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![]() Johannes Leinbach (1712-1766) house in Wachovia. |
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The Road to Wachovia |
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The Pennsylvanians One member of the family unlikely to have had an active role in the decision to leave Germany was Johannes and Anna Elizabeth's eleven year old son also named Johannes. Born in 1712 at Hochstadt, he made the voyage to Pennsylvania with his family and grew up in the agrarian Oley community near present day Reading. By the time the Moravians arrived in Pennsylvania (1740), Johannes had married Anna Catharina Riehm and they had begun their own family that would eventually include ten children. And, in the same year (1742) as his father, the then thirty year old Johannes and his family also entered the Society. The Leinbachs and their fellow Moravians (as all those associated with the Unity of Brethren were to become known) grew and prospered in Pennsylvania. New towns were established, including Lititz in 1749. Johannes and his older brothers, Johann Friedrich and Johann Heinrich, became actively involved in various Moravian projects. And their youngest sister, Maria Barbara, eventually became a missionary and the wife of David Nitschmann, the bishop, after her first husband, David Martin, died while on a mission in the West Indies. ![]() The Moravian schoolhouse in Oley Valley. By 1750 the Moravians had established at least thirteen schools in the Philadelphia area. In addition to tending their farm, Johannes and Anna Catharina accepted charge of the children's boarding school in Germantown for five years and, later, the Brethren's school in Oley. Friedrich, their eldest son, grew up attending some of these Moravian schools and entered the service of the Brethren full time. Maria Barbara settled into the Single Sisters House at the new Moravian town of Lititz about twenty miles to the south. But late in life, with five younger sons and two younger daughters remaining at home, Johannes chose to become an émigré once again. |
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The Road To Wachovia The New Land |