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Pfleger's House

Images of Pfleger's House

This photograph depicts the cluster of buildings that formed the eastern side of the quadrangle that defined the footprint of eighteenth-century Christiansbrunn. The photographer would have been standing along the Monocacy Creek. The Pfleger's House is the structure on the far left. The Boys' House is immediately to its right. The next structure to the right is the Gemeinhaus with its 1760 annex, which formed the northeast corner of the quadrangle. (Photo used courtesy of the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.)

This building is the only structure from eighteenth-century Christiansbrunn that exists in the twenty-first century. It does not appear in the 1755/56 Garrison drawings and does not seem to appear in any list of buildings at Christiansbrunn through 1766. It was built between the Boys' House and the Sawmill.

Its name--the Pfleger's House--is taken from a 1862 drawing of Christiansbrunn by Rufus Grider (1817-1900). A "pfleger" was a helper who served as the spiritual leader of a choir, in this case the Single Brethren's choir. The structure's use in the eighteenth century and the date of its construction remain unknown. A copy of an 1860 plan of the settlement states that it had been a "Stone Distillery" and by the 1860s was "owned by Newmeyer" and used as a dwelling.

The image below locates the Pfleger's House on a 1795 map of the Christiansbrunn community.