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A look at the history behind God's Acre, the Moravian cemetery in historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and some of the burial practices of the Moravian people.
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A look at the history behind God's Acre, the Moravian cemetery in historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and some of the burial practices of the Moravian people.
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A look at the history behind God's Acre, the Moravian cemetery in historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and some of the burial practices of the Moravian people.
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The podcast episode discusses the Moravian Cemetery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The cemetery was established in 1742 and is known as God's Acre. Count von Zinzendorf selected and consecrated the site. The cemetery is the oldest perpetually maintained cemetery in the US and is a popular spot for visitors. Moravians believed in equality, so all graves have flat engraved stones. The cemetery is divided into sections, including one for non-Moravians, slaves, and Native Americans. The cemetery also has many children's graves. The episode mentions two notable graves, one belonging to Juliana Nitchman, known as the Mother of Pennsylvania, and another belonging to Anna Lawatch, an influential figure in the Moravian church. Hello history fans and welcome to another episode of the Marker Quest 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. Before I get into this episode's quest, I wanted to offer an upfront apology for any ambient sounds the microphone might pick up while I'm recording. I don't have a soundproof area in which to make my podcast episodes, and in addition to other humans, my house is occupied, one might even say governed, by a trio of orange cats. Anyone who has cats knows that they are unpredictable and not inclined to take direction, and two of them are in the room with me right now, so you might hear them doing cat things in the background. On with the show then. In the last episode, I talked about the tragedy at the Moravian settlement in Nadenhutten, which later became Lehighton in Carbon County. I made a few mentions in that episode of another settlement in Bethlehem in Northampton County, and that's where I'm taking you this time. What remains of the original Moravian settlement in Bethlehem is under the care of the organization Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites. I'm very grateful to the folks at Historic Bethlehem, as they are very kind about sharing my relevant blog posts with their social media followers. I actually really love visiting Moravian Bethlehem, because it is an incredibly well-kept and well-maintained historical treasure of the Lehigh Valley. In fact, it's currently in the works to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its cultural significance. I don't have words for how excited I am to see this unfolding. I'll be posting episodes down the line about a number of components of the remaining Moravian buildings, so if you're enjoying the Moravian content, you'll want to check those out when the time comes. The blog post from which this episode derives wouldn't have been possible without my good friend Rachel, whom I mentioned in the David Thomas episode. Rachel moved out of state some years ago, for which I've mostly forgiven her, but she was home for a visit in the spring of 2018, and that happened to be when I was preparing to launch my blog. So she suggested that we go to the cemetery, and she'd tell me all the things she remembered from her tour guide days. She worked for Historic Bethlehem when she lived here, and she would actually dress up in a replica Moravian woman's outfit and lead people through various parts of the Moravian Quarter, so she was the perfect person to give me a tour of the cemetery there. The marker for the Moravian Cemetery is situated on West Market Street, along the northern border of the grounds, and it reads as follows. Moravian Cemetery. Used as a burial place, 1742 to 1910. Site selected and consecrated by Count von Zinzendorf. Only flat gravestones were permitted. Here are the graves of persons of various nationalities and races. Your first question is likely to be, who was Count von Zinzendorf? I know this because that was my first question. Well, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was a nobleman who came to hear about the difficulties the Moravians were having in finding a place to settle. So he invited them to live on his lands in Hernhut, Germany, and from there they set out to conduct their global missions and establish the various settlements. The good count became a follower of the Moravian religion himself, and gave them his full support, and he was considered one of the most important figures in their movement. He didn't live in Pennsylvania, but he visited, and he actually crops up in quite a few of the stories told by the historical markers. I mean, it seems like this guy went everywhere and knew everybody. He crops up so often that he has his own tag on my blog. The count first visited Bethlehem in 1741, and I will be telling you more about that visit in my upcoming episode about the first house in the settlement. In 1742, the Moravians welcomed a new arrival named Johann Muller, who came from New York. Johann had met one of their missionaries and been very inspired by what he had learned, so he traveled to Bethlehem in the hopes of joining the Moravian community. Unfortunately, not long after his arrival, poor Johann fell ill with a fever and died, and this created a problem for the young settlement. Where would they bury their new friend, and for that matter, those who would inevitably follow him? I guess that they hadn't expected to need a cemetery quite so soon, but the good count decided to take care of the issue. He went for a walk in the woods surrounding the settlement, picked out what he felt was just the right spot, and consecrated the ground. It might be called Moravian Cemetery on the historical marker, but to the Moravians themselves, it was, and still is, God's Acre. I'm going to be a little nitpicky here for a second and reiterate that God's Acre is a cemetery, not a graveyard. The two words are frequently used interchangeably, but doing so isn't entirely correct, because a graveyard specifically refers to a burial ground within a churchyard. The Moravian Cemetery sits at a bit of a distance from both the modern Moravian church and the original chapel, so it's not within the churchyard, and is therefore a cemetery, not a graveyard. So if this ever comes up when you're playing trivia or watching Jeopardy, now you know the answer. Getting back to the story of God's Acre, it remains to this day the oldest perpetually maintained cemetery in the United States, and is a popular spot for visitors who want to walk, research the graves, or just sit and think. Although it doesn't have as many trees as it did back when it was first consecrated, it is still extremely well shaded, and the paths between the graves are lined with benches. As I had mentioned in my podcast about the massacre at Nadenhutten, Moravian graves are almost always topped with flat engraved stones to illustrate their belief that all people are equal in God's eyes, and such is the case in God's Acre. As we walked around the cemetery, Rachel claimed she was out of practice with giving tours, but she still obviously knew her stuff. She explained to me that for the Moravians, death was something to be celebrated, not unlike a jazz funeral in New Orleans. They were going home to be with their savior, something they had anticipated all their lives, and so it was regarded as more of a joyous event than a sad one. When a Moravian died, his or her passing would be announced by the playing of a specific hymn on the trombone. The Moravians were a very musical people, and trombones were a particularly important part of all of their celebrations. On the day of the funeral, the procession would begin at the old chapel, which has a historical marker of its own and will be featured in another episode. The mourners would walk the path from the chapel door into God's Acre with someone playing a trombone. Men and women walked separately, and if the person being buried was a woman, her pallbearers were often women also. The Moravians were very segregated along gender lines, in the sense that men and women were kept separate most of the time, and that includes within the cemetery. Men and women were not buried together, even married couples. I wanted to give you an example of Moravian funeral music, particularly the trombone, and after some searching, I found some. This is the Moravian funeral hymn called Widower. The clip is only about a minute long. I found this on YouTube, performed by a trombonist named Dave Cannon, so if you'd like to hear more of his music, definitely look him up. Wasn't that pretty? Now, exactly where in God's Acre a person was buried depended somewhat on who they were. The plots closest to Market Street, on the north side of the cemetery, are known as the Stranger's Row. This section was reserved for non-Moravians, because they weren't in the habit of turning away anyone in need. If someone needed to be buried, but they were not actually a member of the Moravian church, such as a traveler visiting from out of town, this was where they would be interred. There's also a section which is chiefly occupied by deceased slaves and Native Americans who had converted to the Moravian religion. The Moravians had a lot of success in evangelizing to those two groups in particular, and converted many of them, because not only did they treat these individuals with great kindness, but in the case of the Native Americans, they went to the trouble of learning the native languages before setting out to teach them the gospel. Many of the Native Americans buried in God's Acre were victims of a smallpox outbreak in 1746. God's Acre also contains a lot of graves for children, and the lack of names on many of these graves indicate that the child died before he or she could be baptized. Even among the Moravians, the infant mortality rate was much higher back then than it is today. Rachel wanted to show me two graves in particular. One was that of Juliana Nitchman, née Haberland, who was the wife of Bishop John Nitchman. She was known as the Mother of Pennsylvania because of her early leadership in the Bethlehem Settlement. She was so significant in the early Moravian church that when she died, they buried her in what was at the time the absolute center of the cemetery. A hundred years later, her gravestone was replaced with one that pretty well spells out her biography. Again, her husband is not buried with her, but the good bishop is still remembered by the local populace. One of the Bethlehem middle schools is named in his memory. The other grave Rachel wanted me to see was that of Anna Lawatch, née Demuth, who was one of the most influential people in the early Moravian church. In particular, she taught many of the younger church members, somewhat akin to what today we'd call a Sunday school teacher. According to Rachel, when Count von Zinzendorf made his visit to Bethlehem, he specifically wanted to hear her teaching because he was curious about how she was able to influence so many young minds. After listening to her, so the story goes, he fell on his knees and asked her to please allow him to preach beside her because she did so much good. She later helped to establish the settlement, which became the community of Lidditz in Lancaster County. Later still, she conducted a pilgrimage to North Carolina, where she and those who traveled with her created another settlement. This eventually became the city of Winston-Salem. Burials in God's Acre ceased in the early 20th century because the cemetery had no more available space for burials, and its situation in the city meant that it could not expand. But with more than 2,000 graves, it serves as the resting place for individuals from throughout United States history. In the midst of a sprawling and noisy city, it remains exactly as it was intended nearly 300 years ago. 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. Next time, I'll take you to Bucks County and tell you about how settlers there rebelled against certain tax laws. 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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