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)