“It Is Thought That Such an Alteration Would be Good for Her”: Moravian Women and the West Indies in the 18th Century

On May 8, 1766, Benjamin Latrobe penned a letter to the head bishop of the Moravian Church, recommending thirty women from England for marriage to men in the Moravian community in Western Germany. Of these, he suggested that seven specifically be married to men bound for the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean. Sister Sarah Birkhead, he wrote, “is not of a very strong constitution, but not unlikely for a hot climate.”[1] Birkhead was just one of many Moravian women who cycled through the mission settlements on Antigua, St. Thomas, and St. Croix. These women did not possess personal wealth or high status and came from England, Germany, and the early American colonies. In this paper, I investigate the writings of the Moravian women who traveled throughout the Caribbean in the eighteenth century. Some, like Birkhead, went in hopes of improving their health. Others, like Sister Anna Mackin, served as a nurse and midwife to Black slave populations in order to convert them.[2] The Moravian settlements in the Dutch Caribbean were the first and longest lasting of their mission efforts, leaving behind over forty years of official reports, memoirs, and personal correspondence by the women who served there. They record a dichotomous relationship in a place that represented both health for white visitors and death for Black slaves. I explore these conflicting ideals in an eighteenth-century Caribbean that was both mission field and plantation domain, a destination for willing service and forced migration.

[1] “Letter from Benny Latrobe to the Directory,” R. 13. B. No 8.a, 1, Unitäts-Archiv der Evangelischen Brüder-Unität Herrnhut (UA)

[2] “LEBENSLAUFE vh. Sr. Anna Mackin in St. Croix (1720-1772),” Gemeinnachrichten 1773, Beilage X, 2. Beilagen zu dem Gemeinnachrichten des Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, Moravian Church Archives, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (MAB).