AT REST IN GOD’S ACRE

No one in the little Moravian community of Bethlehem knew much about Johann Muller.

The young man had come from Rhinebeck, a village along the Hudson River in New York. He had met Moravian missionary Christian Henry Rauch, been inspired by his teaching and left for Bethlehem to join the Brethren. Muller had been on hand to greet the First Sea Congregation, when they arrived in Philadelphia on June 7, 1742. There he came down with a fever. He died June 26, 1742, in Bethlehem.

Muller’s death required the Moravians to make a decision on a community burial ground. Church founder Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, taking along his former pastry cook and future missionary Christian Froehlich, walked out to the woods northeast of the Gemeinhaus to find a location.

“God’s Acre” or the community cemetery was consecrated during Muller’s funeral on June 27, 1742.

Bethlehem has undergone much change in the past 253 years but God’s Acre, the oldest perpetually maintained cemetery in the country, retains its place.

Like most things the Moravians did, little was left to chance with the cemetery. On Aug. 14, 1748, the first plan for God’s Acre was sent to the church’s headquarters in Herrenhut, Germany, for approval.

It required that men, women and children be buried in the divisions of the community established by Zinzendorf known as choirs. Those of the same age, sex, and station in life would be buried together.

The oldest section of God’s Acre is along Market Street. It is made up three sections. Sections A and B were occupied by men and boys and the section C was occupied by women and girls.

The stones have always been placed on top the graves. The only major change that has been made to the cemetery, which is composed of 3.17 acres, in the 20th century occurred in 1921, when the trustees of the Bethlehem congregation decided to remove the burial mounds to better maintain the cemetery.

In 1912, the Pennsylvania German Society published the Guide to the Old Moravian Cemetery of Bethlehem, Pa., by scholar Augustus Schultze. Reprinted as a book in 1918, it offers the best guide as to who is buried in God’s Acre.

Perhaps the best known interments are the Indians. In August 1746, smallpox took a heavy toll on the converted Indians that inhabited Friedenshutten, or Huts of Peace, located where Bethlehem’s City Hall is today.

The unmarried male Indians that died from this illness are buried in Row 8.

The most significant death took place on Aug. 27, 1746. Wasampa, nicknamed Job by the fur traders, was a well-known figure who had been converted in New York in 1742 by the missionary Rauch. He was baptized as John but was generally known as “Tschoop” from the German pronunciation of Job.

Tschoop was so well known among the Moravians that when painter John Valentine Haidt came to the community in 1754 he included a portrait of the Indian in his painting “First Fruits.” But Tschoop became best known when he was used as the model for the Moravian Indian Chingachgook, in James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel “Last of the Mohicans.”

In 1864, James McDonald Ross, an Indian who was part Scot and part Cherokee was buried there. His father, Chief John Ross, was the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

A product of a marriage between a Scottish trader and half Cherokee woman, John Ross fought in support of Gen. Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812. This did not prevent Jackson, who became president in the 1830s from removing the Cherokees from their land.

Chief John Ross converted to the Moravian religion in 1852. His oldest son, James, died in 1864 while fighting for the Union Army. According to one source, James became ill in a southern interment camp and was denied burial because of his Indian ancestry. His tombstone states he died in St. Louis, Mo. on Nov. 9, 1864.

His father had his corpse — misspelled “corps” on his tombstone — shipped to Bethlehem, where he was buried Nov. 22, 1864.

To Moravians, the most important people buried in God’s Acre are the early church leaders. Bishop Nathaniel Seidel, was the president of the American Provincial Board for 20 years; David Nitschmann Sr., known as Father Nitschmann, helped cut down the first tree for the building of Bethlehem; and his nephew, Bishop David Nitschmann, bought the 500 acres that Moravian Bethlehem was built on. John Heckewelder, a missionary whose writings about the eastern American Indians are internationally known is also buried there.

The most prominent Moravian woman in God’s Acre is Juliana Nitschmann (not related to the above mentioned Nitschmanns). The wife of Bishop John Nitschmann, she came to America in 1749 and was given the title “Mother of Pennsylvania.” As a sign of respect, her grave was located at what was then the center of God’s Acre.

There are plenty of virtual unknowns in the cemetery. Many are children of different races who died of childhood ailments and the occasional plague of fever.

Others are non-Moravians. Among them is Aquila Wilmot, an Army surgeon who died during the Revolutionary War of typhoid fever while treating soldiers housed in the Single Brethren’s dwelling used as a hospital.

The Moravians did not discriminate by race in God’s Acre nor did they turn away non-believers. Take for example locksmith Jacob Schoen, of Switzerland. He was “unreliable in his disposition” and “inclined to lead others astray,” according to Moravian records. Schoen was “dismissed several times from the Church at Christiansbrunn and elsewhere, but always returned begging for readmission.”

Viewing the graves of John Rice and his brother Owen, one would never know that they were once at the center of a financial scandal that rocked the Lehigh Valley.

In the 1840s, John Rice, was president of the Northampton Bank in Allentown. His brother, Owen, was a merchant and prominent lay member of the Moravian Church. When the bank failed in 1843, it was discovered that both men had overextended themselves using both Northampton bank and Moravian church funds for speculative investments. John Rice fled to New York where in the last eight years of his life he suffered a series of debilitating strokes. Owen Rice stayed in Bethlehem where he died in 1856.

Because of space, the last of God’s acres 2,716 interments was in 1912. Many still come to the park-like setting seeking both peace and the history in the heart of Bethlehem.

Originally Published: May 28, 1995 at 4:00 AM EDT