 Please go ahead and click on that Q&A and it looks like some questions have already been asked and they've already been answered. Yes, if someone was commenting that they enjoyed the information on Bethabra and I think Diane Overby did a great job on consolidating a lot of information in a short period of time there. Yeah, and then I see that you mentioned that Tom from the archives in Bethania said, well done. Thank you Tom, it's very nice of you. We'd like to just open to any questions from the public. So we'd love to hear from you, any comments, any questions, feel free to go ahead and ask them. We will look at them. We will either answer these questions verbally like we're doing that. We will type and answer. We can also fill you in on the rest of the, on the rest of the conference for the week and let you know what's up. Okay, so we have someone asking a question. Julia Fallon says, is there a publisher of Moravian Diction? Not that I know of. Well, I'll tell you this, there's the former rest archivist at our place. You got it. Go ahead. There are a few really interesting novels on Moravian history, but to my knowledge, there is not a specific publisher who focuses on that there are publishers who focus on publishing scholarly articles, both in Germany and here in the United States. There's a question about from somebody asked if when Moravian's referred to a farmer's plantation that they didn't meet a large farm, was this a farmstaff was placed? Not necessarily, for example, and we have a map here showing Christian Dunca's place just on the west side of Salem that I would say is about a half acre and he calls it plantage. Plantage in space doesn't necessarily mean plantation, although that's one translation of it. It's usually just a farm in the Moravian context that were larger, closer to plantation style use of enslaved labor in the at the edges of the settlement, but in places like Salem when you read plantage, there's a there is a plantage for the Wachovia Church is where they used to grow vegetables and stuff for the pastors. That was a church on farm, but most of the time, it's not a plantation economy in the use of that. Language of the early documents, you know, probably till 1876 I can say our documents here officially were recorded in the German language because they were sent back to Heron Hood, the headquarters of the unit to spread from worldwide locally by about the time of our end of our conference time 1822 about how you get to the third generation of folks living in Wachovia. The grandkids and the great grandkids are you start talking more English. From the beginning there was one English settlement here hope. It was primarily English settlers from Maryland, but the, the language officially in our records is German and that German is a very interesting script. I'm glad to take lessons with our friend Paul Boyker up in Bethlehem at the Moravian archives here because the about a third of the alphabet is substantially different in shape or the graphically from the letters that we're used to so it's real challenge to read these these documents. Lots of really good questions today. Let's see. I have a question friend of ours who studies indigenous folks as a quote in the Bethabra video that mentions the fact that the Moravians were to withhold from contact with indigenous people. As a first priority because they had to get their church economy stabilized at the time they came to Wachovia church and actually was having difficulties. They were the Seponi or the Kataba. This Sara, who you feel about the Sara area, Sara Mountains just north of us in Stokes County, Rockingham County, Upper Sara and Laura Sara. The Sara had already left this area and move south to what's now in the area of Shirah, South Carolina. The Kataba is there. Any mention my son is also a linguist he was also isn't the same question in the records of the Kataba. There's no active mention of the Kataba here because they were not in the in the neighborhood. Seponi, likewise, I don't see a lot of mention, but I'd love to have the researcher has that question to come take a look and help me find what's here. Did the Moravians take sides and the regulators conflict, you know the regulators were marched through with Abra I guess when they were arrested. There's a series of stories about the pre-revolutionary days and the Moravian decision formally to be neutral during the Revolutionary War. In a booklet that our archivist Daniel Cruz wrote a few years back called through fiery trials, and it talks about the stories of the Moravian quandary of being as Dean Gillespie put it they really were not nationalists at all they were a trans national trans transatlantic worldwide brotherhood of Christ. They were not interested in the idea of nationhood, the way we later would understand it. And so they did not take a side they in the Quakers were thought of with equal suspicion during those days, but there is there is detailed information in that booklet through fiery trials about the Revolutionary days. We have another one were people who were considered living in Bethania outside, were they neighbors in the way non Moravians were. Well, Bethania was was a, it was a congregation so they would have been congregants. They would have been members in that area. And the outsiders of the house vatican. As far as I understand it were actual Moravian members who lived outside of a congregation so outside the town limits of Athena outside of the fabric or outside of Salem or outside of Bethlehem. Those would have been the house vatican. So they were definitely considered Moravian members members of the, but what's the mind of the congregation. Question about Bethania Bethania has got a interesting history when the Moravian communities here and that it was founded. Literally half with Moravians and half with non-Ravians who salt shelter there during the, what we know as the French and Indian war the seven years war in Europe, and they were worried about attacks from the Cherokee when they founded that town. And the area and the outskirts of the formal boundaries of Athena is an area that did have quite a large number of enslaved persons during the time period of our conference. We'll be talking about that more and questions about Bethania and I see another question from the same informed person who is very prescient and want to know about Zinsendorf's attitude toward indigenous who we thought that they were the last lost tribe of Israel. I think of African Americans Craig Atwood is going to be talking about Zinsendorf's ideas and perhaps we'll hear from him on those topics on Saturday morning when we tune in and have a round table of scholar discussions and and let me just interject here that this conference is different. Hey, we're here online. That's different enough. But the conference has at three different components in the mornings tomorrow and Friday. There'll be a gathering of scholars that's not open to the public that will be sharing research papers about different topics, many of which are very similar to some of our good questions we've got already today. And those topics will be explored in discussions among the scholars and then there will be summarized Saturday morning by Professor john sends my University of Florida who wrote a very famous book separate Canaan about the African American experience here in Salem in the 1990s. He'll be here to summarize the events of that discussion over the next two days and let some of the scholars participate and share their observations as well. So the questions about those specifics with the Danian Zinsendorf bring us back to our expert panel on on Saturday, I think you'll have some good conversation from that and fine tuning on in Adelaide's freeze Moravian records or Bethabra but Bethania plantations were just farms. Bethania again is a different creature, a plantage in Bethania might be near to what you call a plantation and what the economy work. But the area is not set up to be a plantation economy it changes you know at the beginning Moravian's Cameron had a communal economy that lasted about 10 years or so and then they switched as people became more independent. And what you'll see in the course of the information from our conference is that probably in Bethania is one of those areas with the pressure to be more American at least an attitude towards slave holding is the greatest because it's at the fringe of the community is not the center of search control. It started out bifurcated between half long term church members and half of recent converts and so it's a it's a word that has different meanings depending on where you are a time wise and space wise in watobia but it's very interesting point. Yeah I think the issue with the word plantage in German is that it changed over time and I mean there was a major change in agriculture and cultivation of the land in the 18 hundreds and an adoption more of the practices the land and so by 1810 1812 1822 was approaching more of the concept of plantation. I have a question from someone who asked if the Moravian's were attacked by Indians like people in Southwest Virginia. Well they were certainly scared to death of that after those raids happened and at one time there was a bill that was shown in Dan Overby's video that we have here in the archives that was submitted by Moravian's to the colonial government asking for reimbursement from feeding Cherokee meals because the Cherokee would come through here on the way up to Ohio to fight with the British against the Shawnee in the French. And then that turn and there was a tax of Cherokee at Fort Dobs when you're modern and states will people were killed and ambushes near the Thabra and it was because of the fear of ambushes that they put up the Palisade around the Thabra and had so many people from the frontier beyond the Wachovia come to that place to settle there actually probably more people who were non Moravian down near the dam below with the Thabra for a while because of those fears of Indian indigenous attacks. Then there were Moravians at the time but yes there was a fear of that but not attacks itself on Moravian settlements. And Eric I don't know if you saw the question there about finding the documents that were in the Thabra presentation. I think you could probably offer a pretty good answer for that. Now a lot of we've mentioned several times I was looking at the video today and struck again how often we refer you to those records of the Moravians in North Carolina which are translated English translated into English excerpts from the church diaries and church records and I have to go back and check that. Specific reference to young warrior neighbors in the hollows but my guess is that's also from the records of Moravians because those are translations of church diaries, church minutes between administrative boards, a grab bag of personal correspondence and diaries. Adelaide Freese did an amazing, I would say you can imagine the birds that you've seen maybe some of you the bird's eye view in 1991 or 92 I guess it is Winston and Salem Adelaide Freese does a wonderful job of giving you a bird's eye view of what our documents contain. She doesn't translate everything. I think Grant you found out what the Salem diary of 1870 translation she gives is only about 20% of what's there. Yeah, I think you could say a quarter and he does a good job of translating a lot of the interesting things historically significance items, but a lot of what she doesn't translate which I find really interesting as a literature person is the pietistic language in German and that that is extremely difficult to translate and so I can maybe understand why she didn't try to translate it pietistic language in general is difficult to understand. But yeah, there's there's three quarters of the diary is not translated. You know, I'm really impressed with how well you all are negotiating the zoom stuff today this is a complicated task we're asking of you think about. We're used to watching our televisions picking up the remote one click we get a thing we're asking you today to to tune in and use different links to go to different parts of our program to go back and refer to these videos. I really appreciate your hanging with us as we're all trying to learn this technology together, but it's great that in the middle of all this isolation we've suffered for so long with code that we can get together and talk about cool things on a wonderful fall afternoon so thank you for that. Yeah, and actually we are probably engaging more people than we would have in a live conference right now we have roughly 38 people attending right now so that's that's fantastic. I got a question from someone in Lithania who says hello and talks about that there were orchards near there and where their large tracks near old Salem in Diana's presentation you saw the planning of apple trees all around the fabric because one of the big products they sold at that was apple brandy and so they need a lot of apples to do apple brandy there's a large farm run by the single brothers here in Salem west of town that provided agricultural products for the village here at Salem. So there were large tracks of agricultural land near these settlements, although the bethanya situation if you go, our friend Michelle Williams, they currently closed her visitor center, but she still works with historic bethanya there and hopefully they'll reopen soon after Covid but bethanya is laid out in a kind of a prototypical agricultural European style village where you've got a central street and the the allotted land for farming is directly behind the folks it's a way so they're all crunched together housing wise but their farms are back behind the houses. So kind of unique arrangement. So were the Scots Irish considered neighbors. I would say yes. In the records in the diary, I found several references to Irish settlers. And one thing that several of the pastors did or the ministers did is they would travel to some of these settlements outside Salem or outside of the fabric and visit some of the settlements in order to preach, and they would refer to them as their neighbors. So they would say we went to our neighbors, the Irish across the muddy creek and we preach to them. So I'd say yes. Well, being Scott Irish myself, I'll have to just take a pass. I hope we're considered neighbors. But it is funny, we had a request a couple years back from folks who were redesigning the Greensboro battleground park. I'm interested in Adelaide freezes translation of the original settling party settlement party coming down the path, what would be the great wagon road or near it anyway now from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, and they were quite chatty about the Scots Irish and and all these other different ethnic groups from Europe that were passed along the way. So part of our conversation will be, although our focus in our themes in the papers is looking at the relations between Americans and indigenous and African Americans that also takes place in the backdrop of a variety of different European cultures that settled here. When the Moravian's first got here in Bethabrum, they were so blessed to find a number of German speaking compatriots here from the home country, and they helped ease their transition into Wachovia by showing them where an abandoned cabin was by getting a wagon load of pumpkins by helping them get connected to who was in the neighborhood. And so we'll be looking a little bit those connections between European neighbors as well. I think a very interesting connection to explore further is the use of alcohol, because there was a great controversy about Scots Irish drinking quite a bit and also the alcohol trade and that would also relate to relationships with native people as well. So maybe we can go into that topic a little bit later. I have a question from someone says approximately how much material did Adelaide freeze that what she had access to and she was responsible for the first seven, I think volumes of our records of the Moravian series she started in 1922. I think she ran her that series goes to about 1947 or eight. She was in the middle of a volume when she passed in 1949 and Douglas rights finished that volume. We continued that series up till Daniel Cruz worked on volume 12 and 13 I think to finish it in 2006 to get us 1876 but of all the records that we've got how much was translated. Well, I would not be surprised if the number totally is not any greater than what grants experience was in that Salem diary of 1817 I would bet she only got to about 20%. I would ask when I took this job a few years ago how many pages of stuff were there. And I was told a million, which sounded like somebody didn't want to count after looking at it for a couple of years, it might be a million. There's a lot of pages in there. Some of it is not legible because of environmental damage or inks running together over time the single brothers diary in parts is very difficult to read it just blurs together. But many of the records are in really pristine shape, and it's a pleasure to have them and to be custodians of those records and to look forward to scholars like grant Norica and and many of our folks here today to come use and translate some more of them so that Moravian students and and other folks in the area who interested in what these records hold can learn more about and that's one of the reasons we're excited to be part of this conference is we facilitate that kind of work. So Riddick Weber asks, and he's actually going to be one of our research members on this conference. He's from Bethlehem. He asks, do you think not translating the pietistic language was that it was difficult or that she was embarrassed by it and did not want to translate it. My guess is she was translating with an eye toward the English secular audience and just decided to leave it out because of that I think she certainly was capable she's a very good translator I don't think she would have had too much difficulty doing it. But I do think that trying to provide a historical record of the more strictly interesting events is what she was trying to capture. And I think that really led her decision. So Grant, maybe you can link that to another question from our participants about other Christian and non Christian influences on the identity that was constructed during that time in the Moravian community. Well, so if I understand the question as sir, the Christian identity in a Moravian community was very much that that community lived in service of Jesus. Their Christian identity was complete in that sense is that what you mean by your question. Um, when you read the question is, I could rephrase it if I understand it correctly, but what about other Christian groups, you know, such as Catholics we know there were Catholics living in old Salem I mean there's again the Irish connection perhaps, possibly, but then also what about non Christian influences for example we know that many enslaved generally speaking, we're already exposed to Islam. So it creates a hypothesis that as the enslaved communicated with each other that ideas were circulating about other forms of monotheism. What about Jewish neighbors and what about indigenous virtualities and how did they affect Moravian concepts of neighbor. That's a really good question. I don't know if I could answer that here. I will say that in general they refer to any other religion outside of Christianity as heathenism. And that was obviously their goal to bring them away from that that religion and present them with the gospel. Which they held is the is the one true religion. Interesting question about whether you had to come from that 1753 group was settling in the wilderness. Yes, there were folks around. There's a lot of folks. Here's what's his problem. A lot of folks. When they picked the site for Bethabra they did it knowing that they were 50 miles away from somebody else selling some of the similar goods. That the county seat Salisbury I think might have had 35 persons there at the time when when Rowan County was starting. The numbers of people are small. One of the things we can track very precisely because of the great map work that was done by Reuter and some of the early surveyors from raving community is we we know who was there. And we who know who owned the land now. If you look in 1753 and the, I guess it 1753 when we started by the time there's a there's a map I moved on I think it is in 1770s. I think it shows that we are at the edge of still the settlement towns and stuff for Northwest North Carolina. It takes a while to get going up here but the settlement North Carolina took off. Thanks to Governor Dobbs, who was an investor in the North Carolina colony before he became governor of North Carolina, and was trying to sell and to sell to folks to come move to the state. There was a lot of effort to settle the Piedmont. And of course, Randall himself was the one that sold Moravian's their 100,000 acres or just under that to start while covia. So it was wilderness by standards of density of population. It wasn't totally uninhabited because there were indigenous people here. And there were some Europeans, but it was not happening hop in place. Yeah, thank you. We have so many good questions and I'm watching the time and I'm afraid we can't really answer them all but I would like to respond to the question that asked to what extent if any did the Moravian's attempt to learn the language of the indigenous people and learn anything about their customs traditions and religion. Did they record anything they learned since the North American natives did not have a written language. What we know about the history is recorded by early Europeans on first contact with them. And so there are there are many, many long answers that belong into this into this big domain but I would like to congratulate the Moravian archives for just recently having won the Cherokee Nation Wooster Award. And the reason for winning this prestigious award is because the archives do have an enormous collection of entries on indigenous peoples and in particular the series Eric that you might want to talk about that recorded the contacts between the Moravian missionaries and the Cherokee people. So Eric take it away. Yeah, this. Your question actually would be an excellent one to ask of our panelists on Thursday night who are representatives from the Cherokee Nation because it's an, there are many stories of Cherokee history written down past to oral culture. I just because of my culture doesn't have a written language doesn't mean they don't have a memory. They don't have stories about their own history and that's certainly the case with Cherokee. It was at about the time that the Cherokee mission started with our our Moravian missions at what in spring place what is now Georgia what was in Cherokee territory in northwest Georgia. And it started in 1821 and it was in the 1820s at Sequoia, used as syllabary and they published the Cherokee Phoenix and there started to be a written language for the Cherokee but there's a lot of stories and Cherokee traditions that the Moravians will make reference to and that the Cherokee have preserved themselves in oral culture. So we're blessed that the recent award is we've gotten our work now with up to 1838 volume 10 is coming out this fall look for that. And then the next volume 11 will actually document the experience of Moravian missionaries as they proceed the Trail of Tears and their experiences there Cherokee arrive and Indian territory in 3839 so look forward to reading more about this. Thank you Eric. I would like to add one point and that is that as far as we can reconstruct that and learn from Native peoples. Native peoples have always been multilingual so no matter what settlement you would go to. You would always find speakers of multiple native languages. And so it was very easy for native people to pick up English. As a matter of fact the Cherokee mission schools had the purpose to teach Cherokee students the English language and very, very quickly that translated in native peoples writing in English. And it started already on the East Coast years before the Cherokee missionaries opened their schools and so when you talk about Native writings and ethnographies and pamphlets and hymns and all of that always keep in mind that English was used very early on as well. Eric I don't know if you noticed the question about Friedberg. I just told that person to send me that question. I'll give you some details. There's lots of Brethreny churches. There's a whole bunch of South Texas was funny. I went with my son down to Austin and all of a sudden I started seeing Brethren this and Brethren that. There's some German immigrants and variants of Brethren churches in Texas. So I have a feeling that's a question that also our friend Craig Atwood who's the theological expert for the Moravian church is going to us on Saturday morning can give you a more succinct answer but I've asked her to send me that question to my email and I'll answer it in more detail after offline. Yeah, and then I don't know if you also saw the question about the wilderness. Yes, that's what I was talking about that wilderness is a relative term. One of the things with our records is that it's sort of like if there are 20 people in the neighborhood and you know all 20 people it's the record seemed crowded but that may be about it. The area had settlers one of the things that reasons that they had such an intense job of surveying the land is that trying to prove a crime to land ownership. It wasn't there wasn't anybody around the law wasn't around you had to be documented you send it back to what the colonial authorities and you hope and pray that things were defendable. You know the Moravians had a claim they own the land. It was called that tell mulberry fields that was part of the maybe a thought of as an initial first place for what Cobia to be was up near Wilkesboro and now buried under car lake up there. And for 50 years they had a court case trying to figure out in fact if they had title. And finally the end up settle it by just saying okay yeah you got title let's just give a bunch of money to Chapel Hill and and we'll forego the title and we'll forego any penalties and let them pay somebody to Chapel Hill to start the university or the health university massive court cases because it was difficult to prove ownership in this early days of settlement and the colonial frontier. Now it looks like one last question probably answer this one then maybe close out this session. The people of Bethania also come to construct Salem as the Bethabra people did in the records I have come across. It seems like the majority of the people came from the fabric. It would not surprise me however if there were also members coming from the thing. There was another question about the relationship between the fabric and the thing. They considered the thing is neighbors well they would have absolutely considered the neighbors but also members. But the differences that arose between Bethania and the fabric and I think you've spoken a little bit about that Eric. Do you want to say anything else about the peculiarity of the thing and its members and why there might have been conflicts or disagreement between the fabric. I think there's a great reference book I'll ratchet to in addition to telling you the stories of instances of conflict when you when you've got folks who did not grow up in the in the church and come into the church and then their their kids come in and grow up. Second and third generation effect gets amplified a lot quicker than when the church has been a multi generation tradition. We have some of our Moravian families who go back to the founding Moravian settlements in Europe and their families came over to Wacovia. And others joined the church along the way and they've got different and they they they opt out. A lot of the families that came into the church and in the time period we're talking about started to get flustered with the church's rules about getting married. You had to get your marriage approved by lot. The Lord said by lot that you were allowed to get married you get married and if they didn't then you couldn't at that time. And folks got flustered with it and went around it broke rules and eventually they stopped that practice in 1819 for marriages but there are some interesting stories within the records the Moravian series but also Daniel Cruz and Richard Starbuck in a history of the southern province in 2002 I guess it was with Courage for the Future which kind of summarizes all the stories if you if you sat down and tried to read 13 volumes of records which is what we've now got published and available online. That's a lot of stuff but but Daniel and Richard narrow it down to some things and part of that is discussion about the occasional squabbles that folks in Lithania had with the Vithabra just because they were hitching to be different and in fact what happens is in the beginning of the 18th century Lithania takes off economically becomes a much more prosperous town. It's the end of the plank road for a while. The Vithabra dwindles out and fades away so the fates of these two towns change economically during the course of our time period and then also factors into some of their attitudes about how much the Moravian traditions they want to follow. So I think it's time to wrap up. Thank you for. Excited by these questions. Knowledgeable fan base here. I'm sorry. But there's a lot of fans I'm blessed in this job to hear from Moravians and people who have family members in the Moravian community all the time and they're very committed to learning the details because there's so many great details to learn about. And what's interesting about this conference is you're going to have folks who don't necessarily have those family connections who look at the same records and asking different questions of them and they'll force you to look when you go back and look at these records again and see other stories that are right there in front of you that you might have missed when you're looking to read the records from only one particular perspective. There's of course one very important question we haven't answered yet and that is how authentic are the Moravian sugar cakes but I think you'll leave that for a future question and answer period. I think that one needs further research I suggest you buy us one tomorrow we'll try it out okay. Well we shall see about that but what I would like to say in closing is that we look forward to having you with us tonight. Seven o'clock we have a very very special event for you. My colleague at Winston-Salem State Professor Andre Minkins, who is the director of the theater program there has put together, especially for our conference a play to explore the relationships right here between enslaved African Americans, Indigenous peoples and the Moravians. So I hope you can join us for that. After that play we will have a very similar Q&A in which the solo artist and Professor Minkins will be available to reflect with you on this very powerful aspect of becoming a neighbor. So thank you so much. And we'll see you at seven o'clock. Bye bye. Thanks. Bye everyone. Bye bye.