Journey from Bethlehem to Salem

Nearly thirty years ago Pennsylvania History published a 1766 travel journal that a young Moravian woman, Salome Meurer (1750–1821), kept as she journeyed from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania to Bethabara in North Carolina. The “most fascinating aspect of this migration,” the editor noted, “is that it was undertaken by eighteen women and older girls and only two men” (Aaron S. Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” Pennsylvania History 61, no. 2 [1994]: 206–34). In fall 2021, five women retraced the steps of these Moravians from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. These five women, called “thru-walkers” to distinguish them from many others (“day-walkers”) who joined them for a short portion of the journey, walked for twenty-nine days to complete the 511-mile trip (44, 92). The 2021 walk commemorated the 250th anniversary of Salem College (1772–2022), whose first teacher, Elizabeth Oesterlein, was one of the women who journeyed in 1766. This volume commemorates that 2021 walk.The book is organized into short sections corresponding to each day of the walk. The 2021 walkers followed the trail of the original company, though the absence in Meurer’s 1766 journal of details about the Moravians’ route through Virginia meant that the planners had to improvise in devising the 2021 path. Each morning the walkers gathered to read aloud the day’s entry from Meurer’s journal before setting out on their day’s walk, which could involve as many as twenty miles. Each section of the book includes Salome Meurer’s short journal entry as well as reflections by the walkers on passing through the same landscape. Each section also includes a map of the day’s travel and many photographs from the day’s travels.It is difficult to assess the intended audience of this book. The hundreds of photos of the walkers, posing as they eat lunch or near a sign when they entered a state or arrived at a town, suggest that the book was meant for the walkers themselves, their families, and their community. A different audience—interested in the history of the 1766 journey—would have benefited from fewer photographs of the walkers and more photographs, instead, of the landscapes through which the company passed or images of the historic towns or sites they visited. But there is a lot in this book to interest students of history. The editor, Virginia Hart, has included short essays on a variety of places and topics, including eighteenth-century currency, alcohol, river crossings, and the Moravian practice of the Lot. At times the volume even adds to the research that Fogleman presented in 1994. One short essay gathers information about the many men (not just “two,” as Fogleman stated) who accompanied the eighteen women at different times during the long journey in 1766. The “Brother Holder” who accompanied the walk, unidentified in Fogleman’s article, is identified here (202).All sorts of readers will enjoy comparing the 1766 journey with the 2021 walk, a comparison that this book invites by printing Meurer’s daily journal entry along with the daily reflections of the 2021 walkers. The book begins, in a forward written by the president of Salem Academy and College, Dr. Summer McGee, by noting that “two hundred and fifty years ago, a courageous journey led to the establishment of Salem Academy and College. . . . Now in our modern era, again a group of bold, courageous women have embarked upon a journey of remembrance, institutional pride, and camaraderie” (4). Often the volume returns to these moments of continuity: “We crossed the Rappahannock River, just as Salome and her colleagues did 150 years ago” (80); “We learned that the original girls/women crossed the James [River] TODAY in 1766, just as we did” (102). At other times, however, the walkers are impressed by the differences between their walk and the 1766 one—and river crossings, in particular, seem to have prompted this recognition. While the modern walkers, of course, could rely on bridges, the travelers in 1766 hazarded their lives. The Moravian women and men had to turn back while crossing the Susquehanna on a cold and windy October day, for instance, because a strong wind was blowing waves onto a raft already groaning from its load of twenty-two people and nine horses. “After a couple of hours,” Meurer wrote, “we risked crossing again” (46). A few days before the 2021 walkers ended their journey, one of them reflected on the difference between their experience and the 1766 journey: “We could NEVER do their journey justice. Imagine no hotels, rain every other day, bedbugs and fleas nightly, inadequate navigation, the danger of river crossings, and the fear of the unknown” (168).But this marvelous commemorative volume finally highlights the resonances between 1766 and 2021. Both companies succeeded because of the unexpected kindnesses of strangers and both experienced moments of profound peace and elevated spirits. The journey’s hardships, different as they were, not only created community among the travelers but also swelled the travelers’ appreciation for those who helped them. As one 2021 thru-walker wrote at the journey’s conclusion, she felt “completely loved, supported, nurtured” (205)—a feeling for which she credits those who organized the trip and the many friends and strangers who pitched in during it. Salome Meurer also felt this sense of being cared for, though she thanked her Savior for it: “We could not thank our LORD enough,” Meurer wrote after arriving in Bethabara on October 31, 1766, for his “grace and protection” and for “His watchful eye over us day and night” (183). This volume testifies, of course, to the accomplishments of both companies of women. But in the end the 2021 walkers came to realize what the 1766 Moravians knew before they set out: their own efforts were possible only because others sustained and supported them

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