Forming a family by marriage was not necessarily an easy go in early Salem. Consider this in 1774:
April 6 - (The church) recommended to Br. Peter Rose that he marry Sr. Rosina Bockel;
April 7 - Br. Peter Rose did not accept the proposal from the church concerning Sr. Rosina Bockel, but suggested Sr. Christine Merk. The church sent the proposal to her.
April 8 - Sr. Merk positively declined.
April 8 - Br. Peter Rose thereupon accepted the first suggestion, and Sr. Rosina Bockel accepted it as well.
April 10 - Brother Rose and Sister Bockel were betrothed.
In 1772 one of the governing conferences of Salem said that for pleasure the Single Sisters and the Single Brothers should exercise by walking. But, and this was important, they should always go in opposite directions, alternating their routes week by week. This to prevent undo fraternizing.
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| The Salem pottery |
The lease system was a means for the church to maintain control over the affairs of the village of Salem. Families were assigned home sites but the land itself continued to belong to the Moravian church. The building(s) and improvements belonged to the individual or family but the land was leased one year at a time. If someone no longer wished to live under the discipline of the Moravian church the lease would not be renewed.
The church not only leased property for the homestead but also for tradesmen - bakers and tailors and such. This enabled the church to limit the number of craftsmen for any given product. Limitations enabled Salem to be one of the richest and most productive communities in North Carolina.
When you see such a scene do you wonder what the one person is saying to the other that cannot be said in public? This photo was taken at the dinner given for "President Washington" at the tavern in Salem. The actual President Washington was in the village for three days and in the tavern for two nights in 1791.
The 18th century Moravians may be described with three words: simplicity and spiritual warmth. These words are by no means exhaustive - but they lie at the core of the first generation Moravians in North Carolina.
Brother John Christian Blum became the agent in the village of Salem for the Cape Fear Bank and thus had the responsibility of being watchful over the cash on hand.
On the evening of December 21 1827 he apparently blew out a candle to go to church. He had not noticed the spark that fell into papers. In quick order $10,000 of the bank's money went up in flames. That is approximately $200,000 today.
There was no way he could afford to pay it. The Moravian church paid the debt to the bank. In turn, Brother Blum had to give the church all his property, large and small, and his profits for the rest of his life. After he died his sons purchased the home from the church.
Waterworks were uncommon in the U.S. in the 18th century, but in 1778, drawing from their familiarity with German waterworks systems, the 126 residents of Moravian Salem built one of the first public waterworks in this country. The pipes were cut from white oak logs. The water was gravity fed into Salem having traveled about one mile.
This water system was not for the purpose of personal bathing or hygiene, but for several kitchens - the Single Brothers, the Single Sisters and the Tavern. The kitchens then as today had one simple tap for washing pots and pans. This was a huge labor saving arrangement.
In the opening years of the 19th century, as in the decades preceding, slaves could become members of the Moravian Church. On the one hand this is enhanced the status of an enslaved person. On the other hand it bound them to obedience to the church. In this regard it was the same for free whites as for his slaves African-Americans.
Any Moravian Black or white could be asked to leave the community if they were not complying with the discipline of the Moravian Church.
However, waywardness was more complicated for the Moravian slave than the Moravian free white church member. If the slave was chronically disobedient he or she could, after being sufficiently warned, be sold outside the community. Obviously this made penalty for noncompliance something more dramatic for the enslaved person than for the free white.
Cemeteries are for non-Moravians. Moravians do not use the word "cemetery" for their burial places. Moravians referred to their burial ground as Gottes Acker - a term they brought from Saxony.
In German Acker is not a measure of land mass but describes an agricultural field - a place where one plants seeds. Moravians think of God's Acre or field as the place where the bodies of believers are sown to await the Resurrection of the dead at the Second Coming of Christ.
A Moravian brother and sister catching that rare moment when one can relax at the 1784 tavern in Old Salem, NC.
Rebekka Protten's life is a marvelous story of a Caribbean woman that was a slave turned evangelist. She is credited with helping to inspire the rise of black Christianity in the Atlantic world. All but unknown today, Rebekka Protten left an enduring influence on African-American Christianity.
Born in 1718, Protten had a childhood conversion experience, gained her freedom from bondage, and joined a group Moravians.
She embarked on an itinerant mission, preaching to hundreds of the enslaved Africans of St. Thomas, a Danish sugar colony in the West Indies. Laboring in obscurity and weathering persecution from hostile planters, Protten and other black preachers created the earliest African Protestant congregation in the Americas.
Rebekka is a shinning example of the missionary spirit that was evidenced by the early Moravians. They were not in a quest to be a baptized version of the Peace Corps seen so often in the 20th and 21 centuries. No, the Moravians of the 18th and early 19th century were seeking to bring the astonishing good news of Jesus Christ to the lost with an eye to the conversion of the hearer. A part of that enterprise was doing service to those to whom they preached. May their tribe increase.
A Moravian sister scrubs potatoes which are richly harvested in the Miksch House garden.
The Miksch is a pre-revolutionary building originally built with logs, soon covered with clapboard. There are various simple additions up to 1786. It was the first privately owned single family house in Salem. Earlier homes in Salem were shared.
On June 22, 1776 violence came to the Salem tavern. Four men, characterized as army deserters, ran wild in the tavern, breaking doors and furniture and attacking people. The rioters chased Salem citizens up the street to the home of Christian Gottlieb Reuter. His home suffered broken windows. The melee then moved to the Single Brothers House. Similar havoc was wreaked there. Seven Moravian brothers were noted as hurt by tomahawks.
A military muster was in the area and came to take charge of the violators. As Providence would have it they were tried in the same tavern where their violence began. They were arrested by the troops and sent as prisoners to Salisbury, NC.
