USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > Bethlehem > A history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741-1892, with some account of its founders and their early activity in America > Part 67
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5 Schneppel=Schneppchen, diminutive of Schneppe, nozzle, lip or peak, and Haube, cap. Schneppel-Haube or Mütze, a close fitting cap with a peak in front. One variety of it seems to have been associated in former times - not among Moravians - with mourning attire. Some portraits in the archives at Bethlehem display the Schneppel-Haube of former times. Women in old Moravian settlements in Germany submit to a somewhat modernized form of it even yet.
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
served notice on the Conference of what they had concluded to do. Here was a problem that embarrassed the fathers more than all the conflicts with Bethlehem business men. This gentle audacity took them by surprise. It was a coup de main that left them little else to do than to unconditionally surrender. They meekly asked the sisters who had official seats in the Elders' Conferences of the three church villages to ascertain for them the general sentiment and opinion among the women and kindly report. Those at Bethlehem, speak- ing for all, reported at a sitting in March, and very likely with a twinkle in their eyes, that the sentiment against the Schneppel Haube was very general; that many had already adopted the change at all of the places on all occasions excepting in church, and that the move- ment would evidently prevail. Thereupon it was recorded that inas- much as many had introduced this change without consulting the several Elders' Conferences, the General Helpers' Conference did not see what it could do in the matter, but the Elders' Conferences were to be urged to seriously consider how the growing spirit of insubordination might best be coped with. Thus came the gradual discarding of the Schneppel Haube and the adoption of the Englische Haube as a transition to finally wearing what each one pleased.
Meetings of the voting members were held at Bethlehem, August 22 and 23, to settle the question of representation at the approaching General Synod. Under the arrangement then yet existing, there was no election of deputies of the churches jointly as a Province of the Unity by the Synod, but representatives were chosen by the several church-settlements as such. It was decided on the 22nd, that Bishop Reichel, who was going to Europe to remain, and Cunow, who had to attend the Synod anyhow, might be two of the Bethlehem depu- ties. Then a third should be elected representing the laity and the parties most sharply at issue with the Administrator. This election, which took place on the 23d, resulted in the choice of Owen Rice, Jr. February 15, 1818, the credentials furnished the deputies were publicly read in the church and delivered to them in the presence of the congregation. March 5, they started on their journey to Europe -Bishop Reichel and his wife, Cunow and his wife, and Owen Rice. The important General Synod was in session from the beginning of June to the end of August. On December 6, Cunow and his wife and Owen Rice got back to Bethlehem. Five days later came the Rev. Lewis David deSchweinitz, who had attended from North Caro- lina. With him came Bishop Christian Gottlieb Hueffel to succeed Bishop Reichel as President of the Executive Board, but not as
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Head Pastor at Bethlehem. Herein one of the desired changes already appeared. These two positions were no more to be filled by the same man unless some emergency made it unavoidable. The board over which he came to preside was now no longer to bear the lengthy, unwieldy, although ingeniously thought-out title: "Confer- ence of Helpers in General of the Congregations and Stations in Pennsylvania and the adjacent Parts," which in these pages has been abridged into General Helpers' Conference-it was constructed to accord with the rationale of the close regime which suppressed the idea of a Provincial body with an official head-but was to be called the Pennsylvania Province Helpers' Conference and was to have more character as a central body, differentiated somewhat more from the local boards of Bethlehem. For convenience it will henceforth be called the Provincial Board. It was to consist of five members : the Presiding Bishop appointed by the Unity's Elders' Conference ; the Administrator, also, of course, an appointee of that body, and the Head Pastors-Gemeinhelfer-of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Lititz. The Administrator was not to be necessarily a member of the two Bethlehem boards, although this was not forbidden if circumstances rendered it unavoidable. It was also decided that the Principal of the Seminary for Young Ladies should devote himself more entirely to his particular work, as a rule, and, when possible, another man should fill the position of associate minister and preacher.
New statutes for the exclusive church settlements in Pennsylvania, formulated by the Preparatory Synod in 1817, submitted to the Gen- eral Synod, amended in some particulars and then enacted by that body, together with a new code of detailed instructions for the gov- erning boards of these villages, were made operative in January, 1819. On the 28th of that month all of the revisions and re-con- structions authorized by the Synod were publicly communicated and the new statutes were adopted and signed at Bethlehem. Not all that was desired was gained, but the reforms were sufficient to arrest the growing disaffection, prevent revolutionary measures and make it possible to continue the exclusive church-village plan a number of years longer. The most objectionable uses of the lot, sufficiently treated of in the preceding pages were abolished and the Gemeinrath or Common Council now again consisted of all male communicants of the village, of voting age and in good standing. Various hampering restrictions long objected to, and methods of procedure that had caused irritation were set aside, and the way to the introduction of
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
some desirable external improvements was opened by the revised instructions adopted for the village boards to work under.
The Rev. John Frederick Frueauff was installed as Head Pastor for the time being, while the Rev. C. F. Seidel continued to fill the position of associate minister and regular preacher. The position up to this time occupied by the Rev. Christian Frederick Schaaf in the pastoral corps, as special spiritual overseer of the choir of married people, ceased to be a separate one. It was added to the functions of the Head Pastor. Schaaf left for Salem, N. C., in April, 1819, after more than twenty years of labor at Bethlehem, the longest continuous term of service among Moravian ministers of the place. Besides his particular function, as stated, he had been variously useful, in connection with the church music, the management of the book depository, the publication of a new hymn book and in keeping records for the Elders' Conference and for the General Board. He had also filled the position of Head Pastor at one interval and served as a member of the General Board. He repre- sented eminently the old regime and the paternal idea of government, but not in their harsh, forbidding features like some other men. It was in a kind and fatherly way that he thought he must do his full duty by supervising every man's household and having a hand in the management of all domestic matters. He was a friend of the children and there are people yet living who remember good "Pappy Schaaf," as he was affectionately called at Salem in the later years of his life, who always had with him a "mint cake," or other tempting thing to bestow upon the little boy or girl who could promptly give him the answer to a catechism question or correctly repeat for him a verse from the hymn book.
During the last years of his service at Bethlehem he was actively associated, as one of the leaders, with several features of church routine and with new movements which were among the brighter things of the time. He took much pains to help foster singing among the children and to render their participation in various services attractive. On September 7, 1814, the first reference occurs in the records, after the building of the new church, to the children entering at the close of morning prayer to greet the parents by singing benisons on the morning of their covenant festival, as had long been the practice in the old place of worship. At that time they quietly entered at the east end of the church, slipped up the stairs and suddenly appeared in the corner galleries on either side of the pulpit, the boys on the north and the girls on the south side. In those days
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the beautiful outdoor close of evening prayer on the festival days ot the children-before 1818, the little boys on June 24, and the little girls on August 17, and after that year combined on the last named date-took place at the west end of the church where the children assembled on the terrace, while the choir and orchestra were stationed at the open windows at the rear of the organ and the trombonists in the center. This arrangement continued for about seventy years after the church was built.
Another of the conspicuous occasions for which the children were particularly trained to sing in public was the general Congregation Festival or anniversary. This occasion, which began to be observed in 1762, to commemorate the organization of Bethlehem completed June 25, 1742, and was more distinctly and formally established as a feature of the annual routine in 1781, during the sojourn of Bishop John Frederick Reichel at Bethlehem, was called the Gemein- fest, or Congregation Festival, because it was a general festival for the entire congregation and not for any particular choir division of the membership, or an occasion of a memorial character for the communicant membership exclusively, like the services associated with August 13, and November 13. The observance of such a general Congregation Festival on the anniversary of the founding of the settlement, organization of the congregation, first communion occasion or consecration of the church has always been a prominent custom of Moravian congregations everywhere. The General Synod of 1818, among other measures intended to foster more historic churchly consciousness, made the attempt to have the significant date, May 12-"der Mährische Kirchentag," the Moravian Church-Day -uniformly adopted by all as the day of the Congregation Festival, in view of corner-stone laying and arrival of the "Moravian Churchmen" at Herrnhut in 1724, the first distinct organization under the statutes of 1727, and the Anglican recognition of 1749, all associated with this date. This movement, although May 12 deserves. far more notice by Moravian Churches as a memorial day than it receives, did not prove to be popular, for it deprived the occasion of its local anniversary character in each particular congregation. The change was made at Bethlehem, but in 1826 the festival was restored to the 25th of June, the experiment, like in other congre- gations, not proving satisfactory, as was reported to the next General Synod in 1825. Since then its character as a purely local Anniversary Festival, commemorating the organization, has been more distinctly recognized as its specific meaning.
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In those days of much musical culture in Bethlehem, the greatest of all children's services, that of Christmas Eve, was naturally the most conspicuous in this particular and was usually preceded by some weeks of practice at which Brother Schaaf was commonly present to lead the singing with his violin, as in former years Father Grube had so often done, and to encourage the children to do their best.
Schaaf was, moreover, one of those at Bethlehem who caught the spirit of the years which followed the war of 1812, in the domain of religious effort-for it was not only in trade and traffic that new energies were stirred, but also in evangelization, particularly in special efforts to inculcate scriptural knowledge among old and young. It was the period in which mainly the movements started that took shape in such final great organizations as the American Bible Society-that of Philadelphia, now the Pennsylvania Bible Society, having existed since 1808-the Amerian Sunday-School Union, the American Tract Society, and the American Home Mission Society. The Sunday-school movement of that time particularly interested men like Schaaf, and it was chiefly through his efforts and those of Mary Allen, one of the leading women of her time at Bethlehem, in culture and piety, and particularly in efforts for the benefit of the young, that the first Sunday-school was commenced at Bethlehem in 1816. Its purpose and methods were those which had been adopted a quarter of a century before by Robert Raikes at Gloucester, England, had become very popular in that country and at this time were becoming so in some parts of the United States. Both in New York and Philadelphia they were enlisting the interest of many in the Unions that were elaborating extensive plans of organ- ized effort. While the name Sunday-school adopted in English speaking Chistendom and the popular interest in the work were comparatively new, the idea and the methods were far from being so. It belongs to that kind of movements which cannot be said to have had their distinct beginning anywhere or at any exact time, or to have been originated by any particular person; that kind of undertakings which have often been thought of and started by differ- ent persons at different places. The Sunday-school work of modern times is commonly traced back to the efforts of Raikes, because the movement started by him, rode forward on a popular tide, in some churches carried the interest of clergy and people with it, attracted wide attention as meeting a need of the time, spread, became general and attained organized permanence. Wherever the English language
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and English associations and traditions prevailed, people naturally viewed this rapidly growing new branch of Christian activity as the outcome of what Raikes commenced; learned to associate his name with it as founder, and in course of time became accustomed to speak of him as the father of Sunday-schools ; generally assuming that such a thing never existed and such an idea never was thought of before his day; for comparatively few persons have the inclination or take the trouble to historically investigate. The Sunday-schools that existed in England and America before that time, although num- erous, were sporadic, did not constitute the starting-point of great popular and permanent activities, were not epoch-making, have to be hunted for in the by-ways of history and are therefore not known by the most of people to have existed.
The similar work in Germany and Holland is usually not taken into account simply because it did not bear the English name Sunday-school. In Pennsylvania there had been many Sunday- schools in colonial days, some in Lutheran and Reformed country churches, others started by Quakers, Mennonites and Tunkers, and by the Sabbatarian Brethren, at Ephrata. All were conducted with the idea of giving instruction in reading, moral training and discipline and particularly information out of the Bible and on the essentials of Christianity to children who were neglected or in various ways were prevented from enjoying either the privileges of secular schools or the benefits of provisions made by such churches as then existed for the special religious nurture of the children. The last named object was one to which, in those days, far more attention was paid among the German population than among the masses of English speaking people.
As for the Moravians, the general idea and, in the main, even the methods of Robert Raikes were as exactly like those of much of their early located and itinerant work among neglected children in Pennsylvania as such efforts, at different times and places and by different people under varying circumstances, could possibly be. In connection with the modern era of spreading interest in such efforts under the name Sunday-school, such work had been commenced in several of their city congregations prior to 1816. When the work at Bethlehem was started, it was not because there was thought to be a need of it in the Congregation. The ample, thorough and systematic provisions for the nurture and training of the children that existed in the Moravian villages of those days were among their foremost char- acteristics. This indeed accounts for the fact that the Sunday-school
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in its modern character did not rise to importance in the Moravian Church at Bethlehem, as a department of its internal work until many years later when it very gradually attained its place in conse- quence of the decay of older arrangements and methods. The Sunday-school of 1816, was opened for the benefit of children about the neighborhood and of apprentices and girls in service who had not been brought up at Bethlehem and whose opportunities for acquiring both secular and religious education had been meagre. While many children in the vicinity were in a sadly neglected condition, it would be an injustice to some respectable Christian families to suppose that all who were among the scholars in those years came from careless and irreligious homes. Boys and girls gathered from considerable distances, some of them encouraged to attend by Christian parents who gladly embraced the opportunity, in view of the very crude character of the few country day-schools and the insufficient provision for religious instruction in their neigh- borhoods. The exact date at which "Sister Polly Allen," as Mary Allen was familiarly called, commenced her little Sunday-school for girls in the spring of 1816, cannot be ascertained. She quietly gath- ered a few children together who lived near Bethlehem in the present Hanover Township, taught some the alphabet, others to spell and yet others to read; taught them hymns, told them Bible stories, had them sing together-Brother Schaaf helping her in leading the singing-and then gave them a light repast before they returned home. Their first place of meeting was the former dining-room under the Old Chapel. Probably the last member of that Sunday- school, the aged widow Sarah Yerkes, of South Bethlehem, died in 1896. At an evening service on July 28, 1816, Shaaf made this matter the subject of a discourse in which he referred to the general activity of the time, both in England and America, in the spread of God's Word among adults and children, and particularly to the Sunday-school movement, and drew attention to the duty Bethlehem owed its surroundings in this respect. He then stated that a few men and women of the Congregation felt moved to open a Sunday- school for children of the neighborhood, to be held from one to three o'clock, drew attention to the boys and girls in service at Bethlehem, who should also have the benefit of it and asked for the prayerful interest of the people and for contributions to a fund for the purchase of books.6
6 A subscription list in his hand-writing is yet in existence containing the names of contri- butors from July 29, 1816, to September 22, 1818. They are mostly women. The first on
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The most active among those interested in the boys' department was William Henry Van Vleck, then filling his first appointment at Bethlehem, already referred to, as superintendent of the young men and older boys of the Congregation. The formal opening of the school under official auspices took place in the church on August 4, 1816, when thirteen boys and twenty-five girls from the neighborhood gathered as the nucleus, and a number of Bethlehem people were present. Bishop Reichel opened the exercises with an address and prayer. Then the scholars repaired to the places where the schools were to be held; the boys in the up-stairs room of the church, the present archive-room, and the girls in the Old Chapel; Van Vleck in charge of the former and Mary Allen of the latter. Thus began Sunday-school work in Bethlehem. One of the boys who attended that school was the long and widely-known Lutheran pastor, Joshua Jaeger, whose father ministered at Schoenersville. He made this interesting statement himself when he preached, the first time, in the Moravian Church in Bethlehem on December 9, 1849, during the pastorate of Bishop William Henry Van Vleck, who at the beginning was superintendent of the school. The Rev. C. F. Seidel took a warm interest in the work when he removed to Bethlehem in 1817, and energetically fostered every effort to revive Christian activity among the people. Several tangible evidences of this appear in the records of the years from 1817 to 1825, which deserve to be referred to in this connection.
One, looking to the cultivation of more substantial interest in the missions of the Church, was the organization of the Women's Mis- sionary Society on March 8, 1818. More than fifty women met on that occasion and, after an opening service at which Seidel officiated, they organized by adopting a few simple regulations, fixing the membership fee at one cent a week, electing six collectors who were to report quarter-yearly and who with Seidel as President then con- stituted the Board of Managers. The Society was called at first the
the list is the daughter of Bishop Ettwein. Her name is written Benigna Ettwein, Sr., to distinguish her from his grand-daughter Benigna about whose odd sayings and doings so many reminiscences, stories with variations and fictions, have been current among Bethlehem traditions. The largest contributions were from Mary Allen. On the back of the paper two disbursements are noted; one, June 10, 1817, to Conrad Zentler, printer, of Philadelphia, for printing "An Address to Parents " (German) on sending their children to Sunday-school ; another September 20, 1818, for German tracts. Copies of the "Ansprache an Eltern in Bezug auf Sonntags-Schulen" are preserved in the archives. The issue of such an appeal was decided upon by the Elders' Conference in May, 1816.
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
"Society of Sisters and Friends in Bethlehem in Aid of the Missions of the United Brethren." Its name was later the Female Auxiliary Missionary Society in Aid, &c., then for many years simply the "Female Missionary Society," and eventually the "Women's Mission- ary Society." Its organization was subsequently elaborated some- what. It has had an unbroken existence, is yet pursuing its good work and is probably the oldest such organization at present in existence among women in the United States. It is of interest to record that one of its earliest undertakings was to put into print, for the use of the missions, the Delaware Indian translation of Lieber- kuehns's Harmony of the Gospels, completed in 1806 by the venerable missionary, David Zeisberger who, after sixty-three years' labor among the Indians, had entered into rest in the eighty-eighth year of his age at Goshen, Ohio, on November 17, 1808. It was published in New York in 1821. The famous missionary and Indian scholar, John Heckewelder, then living in retirement at Bethlehem, prepared the copy for the press at the request of the Women's Society. Elias Boudinot, the first President of the American Bible Society, was greatly interested in the enterprise and was of much assistance in securing the necessary financial aid.
The interest of the Women's Missionary Society in this particular undertaking was perhaps stimulated by the attention that was aroused at Bethlehem in those years by another organization for the general cause of Bible distribution, of which Seidel for a few years was the foremost Moravian promoter. A Bible Society had come into existence in the county in 1819, auxiliary to the Philadelphia Society of 1808, now the Pennsylvania Bible Society. At a meeting held in the Court House at Easton, with Samuel Sitgreaves as Presi- dent and Joseph Burke as Secretary, on November 8, 1819, the "Bible Society of Northampton County, auxiliary to the Society in Phila- delphia," was formed by the adoption of twelve articles of consti- tution. Its first President was William Kennedy and its first Secretary was Samuel Sitgreaves. The annual dues were fixed at one dollar, all the clergy of the county were constituted ex officio directors, and provision was made for the formation of auxiliaries in the county. Such a branch organization for which a printed constitution of nine articles was prepared by the Board of Managers and distributed in April, 1820, was to be called a "Bible Association Auxiliary to the Bible Society of Northampton County." An auxiliary was formed by women, at Easton, on March 3, 1820, with S. C. P. Bishop as President and Susan Sitgreaves as Secretary. The only other auxiliaries known
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to have been formed in the county were at Bethlehem and Nazareth. Here, however, there was not a regular organization with officers but merely an association of stated contributors entitled to a certain num- ber of Bibles for free distribution in return for their contributions. This was in response to an appeal from Secretary Sitgreaves, April 12, 1820. The second annual report of the Board of Managers, April 3, 1821, contains the statement that, whereas at the time of the first annual report, April 4, 1820, there were only fifty-four annual sub- scribers, the number had been increased by twenty-five, and adds the following: "It is but justice to say that this important addition to the funds has been chiefly received from the Moravian settlements of Bethlehem and Nazareth, whose clergy gave immediate attention to the call made by your Board upon the Christian benevolence of the County in their circular of the last spring; and by their zeal and exertions have not only aided our funds, but promoted also the objects of our institution in opening a door for the dispensation of many volumes of the Book of God. But whilst the Board would make honorable mention of the endeavors of the Moravian Brethren in aid of the common cause of Christians, and cheerfully acknowledge the zeal of a few other individuals in the same cause ; it is with regret that they have to report that similar attention has not been given to their circulars in other districts of the county; that they have not heard of other subscriptions made or associations formed, or collections taken in behalf of the most important and disinterested of all charities." This report of 1821, states that $II0 had been sent to the Parent Society at Philadelphia.7
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