Our History

In 1771, German Moravian missionary David Zeisberger was granted permission by Delaware Chief Netawatwees to establish a mission town for the purpose of converting Delaware Indians to Christianity. In 1772, Zeisberger founded a mission town for Indians in the Ohio Country at Schoenbrunn (meaning "Beautiful Spring" in German) near present day New Philadelphia, east of the Tuscarawas river. These Indians were a mixture of Mahican and Delaware Indians. Due to the cultural differences between the Mahican and Delaware converts, a second village was established by Mahican elder Joshua on October 9 of the same year further south, right along the Tuscarawas river at Gnadenhutten (meaning "Tents of Grace" in German). The first child to be born in Ohio Territory happened here in Gnadenhutten in July of 1773 to the Roth family.  Life at Gnadenhutten was one of peace and hard work. With a T shaped village layout and a central street through the mission village, cabins lined both sides  as the village grew to around 150 people in 1775.

The onset of the American Revolution made life difficult for the residents of Schoenbrunn and Gnadenhutten. During the war, tensions were on the rise as the non-Christian Delaware and Wyandot tribes increasingly supported England instead of the rebellious Americans. The Christian Mahican and Delaware found in these missions, who had hoped to remain neutral, were not trusted by either side, each believing the Christian Indians were working with the opposing side. To protect his followers, Zeisberger consolidated the Moravian missions at Lichtenau, (near present day Coshocton) in 1778. When the local Delaware tribe, which had largely remained neutral, began shifting their support to the British, the Moravians began moving back eastward, reestablishing the village of Gnadenhutten in April 1779 and established two new villages, New Shoenbrunn, located a mile downstream from the original Schoenbrunn village, in December 1779 and Salem in April 1780, in the attempt to retain their neutrality.

In 1781, British authorities were of the belief that these Moravian Christian Indians in Gnadenhutten were aiding the Patriots and ordered them to abandon these villages and forced them to relocate in northern Ohio along the Sandusky River, a location the Moravians named "Captive's Town".  Arriving at their new camp in the late fall unprepared, it was too late to plant crops. Subsequently the Moravian Indians faced serious food shortages during that winter. Faced with horrible starving conditions, and while Zeisberger and other missionaries were being detained in Fort Detroit,  a group of Moravian Indians was permitted to return back to the three villages in the Tuscarawas valley in February 1782 to harvest whatever crops remained from what had been left behind the previous fall.  While in Gnadenhutten gathering crops, these peaceful Moravian Indians were mistakenly identified as the Indians responsible for recent raids in nearby Pennsylvania where militiamen attacked a village, captured the inhabitants, then brutally murdered them. Throughout the night of March 7 and into the morning of March 8, 1782 over 90 men, women and children Christian Indians were held captive to be killed on the morning of March 8.  This gruesome event is known as the Gnadenhutten Massacre. Two boys were able to escape the massacre, thus providing the only accounts of the incident.  These Pennsylvania militiamen then burned these once thriving Moravian villages to the ground, leaving the Tuscarwas valley largely vacent for the next 15 years.

John Heckewelder, who had served as a missionary alongside Zeisberger since the 1770's, returned to Gnadenhutten in May 1797 to find it overgrown. Operating as a land agent for the Moravian church, he began to re-establish the village of Gnadenhutten after Congress had granted the Moravian church 12,000 acres of land in the Tuscarawas valley as compensation for the massacre. In this re-establishment, the remains of the massacred inhabitants were found scattered about the village grounds as years of being left to growth and wild animals had taken its toll. These remains found by Heckewelder and his company were interred in the cellar of a burned cabin. They were later buried in one central mound, marked today on museum grounds as a visible mound surrounded by a fence where people from all over the world, both Native and White come to visit and pay respects to those who lost their life in the massacre. 

Today you can visit the Historical Site and walk the grounds of Ohio's oldest existing settlement. We suggest starting in the museum by watching a short film describing the events leading up to and including the massacre, then taking a walking tour to visit the reconstructed Cooper Cabin and Mission House and ending at the Mound and back at the museum. Inside our museum you will find artifacts that were unearthed in a recent excavation of the site along with many artifacts of Moravian Mission life and life in the early pioneer days when the village was re-established as the current village of Gnadenhutten.