ABSTRACT
In 1747 at Gnadenhütten, a Christian mission village in the upper Lehigh Valley on the borders of Pennsylvania, a Native American father and mother sought the help of a Moravian missionary in placing their child in a predominantly white boarding school, or Anstalt, in a Moravian Gemeine—a congregation or religious community—in this case at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The parents, named David and Sara, told the missionary that they were anguishing “because they did not understand how to raise their son and believed that if he died while living with them, he would not become blessed. If, however, the Gemeine accepted him and he died there, so would they have a certain hope that he would be blessed.” Several days later David traveled with his son to Bethlehem where he could live “in the care of the Gemeine.” For his part, according to the Moravians, “the boy took leave of all the Brethren [i.e., to enter the Anstalt] with much joy in his heart." 1
