An Unusual Trip to German Colonial America in Winston-Salem (updated)

The shoemaker explained what made his lasts last and the tavern public room was set up for a congenial checkers match. But when we saw the tavern owner’s wife sitting at a table practicing an art known as fraktur and when we spotted the ceramic tile stoves that heated 200-odd year old buildings, we realize that Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is a living history town unlike Colonial Williamsburg, Old Sturbridge Village or others you may have visited.
Sure, there was the same metallic scent that permeated the gunsmith’s forge, but the homes and trade shops are named for the Winklers, the Voglers, the Miksches and Blums, not the Charltons, the Wythes, the Geddys and the Randolphs. The colonial settlers here were of German, not British descent, and the furnishings and stories of family life have Teutonic roots.
Boxy tiled stoves usually seen in castles on the Rhine River, not familiar potbellied stoves, slowly ate up the wood in the Old Salem living spaces and trade shops. And fraktur? It is a German folk art, sort of a combination of calligraphy and painting; and the tavern owner’s wife had several samples with images of birds and flowers on a table. She explained that they were both given to young children for school achievements, the way gold stars are awarded today, and to commemorate births, weddings and deaths.
These colonial Germans were members of the Moravian church and they came to these shores for the same reason others did around that time, to escape religious persecution in Europe. Moravians’ roots date to the 15th century when a Catholic priest from Bohemia named John Huss challenged the church a good century before Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a Wittenberg church door. After first settling in Pennsylvania, in 1753 the Moravian church purchased land in the Carolina backcountry that they called Wachovia. They named the third town established in Wachovia, Salem, adapted from the Hebrew “shalom,” meaning peace. Salem soon became Wachovia’s center for commerce, trade and professions.
A step inside the building called the Single Brothers’ House offers insight to the Moravians and their non-conformist ways of life. The Single Brothers’ House was basically a village in a village with a meeting hall, dormitory rooms, a kitchen and resident craftsmen including a tailor, shoemaker, dyer and weaver inside its walls. The building was home to the Single Brothers’ Choir, but not a choir in the usual sense. The Moravians did love to sing, but they also used the term choir to mean a group within their church.
Members, and almost all were addressed by the titles of Brother or Sister, lived in segregated choirs based on their age, gender and marital status. There were choirs consisting of married people, single men, single sisters, widows, widowers, older girls, older boys, and so on. Choir leaders watched over the members’ spiritual growth, and enforced the rules such as a single brother was not permitted to marry until he could financially support a family, and that usually meant having a trade such as a shoemaker or gunsmith.
The shoemaker’s shop in the Single Brothers’ House is pleasantly cluttered with lasts and scraps of leather, paper and wood. The craftsman showed us how he added padded leather to lasts to conform to a man’s feet, and how he hammered bull hide to make the soles. In time Brother Samuel Shultz opened a second shoemaker’s shop to accommodate women so they would not have to awkwardly enter the Single Brothers’ House to buy their shoes.
That tradesmen worked out of the Single Brothers’ House was hardly unusual. In colonial Salem most tradesmen ran their businesses from inside their homes. The Vierling House, home of Dr. Samuel Vierling and built in 1802, is separated into residence and business sections. Like most Moravians, the Vierlings, loved music as evidenced by the curious, wooden quartet music stand in the parlor. Across the hall an interpreter stood in the apothecary—the doctor also served as a pharmacist – and discussed how opium was for a while used in laudanum to ease pain but ultimately failed due to severe blood thinning. Then he demonstrated such prehistoric medical devices as an ear trumpet, a tooth remover (ouch!) and an ancestor of today’s stethoscope, a crude, hollowed out wooden tube narrowed in the middle like an hourglass.
If anything was almost as important to the Moravians as music, it was bread. Bread was so important to daily life in the mid-18th century that a baker was one of the first settlers who came here. Christian Winkler ran the bakery one can step onside today. Its gaping domed oven is still used, and one can see often interpreters baking bread and pastries while taking in that familiar warm aroma. One can also purchase finished products here, but the Moravian sugar cake might be best enjoyed by those with an ample sweet tooth. Or consider another Moravian treat, wafer thin sugar cookies.
Across the road from the bakery are the Miksch Gardens and House, here since 1771 and the best place to get a sense of Old Salem family life. Matthaeus Miksch sold tobacco he grew in the family garden, a virtual lush salad bowl and one of several historically accurate Salem gardens. His wife Henrietta made candles and gingerbread she sold in a small shop. The Miksches were considered equal partners in their businesses. In fact, the Moravians encouraged education for both genders at a time when schools for girls in the South were sparse.
When not crafting goods and growing plants to sell, the Miksches did so for self-sufficiency, and adjusted the size and shape of just about anything natural to use as a utensil. On a wooden kitchen table a split gourd serves as a bowl, holding globs of fat soon to be made into soap. The Miksches also made yeast from hops they grew in their garden, and used it to make bread.
Inevitably, when the topic of history in the American South is broached, the conversation often turns to questions about slavery. Initially, the Moravians lived in an integrated society, but before long Southern institutions worked their way into the Moravians’ lives; Salem became segregated and landowners bought slaves. Inside the reconstructed African Moravian Log Church visitors can listen to actors reading passages based on slaves’ diaries.
Phyllis, a slave belonging to Dr. Friedrich Schumann, said through a headset, “For a change I feel pretty good today. My family belongs to Dr. Schumann on his plantation across Middle Fork Creek, behind the church. But after all our work is done, we mostly come and go as we please. I’m 21 and can read and write. I’m a good student. Everybody says so. I have a beautiful son to take care of now.”
In 1836, eight years after Phyllis wrote those words Dr. Schumann emancipated his 17 slaves and paid for their voyage to Liberia.
Before leaving Old Salem, take a look at the tin coffee pot on steroids at the northern end of the historic district. Nineteenth-century tinsmiths the Mickey brothers used it as an advertisement and shop sign. So after you leave Old Salem are driving along a contemporary highway, should you pass a furniture store with a humongous chair in front, or a tire shop with a tire the size of a Ferris wheel on its roof, keep in mind that over the top advertising is nothing new.
IF YOU GO
Note: Many historic houses in Old Salem are privately owned. So while chatting with the gunsmith, for example, you might look out his shop window and see a 21st century man in shorts and a tee-shirt mowing his lawn. After a while, such anachronisms are unnoticeable.
Note: Also part of the complex is The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, filled with some of the South’s finest antique furniture, silver, paintings and metalwork.
Admission: All-in-one inclusive passes: $23 adults, $11 ages 6-16. Cheaper ticket options are available. Hours: Year round, Tuesday- Saturday, 9-4:30, and Sunday, 12:30-4:30; closed Easter, Thanksgiving, December 24 and Christmas Day.
Village dining options:
The Tavern in Old Salem (locally farmed food including specialty, Moravian chicken pie, in an upscale casual environment) lunch $8-$10, dinner entrees $13-$25.
C. Winkler Bakery (baked goods include Moravian sugar cake, bread and cookies made in a 200-year-old, wood-fired oven). Most items under $10.
Old Salem Candy Shop & Marketplace (includes handmade fudge, flavored popcorn and historic candies). Most items under $10.
Further information: www.oldsalem.org (336) 721-7350.
Winston-Salem lodging:
Brookstown Inn, 200 Brookstown Ave., (70 rooms, built as a textile mill in 1837) (800) 845-4262; (336) 725-1120 www.brookstowninn.com
Augustus T. Zevely Inn, 803 Main Street, (12 rooms, built as a doctor’s house/post office in 1844; the only lodging facility in Old Salem Historic District; “(336) 748-9299 www.winstonsalembandb.com
Days Inn – North, 5218 Germanton Road, (336) 744-5755 www.daysinn.com