Bethlehem to Bethabara: A Fresh Look at the Travel Journal of Salome Meurer, October 1766

In 1766 a group of Moravian women traveled from the relative safety of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, through Virginia to the Moravian settlement of Bethabara in North Carolina. In an age when it was unusual and dangerous for women to travel, the company of Moravian women attracted a lot of attention, much of it unwanted. One of the young women, Salome Meurer, kept a journal on the trip that was sent back to the elders in Bethlehem. Though others have written about the trip and the journal, this article approaches the topic from the perspective of Moravian studies and demonstrates how this text illuminates several features of the eighteenth-century Moravian Church. It was the structure and piety of the church that made it possible for the young women to make this treacherous journey.