Moravians never throw anything
away. This is sometimes said with a tone
of mild frustration. Do we really need
to keep 67 frayed and tattered copies of an anthem that no one in the current
choir can remember singing and which, if a director did decide to put it back
into active repertoire, is now available in a much better edition? Far more often, however, this habit of saving
everything is noted with pride and delight when a dusty box or storage bin
yields an unexpected treasure.
In recent years the archives at
Lititz Moravian have been the source of a number of surprising finds. The most recent one, featured in several news stories in the past few months, has been the identification of an 18th
century hand-written book as Volume I of the diary and church records
maintained by Bishop Mattheaus Hehl while he served the Lititz
congregation. It, along with Volume II,
which was located in the Provincial Archives in Bethlehem and is now undergoing
restoration and preservation, will soon be digitized and translated. Those who are fascinated by early Lititz
history eagerly await the completion of this project, wondering what forgotten
details of life in Revolutionary War era Lititz might be revealed.
