Photo Credit: Jeanne Valentine Chase
On Friday, Sept. 20, two men stood at the corner of Bethel Cross and Strever Farm roads, carefully scrubbing away years of grime from the Moravian monument in Pine Plains.
Pastor Tim Wagner of Croton Falls (N.Y.) Community Church and his parishioner Billy Bowen, took on the task, using a conservator-recommended solution called D2, often used to clean historic gravestones and monuments. With each pass of their soft brushes and the D-2 solution, they revealed the life of the stone, quietly reviving a forgotten piece of history.
Their efforts were part of a larger interest in preserving the story of the Moravians’ historical connection to the region, which dates back to the mid-18th century. Last year, Wagner organized a year-long celebration of Moravian traditions at Croton Falls Community Church, culminating in a Moravian Christmas last December.
Two weeks prior to cleaning the monument, Wagner met with Dyan Wapnick and Mike Manning of the Little Nine Partners Historical Society (LNPHS) to discuss the likely original location of Shekomeko, a Mahican village where the Moravians established a mission. Wapnick advised Wagner to contact the Moravian Historical Society, which owns the monument, for permission to clean it, which he did. With their approval, Wagner and Bowen set to work.
Their interest in the site stems from the visit of Count Nicholas Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravian settlement in Bethlehem, Pa., who traveled to the Shekomeko mission in 1742. Zinzendorf was the bishop of the Moravian Church, and is credited with forming the first Christian congregation of Native Americans in the United States. He spent five days with Moravian missionaries who had been living among the Mahicans, developing trust by embracing the natives’ customs rather than promulgating their own.
“The Moravians were the first large-scale Protestant missionary movement and the first to send lay people rather than clergy as missionaries,” the LNPHS explains on their website.
Originally, the Moravian mission site was likely closer to the Shekomeko Creek, but the monument, first dedicated by the Moravian Historical Society on Oct. 5, 1859, was later moved to its current location to facilitate easier mowing of the surrounding fields.
Wagner said that members of the present-day Central Moravian Church, headquartered in Bethlehem, have expressed interest in visiting the monument site next year.
For more on the history of the Moravian mission and its impact on the region, visit the Little Nine Partners Historical Society’s website.