Lehigh Valley 250: Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites

Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites are producing three exhibitions for Lehigh Valley 250 series:

Working Hands: Supplying a Revolution
Centering on themes of innovation, the exhibition will explore colonial America’s largest and earliest “industrial park,” where pre-Industrial Revolution crafts and trades thrived in sharp contrast to their pacifist beliefs, and explore how Moravian apprentices handled the duality of gun manufacturing, without being permitted to join the fight. This exhibition will also explain how the Colonial Industrial Quarter enabled American independence and provided a framework for the early Industrial Revolution in North America.

Bethlehem Moravians and the American Revolution
This exhibition will document how Moravian beliefs and value systems led to a contrasting way of organization, government, and communal living. The innovative communal organization that separated women from men into “choirs” by gender, age, and marital status, led to the empowerment of women. Audiences will also have the opportunity to explore the multi-racial, multi-ethnic community in the Single Sisters’ House (1744), where Indigenous, African, and African American women lived and worked alongside their white sisters.

A French Nobleman in Moravian Bethlehem
For 27 days in the autumn of 1777, the young Marquis de Lafayette rested in Bethlehem, recuperating from a wound he received in the Battle of Brandywine. This exhibition will consider the experiences of leading visitors to Northeast Pennsylvania, focusing on the Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), in Bethlehem while he recuperated from his wounds and their local hosts. A highlight of the exhibition will be the chair (in the collection of HBMS) used by the ailing Marquis will tell the story of the Marquis and his recovery, while also relating the story of young Liesel Beckel, a pacifist Moravian woman who attended to him. The chair will also share the story of healthcare during this period, contrasting the Marquis’ comfortable, large, upholstered chair with a regular soldier’s surroundings, as he recuperated at the nearby Brethren’s House (built in 1748).