{"id":16760,"date":"2026-06-21T15:01:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=16760"},"modified":"2026-06-21T15:01:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:01:15","slug":"america-250-soldiers-names-forgotten-but-sacrifices-remembered-at-bethlehem-tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=16760","title":{"rendered":"America 250: Soldiers\u2019 names forgotten, but sacrifices remembered at Bethlehem Tomb of the Unknown Soldier"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On the hillside along First Avenue in Bethlehem lies a mass of graves belonging to men whose blood was among the first to water the tree of liberty.<\/p>\n

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The graves lay under houses and sidewalks. Their names are forgotten to history, but their collective sacrifice is not.<\/p>\n

The Bethlehem Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, an easily missed landmark on First Avenue, serves as both their grave and memorial.<\/p>\n

This Independence Day marks 250 years since the nation declared its independence, but winter 2026 will mark 250 years since the first of these men was laid to rest. Four men are interred at the site, but more than 500 are buried on the slope of the hill. There are no announced plans linked to the semiquincentennial for the tomb, but every year the men are honored on Memorial Day and what can be told of their story is remembered.<\/p>\n

In 1776, Bethlehem \u2014 at the time a mere village \u2014 was dominated by the Moravians, who were pacifists and initially refused to participate on either side of the Revolutionary War. But in December 1776, Gen. George Washington ordered the settlement to host the Continental Army\u2019s field hospital. At the time, the Continental Army and the British were embroiled in a series of battles in New York and New Jersey. In need of a hospital for the sick and wounded troops at a location far enough away from the battlefield, Washington chose Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

The village\u2019s Brethren\u2019s House, a lodging house for single men, was the site of the hospital. The number of men further swelled after the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777 and hundreds of men were held in camps around the building. About 90 years before the establishment of germ theory, the injured soldiers were kept in close and unsanitary conditions, which led to many getting sick and hundreds dying of disease.<\/p>\n

The Brethren\u2019s House, designed to hold at most 200, often housed anywhere from 500 to 700. It had become a \u201creeking hole of indescribable filth. The intolerable stench polluted the air to some distance around it,\u201d according to a history written by Bishop Joseph Levering, a former Moravian archivist. Wounded soldiers were carried from the battlefield on wagons and were operated on without antiseptics or anesthesia.<\/p>\n

The first of the dead were buried in coffins along the hill west of Monocacy Creek, well outside the settlement proper. Several officers were allowed to be buried in God\u2019s Acre cemetery.<\/p>\n

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According to an article published by The Morning Call in 1995, soldiers buried their dead at night to avoid detection by British loyalists and to avoid damaging morale. At times, 10 to 12 soldiers were buried in one evening. Some Moravians lost their own lives to sickness while caring for the soldiers.<\/p>\n

Over 500 would be buried there by the time the field hospital was closed in 1778. At the time, few of the soldiers\u2019 names were written down by the Moravians, who by and large did not speak English. Only 16 names were recorded and all of them were lost when the British burned the Capitol building and the White House in 1814.<\/p>\n

Afterward, life in Bethlehem went mostly back to the way it was. The hillside where the soldiers were buried was left largely untouched for years, though farmers would occasionally dig up bones while plowing. Daughters of the American Revolution installed a small stone marker at the top of the hill to commemorate the dead. As Bethlehem expanded from a village to a city and houses were built, more bodies were dug up. The crypt and monument were dedicated in 1931 when the bones of a soldier were reinterred after they were dug up in the 1920s.<\/p>\n

The most recent documented case of skeletal remains being uncovered was in 1995, when contractors were building a patio and retaining wall in a property owner\u2019s yard. Archeologists and historians were called out, and three bodies, one a teenage boy and the other two of adult men, were exhumed. For the boy to be so young would not be exceptional; many who served in the first Continental Army were 15 or younger, Mark Schaffer, an archeologist with the Bureau of Historic Preservation who helped with unearthing and examining the bodies, said at the time.<\/p>\n

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There was nothing else preserved in the graves except for old nails, pieces of partially decomposed wood from coffins and a single button crudely made of bone. Schaffer said contemporary Moravian documents stated that the poorly equipped Continental Army soldiers had little when they died.<\/p>\n

There was no evidence of physical injury, leading archeologists to believe they died of disease. Schaffer said that the boy and two men likely were among the 110 who died during the winter of 1776-77. About 400 were buried during the winter of 1777-78 and by that point, they no longer bothered with coffins.<\/p>\n

After archeologists finished confirming the age of the bones and gathering what information they could, the men were reburied with honors near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.<\/p>\n

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Four men are interred at the site, but more than 500 are buried on the slope of the hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica 250: Soldiers\u2019 names forgotten, but sacrifices remembered at Bethlehem Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - Silicon Valley Moving Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=16760\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"America 250: Soldiers\u2019 names forgotten, but sacrifices remembered at Bethlehem Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - 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