Gnadenhutten

Gnadenhutten is a village located on the Tuscarawas River in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, United States and is Ohio's oldest existing settlement. The population was 1,288 at the 2010 census.HistoryGnadenhutten was founded in October 1772 as the second settlement of German Americans and Lenape Native Americans affiliated with the Moravian Church. Tribes of Christianized Lenni Lenape people had settled at Schoenbrunn nearby, founded months earlier by missionary David Zeisberger. On July 4, 1773, a baby boy was born to the Roth family, becoming the first white child known to be born in the Ohio territory. This community, originally led by the Christianized Mohican chieftain Joshua (who died August 1 of the following year), had grown to about 200 persons by 1775.As pacifists, they remained neutral during the American Revolutionary War. However, occupying British forces and their Wyandot and Delaware allies feared that members of the Christian Gnadenhutten, Schoenbrunn, and Salem communities helped guide the revolutionaries. The Native Americans were evicted northward to "Captive Town" near the Sandusky River area. Stripped of valuables and without farmland that summer or adequate provisions the winter of 1780-81, many starved and died of disease.