Gnadenhutten ( jə-NAY-dən-hut-ən, meaning “Houses of Grace” in German) is a village located upon the Tuscarawas River in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, United States. The population was 1,240 at the 2020 census. It is Ohio’s oldest existing settlement, being founded by Moravian Christians in 1772 and was the site of the Gnadenhutten massacre during the American Revolutionary War. It is share of the New Philadelphia–Dover micropolitan area.

Gnadenhutten, originally Gnadenhütten, was founded in October 1772 as the second harmony of German Americans and Lenape Indians affiliated later than the Moravian Church. Tribes of Christian Lenni Lenape people had established at Schoenbrunn nearby, founded months earlier by missionary David Zeisberger. On July 4, 1773, a baby guy was born to the Roth family, becoming the first white child known to be born in the Ohio territory. This community, originally led by the Christian Mohican chieftain Joshua (who died August 1 of the next year), had grown to just about 200 persons by 1775.

As pacifists, they remained asexual during the American Revolution and subsequent Revolutionary War. However, the British and their Indian Wyandot and Delaware allies suspected that members of the Christian Gnadenhutten, Schoenbrunn, and Salem communities had provided aid to American patriots. As a result, the British motivated the Lenape tribespeople in the region to the Upper Sandusky Place of the Ohio territory. While the British detained Rev. Zeisberger at Fort Detroit, they allowed on the order of one hundred and fifty Lenape to compensation to their obsolete town to collect the harvest and supplies stored there. However, Pennsylvania militiamen, led by David Williamson, following the murder of American settlers by extra Indian tribes a few weeks earlier, came to the resettled town in March 1782, and tricked the Indians into giving in the works their weapons. Ninety-six beatific Lenape men, women, and kids spent the night in circulate and prayer knowing they would be slaughtered the considering morning. On March 8 the Pennsylvanians effective the Gnadenhutten massacre and burned the approximately 60-cabin town. Only two boys escaped; the incident led to distrust along with Native Americans and American settlers, and reprisals adjoining American patriots in Native American custody.

Although three 4,000 acre tracts were reserved for Indians as an “act of indemnity”, John Ettwein petitioned Congress in 1783 and the Place was after that opened to European American settlers. John Heckewelder from Pennsylvania built the first home in 1798, and Moravians remain in the town today. Few Native Americans chose to breathing there and they gave going on title in 1823 after the Moravians had made many improvements.