About

About

Arriving as German-speaking immigrants, building a faith-centered community at the mid-eighteenth-century American frontier, Moravians kept detailed records in order to maintain ties with Church leadership in both Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Herrnhut, Germany. In diaries of church and daily life, reports from missionary work with the Cherokees, and life stories of a community of church members, Moravians recorded their living witness to the surrounding world.

The Moravian Archives is the official repository for records of the Moravian Church in America, Southern Province. The Province includes Moravian churches and fellowships in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia. Our records begin with the establishment of the first southern Moravian settlement in 1753 at Bethabara, NC (now part of Winston-Salem), and continue until present day.

Digitized Collections

The bulk of what you'll find on this page will be digital surrogates of paper-based material. In other words, you could visit us and see the physical item in person. We have created digital surrogates for your convenience and to reach a wider audience. Decisions on what is digitized are based on a number of factors, including the stability of the physical item, the demand for a particular collection, the capacity of staff to perform digitization, and copyright restrictions. If something has never been digitized before, we may require a fee from the first person who requests that it be digitized. If you would like to request the digitization of a resource, please contact us.

Born Digital and Audiovisual Material

The Archives collects material created digitally ("born digital") such as document files, email correspondence, and marketing materials. We also collect audiovisual material, including sermons and lectures. Eventually, this material will also be featured here, but we do not currently have the resources to create access to born digital and audiovisual material.