Moravian Historical Society Digitized Resources

Moravian Historical Society is proud to provide an online resource for remote research. The digital resources are from selected areas of the collection. New collections are added on an ongoing basis.

A Historical & Archives Records Care (HARC) grant from the Pennsylvania Museum and Historical Commission made this project possible. The Moravian Historical Society was able to expand this work with funding from the American Historical Association’s Grants to Sustain and Advance the Work of Historical Organizations Program, which provided relief to institutions adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This opportunity was made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Highlights from the Digitized Collections:

Paintings of John Valentine Haidt

The Moravian HIstorical Society has a collection of 24 John Valentine Haidt (1700-1780) paintings. As official church painter, Haidt painted portraits as well as Biblical scenes.

Henry Family Collection

The Henry Family Collection contains some 450 unique items, including letters, weekly journals, personal papers, drawings, family genealogy, correspondence, and photographs. William Henry of Lancaster (1729-1786) was a gunsmith, merchant, and patriot financier. His descendants include John Woolf Jordan (1840-1921), an archivist and librarian for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and James Henry (1809-1895), a scholar who founded the Moravian Historical Society.

Moravian Maps

Moravians began surveying Pennsylvania in the early 1740s. Their contributions to the surveying of the state offers some of the earliest documentation of land use in the colonies during tumultuous times of war and unrest.

Moravian Historical Society Annual Lectures

Nazareth Hall

Nazareth Hall operated for 144 years as a private boarding school for boys. Explore the daily life of students from classes and exams to sports and extracurricular activities through documents, pictures, and objects from the students who lived and learned inside its esteemed halls.

"Nazareth in the Eighteenth Century"

An unpublished manuscript for a book on the history of Nazareth, Pennsylvania. From the first European settlers’ arrival to the community’s response in 1800 to George Washington’s death and Charles Gotthold Reichel’s retirement in 1802 from Nazareth Hall.