Interview with a Researcher: Savannah Flanagan

This interview marks the eighth in a series where we meet with a user of the Moravian Archives to discuss their unique experience working with our collections in Bethlehem. In August 2025, we sat down with Savannah Flanagan, a recent recipient of a research grant from the Rev. Vernon H. Nelson Memorial Fund, to discuss her ongoing study of women’s medicine in North America during the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Tom McCullough (TM): It is August 18, 2025, and I am fortunate to be joined by Savannah Flanagan today. Welcome, Savannah! Could you tell us a little more about yourself and what you are currently studying?

Savannah Flanagan (SF): Thank you for having me. My name is Savannah Flanagan. I am a Ph.D. candidate at Baylor University, in the History Department. I have my master’s degree in history and a public history graduate certificate from Virginia Tech, where I wrote my master’s thesis on Moravian women in Salem, North Carolina, in the colonial period, talking about how they bent the rules adjusting to a more American identity rather than an immigrant identity. Now my current research focuses on how religious communities, broadly defined but especially communities who gave women options, to stay single; looking at different communities in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century and how they approached women’s medicine, the theory being that since they imagined roles for women beyond just reproduction that maybe this changed their approach to women’s medicine. Of course, the mainstream, kind of secular medicine primarily focused on reproduction as the primary role for women, the function of a woman’s body. The Moravians have kind of made their way back into this study. That’s what brought me to the Moravian Archives.

TM: Awesome. For your master’s work, did you carry out research at any of the Moravian Archives?

SF: Yeah, I did research at the Southern Moravian Archives in Old Salem (Winston-Salem, NC).

TM: Did you first learn of the Southern Province Archives through your research, or had you thought about going there previously?

SF: That was kind of my first introduction. I grew up hearing about the Moravians and going to Old Salem as an historic site to visit. My thesis advisor had done something with the Moravians and trade, so it just kind of inspired me to pursue this further. And I just noticed when I was working on my master’s thesis that mentions of health, medicine, and illness came up all the time, so it just kind of snowballed from there of finding more examples from other communities and developing these questions further.

TM: I was fortunate to meet you a few months ago when you made it here to the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem for research. What were you looking for here as part of your new research?

SF: I have been to the Southern Province Archives twice and found so much amazing stuff through them and through looking at what’s available online. I was at the point of looking for context and the need to see what is happening in Bethlehem at the same time that this stuff is happening in Salem. My visit to Bethlehem was kind of just to explore; I had a few names in mind, approaching the Archives, and a few ideas about where to find the type of information I was looking for, just from having been in the Southern Province Archives: looking for recipe books, inventories, any kind of writings that women would have done…just looking through an array of things for little mentions, because you’ll rarely find a whole book or diary on a topic.

TM: It must have been nice to have that opportunity to survey the collection and explore rather than to focus on the answer to a specific question.

SF: Yes, it is really nice to be able to approach it open ended and let the sources guide you. Once I found something that was interesting—also a great thing about the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem—is the ability to be able to say “Hey, I found this. Do you have anything else on this person?” You were able to pull some more information on Eliza Horsfield for me, which was incredibly helpful.

TM: That’s one of the things that can be beneficial to doing research in person versus using only materials that are digitally available online. You have an opportunity to pivot from something you find and ask if there’s something more that covers this date or person or topic.

SF: Absolutely. An archivist is always going to know way more than you as a historian will know, so it is nice to have someone who knows the collection, to ask questions.

TM: That’s very nice of you to say. I often feel like I don’t know the subject matter as well as a visitor coming to use the collections; however, I or another staff member might have good ideas on some resources that would be useful for the subject expert, you in your case, to consult while in the reading room. While you were here and exploring the collections, did you find anything special that really stands out?

SF: Yeah, there was one piece in particular that really gave me some important context that I’m working through now. In going through the sick-nursing committee (Krankenwärterkonferenz) minutes and going through the names of some of the people who were involved in this committee, there’s a name that pops up “Anna Maria,” who, once I could compare timelines, she actually comes down to Salem and marries Dr. Jacob Bonn as soon as she arrives down there. And she serves as midwife and is one of the leaders of the sick-visiting committee in Salem, and she becomes a very important figure in the healthcare of the Salem community. It was great to find that, because (1) she doesn’t really have any of her own writings, as least that I’ve been able to find, outside of her brief memoir, and it was nice to find something that gave a little bit of context to who she was before she arrived, because she pretty much arrived, and they got married instantly. It seemed like this was something that was agreed upon when they both were in Bethlehem and then traveled down. It was great to see something about her life before that, but it also shows that she was a healthcare provider in her own right before she even got married, which changes the narrative a bit that she just learned from Dr. Bonn the skills that she had, whereas she was bringing her own set of skills and experience down there, in a more major role in the healthcare system. That was just a really fascinating piece to find and some great context to really expand the role that she plays there; especially, she is the second primary midwife in Salem.

TM: That is super interesting to have that additional context about her life before coming to Salem. And to know that it was her perhaps bringing knowledge and experience to the work of her partner, not necessarily just the other way around.

SF: Yes, and he [Dr. Jacob Bonn] passes away very suddenly, and she has to kind of take over the apothecary shop at least until they are able to find another man to fill that position. So there’s a period of time where she is actually running the apothecary, and she is one of the primary healthcare providers because they suddenly have no doctor in the town for a while.

TM: That is really fascinating. I’ve come across a few memoirs in our collection where it describes the deceased person as having been a midwife, but it almost surprised me at the same time that I didn’t more frequently come across references to this very important community role; I’m really glad to hear that you have uncovered so much information about Anna Maria Bonn, first in her role as a midwife in Bethlehem but also later as a healthcare provider in Salem. Is there anything else you found while you were here in the Moravian Archives that was particularly interesting?

SF: Yes, I also greatly enjoyed going through Eliza Horsfield’s journals. They are incredibly unique for an early nineteenth century women’s journal because she seems to have written down anything that was interesting to her; she copied stories—I’m assuming—from newspapers and other books and readings that would have been available in the community; she will have a couple lines where she’s just noting the weather, and then she’ll have a copy of this essay on some scientific topic or considered scientific for the time. Also throughout she has medical recipes written down. So it’s really an eclectic collection, but it shows her interests over time.¹ I don’t know too much about this particular topic from the Moravian standpoint, but it’s also interesting to see what kind of literature she was exposed to, at a time where what women were reading was fairly policed by a lot of religious communities.

TM: I recall you showing me the style in which she wrote factual information in more of a storytelling format, a really interesting form.

SF: Yes, it was really unique. Also impressive her really having the time to do all this writing, but also how elevated the style is. It was just a really fascinating source. Throughout the journals there would be interesting little pieces tucked into the volume, like Valentine’s Day cards (see image below) that were hand-drawn and then filled in with prayers or bible verses. That kind of material culture is always just really cool to come across.

TM: I know you did your master’s thesis, in part going off research you did on the Moravians. With what you’ve found in your more recent research, is there anything that you’d like to do with it? Publish it? Present at a conference?

SF: Yeah. Right now the big thing is that a lot of this is going into my dissertation exploring women’s health and comparing and contrasting different communities. I’m also working on an article that I hope to eventually get out into the world that focuses on Moravian practices around motherhood. Hopefully this research will also go into that.

TM: That’s really exciting! Please consider the Journal of Moravian History as a potential place to publish the article you’re working on. One of the things I found really fascinating about your research visit is that you were able to approach the collection materials from a discipline that is less common among our visitors than say, history or genealogy or religious studies.

SF: Yes, it’s very interesting coming to an archives with such a specific research topic, as you really need to look at a bit of everything to find bits and pieces on it.

TM: In terms of what you’ve been able to find, you mentioned that the Moravians are part of your dissertation, though you’re also looking at other religious communities. How do the Moravians compare to some of these other groups you’re investigating, if you’re open to sharing some of your preliminary findings?

SF: Some of the other groups I’m looking at are Quakers, Shakers, and Oneida Perfectionists. One of the similarities across the board is the use of herbal medicine and natural approaches. There’s a good bit of resistance to “regular” doctors and—we would call them—heroic interventions; however, Moravians are practicing the herbal methods, the changes in diet, and these practical, natural approaches long before these other groups start to practice them. These other groups really don’t get into herbal medicine practices until you have Sylvester Graham and later Thomsonian Medicine (under Samuel Thomson).² The Moravians are doing it first, and I think that it has to do with a German medical influence, but that is one commonality across the board. Something the Moravians do that—as of now—I’m seeing as fairly unique, is this practical approach to talking about the functions of the body (e.g. talking to young girls and women about menstruation, what to expect, this is when you would maybe go see a doctor) in such a practical way that it’s almost shocking for like today; some people don’t even talk about it this bluntly. And they are rather unique in that way, and I’m unsure exactly why that is, but it is very notable, especially when talking about the care of women who are not going to have children; that they are recognizing that there are healthcare concerns outside of just reproduction. That’s all I have so far in the early days, but I’m excited to expand on it and see where it goes.

TM: We are really excited here at the Archives to see what comes out of your research. Hopefully something that people will be able to consult in our library collection in the future! Is there anything that you wish others knew about the Moravian Archives or Moravian history?

SF: Yeah. Primarily, how much stuff there is… this is not a small archives, speaking for the Southern Province and Northern Province archives. There is so much untapped potential for studies, especially studies around gender and race. There has been some great groundwork laid by historians in the field, but I feel like there’s so much more to be done, and it connects to other topics from the same time period in so many ways.

TM: Thank you for joining us today and on short notice. Best wishes on your semester at Baylor, and we hope to see you back at the Archives soon!

SF: Thank you so much!

Notes:
[1] Savannah noted after the interview that the journals of Eliza Horsfield likely could have been described as commonplace books. For more on this genre, see http://vocab.getty.edu/page/aat/300027093.
[2] For more information on Sylvester Graham and Samuel Thomson, see https://www.alive.com/health/pioneers-of-the-north-american-natural-health-movement/.

Enjoyed this conversation? Be sure to check out our previous interviews here: