Bethlehem, PA news and local guide

On April 2, 1741, William Allen, the Philadelphia merchant who later founded Allentown, deeded 500 acres along Monocacy Creek and the Lehigh River to the Moravian Church. On Christmas Eve that year David Nitschmann and Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf, leading a small group of Moravians, founded the mission community of Bethlehem where the Monocacy meets the Lehigh. Among them was John Martin Mack, later a Moravian bishop in the Virgin Islands. They set out to evangelize Native Americans and German-speaking settlers without churches, and according to tradition Zinzendorf, on that Christmas Eve, proposed naming the place for the birthplace of Jesus. Bethlehem began as a typical Moravian settlement congregation in which the church owned all property. In the late 1700s it built grist and saw mills, and the Brethren's House and Sisters' House survive from the early town. The neighboring borough of South Bethlehem grew up around industry across the river. After a failed attempt to merge in 1913 was struck down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1915, South Bethlehem was annexed in 1917 and Northampton Heights in 1918. The consolidated City of Bethlehem elected Archibald Johnston, an executive of Bethlehem Steel, as its first mayor, and later annexations set the city's present borders. Sources Wikipedia: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania