Gnadenhutten

• Schoenbrunn Village and the Gnadenhutten Massacre SiteSchoenbrunn was founded May 3, 1772, by David Zeisberger and Christian Lenape families. At Gnadenhutten, militia killed about 96 Christian Indians on March 8, 1782.

• David ZeisbergerPerson · 1721-1808
• John HeckewelderPerson · 1743-1823

How Gnadenhutten began

Gnadenhutten, on the Tuscarawas River south of New Philadelphia, was founded in October 1772 as a Moravian mission town of German missionaries and Christian Lenape (Delaware) and Mohican converts — one of the oldest continuously documented Euro-American-founded settlements in Ohio. It grew to about 200 residents by 1775 under the Christian Mohican chief Joshua before the Revolutionary War made the mission's professed neutrality impossible to sustain. On March 8, 1782, Pennsylvania militia killed 96 unarmed Lenape and Mohican men, women and children who had returned to the abandoned town to gather their harvest, then burned the settlement — one of the most notorious atrocities of the frontier war. The site has been marked and memorialized since 1872, and the modern village, ZIP 44629, had 1,240 residents at the 2020 census.

Settled October 1772, by Moravian missionaries (led by David Zeisberger) and Lenape (Delaware) converts, under the Christian Mohican chief Joshua.

Where the name comes from

Gnadenhutten is German for "tents of grace" (also rendered "huts of grace"), the name the Moravian missionaries gave the settlement when they founded it in October 1772 as their second mission town on the Tuscarawas River, downstream from Schoenbrunn.

Before the town

Gnadenhutten was a Christian Lenape (Delaware) and Mohican (Munsee/Mahican) mission town, founded October 1772 as converts of Moravian missionary David Zeisberger settled alongside Schoenbrunn a few miles upstream. Under the Christian Mohican chieftain Joshua (who died August 1, 1773), the town grew to roughly 200 residents by 1775, with about 60 log cabins. During the Revolutionary War the town's Lenape and Mohican residents tried to remain neutral, which left them distrusted by both American militia and British-allied Wyandot and Shawnee. In September 1781 British-allied warriors forcibly relocated most of the mission population to the Sandusky River. In early March 1782 a group of roughly 150 Lenape and Mohican returned to Gnadenhutten and the nearby mission towns to harvest corn left standing in the fields. A Pennsylvania militia column found them there, disarmed them under false pretenses, and on March 8, 1782 killed 96 of them — bound and struck down with mallets and hatchets in two mission buildings — then burned the town's approximately 60 cabins. Only two boys escaped. As partial indemnity, three tracts of 4,000 acres each were later reserved for the Lenape near the mission towns, though the Lenape relinquished title to them in 1823 and the land passed to settlers regardless. No organized Native community remained at Gnadenhutten after that.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Christian Mohican (Munsee/Mahican converts).

• Gnadenhutten Massacre Site (other) — village of Gnadenhutten, south of downtown on a county road, on the Tuscarawas River, founded October 1772; massacre March 8, 1782 (en.wikipedia.org)
• Mass grave of the massacre victims (burial) — Gnadenhutten Historical Park, on the massacre site, 1782 burial; marked since (commons.wikimedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1772 — Moravian missionaries and Lenape converts, led by David Zeisberger, found Gnadenhutten ("tents of grace") in October, on the Tuscarawas River downstream from Schoenbrunn, under the Christian Mohican chief Joshua.
2. 1773 — Chief Joshua, the Christian Mohican leader of the settlement, dies on August 1.
3. 1775 — The town's population reaches about 200 residents.
4. 1781 — In September, British-allied warriors forcibly relocate most of the mission Indian population from the Tuscarawas towns to the Sandusky River, suspecting them of aiding the Americans.
5. 1782 — On March 8, Pennsylvania militia under Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson kill 96 unarmed Lenape and Mohican men, women and children who had returned to harvest corn, then burn the town's roughly 60 cabins; only two boys escape.
6. 1798 — Missionary John Heckewelder builds the first European-American house at the site of Gnadenhutten as resettlement of the valley resumes.
7. 1823 — The Lenape relinquish title to the three 4,000-acre tracts that had been reserved near the mission towns as indemnity for the massacre.
8. 1825-1830 — The Ohio and Erie Canal is built through Gnadenhutten, giving the village a route to market.
9. 1872 — A monument to the massacre victims is dedicated at the village centennial on June 5.
10. 1913 — A flood destroys the Ohio and Erie Canal at Gnadenhutten; it is never rebuilt.
11. 1963 — A museum is established at the Gnadenhutten Historical Park.
12. 1988 — A peace tree is dedicated at the massacre site.
13. 2003 — The State of Ohio erects a memorial marker at the site calling the killings a "day of shame."

Stories

A morning in the fields, and what followed

By the winter of 1781-82 the Christian Lenape and Mohican of Gnadenhutten had been forced off their land, moved north to the Sandusky by warriors allied with the British who no longer trusted the mission Indians' neutrality. Their corn still stood unharvested in the fields at Gnadenhutten, and in early March 1782 roughly 150 of them walked back south to gather it before it spoiled. A column of about 160 Pennsylvania militiamen, hunting for the raiders responsible for recent attacks on frontier settlements, found them there. The militia told the Lenape and Mohican they would be taken to Fort Pitt for their own safety, disarmed them, and held a vote among themselves on what to do next. On the morning of March 8, 1782, the militia bound their prisoners and killed 96 of them — men, women and children — with mallets and hatchets inside two mission buildings, then burned the town's roughly 60 cabins to the ground. Two boys survived to tell what had happened. The killings, against a community that had taken no part in the war, discredited the American cause among Ohio's Native nations for years afterward.

Marking the ground, a century and more later

Ohio did not memorialize what happened at Gnadenhutten quickly. It took ninety years, until the village's 1872 centennial, for a monument to go up on the massacre ground, and the state did not add its own marker calling the killings a "day of shame" until 2003 — 221 years after the fact. In between, a museum opened at the site in 1963 to hold what could be gathered of the mission's history, and in 1988 a peace tree was planted there. Three tracts of land, 4,000 acres each, had been set aside near the ruined towns in the years after the massacre as a kind of indemnity to the Lenape, but the Lenape gave up title to that land in 1823 and it passed into the hands of settlers regardless. The mass grave of the ninety-six still lies at Gnadenhutten Historical Park, on the same ground where the mission buildings burned.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

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