This journey was remarkable as an illustration of sacrifices willingly made and extreme hardships uncomplainingly endured for the sake of the Moravian brotherhood.

In the back country of North Carolina near the Mulberry Fields they found the whole woods full of Cherokee Indians engaged in hunting.

A beautiful site for the projected settlement met their delighted gaze at this place; but they soon learned to their regret that it had already been "taken up" by Daniel Boone's future father-in-law, Morgan Bryan.
On October 8, 1753, a party of twelve single men headed by the Rev.Bernhard Adam Grube, set out from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to trek down to the new-found haven in the Carolina hinterland--"a corner which the Lord has reserved for the Brethren"-- in Anson County.

Following for the most part the great highway extending from Philadelphia to the Yadkin, over which passed the great throng sweeping into the back country of North Carolina--through the Valley of Virginia and past Robert Luhny's mill on the James River--they encountered many hardships along the way.

Because of their "long wagon," they had much difficulty in crossing one steep mountain; and of this experience Brother Grube, with a touch of modest pride, observes: "People had told us that this hill was most dangerous, and that we would scarcely be able to cross it, for Morgan Bryan, the first to travel this way, had to take the wheels off his wagon and carry it piecemeal to the top, and had been three months on the journey from the Shanidore [Shenandoah] to the Etkin [Yadkin]." These men were the highest type of the pioneers of the Old Southwest, inspired with the instinct of homemakers in a land where, if idle rumor were to be credited, "the people lived like wild men never hearing of God or His Word." In one hand they bore the implement of agriculture, in the other the book of the gospel of Jesus Christ.