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Archiver > NCORANGE > 1999-04 > 0923013069


From: Dick Howell <>
Subject: Re: [NCORANGE-L] Moravians
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 1999 19:31:09 -0500


Excellent background report. I had the good fortune to visit the Archives in
Bethlehem , Pa several years ago when I was searching my family mainly in the
Lancaster/Reading area.
I was amazed at the condition of he records they had - Many of them were in
beautiful leather binding (nothing like that today) and several showed the
remnants of burned books.  The Archivist took me into the vault to have a look
around and he had the time to give me a verbal history lesson on the Moravians
in Pa. As you said, most of them were primarily German or Swiss, however if
their church was closer than another people went to the closest.

Dick
Elizabeth Harris wrote:

> At 2:23 PM 4/1/99, Loretta Kelldorf wrote:
> >Moravia was a province in Czechoslovakia in Europe. The people from the
> >area were called Moravians. Bohemia was the other major province.  It
> ...>I hope this helps some of you who are trying to figure out what
> >Moravians were.  Originally most of them were Catholic. Where there are
> >concentrated clusters of people with Czeck heritage today, there are
> >large Catholic populations.
>
> We need to distinguish here between Moravia the place and Moravians the
> religious group, which is a mainline Protestant denomination.  The Moravian
> Church dates back to followers of Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake as a
> heretic in 1415 for opposing certain practices of the Catholic church.  His
> followers were collectively known as Hussites, and they kept their faith
> alive in secrecy for the next several hundred years.  In the 1720s a group
> of Hussite refugees from both Moravian and Bohemia found refuge in Saxony
> on the estate of a Lutheran Count, Nicholas von Zinzendorf, and reorganized
> as the Unitas Fratrum, or Unity of the Brethren.  Because many of these
> early members did come from Moravia, this denomination became known as the
> Moravian Church.
>
> After an abortive attempt to form a settlement in Savannah, Georgia, the
> Moravians established a congregation town in Bethlehem PA in the 1740s.
> Although they didn't actively recruit new members, a great many
> Pennsylvania Germans joined their ranks in the 1740-1770 period, mostly
> coming from the Lutheran and German Reformed churches.  Quite a lot of
> these PA Germans came from the Palatinate and Switzerland.  In the 1750s a
> group of Moravian settlers came from Pennsylvania to form a new settlement
> in what is now Forsyth County NC (Winston-Salem area; Salem was the
> Moravian town and has been restored as a historical center).  Their land
> was called the Wachovia tract.
>
> My father's entire family traces back to these early Moravian settlers in
> North Carolina.  I was surprised to learn when I first started doing
> genealogy that *none* of my "Moravian" ancestors actually came from
> Moravia, at least as far back as I've been able to trace so far.  Most came
> from the Rhineland or Switzerland; a few came from eastern Germany and
> those few may be the only ones who might have come originally from Moravia.
>
> If you'd like to read more about the Moravians in NC, take a look at the
> web page my cousin Faye Moran and I do:
>
> http://www.erols.com/fmoran/
>
> and specifically our page on Moravian history:
>
> http://www.erols.com/fmoran/morav.html
>
> The Moravian Church itself also has a home page:
>
> http://www.moravian.org/
>
> This page tells more about what Moravians believe and some of the church
> traditions and customs.
>
> Elizabeth Harris
>
>
> state coordinator for NCGenWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncgenweb/
>
> ==== NCORANGE Mailing List ====
> List Administrator - Larry Noah
> List Web Site - http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~lrnoah/NCOrang

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