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Schoenbrunn Village

New Philadelphia · Tuscarawas County · Eastern Ohio

Ohio's first Christian settlement, rebuilt log by log

Ohio's first Christian settlementOhio History Connection

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Content last reviewed: September 2026 — this is when Field Notes Ohio's content was last checked, not a live status.
Primary official source: Official page
Location confidence: Verified entrance or visitor center
Schoenbrunn Village (Ohio History Connection coordinates)
Seasonal access: Memorial Day through Labor Day: Wednesday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday noon to 5 p.m. September and October: weekends only.
Check current conditions: Official conditions or closures
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A reconstructed Moravian and Delaware mission village, the first Christian town in Ohio.

Founded: Spring 1772 by the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger and Delaware (Lenape) families
Name: Schoenbrunn, German for beautiful spring
Ohio firsts: Settlement, church, schoolhouse and code of laws
Population: 300 to 400 people in about 60 dwellings
Abandoned: 1777, as the Revolutionary War spread
Today: 16 reconstructed log structures, the church, gardens and the original cemetery

The story

In the spring of 1772 the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger came up the Tuscarawas River with five Christian Delaware families and founded a village he called Schoenbrunn, 'beautiful spring.' The mission's purpose was to convert the Delaware to Christianity, and Ohio Magazine describes the residents as being assimilated to it. The village grew to about sixty dwellings and more than 300 people, who built a church, a schoolhouse where boys and girls were taught and Ohio's first code of laws. It sat in a rare pocket of neutrality in a region tense with the coming Revolution.

That neutrality did not last. Pressure from settlers and from British-aligned Native nations forced the village to be abandoned in 1777, and in 1781 the Moravian Indians were driven west. In 1782 a group that returned to gather their crops was killed at Gnadenhutten. Moravian records helped researchers find the site of Schoenbrunn in the twentieth century, archaeology confirmed it, and in the 1920s and 1930s log buildings were rebuilt on their original locations. Today the site has 16 reconstructed structures, the church, gardens and the original cemetery, with a visitor center and introductory video.

Related sites

The Town That Wrote Ohio's First Laws

On the Tuscarawas River, in the middle of the Revolution, Delaware families and German missionaries built a town with a church, a school and a written code of laws. It was the first of its kind in the Ohio country, and for five years it worked.

Then the war reached it. The people of Schoenbrunn left their cabins in 1777, and the village they had built was gone.

Behind the legend

The founding in 1772, the church, the schoolhouse, the law code and the abandonment in 1777 are from the Ohio History Connection. Counts differ across sources: the reconstruction has 16, 17, 18 or 20 buildings depending on who counts, and the population is given as 300 or 400. The tragedy that followed for the region's Moravian Christians is told at Gnadenhutten.

If you go

Walk the village lanes, step into the schoolhouse and church and read about the law code in the museum.