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A look at the tragic destruction of a Moravian settlement in colonial Pennsylvania.
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Details
A look at the tragic destruction of a Moravian settlement in colonial Pennsylvania.
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A look at the tragic destruction of a Moravian settlement in colonial Pennsylvania.
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The podcast episode discusses the history behind one of the historical markers of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The marker is for the settlement of Gnadenhutten, which was the first white settlement in present-day Carbon County. The marker explains that Gnadenhutten was burned in 1755 during a raid by Indians stirred to violence by the French. The massacre resulted in the deaths of 11 residents of the mission house, with only five survivors. The Moravian community was devastated by the loss and memorialized the victims with a stone pillar and a flat stone marker. Benjamin Franklin later visited the area and developed a plan for a chain of forts to prevent similar tragedies in the future. Hello, history fans, and welcome to another episode of the MarkerQuest podcast. I'm your friendly neighborhood blogger, Laura Klotz, and you're joining me for a look at the story behind one of the historical markers of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The MarkerQuest post, from which this episode derives, is actually the single most-read post on the entire blog. It has close to 5,000 hits as of this recording, and I'm honestly not sure why it's so incredibly popular, but I'm not complaining. I remember that this post was a little tricky to research, because there were actually two incidents during the colonial era which were identified as the Massacre of Gnadenhutten. Usually if you look up the phrase "the Gnadenhutten Massacre," what you're going to find are references to the later massacre, which happened in Ohio in 1782. The one which took place here in Pennsylvania happened a few decades earlier. The historical marker for the settlement of Gnadenhutten is located on East Penn Street at the Lehighton Public Works Department. It reads as follows: Gnadenhutten. The Moravian mission of this name was built in 1746 to accommodate the growing number of Mohican and Delaware Indian converts. It was the first white settlement in present-day Carbon County. It was burned on November 24th, 1755, during a raid by Indians, stirred to violence by the French. Victims of the attack are buried in the Lehighton Cemetery near here. Gnadenhutten, I should explain, is a German word which translates as Huts of Grace. The Moravians gave this name to quite a few of their settlements around the world. It has two slightly different spellings, one with and one without an umlaut, which is that pair of dots you sometimes see over vowels in German words. The Moravians had come from Hernhut, in Germany, in order to spread the gospel among people in the New World. They attempted a number of settlements in the 13 original colonies. Some of these, like the one which today is the city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, were successful. Others, such as one they tried to put together in Georgia, were not. They actually did quite well in evangelizing to slaves and Native Americans, which is part of what led to the massacre at Gnadenhutten. There were, at the time of the attack, three small settlements called Gnadenhutten in the same general vicinity. The one where the murders took place was the oldest of the three in what is today the borough of Lehighton. As the marker states, it was established in 1746 and was the first white settlement in what became Carbon County. The other two were situated on the other side of the Lehigh River. These were known together as New Gnadenhutten and eventually became what is now the community of Weissport. I actually stumbled into this quest somewhat unintentionally. My mother was doing research on our family tree and found that we have an ancestor, John Holder, who is buried in the Lehighton Cemetery. She was wondering if he was one of the victims of the massacre and sent me to find out. So my best friend Andrea, who accompanies me on a number of my research trips, and I got in the car and drove first to take a picture of the marker itself. From there, it's easy to find the cemetery. And the cemetery has multiple signs directing visitors to the mass grave. As for the story of what led to the mass grave, it's both horrific and sad. In 1755, the French and Indian War had been going on for about a year. The British colonies were fighting against the colonies of New France, as it was called. And in July of that year, one of the battles killed a British officer by the name of Edward Braddock. Among the soldiers who fought in that skirmish was a young up-and-comer named George Washington. You might have heard of him. Well, unfortunately, the defeat of Braddock left the Pennsylvania frontier without much of a militia presence. Meanwhile, by this time, the Moravians had converted a number of the Native Americans to Christianity, and several of these were living in Moravian settlements. Many of those who hadn't converted were taking the French side in the war, and they were trying to convince the converted Natives to leave the Moravians. Why? Because the Moravians were pacifists. They weren't taking either side in the conflict and just wanted to stay out of it altogether, with the result that pretty much nobody trusted them. The non-converted Natives knew that trouble was brewing, and they were urging their kin to get out of the line of fire. By November 24th of 1755, all of the converted Natives had left Gnadenhutten. Those who chose to remain with the Moravians had relocated across the river to New Gnadenhutten, so there were only 16 Moravians residing in Gnadenhutten at the time. That afternoon, they bade farewell to David Zeisberger. He was a well-known missionary who frequently traveled back and forth between Gnadenhutten and Bethlehem, and he began making his way back down south. The 16 residents of Gnadenhutten gathered in the mission house for supper at the usual hour. While they were all in there together, a group of non-converted Native Americans attacked the building and burned it to the ground. There were about a dozen warriors involved in the attack, though it's unclear which tribe was responsible. Most accounts think they were Shawnee, but a few have indicated that they were Munsee. When the people inside the mission house tried to get out, most of them were shot by the Natives, who had been given weapons and stirred to action by the French. One woman, Susanna Nitschman, managed to get out of the mission house, but she was taken prisoner and died six months later, still a captive, in Tioga County. In all, 11 of the 16 residents at the mission house lost their lives. The invading Natives then burned the remaining buildings at Gnadenhutten and left the scene. There were five survivors of the massacre, four men and one woman. The youngest of these was 17-year-old Joseph Sturgis, who had recently come to Gnadenhutten from Macungie. He got out of the burning mission house by climbing through an upstairs window and was somehow unnoticed by the attackers. He later relocated to the Moravian settlement in Lidditz in Lancaster County, where his descendants founded Julius Sturgis Pretzels and later Tom Sturgis Pretzels. The oldest survivor was Joachim Senseman, a tailor, who was 48. He and George Partsch, a 36-year-old linen weaver, managed to escape and flee to Bethlehem to seek help. By the time they reached the settlement there, David Zeisberger, who had heard gunshots and seen the rising flames of the mission house from a distance, had alerted the militia to trouble. Because it was late in the day and they couldn't be sure what kind of force they might encounter, they waited until daylight to return to Gnadenhutten, where they searched for survivors and arranged to bury the dead. The only female survivor was George Partsch's wife, Susanna, who managed to avoid being captured by concealing herself inside of a hollow tree. The fifth survivor was Peter Warbass, a carpenter, who had immigrated from Denmark. He, Joachim Senseman, and the Parches all moved to Bethlehem, where the widowed Joachim eventually remarried, and they're all buried in the Moravian cemetery there. The deaths of so many of the faithful innocent rocked the Moravian community. Those converted Native Americans who were at New Noddenhutten were devastated by what their brethren had done to their friends. The deceased were all buried together in a large grave, which was then covered with stones and given an unusual pillar marker. You see, normally when Moravians would be buried, they would be given flat stones to represent their belief that all individuals are equal in the sight of God. In this case, however, they erected a stone pillar whose faded epitaph says something about furthering the remembrance of the martyrs. Later, in 1788, a new flat stone was placed on the site, and its inscription reads as follows. To the memory of Gottlieb and Christina Andres, with their child Johanna, Martin and Susanna Nitschmann, Anna Catharina Senseman, Leonard Gattermeier, Christian Fabritius, George Schweisert, John Frederick Leslie, and Martin Presser, who lived here at Gnadenhutten unto the Lord and lost their lives in a surprise from Indian warriors, November the 24th, 1755. Even though Susanna Nitschmann died in Tioga County, and her body was almost certainly not recovered, the Moravians took the trouble to memorialize her on the stone with her husband. Johanna Andres was the youngest victim, being just a year old at the time. Moravian children were separated from their parents once they were weaned and sent to a nursery, which is why Johanna's two older brothers survived the attack. They were in the church nursery in the settlement at Nazareth, more than 20 miles away. Johanna, however, was still too small to be taken there, and so she died with her parents in the fire at the mission house. In the spring of 1756, a few months after the tragedy, New Gnadenhutten welcomed a remarkable visitor, none other than Benjamin Franklin himself. He visited Bethlehem a number of times in his life and was well-liked by the Moravians as a general rule, and they were glad to have him with them. During this visit, he began laying out a plan for what he called his chain of forts. This was a series of stockaded defensive structures that were eventually placed at intervals throughout the Pennsylvania frontier, with the idea that it would keep another disaster like Gnadenhutten from ever happening again. This chain included Fort Allen, Fort Everett, Fort Lebanon, and the short-lived Fort Franklin, among others. All of these have historical markers of their own, so you can expect them to crop up in eventual podcast episodes. I've already written blog posts for Fort Allen and Fort Franklin. I'm looking forward to sharing the story of Fort Everett because it was built at the home of my own direct ancestor, John Everett. While our friend Ben was setting to work on his forts, Pennsylvania Governor Morris officially declared war on the Delaware, or Lenape, Native Americans. He did, however, make an exception for those who had converted to Christianity. This unfortunate war would continue for some time, finally ending in 1758 with the signing of the Treaty of Easton. This treaty was an agreement with 13 Native American nations in which they pledged that they would not ally themselves with the French against the British any longer. In return, Pennsylvania restored a number of land rights which the Natives had previously ceded. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you did, please subscribe to my podcast, leave a review or a comment, and tell your friends about what you learned. Until next time, I'll take you to Northampton County for a visit to the cemetery I mentioned in this episode. Until then, you might like to read about my other adventures by visiting pamarkers.blogspot.com, and you can also find MarkerQuest on Facebook. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, this is Laura Klotz with MarkerQuest, and this episode is history.
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