Historical Sites and Monuments

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Dansbury Mission

The settlement at Dansbury (now Stroudsburg), PA was originally founded in the 1730's by Judge Daniel Brodhead. David Bruce and his wife Judith were the first Moravian missionaries in the area, followed by Joseph Shaw, whose wife Mary passed away during their ministry there. In 1747, James and Mary Burnside occupied the first Moravian parsonage built at Dansbury. Andrew and Jane Ostrum, Reinhard and Elizabeth Ronner, and Sven and Anna Roseen continued the Moravians' evangelistic work among the American Indians and unchurched white settlers of the area.

Judge Brodhead was so moved by the work of these missionaries that he donated three and a half acres of land to the Moravians for mission purposes. On May 19, 1753, the mission church and a new parsonage were dedicated to the worship of God by Abraham Reincke. Following Reincke in his work at Dansbury were Jasper and Elizabeth Payne and Joseph and Martha Powell.

Things changed rapidly in 1755. Soon after the massacre at the Moravian mission at Gnadenhuetten (now Lehighton), hostile Indians marched their way towards Dansbury. On December 10, 1755, the Indians attacked Hoeth's settlement less than fifteen miles away. Later that day they attacked Judge Brodhead's homestead at Dansbury. Although the Indians were met with strong resistance, they were successful in burning down his home and the surrounding buildings. This series of attacks led to the mass retreat of the white settlers in the area — now refugees — to the safety of Nazareth and Bethlehem. Judge Brodhead himself died shortly after this trek and is buried in God's Acre in Bethlehem. The Indians later returned to the now unoccupied Dansbury and burned down the remaining structures, including the Moravian mission.

In 1751, land had been acquired just west of the church for a cemetery. Years after the abandonment of the mission, the land came into the possession of Jacob Stroud. He deeded the property to Daniel Stroud, Peter Hollinshed, and John Starbird in 1805 for the expressed purpose of maintaining the cemetery and for a house of public worship if the opportunity presented itself. The cemetery portion of the land remains intact to this day, although no stones remain to mark the graves of those interred during the time of the Moravian mission. The location of the mission church is now occupied by a utility substation.

The first formal public memorial to the Dansbury Moravian Mission was unveiled at the site on June 25, 1931. The Moravian Mission Memorial was jointly presented by the Monroe County Historical Society and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.The celebration program included Brodhead family descendants as well as Moravian religious and historical scholars. A short time later, a plaque was added to the back of the memorial by the Moravian Historical Society, which lists the missionaries who served at Dansbury.

Click here for a map to the Dansbury Mission.

For more information, please read:

• The Dansbury Diaries, translated by William N. Schwarze and Ralph R. Hillman, 1994
• Hillman, Ralph Ridgway, Old Dansbury and the Moravian Mission, 1994
• Levering, Joseph Mortimer, A History of Bethlehem Pennsylvania, 1903

Text Of Historical Markers