Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 2

Engraving by Nicholas Garrison dated 1784. Substantial communal buildings (married couples, widows, widowers, single brethren, single sisters, older boys, older girls, and children formed separate “choirs” or homogeneous living groups) overlook the Lehigh River. With a population between 500 and 600 in 1776, the settlement was swollen by several thousand troops late in 1777 when a delegation of Continental Congress members, including John Adams, paid a visit there. One Moravian wrote of this visit: “During their sojourn, the Delegates spoke in high terms of Bethlehem. Those from New England especially, were delighted with our institutions, and the neatness prevalent in the town, promising to exert their influence for the speedy removal of the Hospital and the British prisoners, provided we would consent to their making Bethlehem their headquarters during the war. It was by much persuasion, only, that we induced them to abandon that idea, setting before them the ruinous consequences to our Society, which would inevitably result from such a measure” (John W. Jordan, “Bethlehem During the Revolution,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 13:72–73 [April 1889]). See Adams' account of Bethlehem at p. 266–267.