BETHANIA RAMBLE

Welcome to Preservation North Carolina's Bethania Ramble!

Bethania is the second oldest Moravian settlement in North Carolina. The first settlement was Bethabara, begun in 1753 by single men from established Moravian communities in Pennsylvania. Both settlements were located on a 98,985-acre tract of land acquired from English Lord Granville with funds from Count Zinzendorf, known as the Wachovia Tract. When activity associated with the French and Indian War came to the region, many refugees sought safety within Bethabara's stockade. 

To accommodate these refugees and the growing number of Moravian families, the first planned Moravian town named Bethania was planned as an agricultural town 2 miles northwest of Bethabara in an area known as Black Walnut Bottom. Dating from 1759, Bethania’s original plan contained 24 building lots centered on a linear main street with a church square between lower elevation lots assigned to Moravian families and upper lots for refugee families. The village was surrounded by land surveyed into distinct bottomland strip fields, higher ground orchard lots, and upland fields. All land was owned by the Moravian Church and lease contracts were made with the Church.  

First Period buildings were simple log structures, but Second and Third Period buildings were substantial and sometimes continued traditions from Pennsylvania and Central Europe, including floor plans, materials, and construction methods. Important early buildings included the 1760 Gemain Haus (community hall), a 1765 tavern (catacorner from the Cornwallis House), and a 1784 grist mill leased from the Church by a four-person partnership (foundations and portions of the stone and earth mill-race remain). The mill was built north of the village of Bethania on Muddy Creek. 

Today, Bethania is one of 40 sites in North Carolina recognized as National Historic Landmarks. The community was awarded this highest level of recognition in the United States in 2001 for its outstanding historical significance. Bethania is also the only community in North Carolina to be completely surrounded by another municipality, in this case, Winston-Salem. Preservation North Carolina holds covenants on six properties in the village and one on an outlying property. 

Reading Bethania's Historic Landscape:

Streets and lots of Bethania were laid out in 1759 by the Moravian Church as a planned agricultural community. Many settlers were first- and second-generation immigrants from Slovakia, Czechia, and Germany. It was the second Moravian settlement in the state, following Bethabara, and was designed as a European linear village centered on a Gemein Haus (church) on the central square.  

As an agricultural community, general gardening and agriculture were integral to the original town plan, with houses built close together near Main Street, and a wide array of agricultural lots were designated as part of the plan.  

As was traditional in European traditions, space was arranged around a hierarchy of uses. From Main Street, the alignment of the residential lots, garden plots,outbuildings, back lanes, and farm lots.  Nearer to the houses were backyards where cows, chickens, and pigs were kept for domestic use, as were house gardens producing vegetables and herbs for use in the home. Many varieties of fruits were also grown in orchard lots located on suitable land interspersed among the houses. Further away, upland fields were used as fenced pasture and for production of hay. Lower fields along Muddy and Bear creeks held rich soils in an area known as Black Walnut Bottom in which corn, soybeans for livestock, and other crops were grown.  

Very important to the original agricultural town plan were public alleyways and pathways that were surveyed and platted on maps and led between house lots and orchard lots and that provided routes for residents to get to and from their homes and the bottomland strip fields and orchard lots that they were assigned and farmed. Most of these alleyways were no more than 10 or 12 feet wide, but there was a 75-foot-wide stream buffer surveyed along the route of a stream that begins at “ Bethania Spring “ ( shown on a 1760 survey ) and flows south through a small valley behind the houses and house lots along the east side of Main Street. Portions of that stream buffer have been protected and can be seen and walked. 

Today, upper fields, bottom lands, orchard spaces, lanes, and outbuildings reflect the medieval European traditions preserved in Bethania’s landscape. 

Resources:

National Register Nomination: Bethania Historic District by Ruth Little-Stokes, North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1975. 

From Frontier to Factory: An Architectural History of Forsyth County by Gwynne Stephens Taylor North Carolina Department of Archives and History. 1981.  

National Historic Landmark Nomination: Bethania Historic District by Claudia Brown and John Clauser of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 2001.  

The Bethania Freedmen’s Community: An Architectural and Historical Context of the Bethania-Rural Hall Road Study Area, by Fearnbach History Services, Inc. February 2012