SCHOENBRUNN—
a Moravian Missionary Settlement, 1771-1777

In 1771 Ohio was mostly forest and Indian Chiefs Pontiac and Tecumseh had more authority over the land and their Indian legions than any of the then encroaching settlers from the east.

That year, Moravian missionary David Zeisberger, in harmony with Delaware Indians residing near present-day Newcomerstown, selected a site for a future village, hence the name Schoenbrunn, from an Indian word describing a nearby “beautiful spring”.

Eventually, the little missionary cluster of huts and cabins grew to be inhabited by as many as 250 settlers.

It was on a “Great trail” between American Pittsburgh, English Detroit and savage Shawnee lands to the south—protected only by nearby Delaware Indian villages.

However, once the American Revolution pitted the Americans against the British and these forces—the latter with vastly stronger Indian support—came closer to confrontation in what is now Tuscarawas County; Schoenbrunn was no longer tenable and had to be abandoned.

Meanwhile, in the brief half-dozen years of its existence, Schoenbrunn sustained a precarious, wilderness lifestyle for its settlers and was, in fact, the first organized settlement in what is now Ohio.

In an entry in Zeisberger’s diary from August 1772 it is told of the first birth in the settlement; a daughter born to Indian converts.

By June 1773 settlers were remembering a great famine the previous year among the Indians but were hopeful for their first corn harvest.

In July a diary entry told of a bad cough spreading through the children with “only a few having been spared”.

By 1776 Americans were fighting for their independence from Britain and the settlement was in grave danger of being overrun by the warring parties “....and all sorts of good-for-nothing rabble” that were assembling there the diary complained.

Finally, on April 19, 1777 the final meeting was held in Schoenbrunn’s church (below) and by the following day the settlement was abandoned.

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In the small photos from the top; Dave joins a pair of modern youngsters in examining a cabin’s interior, then Sue and Mackenna enter a cabin with an adjoining fence displaying the hides of animals harvested for food. Below that is the interior of a typical cabin, this one with the “modern” convenience of a fireplace.


Next lower, Mackenna pretends to use the teacher’s quill pen. Below that the small size of the cabins can be scaled against the visitors. Finally, Dave is enjoying the church/meeting hall, first completed in September 1772 and later enlarged as the settlement grew.