Journals of Conrad Weiser (1748), George Croghan (1750-1765), Christian Frederick Post (1758), and Thomas Morris (1764)Croghan, George
History
Journals of Conrad Weiser (1748), George Croghan (1750-1765), Christian Frederick Post (1758), and Thomas Morris (1764)
Croghan, George
Mississippi River Valley -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
The first attempt of this church to christianize the American Indians
in Georgia having failed because of Spanish hostility, the Moravian
disciples removed to Pennsylvania (1739), and were granted land on
which to establish their colony at Bethlehem. Thither in 1742 came
Post, eager to join in evangelizing the Indians; for which purpose he
was sent the following year to assist Henry Rauch in his mission to the
Mohegans and Wampanoags. This mission had been established about 1740,
Count Zinzendorf, the great Moravian bishop, having visited its site at
Shekomeko (Pine Plains, Dutchess County, New York) and baptized three
Indians as its first fruits. The work spread to the neighboring Indian
villages of Connecticut, and Post was assigned to a circuit in Sharon
Township, Litchfield County, consisting of the villages of Pachgatgoch
and Wechquadnach. Here, in his zeal for the service, he married a
converted Indian woman (1743), and endeared himself to all the tribe.
But persecutions began to assail the humble brethren and their converts;
they were accused of being papists, arrested and haled before local
magistrates, by whom they were no sooner released than a mob of those
whose gain in pampering to Indian vices was endangered by Moravian
success, set upon them and rendered their lives and those of their new
converts intolerable. Post, who had been on a journey to the Iroquois
country (1745), was arrested at Albany and sent to New York, where he
was imprisoned for seven weeks on a trumped-up charge of abetting Indian
raids.
The situation made retreat necessary; therefore, in 1746, the Shekomeko
and Connecticut settlements were broken up, and the Christian Indians
with their missionaries moved in detachments to Pennsylvania, where,
after kindly entertainment at Bethlehem, a town called Gnadenhütten (huts
of Grace), was built for them, at Weisport, Carbon County. It was during
their stay at Bethlehem that Rachel, Post’s Indian wife, died (1747), and
there two years later he married a Delaware convert, Agnes, who lived
only until 1751.
Meanwhile, Post was employed as missionary assistant, going to Shamokin
in 1747 to aid the missionary blacksmith established there, to clear
and plant more ground. Again in 1749, he revisited the scene of his
early labors, and helped David Bruce to re-establish a mission among
the remnant left at Pachgatgoch. Two years later he was summoned to a
more distant field on the dismal shores of Labrador, where a company
of four Moravian brethren were sent to begin a mission to the Eskimos.
An untoward accident rendered this project futile; the major part of
the crew of the vessel which had transported them having been lost, the
captain impressed the missionaries to carry his ship back to England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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