Ohio History Journal


OHIO

OHIO

Archaeological and Historical

QUARTERLY.

 

 

THE MORAVIAN RECORDS.

VOLUME TWO.

 

THE DIARIES OF ZEISBERGER RELATING TO THE FIRST MISSIONS

IN THE OHIO BASIN.

 

 

EDITED BY ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT AND WILLIAM NATHANIEL

SCHWARZE.

INTRODUCTION.

THE MISSIONS OF THE UNITAS FRATRUM.

The ancient church of the Unitas Fratrum, the United Breth-

ren, or Moravians, as they became widely known from their

original home-land, was all but utterly destroyed by the persecu-

tions that accompanied the Thirty Years' War. Fleeing their

native fields, the Moravians turned to Saxony and Silesia, where

greater liberty of conscience was permitted; in the year 1722

emigrants arrived at Berthelsdorf, upper Lusatia, on the estate

of the noble Zinzendorf. Here, through the liberality of their

new-found protector, the exiles built Hutberg, the colony later

receiving the name Herrnhut; this was the first congregation of

the renewed church of the United Brethren.*

*Unless specially indicated my sources of information for this

chapter are: [Benj. La Trobe] A Succinct View of The Missions Estab-

lished Among the Heathen (London, 1770), G. H. Loskiel, History of

the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Indians in North Am-

erica (London, 1794), John Holmes, Historical Sketches of the Missions

of the United Brethren (Dublin, 1818), and John Heckewelder, A Nar-

rative of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Delaware and

Mohegan Indians (Philadelphia, 1820).

Vol. XXI--1.            (1)