Friday, September 11, 2009

Bookends Friday: Moravians in the Upper Ohio Valley in the 1700s

A recent review on H-Net alerts us to the 2005 book The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772-1781, translated by Julie Tomberlin Weber and edited by Hermann Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel. I haven't seen it, but it appears to be as much about the Delaware Indians as about the Moravian sect, and it includes both genealogical and historical material. From Elisabeth W. Sommer's review:

"In addition to the diaries themselves, Wellenreuther and Wessel include an eighty-seven-page introduction, copious notes, a list of all congregants of the mission settlements, the minutes of two mission conferences, a set of the statutes governing one Indian mission, and the minutes of an Indian council held at Detroit in 1781. They also include a series of maps, but unfortunately, as is often the case in publications today, most readers will need a magnifying glass to make good use of them.

"The lengthy introduction, written by Wellenreuther, contains a section on 'The Diary as Source,' a very thoughtful analysis of the challenges posed by the diaries." If you have people in this far eastern edge of what was not yet the Midwest, this sure sounds like a must-have.

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