Gnadenhütten massacre (Pennsylvania)

On 24 November 1755, during the French and Indian War, warriors allied with the French struck the Moravian mission at Gnadenhütten, Pennsylvania, in what became known as the Gnadenhütten massacre, killing eleven missionaries there. The attackers burned the settlement to the ground and carried off one woman as a captive; of the sixteen people who had been living there, only four managed to get away. In the aftermath, the Pennsylvania Provincial Council gave Benjamin Franklin the task of erecting fortifications both in that region and elsewhere across the Province of Pennsylvania, a response to Native American raids that were growing more common as the war continued. The site of the attack corresponds to present day Lehighton, Pennsylvania.

Massacre

Whether the raiders belonged to the Shawnee or, as certain records suggest, the Munsee remains a matter of dispute. Other accounts identify them instead as Lenape from a settlement along Nescopeck Creek. The assault on Gnadenhütten began late on the evening of 24 November, when roughly a dozen warriors closed in on a mission house sheltering sixteen residents.

A firsthand account describes the scene: the household had gathered for supper when the dogs began barking strangely, prompting Brother Senseman to check outside through the rear door. A shot rang out, and several people rushed to open the front entrance, only to find armed men waiting with weapons already leveled at the doorway. The instant it opened, they fired, killing Martin Nitschman on the spot. His wife and others sustained wounds but managed to flee upstairs with the rest of the household into the garret, where they blocked the door using bed frames. Brother Partsch got away by leaping through a window at the back of the house. Nearby, Brother Worbas, confined to bed with illness in an adjoining structure, also escaped through a rear window despite a guard stationed at his door. The attackers, meanwhile, tried forcing open the garret door to reach those hiding inside, but when the barricade held, they set the building ablaze instead. As flames spread across the roof, a boy summoned the nerve to jump and got away safely. Watching him, Sister Partsch found the courage to do the same, leaping from the burning roof. Brother Fabricius followed suit, but the attackers spotted him before he could flee and struck him with two shots. He alone among those who tried to escape was taken alive, only to be finished off with hatchets and scalped, his body left where he fell. Everyone else who remained inside perished in the flames. Once the house had burned down, the assailants turned to the barns and stables, torching them and destroying all the corn, hay, and livestock within. They then split up whatever goods they had taken, soaked bread in milk for a meal, and left the scene.

According to the Pennsylvania Gazette's issue of 4 December, the Shawnee raiding party numbered only "about twelve," and five people lost their lives inside the burning structure. A sixth person died attempting to flee. One boy managed to escape by leaping from a window, and another man avoided the violence entirely, having stepped out just before the attack to secure the chapel door. In total, the deaths of eleven missionaries were recorded.

The Native American converts present were left untouched, though they initially readied themselves to fight back, standing down only after a missionary urged them to run instead. David Zeisberger, traveling toward Gnadenhütten from Bethlehem at the time, heard gunfire in the distance but paid it little attention until he caught sight of the house engulfed in fire. He rushed word to the militia commander stationed in Bethlehem, but without knowing the size of the enemy force, the decision was made to hold off until morning before investigating further.

Susanna Nitschman, wife of Martin, managed to flee the burning structure but was later captured. She spent six months as a prisoner in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, before dying in captivity.

Fort Allen

Raids against frontier communities did not let up, and that December the Northampton massacre claimed the lives of as many as 89 settlers. Faced with this violence, Colonel John Armstrong sent a message to Governor Robert Hunter Morris in late 1755, insisting that only a line of blockhouses stretching along the southern edge of the Kittatinny Mountains, running from the Susquehanna to the temporary line, could protect the region's people and property.

In January 1756, Benjamin Franklin traveled to Gnadenhütten to oversee the raising of Fort Allen. Recounting the trip later in his autobiography, he described finding the Moravians already well prepared to fend off further raids on Bethlehem and Gnadenhütten. He noted his surprise at how strong their defenses already were. The main structures had been enclosed by a stockade, and the settlers had bought arms and ammunition from New York. Inside their tall stone houses, they had even piled small paving stones near the windows so the women could hurl them down on any attacking Indians who tried to force entry. Meanwhile, armed men among the brethren stood watch in rotating shifts, following a routine much like that of soldiers in a garrison town.

Working alongside his men, Franklin had Fort Allen completed in under a week. The outpost stood on the northern face of the Blue Mountain ridge close to the Lehigh River, consisting of little more than a stockade enclosing a well, a barracks, a storeroom, and a magazine for gunpowder. Its name honored Judge William Allen, the man who later founded Allentown in 1762.

Beyond this project, Franklin directed the building of both Fort Franklin and Fort Lebanon. He subsequently entrusted William Clapham with constructing additional forts, structures that would go on to play a vital role in defending Pennsylvania throughout the French and Indian War.

Memorialization

On 10 December 1788, those who came after set a memorial stone at the site, inscribed with the names of the missionaries who had perished in the massacre. Downtown Lehighton, Pennsylvania became home to a historical marker in 2005, put up through the efforts of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. At Weissport, Pennsylvania, a stone monument bearing a brass plaque identifies where Fort Allen once stood. The Improved Order of Red Men of Pennsylvania joined with Carbon County's public schools and other grateful friends to raise this monument in 1922.

Aftermath

That night Colonel John Anderson reached the area from New Jersey with a militia company, yet word that more than 500 Indians had overrun the settlement made him hold off, and he did not press on toward Gnadenhütten until the next day. Some of the converted Native Americans escaped toward Wyomick, and others were relocated to Bethlehem to dwell among the Moravians there, where, during the French and Indian War, they endured deep poverty and faced prejudice from the town's residents.

Governor Robert Hunter Morris responded by directing 72 soldiers from Northampton County, placed under Captain Hays, to protect the deserted Gnadenhütten property until conditions allowed the former inhabitants to return safely. These men raised a modest stockade for protection, but on January 1, 1756, twenty of them were drawn into an ambush and killed. The survivors ran, and the stockade went up in flames. Fear spread widely among nearby settlers as a result, prompting Philadelphia to commission Benjamin Franklin to look into the matter and craft a defense strategy for Pennsylvania against future assaults.

By April 14, 1756, Governor Morris had formally declared war against the Delaware Nation, setting bounties of $130 for the scalp of any Lenape male past the age of ten, $50 for that of a woman, $150 for a captured male, and $130 for a captured female, though the converts were spared from these terms.

Those killed in the assault now rest in Lehighton Cemetery, marked since 1906 by a monument raised in their memory.