Dave,
The Moravians fortified Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the satellite communities in 1755/56 and again in 1763 when they felt threatened by the collapsing frontier after Braddock's defeat. The erected pallisades and watch towers and distributed guns around the settlements. In 1757 Northampton County officials reported to provincial authorities that five persons at Bethlehem kept an armed “Night Watch” and an additional “44 single men and 25 married . . . have Arms,” while at Christiansbrunn “18 of the Singlemen have arms . . . and frequently go out with some of the Indians, who are paid for that Purpose, in ranging Parties . . . to see that no Indians are lurking about." In 1763, as the Indian war flared up again, Bethlehem’s authorities inventoried the guns on hand: eighty-eight in all, nineteen provincial guns stored in the brothers’ house, forty-one guns with Andreas Weber (steward of the boarding school), eleven guns with the locksmith, nine guns possessed by married men, and eight guns possessed by single brothers. On August 10 authorities assigned people and guns to different locations—the tannery, the waterworks, the stable, the tavern—and established two companies that would have no fixed location but “rather will rush to help where they are most needed.”
It is crucial to realize, though, that these arms were not produced by Moravian gunsmiths: they were purchased from New York. The merchant Dirck Brinkenhoff reported in December 1755 that Moravians in Bethlehem had sent to New York “to purchase some small arms & to borrow as many more as they could.” With “about 60 small arms, 7 or 8 Blunderbusses & 2 Wall-Pieces,” Brinkenhoff added, “they are determined to make a vigorous Defence.”
