First House of Nazareth Discovered

Archaeologists in Nazareth dug only a couple of feet Wednesday when they hit rock — large limestone chunks back-filled with soil mixed with pottery shards, buttons and a horse bell.

The rocks make up the foundation of the First House in Nazareth, built in 1740, the first structure on a property that local historians describe as the oldest surviving Moravian settlement not only in the Lehigh Valley but all of North America.

While the Moravian settlement featuring the stately Whitefield House has been preserved as a museum, the First House had been razed 150 years ago. The museum's caretakers, the Moravian Historical Society, now are working to document that underground foundation so they can one day rebuild it as a classroom into the borough's past.