Mr. P.’s mother was a Miksch. She was placed at the age of four years at the building at Nazareth, called Ephrata, to enable her mother to work.[104] She did not like the treatment that she received here. “Her mother worked in the house (her house), and in the field, I think,” said Mr. P. “The women now do not work much in the fields,” he added. “They’re afraid they might spoil their fingers. They’re brought up altogether too proud. I don’t know what will become of the next generation.
“My father moved to Bethlehem, and worked at his carpenter’s trade. When he was married he went to the ferry (at Bethlehem), and kept it for ten years. There were no bridges then. He saw hard times in cold weather and high water. After that he moved to the saw-mill and distillery, which belonged to the Moravian Society. I think he got all he made in the distillery, but worked for wages in the saw-mill.”
“The Moravians distilled liquor, then?” said I.
“Yes; they commonly drinked a little too, about nine o’clock.
“When I was between thirteen and fourteen, I went to my trade. I was put into the brothers’ house to sleep. My trade was a blacksmith’s, and a pretty hard one too. I served my trade seven years and seven months. When I was in the brother-house, I spent my evenings and Sundays there. I had liberty to go home to my parents, but not to be running, like they do nowadays, and do mischief.
“My wife was not a member of the church,—we were married fifty-five years ago. Brother Seidel, the Moravian preacher, married us. They were not so strict then as they had been, in turning all those out of meeting that married out.”
Mr. P. has a strong German accent. He said, “I never talked much English, only when I lived nine years and a half at Quakertown. I now speak German altogether in my family. The young people here now all try to speak English. They’re throwing the German away too much.”
At Nazareth, in 1874, I met Mr. M., eighty-six years old, who said that he was married in 1812. “I thought,” said he, “that my wife and I were the last couple married by lot; but I have heard that there was one since.”
Mr. M. said that the young men and women had some opportunity to see each other, for although the young men were not allowed to visit the young women at their own houses, yet they would sometimes meet in visiting; but they were not allowed to speak to each other more than “a couple of times.”
Mr. M. and I did not agree in sentiment with a Moravian woman who had told me that young men and young women were not allowed to keep company, and they did not think about it.