The Moravian Historical Society museum and historic site preserves, interprets, and celebrates the rich culture of the Moravians.
The Museum is open daily from 1 pm to 4 pm. Reserve a guided museum tour today.
Annual Meeting, Lecture, and Reception of the Moravian Historical Society
Since 1857, the Moravian Historical Society has presented its members with an update on the state of the organization and hosted an annual lecture. Many of these lectures have been published in the Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society, now known as the Moravian Journal. A complete listing of the Annual Lectures can be found here.
Sunday, October 19, 2025
168th Annual Lecture by Lisa Minardi
“Window to Revolution: Pennsylvania Germans and the War for Independence”
Location: The Moravian Theological Seminary, 60 W. Locust St. Bethlehem, Pa.
2:30 p.m.: Annual Meeting | 3:00 p.m. Annual Lecture | 4:00 p.m. Annual Reception
This talk reexamines the central role that Pennsylvania Germans played in America’s founding. Far from being peripheral figures, Pennsylvania Germans were deeply involved in the political, military, religious, and cultural life of the Revolutionary era. Through rigorous primary source research—including Lutheran pastor Henry Melchior Muhlenberg’s journals—the project will reconstruct the lived experiences of German Americans during the war, including refugees from Philadelphia and New York who sheltered in the crowded Muhlenberg House in Trappe. Minardi will discuss an exceptional array of artifacts, such as fraktur, redware, pewter, furniture, powder horns, long rifles, and other material culture that reflect the experiences of German Americans during the Revolutionary War.
The Meeting and Lecture will take place in the Saal of the Bahnson Center, 60 W. Locust St. Bethlehem
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The event is free to attend.
Advance registration is requested.
Lisa Minardi is executive director of Historic Trappe, where she oversees three historic houses associated with the Muhlenberg family and the Center for Pennsylvania German Studies. She is also editor of Americana Insights, an annual volume series dedicated to research on traditional Americana and folk art. Lisa holds a B.A. in history and museum studies from Ursinus College, an M.A. from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, and is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of American Civilization program at the University of Delaware, where she is researching the German-speaking community of early Philadelphia for her dissertation. She is the curator of numerous exhibitions and author of many books and articles on Pennsylvania German art and culture, including Pastors & Patriots: The Muhlenberg Family of Pennsylvania and A Colorful Folk: Pennsylvania Germans & the Art of Everyday Life.
167th Annual Meeting, Lecture, and Reception
"Our Class in America: John Comenius and Native American Education at Harvard in the Seventeenth Century"​​​
Dr. James A. Owen​
October 5th, 2024
This talk explored the role of John Comenius in developing educational plans at Harvard Indian School. Puritan leaders at Harvard, including John Winthrop and John Eliot, admired Comenius and were in direct communication with him between 1641 and the late 1660s. Comenius's Pansophic education program, using Janua Linguarum Reserata and other books, became the standard for teaching Native American students at Harvard. Tantalizing clues found in the papers of Puritans and European Protestant leaders suggest a more prominent role for Comenius in American education than has previously been known.
James Owen is Assistant Director, Academic Professional Associate, and Instructor in the Institute of Native American Studies at the University of Georgia. He is a historian and musician from the mountains of Western North Carolina. He has held fellowships and received funding from the Newberry Library, the American Musicological Society, the Moravian Music Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the UGA Graduate School. James teaches undergraduate & graduate courses in US History, Native American History, Religion in America, and Senior Thesis courses, as well as Native American Studies and Indian Policy courses.
166th Annual Lecture
"A free wildlife:"
Morale, Morality and Moravianism in Trinidad, 1885-1935
Rev. Dr. Winelle Kirton-Roberts
Saturday, August 19, 2023
When Benjamin Romig, the President of the Moravian Provincial Board, visited Trinidad in 1886, he described it as a place where “careless,” formerly enslaved Tobagonians went to live “a free wildlife.” In the visitation report, Romig expressed concerns about the unacceptable immoral tendencies of the formerly enslaved Africans and proposed a prompt response to expand the Moravian work on the island. As Rev. Dr. Winelle Kirton-Roberts argued, in the context of a multicultural, multiethnic, and multi-religious Trinidadian community, the Moravians squandered the unique opportunity to meaningfully connect with the liberated Africans who migrated to Trinidad for better opportunities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Rev. Dr. Winelle Kirton-Roberts is a native of Barbados. She holds a ThM in Ecumenics and Missions from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in History from the University of the West Indies, Barbados. As an ordained minister in the Moravian Church, Eastern West Indies Province, Kirton Roberts served in pastoral and administrative positions. At present, she is the pastor of the Geneva Moravian Fellowship in Switzerland.​ Kirton-Roberts has researched the history of missions in the Caribbean for over twenty years. While working in Trinidad, the Virgin Islands, and Barbados, she discovered the dearth and limitations of Caribbean church histories, an issue she has sought to address in her book, Created in Their Image: Evangelical Protestantism in Antigua and Barbados, 1834-1914 (2015).
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Upcoming events and programs are supported, in part with funding from the Hotel Tax Grant Program through the County of Northampton Department of Community & Economic Development.