Whitefield House — A School for Enslaved Children That Became a Moravian Landmark
Near Allentown, Pennsylvania
The Whitefield House in Nazareth began with an ambitious and troubled plan. In seventeen forty, the Anglican evangelist George Whitefield purchased five thousand acres here and intended to build a school for Black children. Construction started before the project collapsed, and in seventeen forty-one the Moravian Brethren acquired the unfinished structure.
The Moravians completed it in seventeen forty-three as a family house, then converted it into a boarding school for girls, and later into a nursery for the children of missionaries serving overseas. It later served as a home for retired Moravian mission workers, and it is among the oldest buildings in Pennsylvania. The Moravian Historical Society, founded in eighteen fifty-seven, is headquartered here, preserving records of one of colonial America's most ethnically diverse and globally connected religious communities.
