52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 26
June 24 – 30, 2034
Family Gathering

As family gatherings go my family had quite number of them as I remember as a child. Most families gathered together during holidays or important familial events before the advent of the internet and social media. Sadly, those days are mostly gone now. Still, we often attend family weddings, christenings, or possibly family funerals, although some of those events have become fewer since the days of COVID -19.
Today, instead of one family gathering that features an ancestor from not too many generations ago, I thought I’d focus on a different interpretation of “family gatherings.”
My paternal line features an ancestor who gathered his family together in order to establish and continue a whole new community. His name was Johannes Joseph Leinbach. I’ll be using his anglicized name as the German language is not one in which I am fluent or even vaguely understand.
Joahnnes was born in Hochstadt, Wetterau, Germany on 18 February 1712 the son of Johannes and Anna Elizabeth Kleiss Leinbach.
My Leinbach ancestors on my paternal side of my family tree came to Colonial America during the 1700s to escape religious persecution in their home country as they were part of the Reformed Church. This movement became common in Germany after the Protestant Reformation, a 16th century theological movement in Western Christianity movement in Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church. Following the start of the Renaissance, the Reformation and Martin Luther’s “’95 Theses” of 1517 marked the beginning of Protestantism. Among other groups that arose in the years following the Reformation was a sect of Protestant worshipers known as Moravians.

The Moravian church was founded in the 18th century but traces its origins to the Unitas Fratrum (Unity of Brethren) of the 15th century Hussite movement in Bohemia and Moravia. German Pietism in the late 17th century increased the unrest among the underground Protestants and many Brethren fled to Protestant Germany. Among those profoundly influenced included many nobles and a young count, Nickolaus Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf. Adhering to the tradition of Bohemian Brethren he led a group in 1722 of whom he settled on his estate in Saxony where he founded Herrnhut as a Christian community. A devout Lutheran, Zinzendorf tried to keep the refugees within the state church. His aversion to apparent sectarianism was overcome when he realized he faced the remnant of a church older than his. He reluctantly helped them revive their own tradition. As a result, Herrnhut became the mother community of the Moravian church.
Johannes, a young man of about eleven years was among the immigrants who arrived in 1723 at the port of Philadelphia, along with his family. The family group included his father Johannes Leinbach, his mother, Anna Elizabeth, brothers Johann Frederick and Johann Heinrich, and sisters, Johanna Maria, and Maria Barbara. They settled in the southeastern area of Pennsylvania near current day Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Lititz, Pennsylvania. Along with Count Zinzendorf they helped to establish Moravian communities in colonial America. For about a century, only church members lived in those settlements. However, the church remained small because of still existing European control and the fact that their communities were closed.

In 1735 Johannes Joseph married Anna Catharina Schwab Riehm. He, his wife, and some of his family resided in the southeastern Moravian community eventually traveling on the Great Wagon Road with to the North Carolina colony to the Wachovia Tract in 1765. He was about 53 years old and the father of eleven children. Johannes Joseph Leinbach became the patriarch of the North Carolina Leinbach family. And as such created a large “family gathering!”

The community became known as “Bethania,” a farming community and encompassed 2500 acres. The town was designed to withstand the challenges and often dangers of a hostile frontier landscape resembling designs used in Medieval Europe. The individual home lots were cloistered in the center of the acreage, then segregated into orchard lots, bottom land lots, and upland lots. The town included houses, tradesman shops, church, a school, barns, and gardens. More than 250 years later Bethania is the only example of a European style “open field” agricultural village remaining in North Carolina. Many of the Moravian-influenced buildings of Bethania have been preserved to the present. Bethania’s 500-acre historic district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Johannes Joseph Leinbach died just ten months at just 54 years old after relocating to Bethania on 14 March 1766 at what later became known as Tobaccoville, Forsyth, North Carolina. He did leave a number of his descendants in North Carolina, some of his children returned to Pennsylvania. A granite plaque now stands in an area within half a mile of where he died.
Hi cousin, great story!
I'm going to add an image of an issue I keep having when I'm reading one of your posts. The gray rectangle always seems to show up somewhere and covers some of the text as you can see. I'm not sure if it's a setting on my computer or if you may have another suggestion.
I also sent you an ancestry message to make a connection to Johannes in my tree.
Thanks, take care!
Cousin Allen