More and more collections are being digitized and placed online. Access to digital content is available through our online finding aid.
List of Digitized Collections
• Bethlehem Congregation: diary 1742-1849
• Bethlehem Single Brothers’ Choir
• Bethlehem Single Sisters’ Choir
• Church Registers
• David Nitschmann (Ep.) Papers
• Drawings & Prints
• Eastern West Indies (selected materials, mostly Antigua)
• First Moravian Church, New York (some diaries digitized)
• Gemeintagsberichte, Reports of European Prayer Days
• Greenland Papers
• Johann Friedrich Cammerhoff Papers
• John Ettwein Papers
• Martin Hauser Papers
• Memoirs Bethlehem (PA)
• Memoirs Emmaus (PA)
• Memoirs Hope (NJ)
• Memoirs Lancaster (PA)
• Memoirs Lititz (PA)
• Memoirs Nazareth (PA)
• Memoirs Schoeneck (PA)
• Memoirs York (PA)
• Jamaica Papers
• Labrador Mission Stations
• Georg Neisser Papers
• Oversized Photographs
• Painting Collection
• Photograph Albums
• Samuel Isles Papers
• South Africa Papers
• Suriname Papers
• Synods and Conferences in Europe
• Travel Journals
• West Indies Papers
• Zinzendorf Papers
list updated April 2024
Access to the Records of the Moravian Missions to the American Indians is provided by Gale Cengage Learning.
In 2018 the Moravian Archives began to systematically digitize its holdings. Thanks to a bequest of Nomi Budelier and a grant from the R.K. Laros Foundation a professional book and manuscript scanner was purchased. We are now able to produce professional scans of most material in our collections.
Digitization of the fragile records from the Eastern West Indies is now underway with the help of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Council on Library and Information Resources.
Translations of material not (yet) accessible through our online finding aid can be found here.
Moravian Church Periodicals
- Moravian Missions (London)
- Digitized by Memorial University of Newfoundland and the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem
- Canadian Moravian Historical Society Magazine
- Available through the Interprovincial Board of Communication of the Moravian Church in America
- Gemeinnachrichten (manuscript, 1747-1817) in progress
- Digitized by Sächsische Landesbibliothek und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB Dresden)
- An index to the digitized content can be downloaded here.
- Nachrichten aus der Brüdergemeine (Gnadau)
- Digitized by Memorial University of Newfoundland
- Periodical Accounts (London)
- Digitized by Memorial University of Newfoundland
- Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society (Nazareth)
- Digitized by the University of Minnesota, Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and Harvard University
- The United Brethren’s Missionary Intelligencer, and Religious Miscellany (Philadelphia)
- Digitized by Princeton Theological Seminary Library
- Labrador Moravian – Moraviamiut Labradorime (Makkovik, Labrador)
- Digitized by the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem
Uncommon Bonds: Labrador Inuit and Moravian Missionaries
Uncommon Bonds: Labrador Inuit and Moravian Missionaries is a two-year partnership between the Nunatsiavut Government, Moravian Archives (Bethlehem), Moravian Church in Newfoundland and Labrador, Memorial University Libraries and the National Heritage Digitization Strategy focussing on the digitization and digital return of nearly 60,000 pages of archival resources concerning Labrador Inuit. The complete set of resources will be publicly accessible through online repositories maintained by the Moravian Archives (link to digitized resources here) and Memorial University Libraries.
All materials featured are from the holdings of the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem. Learn more about the digitization project on the Uncommon Bonds website.
The Uncommon Bonds project was supported by a Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Archiving Antigua: A Digital Record of Pre- and Post-Emancipation Antigua, 1760-1948
By visiting the Archiving Antigua page on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), users may access digital copies of the following records genres from the Moravian Church in Antigua:
- Membership catalogs, including “speaking books,” which contained a concise record of pre-Communion conversations with each church member, with references to exclusions or absences from worship services.
- Baptismal registers and marriage records.
- Exclusions registers, containing records of allegations of so-called “infractions” for which members of various congregations in Antigua were excluded from partaking in worship services. These sources help reveal ways in which Euro-American missionaries stigmatized the actions, or alleged actions, of church members during the colonial period, and ways in which members responded to reprimand.
- School records, including student registers and report cards from Moravian educational institutions in Antigua.
- Landscape views, maps, photographs, and surveys.
- Diaries, kept by pastors and missionaries.
All materials featured are from the holdings of the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.
The Archiving Antigua project was supported by a Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Digitization was carried out by the Conservation for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between 2017 and 2019. Additional materials have since been digitized by the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, 2019-present, in a continued effort to improve access to materials from Antigua.
Other Digital Projects
- Bethlehem Digital History Project (BDHP)
- Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
- Includes items digitized through the CLIR-funded Archiving Antigua project and a separate NEH-funded project, among other items digitized in house by the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.
- Philadelphia Congregations Early Records Project
- Includes select items from First Moravian Church (Philadelphia, PA), among the records of many other historic churches and synagogues in Philadelphia.
- Revolutionary City: A Portal to the Nation’s Founding
- Includes several items from First Moravian Church (Philadelphia, PA) that were produced during the Revolutionary War period.
- International Mission Photography Archive (IMPA)
- Includes ~3,000 photographs taken by Moravian missionaries in Tanzania and South Africa; digitized from the collections of the Unity Archives, Herrnhut
- Labrador Inuit Through Moravian Eyes
- Moravian Lives
- Includes tens of thousands of digitized Moravian memoirs, as well as a transcription portal for users to assist with the transcription of the handwritten memoirs in English, Swedish, and German.
- Online Archival Collections of the Moravian Historical Society
- Historical Maps of the Lehigh Valley
- State and University Library of Saxony (SLUB) in Dresden, Germany
- The SLUB offers access to various Moravian resources including selected records relating to the Moravian missions among the American Indians.
Explore our current exhibit “The Archival Process: New Acquisitions at the Moravian Archives” online here.