building-site and the work of exhumation took place in 1886, the few bones remaining in his grave were brought to Bethlehem and interred in the old cemetery. The George Neisser school-house in Bethlehem was named in his memory in 1893. Many details of early Moravian annals in Pennsylvania from 1734 are on record only in his historical notes. Mack, one of the leading missionaries among the Indians, 1742 to 1761, became Superintendent of Missions in the Danish West Indies in 1762, was consecrated bishop for that field in 1770, while visiting in Bethlehem- the first Moravian bishop, and indeed the first bishop of the Christian Church consecrated in America-and died on the Island of St. Croix in 1784. Boehner, who entered missionary service in the West Indies in 1742 (Note 7, Chapter III), devoted the rest of his life to that work and died on the Island of St. Thomas in 1785. Seybold, after marrying in Penn- sylvania, returned to Europe in 1742, and died at Herrnhut in 1787. Of Bishop Nitsch- mann and the missionary Zeisberger, so much information in print is easily available that special personal notice, in addition to what will further appear in the regular text of these pages, seems unnecessary. The same may be said of Spangenberg, Boehler and Antes. The Moravian archives at Bethlehem contain portraits of the following among these first settlers : The Nitschmanns, the missionary Zeisberger, Mack (and wife), Neisser (and wife), also of Spangenberg and Boehler when yet young men, and their wives. 6
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