RAMBLE PROPERTIES

The first Bethania Moravian Church was a hastily erected log building that was completed in 1760, It was replaced in 1771 a two-story Gemien House.  The third sanctuary was completed in 1809 of brick and was intended to serve as a legacy building for many generations.   

The third church burned in November 1942, from a fire started in the basement. Despite a bucket brigade from hand pumps, the building was a complete loss. Within days, the community began a fund drive to rebuild the edifice. An article in the Winston-Salem Journal in November 1942 stated, “the walls of the main auditorium are standing and appear to be intact...church officials are anxious to get a roof over the building as soon as possible to protect the walls that have been left in position and are usable again.” 

Architect Harold Macklin was hired to oversee the reconstruction. Macklin was an English-born architect who planned several of Winston-Salem’s principal landmarks of the period He arrived in the city in 1919 and became a licensed architect in 1920. The reconstructed church was dedicated in October 1946.  

The reconstructed sanctuary incorporated the handmade Flemish bond brick walls, rooftop cupola, cove cornices, round-arched sash windows with traceriedupper sash and molded surrounds, rounded brick water table, and stuccoed fieldstone foundation. Two brick additions expand the original footprint, including a two-story brick wing that extends to the east and a smaller gabled 1965 vestibule on the south gable entrance.  

In Moravian traditions, God's Acre is the name given to their church cemeteries. Their uniformity represents the Moravian belief that all people, no matter their position in life, are equal in the eyes of God. Burial grounds are divided into large sections with paths between them. Early gravestones are at ground level, made of soapstone or white marble, and hold the same dimensions for adults. Later stones from the mid-nineteenth century are upright and more elaborate. 

Bethania’s God’s Acre is original to the town plan of 1759 and has been expanded several times. The cemetery’s most visual feature are the rows of ancient red cedars that bound sections. Graves were arranged according to the Moravian choir system, with married and single men buried in the southwest section, married and single women in the northwest, female children in the northeast, and male children in the southeast. Of the approximately 500 gravestones, those which predate the 1830s are small flat stone or marble markers numbered in order of placement. Marker No. 1 is for Mary Hauser (1759-1760) daughter of Johann Georg Hauser, Sr., and his wife Anna Maria Margaretha. From approximately 1840 through the 1870s, flat and vertical markers are intermingled. IsraelGeorge Lash (1810-1878) has the largest and most ornate marker. 

Built in 1853, the historic parsonage is an example of the popular Greek Revival style of architecture. The symmetrical facade features pedimented gable ends, boxed, ovolo-molded eaves, interior end chimneys, and an entrance topped with a transom. The house is constructed of hand-hewn timbers that enframebrick nogging placed between studs and posts.  

The house was originally located at the corner of Grabs Drive and Main Street, facing Main Street. Its first occupant was Rev. Eugene Maximillian Grunert, pastor at Bethania 1851-57. Grunart made pencil sketches of the village, including his home. The Greek Revival style was a pragmatic choice for the parsonage as its simple forms remained stylish and more economical than competing styles of Gothic Revival and Italianate design.  

In the early 1960s, the church sought expansion of their facility and the old house was sold to insurance agent and antiques collector Howard C. Conrad in 1963. Conrad moved the house to its current site that year, and additions were made with antique flooring and recycled old-growth timber. Other interior features are thought to be early, including Greek Revival-style post and lintel mantels and some decorative moldings. 

The Wolff-Moser house is a well-constructed house that was originally located at a rural site two miles north of Bethania in 1799.  It is important as a rare example of hand-hewn timber frame structure with brick nogging between the posts and studs, as sometimes seen in European residential buildings. The one-and-a-half story house has other important features of the Georgian period, including fine plastered walls, molded chair rails, six-paneled doors, and three-part mitered doors and windows surrounds. The mantels have arched openings with raised single-panel friezes above the hearth.  

 
This unusually sophisticated rural house was built by Pennsylvanian Major Johann Adam Wolff, a carpenter who was documented by Moravians as having worked on construction of the Caswell County Courthouse in 1794 and the Home Moravian Church in Salem around 1800. Wolff was married twice, first to Eva Barbara Petree before moving to Tennessee. From Wolff, the house passed to Henry Thomas Moser and it remained in the Moser family for five generations. 

In 2003, the historic house, then in an unstable condition, was purchased by the Town of Bethania and relocated to its current site a year later. Stone from the original site was saved for re-use, and the original interior woodwork was recovered, purchased, and reinstalled.  

The site is one of seven properties in Bethania legally protected by their owners through historic preservation agreements held by Preservation North Carolina. With the nearby Alpha Chapel, the Wolff-Moser House anchors a welcoming historic center for civic activities at the southern entrance to Bethania. 

Originally located two miles northeast of Bethania, the use of the term “alpha" indicated this chapel as branch “A” initiated by the Bethania Moravian Churchas its mother church. An article in the Union Republican newspaper of November 1895 stated: “The consecration of the new Alpha Chapel was a happy occasion. It is a cheering sign of activity of the Bethania congregation and an evident seal upon Bro Cosland’s energetic labors. Alpha Chapel is situated on the beautiful road between Bethania and Rural Hall, about half way between the two places...” 

The 20 x 30 foot frame chapel features simple details, a high 14-foot ceiling, a double entrance with a transom, and six windows. It is a charming example of utilitarian chapels that were once commonplace across our state’s rural landscape. 

Alpha Chapel never grew into an independent Moravian church. However, the congregation at Mizpah Moravian Church on the Tobaccoville Road north of Bethania saw increased membership. In 1932, Alpha Chapel was moved to Mizpah, where it was attached to the church to serve as Mizpah’s Sunday school and fellowship hall. That use continued until the 1950’s when Mizpah built a larger brick Sunday school building. The Chapel was once again relocated, this time to private property. 

The chapel relocated a third time to its present site in 2001 after being donated to the Town of Bethania. Today, the restored building functions as the Bethania Town Hall and is one of seven properties in Bethania legally protected by their owners through historic preservation agreements held by Preservation North Carolina. 

The Stoltz Barn was built for dairyman Thomas Lash Stoltz around 1915. The innovative frame structure was sheathed with corrugated iron siding and topped with a standing seam metal gambrel roof. The extended Stoltz family was important to the community in various leadership and agricultural roles, and the two-story frame house at 5536 Main Street was their ancestral home. For decades, it was the location of Old Salem and MESDA furniture conservator Ned Hipp’s cabinet shop.  

Early 20th-century barns increasingly incorporated metal sheets as cladding and roofing for durability. Corrugated siding was water and pest resistant, fireresistant, ready-made, and affordable. Its use is exemplary of the acceptance of new materials that could be manufactured remotely and transferred to Bethania by train. 

The barn is one of seven properties in Bethania legally protected by their owners through historic preservation agreements held by Preservation North Carolina.

The Knights of Pythias is a fraternal organization founded in Washington, D.C. in 1864 by J.H. Rathbone, inspired by the legend of Damon and Pythias. It is based on the principles of Friendship, Charity, and Benevolence, and became the first fraternal organization to be chartered by an Act of Congress. The organization promotes community service and supports various charitable causes.  

The Bethania Lodge Number 96 built their “Pythian Hall” in 1897 as a two-story frame structure with Victorian embellishments. There, its members listened to presentations and addresses, held musical programs, and held suppers and lawn parties as fundraisers. 

The Bethania High School was established in 1907 and met in the former Kapp Tobacco Factory until 1908, when classes were moved to the former Pythian Hall, to which a two-story frame expansion was built. When the Forsyth County schools were consolidated in 1924, students were transferred to the newly completed Old Town School.  

The two-story building was reduced to one story, perhaps referenced in a July 1959 report in the Winston-Salem Journal that stated “The final event in a three-month celebration of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Moravian village and church at Bethania will take place in the community... They will also be invited to browse in the old schoolhouse. This two-story frame building—which housed the first public high school in Forsyth County—will be in a state of transition. It has undergone considerable repair by Bethania residents during the past two months.  Its three first floor rooms will contain a number of historical documents and objects from years of the school’s operation (1907-1924) and from earlier periods in Bethania’s history.” Today it remains the home of the Bethania Historical Society. 

The site is one of seven properties in Bethania legally protected by their owners through historic preservation agreements held by Preservation North Carolina. 

The brick portion of this cottage was built as the office of the 1879 Bethania Woolen Mill, one of the largest industrial enterprises in Bethania’s long history. The existing one-to-four common bond brick building with shed roof, segmental-arched openings, sash windows, and exterior end chimney provide a touchstone to this industrial legacy.  

Thomas Loesch married Wilhemina Stoltz in 1843. Loesch, later anglicized to Lash, was both a farmer and an industrialist in Bethania. Brothers Thomas and Israel G. Lash owned a flaxseed oil mill, a grist mill, a tannery, and a cigar factory. On May 11, 1879, the Wilmington Star newspaper reported “Bethania is soon to have an extensive cotton and woolen factory. Thomas B. Lash will erect the same, and it will form an important addition to the enterprise of that place.” His Bethania Woolen Mill is said to have contained spinning frames and 14 looms operated by a Coorless steam engine.  

His obituary, reprinted in the Raleigh News and Observer from the Winston Republican newspaper on August 4, 1888, stated “At his home in Bethania...Thomas B. Lash breathed his last on the 27th ult., at the ripe old age of 81 years. The deceased was a brother of the late William and I. G. Lash, andwas in earlier years engaged in merchandising and the manufacture of cigars in company with the latter named brother until Mr. I. G. Lash removed to Salemand engaged in the banking business. In later years the deceased erected and ran for a short time the Bethania Woolen Mills. He always took a leading part in the affairs of the county, and his views and opinions were sought for and practiced by a long list of personal followers.”  The mill operated for less than 20 years.The Union Republican newspaper in Dec 1899 stated “The woolen mill building will not be sold with the land on which it stands, but the building will be offered separately, either as a whole, or offered in parts of the material.” With that, the woolen mill was torn down with the exception of the brick office structure, which was adaptively converted into a dwelling.  

The site is one of seven properties in Bethania legally protected by their owners through historic preservation agreements held by Preservation North Carolina. 

Like the Cornwallis House across the street, this structure was built as a two-story, three-bay, log house sheathed with weatherboards and built upon a dry-laid fieldstone foundation. The 1789 Hauser House does not have evidence of a central chimney, and its end chimneys served the four-room plan by utilizingcorner fireplaces. The differences in the two houses demonstrate rapidly changing tastes and traditions occurring among Bethania’s Germanic residents.  The house was constructed on a lot originally designated for an orchard by Michael Hauser Sr and his German-born wife Anna (Fiscus). 

Greek Revival-style features of this house such as the post and lintel mantels, cornerblock door and window surrounds, and two-panel doors reflect a mid-nineteenth century remodel to exhibit the family’s wealth and taste. Pastel colored marbling may be the work of neighbor Naaman Reich from the mid-nineteenth century. A reconstructed mantel in the Dining Room reflects the contemporary woodwork of Robert Pearl and artist/muralist Beth Spieler.  

The site is one of seven properties in Bethania legally protected by their owners through historic preservation agreements held by Preservation North Carolina. 

Established in 1845, Bethania’s African American Moravian Church was in a log building built in 1850 located where the current sanctuary now stands. The log building served as both a sanctuary and a school during the Reconstruction Era. Reverend A.T. Goslen organized an African Methodist Episcopal Zion congregation in Bethania in 1875 and the congregation began planning for a new sanctuary in September 1891. Moravian Church elders transferred ownership of the African American Moravian Church property to A. M. E. Zion Church trustees in May 1892, and Reverend Hauser dedicated the new 1,500-square-foot wood frame sanctuary in early September 1893. 

After a 1926 windstorm caused the Bethania A. M. E. Zion Church to lean 14 inches east, the congregation was forced to demolish the sanctuary and rebuild using some salvaged materials. C. H. Jones of Winston-Salem donated stained-glass windows and Rev. Joseph Loften Lash collected funds to buy a church bell. The new sanctuary was dedicated in July 1928. 

In September 1968, an announcement in The Sentinel newspaper stated, “Bethania AME Zion Church at Bethania is scheduled to begin the largest renovation project in its history in about two weeks, the Rev. John J. Evans, pastor, said this week. The church, which had its beginning in 1850 when each landlord of the white Moravian Church furnished a log to build a churchhouse where enslaved Negroes could worship, is scheduled to begin a $16,000 expansion and renovation project. Clyde Riddle Construction Co. has the general contract. The frame church will be brick veneered and a lower auditorium, two baths and a new heating plant will be added. The front entrance will be renovated and a new roof will be installed. In the sanctuary, the ceiling will be lowered, the walls paneled and the floor carpeted. New windows and new lighting fixtures will be installed throughout the building.” 

The congregation’s 125th year was celebrated three years later with the dedication of the expansion project. The Sentinel reported in April 1971 “The new plant includes a sanctuary, pastor’s study, five classrooms, two dressing rooms for the choirs, and a finance room. The lower area has an assembly room, a kitchen and storage room, two baths and a furnace room.” The article continued “A research of the old church records reveals that the congregation was organized in October, 1845 by the Moravians. A reference dated October 6, 1850 said in part, ‘In the afternoon the new Negro Church was dedicated. About 60 Negroes were present.’ The reference was to Bethania [AME Zion]’s first log building.” 

With its narrow vertical windows and stylized spire, the current sanctuary represents a mid-twentieth-century practice of African American churches embracing modernism and the future within a broader context of many white congregations looking back to earlier forms and architectural antecedents.   

Lord Cornwallis occupied Bethania during American Revolution, February 9, 1781, after crossing the Shallowford on the Yadkin as he was lured northward by patriots on a strategic retreat led by General Nathanael Greene into Virginia. While in Bethania, British officers were housed in some Bethania homes, and Cornwallis is remembered as having spent the night in this house.    

Regardless of its infamous guest, the Hauser-Reich-Butner House is an important touchstone for our state as a reflection of Germanic building traditions, its integrity, and its decorative arts.    

The Hauser-Reich-Butner House was built around 1770 as a two-story, three-bay, log house sheathed with weatherboards and built upon a dry-laid fieldstone foundation. The house originally featured a central chimney that was removed in the mid-19th century when the house was anglicized. It replaced by two interior end chimneys, but the original four-room plan remains largely intact and represents Germanic building practices in the Carolina Piedmont. The house was likely built by Pennsylvanian Johann Georg Hauser, Sr., and his wife Anna Maria Margaretha. The couple were not Moravians, but they represent the Germanic non-Moravians who were accepted in Bethania and joined the church. Later residents included Naaman Reich and Professor A. I. Butner.    

Among the most important features of the house are trompe l'œil paintings by resident Naaman Reich, a professional painter who lived here from at least 1847 till his death in 1871. Examples include landscape scenes seen through windows within simulated stone walls, a still life on a plastered niche wall above the fireplace, wood-grained panels beneath windows, and simulated modillion cornices and a medallion on the ceiling.   The paintings and woodwork were restored by David Goist, a noted NC Museum of Art conservator, and by Leigh McDonald of Charlotte and Beth Spieler of Bethania.     

The site is the first of seven properties in Bethania legally protected by their owners through historic preservation agreements held by Preservation North Carolina.