World United States North Carolina Winston-Salem

Adventures with Miss Daisy The Years B.D. (Before Daisy...Before Digital)

1989 June 17 - Old Salem Jan 14, 2001

Today I visited Old Salem. It is a very pretty village with employees dressed in period costumes and performing tasks as they were done in the mid-1700s.

Salem was founded in 1766 by members of the Moravian Church, an early Protestant group which traces its beginnings to the fifteenth-century martyr, John Hus. In the early 1700s many of them emigrated to Germany to escape persecution and founded the town Herrnhut. In 1753 a tract of land was bought in North Carolina for the purpose of establishing a community, which was named Bathabara. In 1766 the town of Salem was begun. It operated as a closed congregation and the residents were divided into “choirs” according to age, sex and marital status.

In 1913 the towns of Winston and Salem were merged. Old Salem is now a non-profit educational corporation.