Photo Credit: Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, PA
Many readers know the importance of Old Salem as the birthplace of the Southern Garden History Society and for decades its Winston-Salem headquarters. Over the years, moreover, many members have visited Old Salem while attending Restoring Southern Gardens and Landscapes conferences (RSGL).
To understand our birthplace, however, is first to appreciate its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Moravian roots and its wider National Historic Landmark cultural landscape setting. As Moravians tilled the soil across their 100,000 acre “Wachovia” grant, it was in the central town of Salem that skilled tradespeople made and sold goods needed by the broader community. Expanding around a central square, crucial buildings came to include the Home Moravian Church and Salem College on the east, along with the Single Brothers dwelling/workshop and the Salem Tavern on the west.
Since the founding of Old Salem in 1950, staff members have demonstrated a wide array of skills to help visitors learn about Moravian daily lives, while homes were restored to a Moravian period appearance. In time, moreover, Old Salem’s management would grasp the importance of telling the out-of-doors story, thus demonstrating how the town’s table and ornamental plant needs were met. Beginning in 1972, long-time Old Salem resident Flora Ann Bynum spearheaded initiatives towards accurate portrayals, as she chaired a garden and landscape committee formed by Old Salem’s director of restoration, John Bivins. Readers may recall that in 1979 she also helped to organize the first RSGL conference, and then played a like role with SGHS in 1982.*
The 1970s thus proved a seminal period for Old Salem’s historic landscape. In 1974, Peter Hatch (later to be a SGHS president) came in as horticulturist, to be joined in 1975 by current Magnolia co-editor Peggy Cornett as horticulture assistant and garden interpreter. Hatch and Cornett shared with Bynum a vision of an Old Salem’s grounds more in keeping with its Moravian-era appearance, and less “well-manicured” and “golf course” like, to paraphrase Hatch from a September 1974 newspaper interview. In time, Old Salem garden restorations would cover the period from early Moravian settlement until the mid-nineteenth century, with an emphasis on plots connected with certain Salem house lots.
Historically, the Moravian Single Brothers tended one the largest garden spaces in town, set immediately west of their large dwelling place and workshop. (The Single Sisters once oversaw similar arrangement east of the Salem square, an area since occupied by Salem College.) Fittingly, Old Salem has devoted particular attention to the Single Brothers garden, an interpretive mission that was boosted when further ground was opened in the early 2000s after the removal of the original visitor center and parking lot complex and the establishment of a new welcome area outside the historic core.
To achieve their overall purpose, staff turned to meticulously-kept Moravian records detailing gardening activities, these documents offering evidence of the geometrical configuration of plats along with many details of what residents were growing. Highly recommended is a visit to Old Salem’s website** for general information on the historic horticulture program and details of restored spaces including the Single Brothers garden, the Miksch garden, and several family gardens and an orchard on Salt Street.
Telling Salem’s landscape history also requires setting the town in the broader context of slavery in the Antebellum South. Again, the reader is directed to the Old Salem website, in this case for a discussion of African American life in the Moravian community, both prior to emancipation and during the post-Civil War years.*** Of particular interest is the story of Salem’s “African Church” (later St. Phillips Moravian Church) and the growth of “Happy Hill” community of those once enslaved at Salem. Reflecting changing race relations, the neighborhood became known as “Hidden Town” in the twentieth century, a story told in two Magnolia articles by Old Salem’s Martha Hartley.****
While the SGHS no longer makes its home in Winston-Salem, our connection continues strong in the person of board member Eric Jackson. Horticulture director at Old Salem, Jackson brings an extra strong connection to his job through his own descent from the area’s Moravian settlers.
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*https://southerngardenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Magnolia_Spring_2006.pdf
**https://www.oldsalem.org/horticulture/
***https://www.oldsalem.org/african-american-interpretation/
****For Martha Hartley on the Hidden Town Project, see: https://southerngardenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/Magnolia-NL-Fall-19-Final-1.pdf and https://southerngardenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/Magnolia-Proof-5.pdf 16-17
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