Multicultural Society - Serving Their Neighbors

Excerpt from "Old Salem - The Official Guidebook" by Penelope Niven and Cornelia Wright (click on the link to purchase your copy). Visit the official website of Old Salem Museums and Gardens

"The history of the Moravians comes to life at Old Salem. A unique religious group, the Moravians made the town of Salem an oasis of beauty and order in the Carolina back-country. Today in the workshops, homes, and gardens of Old Salem, men and women carry on the daily tasks of living just as they were done in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries - crafting beautiful objects, running households and businesses, and  engaging in artistic and musical pursuits. This guide will help you make the most of your visit to Old Salem, one of the most authentic living-history museums in the United States."

Multicultural Society - Serving Their Neighbors

Wachovia in Forsyth County

The Moravians who built Salem transplanted a staunch religious faith and a sturdy secular idealism to the rugged Carolina Backcountry. They had a threefold mission: to serve their neighbors in surrounding settlements within eighty miles of Wachovia, as they named their land; "to establish a town where the Moravian ideals of Christian living might be practically realized;" and to preach the gospel to the Indians. Out of their commitment to "common labor for the common good," the Moarvians subdued the wilderness, built houses, farmed the land, established a vibrant trading center, and, for the most part, lived amicably with their neighbors.

From the earliest days the Moravians were a multicultural society. The first colonists dispatched to North Carolina in 1753 were born in Germany, Norway, Danish Holstein, Pennsylvania, or New York. In 1766, the Moravians in Wachovia welcomed "the first company of Brethren and Sisters coming to us direct from Europe by way of Charleston [South Carolina]...."