You are here

Pfleger's House

Images of Pfleger's House

This photograph, from the 1860s or 1870s, shows south-facing side of the Pfleger's House in the foreground. Directly behind the Pfleger's House is the Boys' House and, behind that, the eastern end of the Gemeinhaus. Directly south of the Pfleger's House stood the Sawmill, which had been demolished before this photo was taken. (Photo used courtesy of the Moravian Archives.)

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.