In the fall of 1752, Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg and an accompanying party of five men traveled by from Bethlehem PA to the east coast of North Carolina and then inland to select and purchase a tract of nearly 100,000 acres from Lord Granville. The first settlers arrived in November, 1753, a group of eleven single men selected to provide the necessary skills for establishing a new community. Four others accompanied them on the journey but returned to Pennsylvania soon after. The tract was named Wachau or Wachovia, for the ancestral home of the Zinzendorf family near the Wach River in Europe.

[Courtesy of Faye Moran]