Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was a German count born in 1700. In the 1720s he allowed a group of Protestant refugees from Moravia and Bohemia to settle on his estate in Saxony. The community, called Herrnhut, became the base of the renewed Moravian Church, and Zinzendorf became its leader.
Pennsylvania
The Moravians sent missionaries around the world, including to Pennsylvania. Zinzendorf visited in 1742 and traveled through the colony, preaching and meeting settlers and Native leaders. He helped organize Moravian congregations, including a group of farmers north of Lancaster.
The name
In 1756 the Moravian settlement there was named Lititz, after the castle of Lititz, or Lititz in German, in Bohemia. It was at that castle, the Moravians held, that early followers of their faith found refuge in the 1400s.
For about a century, Lititz was a closed Moravian community. Only church members could own property, and the church controlled businesses and daily life. That system ended in the mid-1800s.
His legacy
Zinzendorf died in 1760. Lititz’s Moravian Church, God’s Acre cemetery and Church Square still reflect the town his followers built.