Colonel Stroud and the Moravian Mission at Dansbury

Buried in this graveyard is Colonel Jacob Stroud, founder of Stroudsburg and one of the defining figures of Pennsylvania's Pocono frontier. But the ground he rests in has a history older than his name. Moravian Brethren missionaries established the Mission of Dansbury here in seventeen forty-three, building a chapel and ministering to both German settlers and Indigenous neighbors along the Delaware River corridor.

The mission chapel was destroyed during the conflict that swept the Pennsylvania frontier in seventeen fifty-five, part of the wider violence of the French and Indian War. The site survived as a cemetery. Colonel Stroud, who gave his name to Stroudsburg and the surrounding county, was eventually laid to rest among those earlier graves. His leadership shaped Monroe County through the late colonial and early national period. The graveyard around you holds layers of Pennsylvania history going back nearly three centuries.