Gnadenhuetten
Lehighton, Carbon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The Moravian mission of this name was built in 1746 to accommodate the growing number of Mohican and Delaware Indian converts. It was the first white settlement in present-day Carbon County. It was burned on November 24, 1755, during a raid by Indians stirred to violence by the French. Victims of the attack are buried in the Lehighton Cemetery near here.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Gnadenhuetten reflects both the Moravian effort to build a shared Christian community with Native peoples and the way the French and Indian War shattered such fragile experiments on the Pennsylvania frontier.
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Related events
- · Destruction of Gnadenhuetten, November 24, 1755
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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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.
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