Forest County and Zeisberger's Mission to the Munsees

Forest County, formed in eighteen forty-eight from Jefferson County and named plainly for the vast woodlands that cover it, holds a remarkable piece of early American religious history. In the late seventeen sixties, the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger established a mission to the Munsee people in this remote corner of Pennsylvania. Zeisberger was one of the most dedicated and linguistically talented missionaries of his era, spending decades living among the Lenape and Munsee peoples, learning their languages, and establishing Christian communities.

His Forest County mission was one of several he planted across western Pennsylvania and Ohio before the American Revolution disrupted and ultimately shattered most of these communities. The Munsees, a branch of the Lenape, had deep roots in the region before European contact. Zeisberger's decades of work left behind detailed journals and linguistic records that remain among the most valuable primary sources for understanding eighteenth-century Indigenous life in Pennsylvania.