Dansbury Mission
Stroudsburg, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Erected about 1744, by Daniel Brodhead, for use by Moravian missionaries. Destroyed by the Indians in 1755, during the French and Indian War. The site adjoined the present cemetery.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
About 1744, frontier founder Daniel Brodhead raised a building here for Moravian missionaries, part of the remarkable Moravian effort to carry their faith to settlers and Native peoples along the Pennsylvania frontier. The mission stood barely a decade: in 1755, as the French and Indian War set the backcountry aflame, it was destroyed in the raiding that emptied the region. Its site lay beside what is now the cemetery.
Why it matters
It recalls the Moravian missionary presence on the colonial frontier and how quickly the French and Indian War shattered the fragile settlements of the upper Delaware.
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Related people
- · Daniel Brodhead
Related events
- · French and Indian War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Colonel Jacob Stroud - PLAQUE
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1931
This graveyard began as the cemetery of the Mission of Dansbury, a Moravian outpost started in 1743 near where Daniel Brodhead had settled in 1736. The mission chapel was destroyed during the Indian uprising of 1755 amid the French and Indian War, then rebuilt. Colonel Jacob Stroud — the frontier officer and founder of Stroudsburg — lies buried here.
Edward Marshall
Portland, PA · est. 1948
Edward Marshall was one of the fast walkers hired to pace off the 1737 Walking Purchase, the land grab that stripped the Lenape of vast territory in the Delaware Valley. He later settled in this frontier area, where in 1757, amid the raids of the French and Indian War, his wife and eldest son were killed—by some accounts in reprisal for his role in the notorious survey. Marshall eventually withdrew to the safer settlements of Bucks County.
Gnadenhuetten
Lehighton, PA · est. 2005
In 1746 Moravian missionaries established Gnadenhuetten, a mission town meant to shelter a growing community of Mohican and Delaware converts and the first European settlement in what is now Carbon County. As the French and Indian War engulfed the frontier, tensions boiled over, and on November 24, 1755, the settlement was attacked and burned in a raid encouraged by the French. The victims were laid to rest in what is now the Lehighton Cemetery nearby.
Monroe County
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1983
Monroe County was formed in 1836 from Northampton and Pike counties and named for President James Monroe. The land had earlier been a frontier battleground, marked by Indian raids between 1755 and 1782 and crossed by part of General Sullivan's 1779 march against the Iroquois. In later generations its Pocono Mountains blossomed into one of the Northeast's most famous resort regions.