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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02220 8273
Gc 974.802 L49s Schmauk, Theodore E. Old Salem in Lebanon
?
EIGHTH STREET, LEBANON, IN THE FORTIES.
OLD SALEM IN LEBANON~
A HISTORY OF THE CONGREGATION AND TOWN
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne. ## 46801-2270
BY
THEODORE E. SCHMAUK,
Pastor of Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lebanon, Pa., and Vicinity; Member of the Lebanon County Historical Society; Member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Ex-President of the Pennsylvania-German Society.
PUBLISHED FOR THE CONGREGATION IN COMMEMORATION OF THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE ERECTION OF THE CHURCH BUILDING.
LEBANON, PA. 1898.
PRESS OF REPORT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD., LEBANON, PA.
PREFACE.
This book is written in memory of the Departed Fathers of Old Salem. Its occasion is the present celebration of the centennial of the church edifice. My father, who served the congregation longer than any of her pastors, exceeding the term of Dr. Ernst by a few months, looked forward with eager- ness to the coming celebration, which would have rounded out the 45th anniversary of his entrance into the ministry and the fifteenth year of our joint pastorate. He desired to begin work on this his- tory already in last January, but I could not take it up then. He died unable to communicate his knowledge. George H. Reinoehl, who also was looking forward to this celebration, and who was an authority on church and town history, died a week earlier. 1401420
These sudden deaths, together with my own ill- ness, and other causes, rendered it necessary to postpone the anniversary from June 3d, to next Sunday, June 19th. This book has had to be planned within several weeks and it was practically written, the sketches drawn, cuts made, the manu- script put into type, corrected, printed, stitched
vi
PREFACE
and bound in the last eleven days. Regrettable er- rors will therefore doubtless appear. Except the binding, the whole volume is a product of Lebanon county workmanship.
Special acknowledgment, in addition to use made of Dr. W. H. Egle's History of Lebanon County, Rev. P. C. Croll's Landmarks of the Leb- anon Valley, and Dr. Klopp's History of the Re- formed Church, is due to Mr. Henry S. Heilman, of Sunnyside, for information and for the unre- stricted use of his library; to the Misses Uhler and Mrs. John Funck for the full use of historical mate- rials in their possession; to Mr. Daniel Musser for the use of his collection of old newspapers; to Mr. J. F. Sachse, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Tobias Rein- oehl, of Lebanon; to Mr. J. P. Braselmann, of Annville, for rapid and intelligent sketchwork un- der difficult circumstances, and to many members of the congregation. It should also be said that the kindness of Messrs. Jos. and Edwin Sowers in the use of the resources of their establishment and in continuous personal service by night and day alone has made the issue of the book possible in this short space of time.
The volume appears just one century after John Schnee set up the first press in our community.
vii
PREFACE
For years the writer, who is the only pastor in Leb- anon who has been a member of the community from early childhood, has had it in mind to write such a history of the place as would actually unfold its progressive development to the reader, and as would investigate and settle some perplexing ques- tions for all time. But this is now out of the ques- tion, and as Old Salem is one of the several his- toric churches whose roots run down into the first beginnings of the town, he has included much town history in the volume. The book, even as a his- tory of the town, is written for the members of Sa- lem Church. Only 500 copies have been printed and only 450 copies will be sold.
THEODORE E. SCHMAUK.
SALEM PARSONAGE,
Lebanon, June 16th, 1898.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I I ALONG THE QUITOPAHILA. Note on the Early Lutherans in Pennsylvania.
CHAPTER II
·
.
7 WHEN WE BELONGED TO CHESTER. The First Settlers.
CHAPTER III
.
.
II
THE NEW TOWNSHIP OF LEBANON.
CHAPTER IV
.
.
.
·
15
JOHN CASPAR STOEVER.
.
19
CHAPTER V .
.
THE HILL CHURCH.
CHAPTER VI
.
·
. 25 THE CHURCH IN GRUBELAND.
CHAPTER VII
.
.
28
THE MORAVIANS AT HEBRON.
CHAPTER VIII
34
THE TOWN OF STEITZ.
CHAPTER IX · . · 49 . HOW SALEM CONGREGATION SPRANG UP.
CHAPTER X
.
52
THE FIRST CHURCH LOT.
CHAPTER XI
.
·
·
58 STOEVER IN MIDDLE AGE. The Town of Lebanon.
CHAPTER XII .
·
.
64
OLD SALEM RECEIVES HER DEED FROM STOEVER.
CONTENTS X
CHAPTER XIII 69 THE FIRST TRUSTEES. Their Acknowledgment of Trust.
CHAPTER XIV
·
77
OLD SALEM'S FIRST CHURCH.
CHAPTER XV
87
A NEW PASTOR.
CHAPTER XVI
92
.
FRIEDRICH AUGUSTUS CONRAD MUHLENBERG.
CHAPTER XVII .
.
96
LEBANON AND THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.
CHAPTER XVIII
.
.
. IIO
REV. WM. KURTZ AND LEBANON IN HIS DAY.
CHAPTER XIX
I18
THE PARSONAGE OF 1783.
CHAPTER XX
.
. 125
CHRISTOPHER UHLER.
CHAPTER XXI
.
.
129
HOW YOUNG GEORGE LOCHMANN GOT TO LEBANON.
CHAPTER XXII .
.
I34
THE BUILDING OF SALEM CHURCH.
CHAPTER XXIII
.
. 147
THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN SALEM AND IN LEBANON.
CHAPTER XXIV . 157 THE NEW CHURCH CONSTITUTION.
CHAPTER XXV .
. 161
OUR NEW ORGAN.
CHAPTER XXVI
. 163
THE WAR OF 1812.
CONTENTS
xi
CHAPTER XXVII
. 167
PASTOR LOCHMANN'S DEPARTURE.
CHAPTER XXVIII
. 170
.
THE COMING OF REV. WILLIAM ERNST.
CHAPTER XXIX . . . .
176
GOVERNOR JOHN ANDREW SCHULZE AND OTHER LEBANON HISTORY.
CHAPTER XXX .
.
180
REV. JONATHAN RUTHRAUFF.
CHAPTER XXXI
·
.
. 185
THE SECOND PASTORATE OF DR. ERNST. The Organization of the Sunday-school.
CHAPTER XXXII
. 188
THE ARRIVAL OF REV. G. F. KROTEL.
CHAPTER XXXIII .
.
.
·
193
REV. HOFFMAN AND FATHER HENRY S. MILLER.
CHAPTER XXXIV
.
.
195
THE FIRST PASTORATE OF REV. B. W. SCHMAUK.
CHAPTER XXXV
·
.
199
THE PASTORATE OF REV. G. H. TRABERT, D.D.
CHAPTER XXXVI
.
·
·
·
201
THE PASTORATE OF REVS. B. W. AND T. E.
SCHMAUK.
HISTORY OF OLD SALEM CHURCH.
CHAPTER I.
ALONG THE QUITOPAHILA.
N the cen- tral bot- tom of the beautiful Pennsyl- vania val- ley that lies like a sunken Ți Quitopakila in plain be- tween the Blue Kittatinny bounding the horizon at the coal . belt on the north, and the Red Sandstone hills fill- ing out the great South Mountain gap in the south, there flow two streams, the one eastward to the Schuylkill to meet the waters of the Delaware, and the other westward to the Susquehanna.
The banks of both streams are the seats of histor- ic Lutheranism .* But it is to the less famous and
*NOTE ON THE EARLY LUTHERANS IN THIS STATE .- Penn- sylvania was pre-eminently the Province of Lutherans. It was settled
2
ALONG THE QUITOPAHILA.
more familiar one that we look today. It is along the Quitopahila that our congregation was planted, both locally and historically, and it is there that she has flourished like a green bay tree.
Old Salem is the church of the Quitopahila. For a century and a third she has been rooted by the streams of water, and brought forth her fruit in her season. Her leaf also is not withered, and whatso- ever she doeth doth prosper.
We Lutherans in the limestone valley of Lebanon
first by them. One might term it, in a broad sense, the original terri- tory of the Lutheran Church in America, as New York is that of the Reformed Church. The Lutherans were here nearly a half century be- fore William Penn, and from them he secured the site on which he built Philadelphia, as afterwards he bought his great interior holdings from the Indians. The Lutheran liturgy was the first praise that went up to God from the shores of this State, and Luther's catechism (intended for the very tribes of Indians that originally owned this ground) was the first book (preceding Eliot's Indian Bible) translated into the In- dian language. In 1638 the Lutheran Swedes came. In 1682 the Quaker arrived. In 1683 German mystics, Lutherans and Dunkers settled in Germantown. In 1694 a German Lutheran preacher became a prom- inent, if not the chief instrument in establishing the first and prin- cipal Episcopal congregation in the State (Old Christ Church), and in off- setting that Quaker supremacy, which, if continuously maintained, might have changed the political and religious history of the State. In addi- tion to the Germans, many English persons joined his congregation. Some of them were Anglican Churchmen, who had come to Pennsylva- nia under the guise of Quakers, and who did not feel it to be safe to throw off that guise until they came under the influence of the bold and fearless Lutheran preacher, Koester. Others were Quakers whom he converted from irreligion. As none of these people could understand the German Lutheran ritual which he was using, but as all knew the English ritual from childhood, this Lutheran preacher, know- ing that the German Lutheran and English Episcopal rituals were very similar, and foreseeing that the future of the country would be English, gave up his people into Episcopal hands by introducing the Episcopal service. The Bishop of London, hearing of the matter, promptly took charge of it and sent a young clergyman, Thomas Clayton, over from England to report to Koester and to assist him in the care of the new congregation. After a time Koester returned to Europe, and the congre-
3
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
should look to the pit from which our fathers were digged and to the rock from whence they were hewn, and not feel shame. Looking back a century, we find them gathered within this massive monu- ment of native stone, built for their faith and their God, along the Quitopahila by their own master- builder, praising the Lord at its dedication. If we look back a century and a half we find that master- builder a babe in the forest along the Quitopahila being baptized into the Lutheran faith by the first
gation was left in Mr. Clayton's hands. From that day on the Episco- pal Church in Provincial Pennsylvania seems to have made continuous effort to gain the hearts, property and children of the German denom- inations in order to build up the Established Church.
Many of the most substantial families in the State deserted the Luth- eran faith as they became English. Thus the founder of St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital of New York City and of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in that city was the great grandson of Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg, and the grandson of F. A. C. Muhlenberg, one of the pastors of our Salem Lutheran Church. In the extensive effort made after the middle of the last century to establish the so-called free schools among the Germans of the State, in such places as Reading, Lancaster, York, Easton, etc., the idea of the originator, the Rev. Wm. Smith, was to educate the children of the Germans in the English language and the Episcopal religion. After elaborate at- tempts, in which both Muhlenberg, Schlatter, and Benjamin Franklin were interested, and which were bitterly opposed by Christopher Sauer, the old Germantown printer, the scheme collapsed. Down to the Revo- lution the Episcopal Church had a certain prestige of the British crown to work largely in its favor among that class of people who are at- tracted in religion by ideas of social distinction and position.
Referring to this matter, Dr. W. H. Egle, State Librarian of Pennsyl- vania, in his "History of Lebanon County," pp. 12, 13, 14, says: "A scheme to educate the Germans . .... was put on foot in 1755, and carried on for several years, but really with little good results. The German settlers appreciated education, for they brought their ministers and schoolmasters with them, and there were few who could not read or write. They could write their name in as great a proportion as their English neighbors, the Quakers. The difficulty was not alone to educate them in the English tongue, but for the English Church. That they did not take kindly to, and after a lapse of a century and a quar-
4
ALONG THE QUITOPAHILA.
Lutheran minister* to enter and settle in this valley .** If we looked back two cen- turies we would find not even the trail of a white man's foot along the margin of this as yet unknown Indian stream. It ran in soli- tude, with remarkable directness, from marshy pools at Hebron toward the west bending about at what is now termed Meadow Bank to make con- fluence in wider basin with the extinct Hazeldyke,
ter, in many localities there is the same objection to the scheme of 1755. Speaking of the objections of the Germans to the Public School System, he says: "Foremost among the opponents of the free school system were the Quakers, the opposition arising from the fact that, having had schools established for many years, supported by their own contributions, they were opposed to being taxed for the educational maintenance of others. Precisely similar were the objections in the German districts. * The German emigrants brought their school- masters with them, and schools were kept and supported by them. More frequently the church pastor served as teacher, and hence, when the proposition came to establish the system of public education, the people were not prepared for it, for the free schools severed education from positive religion. But .... to the credit and honor of the German ele- ment in Pennsylvania, Gov. George Wolf, the father of the free-school system, and Governor Joseph Ritner and William Audenried, the earnest advocates of the same, were of German descent." To this we may add that the fathers of the State school system, the Superintendents of Public Instruction, Wickersham, Higbee, Schaeffer and Houck are Pennsylvania-Germans.
In speaking of the old German parochial system of instruction in Penn- sylvania, one of our leading historians (not a clergyman) has recently asserted that for the development of good, sterling character the system has never been equalled or surpassed by any of the later methods of education.
Early in the 18th century, in 1702, and especially in 1710, the Germans,
*The first minister was the Reformed, Rev. Conrad Templeman, who arrived in 1727 and settled in Rexmont. Stoever did not arrive until 1728, and did not reach the Lebanon Valley until several years afterward.
** Anastasius Uhler (Lebanon). Son Christopher, b. Feb. 2, 1741; bap. March 25, 1741. Sponsors, Balthasar Ort and his wife Barbara. "Private Records of Rev. John Caspar Stoever." Eng. Trans. p. 15.
5
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
and further on after taking into itself first the Bran- dywine and then the Snitz Creek, and several other streams, passed through rising ground to meet fin- ally its bigger Indian relative, the Swatara.
The creek which is the actual though uninten- tional physical key to our town's early history, and which gave the original name to our whole region or township, was fed then as now by springs rising from the limestone beds, was fringed and shaded by dwarf and giant willows, widened into meadows
Lutherans, Reformed and the sects began to come and to penetrate the great Kittaniny valley which stretches across the whole State in a wide and gentle curve. On November 24th, 1703, Justus Falckner, a Lutheran theological student from Germany, was ordained to the holy ministry at Gloria Dei, the Swedish church upon the banks of the Delaware. The ceremony was performed by the three Swedish Luth- eran pastors. This was the first ordination of a Protestant clergyman in the Western world. (See J. F. Sachse's "Genesis of the German Luth- eran Church in the Land of Penn," "Lutheran Church Review," 1897, p. 290.) In this same year the beginning of the first German Luth- eran congregation in the State was made at Falckner's Swamp. In 1717 Rev. Gerhard Henkel appeared as pastor of the same Lutheran Church, which increased and flourished to such an extent that fifty acres of land were given for its use in 1719, and in 1721 a larger church and a school house were built. (See "Lutheran Church Review," 1897, p. 299). By 1718, Governor Keith became alarmed at the large influx of German emigrants. In 1719 the first Reformed church was built in Germantown, and in the next year the first Reformed minister arrived. Thus first by sprinklings and then by thousands the Germans settled. By the mid- dle of the century fully one-half of the population of the State was German. The Lutheran element outnumbered the Reformed two to one. "It may safely be asserted that the Lutheran population of Penn- sylvania alone in the year 1750 aggregated the enormous figure of 60,000." In 1728 the Penn proprietaries were frightened at the number of Germans coming in and would have been glad to keep them out. But these thrifty and economical settlers soon demonstrated themselves to be a most substantial and prosperity-producing element in the State. Penn himself wanted the State to be settled largely by Ger- mans. He made several personal trips to Germany. He had his agent Furley, on the continent, and such men as Pastorius in America to give glowing accounts of the new Province to the Germans and to
6
ALONG THE QUITOPAHILA.
marshy near the stream and rising into rocky wood- land pasture running back to the ridge of the re- gion which we now call Walnut street. This ridge, covered undoubtedly with forest, which came in strong and heavy within the memory ofliving inhab- itants, near Seventh and Walnut Streets, at the resi- dence of one of our members, Mr. William Spahn, ran westward toward Annville almost without inter- ruption, except for the broad break made by the bed of the Hazeldyke. Between this Hill street ridge of limestone and the still greater ledges of shales and gravel one-half mile north of the stream* was the silent heart of Lebanon Valley. The Indians did not neglect this fair region but came through perhaps once or twice a year, burning the high grass before them to start out the game, and leav- ing unsightly tracts of running undergrowth and scrub oak. We know that black and Spanish oak white, chestnut and red oak, birch, poplar, maple, and hickory and walnut trees were found in the val- ley, and that some of the timber was heavy. The Quitopahila was the only boundary, track or mark in the solitary wilderness.
stimulate the emigration hither. In the first volume of the new "Narrative and Critical History of Pennsylvania under German In- fluence," Mr. J. F. Sachse has gathered a large number of fac-simile title pages of brochures and pamphlets written to stimulate this emigration. Later on many false inducements and shameful promises were made to get the Germans over, and those coming in as "Re- demptioners" were actually sold as slaves until they had redeemed their passage money, though they themselves were more or less ignorant of the nature of the transaction until they were landed.
*Receding into gentle slopes toward the east, broken grandly by the channel of the Brandywine, and again by the gully at the Basin and rising into Tunnel Hill, on which to the west when the white man came the first seed of Lutheranism in the county sprouted.
CHAPTER II.
WHEN BELONGED TO CHESTER .- THE FIRST SETTLERS.
armsteun
THE FOUNDER OF PENNSYLVANIA
HEN Penn came up the Delaware and erected his Frame of Govern- ment, he included all ourregionin Chester county, the other two counties of the State being Bucks and Philadelphia. There was no white settlement north of the mouth of the Swatara. Penn himself penetrated the wilder- ness as far as this point in 1790, and proposed locating his capital there .* The place was well known to the French and Indians. Penn himself visited it again in 1701.
Between, say 1715 and 1730, the first settlers (except, perhaps, those at the water part of Lon- donderry) entered our present Lebanon county. In 1718 the first tax list shows that there were in all of Lancaster, Dauphin and Lebanon counties and the Tulpehocken, 129 taxable persons residing, of which 86 were Germans. Among these we already meet the families of Heer, Bowman, Miller, Moyer, Shank, Funk, Hoober, Boyer, Graff, Peter Yorte and Hans Weaver .**
*Comp. J. F. Sachse's paper on The Susquehanna.
** For list see Egle's Hist. of Dauphin Co., p. 23.
8
THE FIRST SETTLERS.
How few of these belonged to Lebanon, and that scarcely one belonged to Quitopahila, can be im- agined.
Indeed the centre of the Lebanon Valley, along the Quitopahila, seems to have been one of the last places reached by the settlers. They came in from the east by way of the Tulpehocken, from the south by way of Klinefeltersville and Schaefferstown, from the west and north by following the banks of the Swatara and little Swatara, and probably from the northeast by way of Oley and Maxatawny, in Berks county. Pressing nearer from all points of the compass, they finally reached what became the Quitopahila Township .*
The earliest deed or land-warrant of which we have been told is that of the ancestor of Drs. D. P. and M. B. Gerberich, in Hanover, said to have
*I have examined a great many documents on this point and gone over all of Taylor's manuscript surveys and land warrants covering Lancaster (and Lebanon) Township. Jacob Taylor was Surveyor General of Penn- sylvania from 1701 to 1733, when he was succeeded by Benjamin East- burn. His papers were kept in his family for a long while, and finally gathered and are now in possession of the Historical Society of Penn- sylvania, under the title "Taylor's Papers, Being a Collection of War- rants, Surveys, Letters, Etc., Relating to the Early Settlement of Penn- sylvania." The Pequa Creek district (768 acres) in Lancaster county was surveyed as early as 1710. Conestoga Creek was surveyed in 1718, and large parts of Lancaster Township in 1729-1730. Michael Bachman's land near Mannheim was surveyed on the 17th of May, 1730, but his land in Lebanon Township not until 1737, when it adjoined "An Irish Settle- ment." Thomas Sower received a tract of 1230 acres on a branch of Swahatawro Creek, with vacant land on all four sides, which was sur- veyed April 20, 1730. Already in 1726 there was a "Draught of a Tract of Land situate on the branches of Swahatawre and Skulkill about 8 miles Northwest from the Indian settlement called Tulpehocken, con- taining 17920 acres," where the little Swatara and "a small branch of the Shulkill" come into proximity. It was "laid out Aug. 10, 1726." It was just east of Thomas Sower's tract. On May 12, the proprietors
9
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
been given in 1723. The original Gerberich came to the county via Philadelphia in the very year in which Benjamin Franklin, then an eighteen-year- old boy, arrived in that city and made it his home.
But in the same year, 1723, the first company of persecuted Palatines of New York State (who were robbed of their improved lands by legal scoundrels at Albany), led by Indian guides, floated three hun- dred miles down the Susquehanna, driving their cattle and horses along the shore, as far as the mouth of the Swatara, and proceeded up the same to the little Swatara, and from there across Bethel township to the Tulpehocken, near Stouchsburg. Five years later a second company came to our county in the same way, under the leadership of the young Conrad Weiser. This was in 1729.
The borders of the county were showing signs of activity for several years before this time. On
gave ten warrants of a thousand acres each, seeming to extend from the mouth of the little Swatara eastward and north to "a barren moun- tain." Four creeks in this land empty into the little Swatara. It was surveyed Sept. 27, 1732. In 1734, George Miley's 300 acres on a branch of the Swatara adjoining George Reynold's land, and Baltzar Ort's 300 acres about four miles to the - of Quitapeheala Creek, and Mi- chael Baughman's on a branch of the Swatara, and a number of tracts between the Tulpehocken and the Swatara were surveyed. On Oct. 19, 1735, John and Richard Penn gave a warrant to secure the 10,000 acres of John Page, "as soon as we have settled such doubts as are between us and the Indians, and then to be executed preferable to all others to take in the survey made by David Powell for Wm. Auhey about the year 1723 of 75 per cent. and the residue of the 1000 acres to be sur- veyed as near and convenient to that parcell as may be."
The actual settlement of the smaller tracts was generally years in ad- vance of their survey.
Among those who arrived from Germany between 1730 and 1750 were, Nov. 9, 1738, Peter and Andreas Kreitzer, Andreas Beyerle; Sept. 1, 1736, John Philip Wageman; Aug. 30, 1743, Jacob Wagman, Jacob Weg-
IO
THE FIRST SETTLERS.
the south it is said that Kurtz began the iron in- dustry as early as 1726,* and in 1728 the Grubbs commenced their iron works. In the east, at Stouchsburg, in 1727, the Lutheran Palatines from the Schoharie, though without any minister, be- gan to build a small log church and school-house, known at Zion's, or Rieth's church. On Sundays they met here to sing and have the Gospel and a sermon read to them. They were without a pas- tor for six years, and became involved in great dif- ficulties on thataccount .** Still further eastin Man- atawny, i. e., near Pottstown, the Germans were having their first conflict with the Indians, in 1728. In the same year, in Philadelphia, the first two German books in the State were published, and in September the theological student, John Caspar Stoever, arrived in that city.
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