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  • God’s Fields: Landscape, Religion, and Race in Moravian Wachovia by Leland Ferguson
  • Helen Blouet
Leland Ferguson God’s Fields: Landscape, Religion, and Race in Moravian Wachovia Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011 276 pp. Illustrations. $74.95 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8130-3748-6

Historical archaeologist Leland Ferguson provides a compelling interpretation of changing race relations within the Moravian community of the Wachovia region in northwest North Carolina from the eighteenth century to the present day. In particular, he creates a rich portrayal of Moravian settlement history of Winston-Salem, with special focus on the development of Salem, now home to the living history museum Old Salem Museums and Gardens. Through his balanced and complementary use and discussion of historical, archaeological, and anthropological methods and theories, Ferguson provides more than a description of buried artifacts and landscapes from Salem’s past. He explores unspoken details of how white Moravians changed their treatment of African Americans during the late eighteenth century. The decision to separate blacks from the main congregation after initially welcoming them as equal “children of God” created tensions for the next several generations to the present day.

Ferguson reveals that eighteenth-century Moravian missionaries initially welcomed enslaved Africans and African Americans into their community because they “largely overlooked race as they imagined themselves building harmonious communities of pious Christians who lived together, worshipped together, and worked for the glory of God and the salvation of souls” (195). To build and maintain acceptance in Wachovia and other places in which Moravians settled, Moravians often tolerated certain local customs, including slavery. Even though slavery contradicted [End Page 101] Moravian ideals of spiritual equality, congregations did not speak out against it to avoid conflict with slaveholders. The Moravian toleration of other’s actions gradually turned into allowing racial slavery and segregation into their own communities. Slavery became accepted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Moravian Wachovia to build economic growth. The acceptance of slavery also allowed Moravians to maintain good social and economic relations with surrounding white non-Moravian populations.

The unspoken history of racism in Moravian Wachovia had lasting effects on its congregations, most notably the geographical and social segregation that has, until very recently, separated black and white Moravians in and around Salem. Using written records and archeological contexts, Ferguson tracks the physical, social, and economic development of Salem and its surroundings. The Moravian Brethren purchased 100,000 acres in northwest North Carolina in 1752, and they named the tract Wachovia. Brethren from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, moved to the area and immediately commenced town planning and building. Wachovia’s founders envisioned their settlements to support production sites for pottery, tinware, saddlery, and clothing. They also sold land within Wachovia to non-Moravians to raise money for future development of the region. The fact that non-Moravians, many of whom were slaveholders, settled within Moravian landholdings had profound effects on the emerging Moravian acceptance of slavery and segregation.

In 1766, Wachovia planners developed Salem near the center of the Wachovia tract. They designated Salem as the “seat of the [Moravian] Unity in America,” “the principal baptized town” (53). As such, Salem ran as a “cloistered community,” where people lived in piety according to the eighteenth-century Moravian choir social structure. Moravians in Salem gradually allowed enslaved people into their community, first as hired labor and later as Church property, or “property of the Saviour” (56). In Salem’s early years, black Moravian members routinely received burial in Salem’s God’s Acre, the burial ground for full members of the Moravian Church. However, non-Moravian whites soon grew uncomfortable with the burial of blacks and whites in the same cemetery. Tensions around racial segregation in Salem grew between the 1760s and October 16, 1816, when Salem’s Moravians decided to accommodate non-Moravian feelings.

Ferguson writes that on this day, Mr. Baldrick, an elite non-Moravian white gentleman, while visiting his daughter at the Moravian boarding school, fell “critically ill and may pass out of time” (59). Moravian elders [End Page 102] grew concerned that Mr. Baldrick’s impending burial in the Stranger’s God’s Acre would upset the local non-Moravian community because he would be placed...

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