Category: United Brethren, Moravian
Membership by baptism or acceptance in the Moravian faith, known as the Unitas Fratrum or United Brethren.
The Moravian Church (Latin: Unitas Fratrum, meaning "Unity of the Brethren"; Czech: Moravští bratři; German, Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, from the place of the church's renewal in the 18th century) is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in the world, with its heritage dating back to the Bohemian Reformation in the fifteenth century. Moravian missionaries were the first large-scale Protestant missionary movement, and in the 18th Century sent both ordained and lay missionaries, some of whom were female, to the Caribbean, North and South America, the Arctic, Africa, and the Far East. They were especially interested in missions to slaves and unconverted native peoples. As a result of some unusual beliefs (e.g. that the Holy Spirit is female in nature), they were sometimes persecuted. They also espoused a model of life that combined private and communal, living in sexually segregated communities but engaging in both communal and private work.
Moravians were careful record-keepers in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries and their extensive records are kept at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. These may often contain records not otherwise available, for birth, baptism, church attendence, marriages and moves into and out of Moravian settlements, burials, etc. Records also include baptisms and burials carried out for non-Moravian people who lived near a Moravian mission or settlement and are worth examining if a non-Moravian family member was born or died in or near a Moravian mission or settlement.
Many, but not all, Moravian records are in German and use the old form of handwriting, which is difficult to read without special training. But records for English-speaking congregations were kept in English.
Moravian records are generally NOT available online, and must be consulted either in person or through a researcher. See http://www.moravianchurcharchives.org/research/ for advice. It is worth consulting the online list of holdings as sometimes there are references to particular individuals and the display may tell you what you need to know without the need to go and see the full record. See http://www.moravianchurcharchives.org/research/. A few items have been published: the records of the Moravian settlement at Beersheba in Tuscarawas County, Ohio have, for instance, been translated into English and published by a local historical society, from which copies can be purchased.
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