Emmaus: The Moravian Village Named for Scripture
Near Allentown, Pennsylvania
The town of Emmaus carries two names layered across time. The Lenape people called this place Macungie, meaning the feeding place of the bears. European settlers began arriving in the seventeen thirties, and a shelter house went up in seventeen thirty-four.
In seventeen fifty-nine, Moravian settlers established a Gemein-Ort here, a congregational village in the distinctive style of the Moravian Brethren, who built tight-knit religious communities across Pennsylvania and beyond. In seventeen sixty-one they named their settlement Emmaus, after the biblical town where the risen Christ appeared to two disciples on the road. The Moravians were meticulous record-keepers and builders, and their influence shaped the character of this corner of Lehigh County. Today Emmaus is a borough of about eleven thousand people, and its Moravian origins remain visible in the layout and architecture of its historic core.
