The Old Salem Moravian village in North Carolina was a surprise in the finding and a riveting discovery of a different way of life.
I stumbled upon the village while on a long walk in Winston-Salem seeing the sites on a short stopover in my 1.5-year solo road trip through the United States, Mexico and Canada.
I’d never even heard of Moravians before I walked into Old Salem, so you can imagine my surprise at seeing an entire town that looked hundreds of years old without any people in it.
The old, covered pedestrian bridge looked new but builders constructed it in a very old style. It seemed like a hint that I was about to go back in time.
Here’s why it’s worth visiting the Old Salem Moravian village:
Walking around the Old Salem Moravian Community
Old Salem is a historic district in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A sign informed that the Moravian community settled the town in 1766. But wait – what’s a Moravian? A self-guiding walking tour led me through the town and explained. Each new sign revealed more history and information and soon, I was on a most grand and unexpected adventure.
This town is a living history museum similar to Jamestown, Yorktown or Williamsburg. There are several communal buildings, churches, houses, and shops. It includes live interpretations of the Moravian community. Nobody was in the streets or shops and the entire place looked abandoned.
The Old Salem Historic District is a National Historic Landmark. Historians have restored much of the 1766 town and about 70% of the historic district buildings are original. They’ve recreated other buildings so you feel you’re returning in time. If it were open, the historians would have been interpreting and recreating the lives of tinsmiths, blacksmiths, cobblers, gunsmiths, bakers and carpenters while interacting with visitors.
Who are the Moravians?
The Moravian Church is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in Christianity and pre-dates the Lutherans by nearly 100 years. Moravians are members of the Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination that began in the 1400s. Moravians were acolytes of John Huss, who was burned at the stake in 1415 in the Czech Republic.
After Huss’s death, the Moravians carried on as people guided “only by the gospel and example of our Lord Jesus Christ” in gentleness, humility, patience, and love for even their enemies. The Moravian Church believes in spiritual rebirth, piety, evangelism through missionary service and doing good works in their communities.
The motto of the Moravian Church is: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love.”
How Moravians settled in North Carolina
The Moravians first came to the U.S. during the colonial period in 1735 as part of British General James Oglethorpe’s settlement of Georgia. They didn’t stay in Savannah long but moved on to establish a permanent presence in Pennsylvania in 1741, where they used 500 acres to establish the Bethlehem settlement.
From Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, they branched out and 15 Moravians walked to North Carolina and founded what they called Bethabara in 1753. It became one of two headquarters for the sect, known today as Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Highlights of the town still include a tavern where George Washington stayed and several restored buildings, shops and homes.
Old Salem Coffee Pot
The reason I chose this spot to walk was to see the giant coffee pot. The huge percolator sits at the north end of the historic district on a wood pedestal over seven feet tall. A sign says it can hold up to 740 gallons of coffee. That’s nearly 12,000 cups! Obviously, I had to see it, and it didn’t disappoint.
The coffee pot is made of silver tin and is shaped almost like a triangle with a long curved spout and a small handle. Tinsmith brothers Julius and Samuel Mickey built the kettle in the 1850s to promote their coffee shop across the street. It was an immediate sensation and the brothers hosted events around the pot and said they even once filled it with coffee, but it’s unclear how they would have poured it once inside the pot. It’s a Monrovian mystery for the ages!
God’s Acre Burial Ground
A God’s Acre is a burial ground or a cemetery. I didn’t know that when walking around the empty village admiring the old architecture and cobbled streets. I walked through a narrow dirt path behind a church to find a graveyard. As a taphophile, I was thrilled.
“While on earth, he was loved,
And we deeply deplore him;
But why should we murmur,
It was all for the best;
Do you ask how he lived!
He set Heaven before him,
Do you ask how he died!
In the faith of the blessed.”
All the gravestones were flat with long, detailed inscriptions. If you like this type of history, you could easily spend a few hours reading these graves and learning about their inhabitants.
Fun fact: It’s tradition for Moravians to be buried in a God’s Acre – a graveyard with only flat gravestones – signifying the equality of the dead before God. The graves are organized by sex, age and marital status rather than family, which led me to the Single Sister’s House.
The Single Sisters
In the graveyard, I saw the stone for the Single Sisters and being a longtime single woman; it peaked my attention. The Single Sisters were unmarried Moravian women who lived together in a small community.
Just beyond the church is the Single Sisters House. It’s a brick and wood structure like others in the settlement, but it has a remarkable story. In 1766, sixteen unmarried young women established a house of their own–the Single Sisters–in the village. It took them nearly 20 years, but eventually, the 16,000-square-foot home sheltered many women. In a time when women were not commonly educated, they taught each other math, science, geography, music and drawing.
It is one of the most noteworthy buildings in the history of women’s education as the oldest educational institution for women in the United States. The house is now a museum that you can tour.
Old Salem Heritage Bridge
As I left, I again crossed the covered bridge. This time I noticed the sign describing it as the Old Salem Heritage Bridge. It turns out it’s not a time warp. The old Salem Bridge is a 120-foot-long pedestrian overpass constructed in 1998. It leads from the visitor’s center and large parking lot that many people use when visiting to walk over the highway into the Moravian community.
The Old Salem Heritage Bridge is one of only three covered bridges in North Carolina.
The bridge is a timber Burr arch designed to mirror the architecture of Old Salem’s Moravian community. It intentionally looks like it could have been built in the 1700s, so I’m not crazy after all. At least, not about the bridge.
While you’re in the area, the small downtown boasts several shops, a yoga studio and rock shop, jewelry, an “oddities” shop, a cheesecake shop and a used clothing store.
If You Visit Old Salem
The settlement is open from 10 am to 4 pm on Wednesday to Saturday. Tickets are $20 per adult and give visitors access to all available buildings and demonstrations.
Find other stories about North Carolina here.
Ramona
September 1, 2022Great read !How wonderful to know that women back then took care of each other we all should learn from this!Thank you for sharing 🥰