TRAGEDY AND RESTORATION: A Fire and a Small Bell

Now, read the story of a bell — A most special bell — A quite Moravian bell. A bell which arrived on Church Square in Lititz way back in the very middle of the 19th century, fell from its honored position atop the church 107 years later and, instead of being discarded, was made over into many miniature bells which today continue to ring their way into hearts and homes of those eager for a bit of historic Moraviana.

In July of 1850, a prominent Lititz merchant and Moravian churchman — once a member of the state legislature — died. Samuel Grosh was his name. He lived on the northwest corner of Church Square, having built the splendid red brick house, now a church rental property. His oil portrait and that of his wife hang in the congregation's museum and are fine examples of early 19th-centry American primitive portraiture.

Brother Grosh's will left a sum of $100 to be applied toward the purchase of a new, larger bell for the church belfry, that elegant piece designed in 1786 by the noted 18th-century Lititz Moravian organ builder, Brother David Tannenberg. The 1850 diary of Bishop Peter Wolle, pastor of the Lititz congregation at that time, notes that on August 21, Gemeinrath (Church Council) authorized the purchase of a 600 pound bell from the Meneely Bell Foundry in West Troy, New York. Wolle records that the bell came to Lititz and "was brought to its place on the steeple" on October 14; and on Sunday, October 20, "the new bell was rang at its proper place." Here, it tolled the hours daily while its smaller, older companion rang the quarters.

The Military Hospital at Lititz - 1778

 

Editor’s Note: Bishop Matthäus Hehl served the Lititz congregation and surrounding areas from 1756 to 1784. During that time he maintained a personal history of the congregation, separate from the official congregational diary, which narrated events of the time. This history is preserved in two bound volumes, now held securely in the Provincial Archives in Bethlehem. In 2014 the entire manuscript was translated into English from the original German by Pastor Roy Ledbetter. What follows here are excerpts drawn from Hehl’s history for the year 1778, when the Brothers’ House was turned into a hospital for Revolutionary War soldiers. They have been selected and edited to focus on physical conditions in Lititz and the impact the hospital had on the externals of community life. Another story which remains to be told is of the deep spiritual struggles the congregation endured during this time.

 

Summary of the most Notable Occurrences in the Congregation in Litiz for the Year 1778.

This year that was distinguished by so many oppressive circumstances and threatening dangers but also by the gracious daily help and many unnoticed shieldings by our Dear Lord was also a year of special grace.

From the 19^th December of last year until the 28^th August of this year there was a hospital of ill and wounded soldiers, up and down [in number], in the Single Brethren’s House – [inserted at the foot of the page:] Of these more than 100 men died here and were buried in a corner of our acre field set apart for this – and also various officers and doctors quartered here and there in the family houses here. The Single Brethren and Boys with their shops were housed in the School and Store House and other places in the meantime, only the out buildings and the kitchen of the Brethren’s House remained accessible to them. The weaving and the smithy and their common table were able to be continued.

Soon after the field hospital moved in, an infectious illness tore through the little settlement, continuing from January until the Spring and leaving few houses untouched. The Single Brethren were affected the hardest, as in 8 different places 15 Brethren and Boys lay very ill, and this made nursing them very difficult. Especially this illness carried off 5 of our Brethren and Sisters, namely on the 23^rd January Br. Johann Jacob Schmick, on the 27^th of the same month the Married Sister Catharina Blickensdoerfer, the 31^st of the same month the Single Br. Heinrich Oerter, the 7^th February Single Br. Christoph, and on the 9^th February the Married Br. Peter Ricksecker, Senior, also the Society Member, the Married Man Jacob Blickensdoerfer on the 20^th January.

A Rediscovered Unique Revolutionary War Broadside

 

The long display case in the center of the Lititz Moravian Church Museum’s front room contains rare items: a letter from Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, the ledger from Lititz’s community store in the 1760s and 1770s, architectural drawings of the community’s earliest buildings. But an equally rare treasure hid there in plain sight: a yellowed broadside (a single- sheet announcement, typically printed on one side) circulated by Lancaster County’s Committee of Correspondence and Observation on July 11, 1775. Over 235 years old, the broadside’s age lends it distinction enough. But the real importance of this document has only just been discovered: no other copy of this 1775 broadside exists in any other collection in the world. It is unique, the only copy to have survived.

Lancaster County’s Committee of Correspondence and Observation, the ad-hoc group of local leaders who gathered in 1774 by request of the first Continental Congress, was responsible for many matters. The Committee needed to convince or compel men to join in militia companies; it also needed to figure out how to deal with those who would not bear arms. Part of this effort, the Lititz broadside asks those whose “religious Scruples” prevent them from joining the militia to “contribute” funds toward the “unavoidable Expenses of the Public.” The broadside reminds those individuals who refuse to bear arms that, if they “keep their Money in their Pockets,” they in effect “throw those Burthens upon a Part of the Community, which, in a Cause that affects all, should be borne by all.”

History of the Doster Building

 

The property that now houses Matthew 25 Thrift Shop, 48 East Main Street, dates back to 1782. The original structure was a limestone, one-story cottage and purchased by Matthias Gottfried Tshudy in 1798 for his new wife Catherine Blickensderfer. Being members of the Moravian community, Matthias and Catherine were joined together by the “lot” system of the church. The names of all eligible young women of Lititz were prayerfully considered by the elders of the church and chosen for a worthy bachelor to be united in matrimony. This union must have been a “perfect match” as the Tshudys celebrated their Golden Anniversary in 1848.

Matthias Tshudy was born in 1771 and became an orphan at the age of 4. He was educated in the Brethren’s House, where he learned the trade of weaving. He became proficient at weaving baskets made of oak splints as well as chip-plaited hats that were in demand with the colonists up and down the east coast. The durability of oak hats for ladies and gentlemen was far superior to any other materials of the day. The men’s hats were in the style of what we know today as “Amish hats.” Ladies’ hats wore woven sunbonnets which were tied with fancy ribbons under the chin.

The Paxton Boys Visit Lititz

 

On the evening of December 27, 1763, the quiet streets of Lititz suddenly filled with men on horses. “God damn you, Moravians,” the riders shouted from one end of the small village to another. They fired off a “volley of shots” from their weapons before they left town. In 1763, twenty-three single sisters and twenty-nine single brethren lived in the Lititz choir houses, while many families lived on farms or in private homes. These families had been part of the Warwick country congregation, which the Lititz congregation incorporated soon after its founding in 1756. The congregation, which had consecrated its new Gemeinhaus a few months earlier, had 277 members in all. The shouts and shots must have frightened the men and women who had gathered for an evening Singstunde, a service in which the community sings hymns together. The residents of Lititz heard the riders’ curses and their gunfire, but they could not have known what had prompted these threats. They would have been terrified had they known that evening what they learned the next day: these riders had just slaughtered fourteen Conestoga Indians who had been placed in Lancaster’s workhouse for protection and had injured Lancaster’s sheriff, John Hay, in the process. Two weeks earlier, they had murdered six Conestoga Indians who lived on Conestoga Manor near the Susquehanna River. These were the frontiersmen known to historians as the Paxton Boys.

In the past decade or so, the Paxton riots have become a familiar topic for historians studying the changing relations between Indians and whites in colonial America. These riots, Daniel Richter wrote in 2002, “crystallized long-simmering hatred into explicit new doctrines of racial unity and racial antagonism”: the Paxton Boys “preached the novel idea that all Native people were ‘Indians,’ that all Euro-Americans were ‘Whites,’ and that all on one side must unite to destroy the other.” Dozens of articles and several books, including Peaceable Kingdom Lost (2009) by Kevin Kenny and Massacre of the Conestogas (2010) by Lancaster columnist Jack Brubaker, have been written on these events. But no historian has bothered to consult the materials left by Lancaster County’s Moravian ministers —Matthäus Hehl in Lititz and Albrecht Ludolph Russmeyer in Lancaster—who wrote about the massacres as they occurred.

The Moravian Star

In a town filled with its many Moravian traditions, none is more visual than the Advent Star. How and where did the beautiful "Moravian Star," displayed at so many Lititz homes during the Christmas season, begin?

 The earliest Moravian star reportedly was made of paper, possibly by a group of boarding school boys in Niesky, Germany, and hung outside the school during Advent in 1821. It was red and white, signifying the blood and purity of Christ. It was long assumed by historians that, because the stars were made in a boarding school, they were used as geometry lessons for the boys in the school.

          In the summer of 2011, however, a surprising discovery was made in the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, PA. The December issue of This Month in Moravian History reported that a recently translated diary entry, dated December 20^th, 1820, revealed: “In the afternoon we all drank and like yesterday, some of us went to see the star in the Brethren’s House of 110 points, made by Madsen.” This entry by a young Moravian provides us with two bits of previously unknown information: first, the star maker’s name, Christian Madsen, a single Brother who likely resided in the Brethren’s House; and second, that the original star was made specifically as a Christmas decoration for use at the Niesky Brethren’s House. Further study of the diary showed that the next month the multicolored, 110-point star was displayed for the 50th anniversary of the Moravian boarding school in Niesky. The school then adopted the star pattern as a geometry project.

Christmas Vigil Services at Lititz Moravian

Many readers here in the Lititz area have attended a Christmas Vigil service at Lititz Moravian. Many more will have heard of them but never attended one. Following is a detailed account of how that service came to be and arrived at its current form over the centuries.

      The History of the Lititz Moravian Congregation records that, just a few months after the village was named in 1756, the small group of Lititz brothers and sisters living in the Pilgerhaus celebrated Christmas Eve by holding a Lovefeast. From that humble beginning has evolved an elaborate worship service beloved by all who participate and attend. The congregation presents the service multiple times each year during the weeks before Christmas as a gift to the community.

Research into the history of the service, popularly termed the Christmas Vigil, yields fascinating results. More than thirty odes (the order of service with hymns, anthems, and scripture readings) designated for Christmas Eve can be found in the church archives. The earliest, dated 1765, is an eight-page printed folder detailing portions to be sung by two different choirs, soloists, children, and congregation. The congregation’s sections are quite short, with most of the music provided by choirs and soloists.