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Friedenshütten

In May 1768, Johannes Ettwein visited the Moravian Indian mission of Friedenshütten on the North Branch of the Susquehanna at the site of present day Wyalusing. According to the Friedenshütten mission diary, his arrival was quite unexpected but very welcome, as he brought with him letters, copies of Zinzendorf’s sermons on the Gospel of Matthew, and news of the world-wide mission of the Church. The ostensible reason for Ettwein’s visit appears to have been the invitation to the Indian brothers Anton and Abraham to join David Zeisberger and Gottlieb Sensemann (who themselves arrived in Friedenshütten the day after Ettwein) to go to Goshgoshing in Ohio to preach there.

However, during his month-long stay Ettwein also held many of the services at the mission, conversed with the inhabitants, and preached on the importance of the mission there, known as “The Jewel on the Susquehanna.”[1] At some point, Ettwein also found time to walk to an elevated spot, most probably across the river at the mouth of Sugar Run (and the beginning of the Wyalusing Path that led to the West Branch, which in four years, he would take, leading half of the Friedenshütten congregation across land at the beginning of their exodus to Ohio). It was probably here that he sat down and sketched the settlement, using ink and watercolors, in hues of brown and grey. On his return to Bethlehem, Ettwein handed this very adequate sketch to the community’s surveyor and cartographer, Georg Wenzel Golkowski (1725-1813). The original of the interactive map, now in the topographical collection in the Unity Archives in Herrnhut, is unsigned, however is identifiable as his by means of a detailed handwriting analysis. The map can be viewed here: http://ssv.omeka.bucknell.edu/omeka/neatline/show/friedenshutten