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Pfleger's House

Images of Pfleger's House

Rufus Grider (1817-1900) drew this sketch of Christiansbrunn in 1862. The Pfleger's House is on the far right, and this drawing shows that the structure (like the Brethren's House) was built into the hill. The other structures in this drawing (from right to left) are the Boys' House and the Gemeinhaus (its original structure and its 1760 addition). (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.