USA > Pennsylvania > Ancient and historic landmarks in the Lebanon Valley > Part 10
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But there are other things besides complaints in these journals. They speak familiarly of the trying events of the war as it progressed through its eight years of peril and hardship. It gives us the names of local leaders, such as Cols. Peter Grubb and J. P. De Haas, and others, and the accounts of their depart- ure with their companies to the front of battle. It records the significant event of the surrender of Corn-
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wallis, when that circumstance was first remarked abroad, and while, but as an unconfirmed rumor, it stirred all the land with intense excitement. To this important bit of news, this "Brother" later adds the significant postscript : "War wahr!"-"'Twas true !"
As the present pastor of this church, Rev. E. S. Hagen, of Lebanon, has recently furnished a translation of these important annals to the Secretary of our State Historical Society, Mr. Jordan, of Harrisburg, we trust the public will some day be able to read all these inter- esting data of daily events in those trying times in their own vernacular. It would be a noble service to our community if the same were given for publication to some of our local public prints.
The writer was particularly interested in recently looking over this pile of ancient diaries, church-records, correspondence, and other ecclesiastical documents. One of these, an early, if not the original draft of the church building, gives the ground plan of this old edifice, which shows it to have been divided into a double house of a kitchen and two living rooms each, while the second story was the "Saal" or Prayer House, or "Oratorium," as it was styled in an inscrip- tion we understand to have been upon its wall.
Another record that was quite full of interest to us is tlie Communion Record, most carefully kept. The first volume contains those for the first 26 years of the con- gregation's independent life. It has the following in- troduction or preface, which I give in a free translation :
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THE HEBRON MORAVIAN CHURCH.
"Inasmuch as a small congregation has been organ- ized by means of the efforts of the United Brethren, (in- dependent since July, 1749), in the vicinity of Lebanon on the Quitopehille, in Lancaster county, and this con- gregation has been affiliated with that of Warwick until the close of 1749, and participated in the communions of that sister congregation, we resolved from the year 1750 to begin liolding separate communions with this Leba- non congregation. Here it has been held since 1748, in the Lutheran church, (where in January a Brethren's Synod was held) until our own church should be com- pleted, in which it has since been celebrated and con- tinued according to the following Conspectu (Record)."
The first celebration, therefore, held liere took place January Ist, 1750. The communicants numbered 23, and it was administered by Rev. Christian Rauchı. The second communion was held March Ist, 1750, and was administered by Bishop Frederick Cammerhoff. The 9th communion was celebrated September 22, 1751, and in connection with Synod, according to this record.
This record mentions names, clerical and lay, in which we have become interested. The first pastors, beginning with 1750, were Christian Rauch, Christ. Herr, George Neitzer, Philip Mener, Richard Utley, Fred. Boehler and "Brother Bader."
There is an interesting narrative still preserved at Bethlehem, giving in the form of a diary a detailed account of the experiences of Bishop Cammerhoff in a visit he made to Shamokin in the winter of 1748. He
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was accompanied by Brother Joseph Powell, and the first day (January 6th) arrived at Macungie. Thus by regular stages, and at the peril of their lives, in the crossing of unbridged streams and trackless snow-covered pathways, they made their journey on horseback to and from their destination on the Susque- hanna. The diary takes account of their stoppages at Maxatawny, Ontelaunee, Heidelberg, Tulpehocken, Hebron, etc. In Tulpehocken they called on George Loesch and his family, who were among the Schoharie settlers and later immigrants to Pennsylvania, who united with the Moravians in 1747. The same journey brought the Bishop and his companion also to the houses of Peter Kucher and Heinrich Xander, two leading members of the Hebron church. The com- inunion record shows all of these to have been faithful and consistent communicant members of the flock. The Bishop in this journey took some provisions and provender from these farmers to the Shamokin mission.
Concerning the personalities of these men, we learn from the minute records of this church and other sources that George Loesch was born near Worms in 1699. Immigrated with the Palatinates to America, and settled in Schoharie, N. Y., in 1710; removed thence to Tulpehocken in 1723, where he took up his resi- dence just a mile northwest of Womelsdorf, already de- scribed, and where the land is still in the hands of his descendants and some of the old buildings are still standing. He became identified with the Moravian
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THE HEBRON MORAVIAN CHURCH.
Church in 1747, and remained in connection with the same until his death, which occurred in Nazareth, Pa., I790.
Peter Kucher, or John Peter Kucher as he sometimes wrote his full name, was a native of Germany, and im- migrated to America in 1732. He sailed in the ship "Loyal Judith," arriving in September of said year. He took up his residence just east of Lebanon. He was a Lutheran Christian and was connected with the Tul- pehocken church, as appears from the list of 166 names of members, who in 1743 resolved to build a second church and declared to build up their congregation on true Lutheran principles. This declaration of princi- ples and list of names is still preserved (given in Dr. Schantz's historical address recently published in pain- phlet form) and contains among its signers the names of Peter Kucher and George Steitz, and others from these parts. The Moravian documents, however, show, in a carefully-kept register of its members, that he was converted to this faith in 1749, and communed with this Gemeinlein for the first time February 2, 1749. He was born according to this account in Waldau, Bran- denburg, in the province of Saxony. His parents were George Peter and Barbara Kucher. He was in religion a Lutheran, in profession a blacksmith and farmer, re- ceived into the "brethren fellowship" during brothers John and Joseph's "land visitation," i. e., missionary tour in Heidelberg, Feb. 2, 1749, was married Oct. 6, 1735, and had a family of ten children, whose names are given in order in this church record. In 1750 he
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donated sufficient land for building and burial purposes, so that in many respects he was a father to this Hebron church. The house which he built in 1761 (possibly the second one) we found still standing. It is a com- modious two-and-a-half-story stone structure (a mansion in those days) with wide middle hall-way and capacious,
THE PETER KUCHER HOMESTEAD.
easy central staircase of hard wood. Although it has not been occupied for some time and stands like a non- animated corporal, great in its weird and forsaken soli- tude, alongside the Quittapahilla and its old race- course just two squares north of "Sweet Home," it yet is a relic that is quite attractive to the student of his-
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THE HEBRON MORAVIAN CHURCH.
tory, in view of the knowledge of its once renowned owner, and the hospitable entertainment it furnished pastors and bishops and others. When it had life and soul this now hollow and ghost-harboring building must have been a home as fine as Mt. Vernon's man- sion. What a hubbub there must have been in it, when the illustrious owner of that Southern mansion, as the General-in-chief of the Colonial army in revolt, sent a quota of 270 Hessian prisoners from Princeton and Trenton to the sacred house of prayer, where the occu- pants of this house statedly worshipped! The writer has recently visited this old relic when he accidentally discovered that it was the Kucher house. Seeing the sandstones in the second story front, the inscription upon which was illegible from a position on the ground, he clambered up an old rickety portico, from the roof of which he clearly read the following:
O
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17
61
M . PETER
KVCHER.
BARBARA
KVCHERIN
After my descent from this portico roof, I tried the front-door latch and found it open, but nothing beyond an echo and a weird, hollow strangeness greeted us from within-not even the ghost of the energetic old pioneer came to bid us welcome. We felt that if there was a re- lative of his still living, the same was committing an unpardonable sin for letting such a valuable prop- erty go to ruins, and for allowing the walls of this his- toric homestead, resonant with the voices and foot-falls of these pious ancestors, to fall into decay, when they should be hung with the pictures and facts that tell its story of piety and hospitality.
The record of Heinrich Xander is as follows : "Born Nov. 16, 1702. From Rimlange, out of the Zurich province in Switzerland. Religion : Reformed. His
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THE HEBRON MORAVIAN CHURCH.
trade, a smith and mill-wright (Müller-Bauer). Re- ceived into the church (Moravian) Whit-Monday, 1749, the 15 May, at a congregational day in Bethlehem. Took his first communion Oct. 39, 1749, in Warwick." This record was made in 1755, three years after the change from the old style to the new style of reckoning dates. Hence the fractional form in dates gives both reckonings-the numerator being the old style, the de- nominator the new style. Mr. Xander lived "five miles west of Kucher," according to Bishop Cammer- hoff's diary. Here visiting bishops and brethren were generally entertained. His grave we found on the Moravian cemetery (Hutberg) near the old church in Hebron, south of the pike. The following inscription is found on his tombstone, lying flat upon the grave after the Moravian fashion:
No. 80.
HEINRICH XANDER.
GEBOHREN DEN 16ten NOVEMBER 1703 IN DER SCHWEITZ. VER SCHIED DEN 17 OCTO- BER 1772. ALT 69 JAHR II MONATH.
The graves of other leading members of this flock,
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inany of whose birtli dates back to the end of the seven- teenth or beginning of the last century, are found here, but their names and other data are fast being obliterated from their memorial stones by the abrasions of time and weather. Yet we could discern the names of Johann Adam Kettering, born in Alsace, Germany, in 1698; George Hederich, born in Zweibrücken, 1706; Catharine Orth, born Kucher (daughter of Peter), born January 12, 1738; and the Buehlers, and Hains, and Bombergers, and Koehlers, and Graeffs, and Imhofs, and Schotts, and Uhlers, and others, who all sleep here their last sleep. But we must close this chapter. We trust it has stirred up a general desire soon to see much of the well-preserved local history kept here in print.
CHAPTER XXI.
A WALK ABOUT STEITZTOWN.
EVERY one of my readers knows, or should know, that Lebanon was founded by Mr. George Steitz. He was a German, who before 1738 (according to a deed of that date mentioning his name and location here) set- tled here along the Quittapahilla on a tract of over 365 acres, covering the old part of the city, for which he received a patent from the Proprietaries of the province, dated May 22, 1753. Though there probably had been somne town lots sold before Steitz laid out a part of his farm into building lots about the year 1750, this "lay- ing out of the town " and sale of lots was the begin- ning of Lebanon. The enterprising German gave his town the beautiful Scripture name it now bears, possi- bly borrowed from or suggested by his Moravian bretlı- ren, whose Scriptural nomenclature stamped itself upon several of the townships of this county. It is more likely, however, that the township had been changed from Quittapahilla to Lebanon before the Moravians lo- cated here, and that the town's name was suggested by that of the township. Be that as it may, it is certain that, in spite of this naming, for a long time the village was known by the name of its founder, and that for
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half a century after its beginning, the surrounding community did its shopping and frolicking and horse- racing and fighting in "Steitze-town."
We want to-day to take a walk around this old burg and see its outlying homes and other landmarks that guarded the old place before ever this century was born, or the village of Steitz had grown into the since enter- prising maiden city of Lebanon. After this historic circumnavigation, we trust the walls, like those of Jericho, will fall, or the gates open, to let iny army of explorers enter and behold the treasures of historic wealth buried within.
Having in my last letter led my readers to peep into the Peter Kucher house, who must have been Steitz's nearest eastern neighbor, we will go northward from here and surround the place by constant turns to our left. The old town-plots show John Light (Licht) to have owned the land north of Kucher, or east and north of the present city limits. We presume that the origi- nal deed of this property finds the name of Casper Wister, "the brass-button maker of Philadelphia," to have been the "party of the first part," inasmuch as it is known that he had first taken up from the Proprie- taries the land immediately north of the Quittapahilla, the land that long separated Steitztown from North Lebanon, which latter village, at the opening of the Union Canal, rivaled its southern neighbor in business thrift and growth, and for some time bade fair to excel it in its strides towards a municipality. It seems not
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A WALK ABOUT STEITZTOWN.
yet to have forgiven its rival for stealing the march on it, inasmuch as it prefers to remain "independent," though the growing " Steitze" has stretched itself in well-graded streets, lined with homes, to its very doors.
Whether John Light had a house east of the city, or whether there were two John Light homesteads on the confines of this town, the writer cannot tell. He knows of the old Light home, northwest of town, and will presently lead his readers thither. But it would seem that one family of Lights had resided east of our city, as the old family burial-plot is found here, which seems more distant than was common from the house, if indeed the "Light Fort" was the first and only Light homestead .* At all events, it is in the eastern portion of the farm where the Lights buried their dead. The family plot is found between Weidman and Leh- man streets, east of Third, near to or part of what used to be the old Fair Grounds. It is, however, stripped of every vestige of fence or ornamentation. Only a number of old gravestones, several of them broken, mark the sepulture of this pious ancestry of our large family of Lights. The question has come up to the writer, whether these ancestors have deserved nothing better at the hands of their present generation of pros- perous descendants, than to be treated with the gross neglect and forgetfulness apparent in these neglected
* The author has recently learned that there was another Light homestead, east of Lebanon, last the property of Felix Light, a de- scendant, before it was replaced by the Penn'a Bolt and Nut Works
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LANDMARKS IN THE LEBANON VALLEY.
·graves. Surely some simple mark of respect is due the memory of these early pioneers, who paved the way to the success and prosperity a later generation is reaping. A little blooming shrubbery were more becoming than a heap of rocks and debris ; an enclosure of paling more fitting than a "commons" of stumps, and a few flowers on Decoration Day more appropriate than a decoration of cast-away tin cans and other rubbish by the desecrat- ing neighbors. Oh! when will all men learn that veneration and self-respect that shows itself in keeping green the graves of the beloved dead, and step softly over the mouldering bones of their ancestors ? Oh ! when will Lebanon, as a municipality, gain authority enough to prevent the theft and vandalism that discour- ages such suggested improvements that would other- wise oft be prompted by grateful hearts ! *
Our visit discovered here half a dozen barely leg- ibly inscribed tombstones. A few of them are broken off and defaced. It is a wonder anything is left of them after a century's exposure to time, weather and vandal-
* Scarcely had the above wish found a voice in this weekly corres- pondence before one of many descendants of these Light ancestors, a faithful and venerating scion, Mr. Asaph S. Light, editor of the Leb- anon Courier, and the present postmaster of Lebanon, instituted measures to have the mouldering bones of these ancestors taken up from these uninviting surroundings and reverently reinterred in the Ebenezer cemetery, about a mile to the northwest of town. Hence a week after this chapter was originally written this old burial plot was no more.
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A WALK ABOUT STEITZTOWN.
ism. The following are fac-similes of a few, in which of the spelling and doubling letters and figures are pecu- liar, the latter indicated by a horizontal line over the letter to be doubled. The first is of red sandstone, others limestone or marble :
Hier Ruhet Johannes Licht, ift ge- bohren den 6 december 1720. Er ift ein Sohn des Johannes und Maria Licht, ist gestorben 6ten abril 1798. fein alder war 7 Jahr 4 monat.
en in inder Ehe 48 Jahr II Monat. Gebohren II Kinder Wovon noch 9 am leben 6 Söhne 3 Töchter. Gestorben 4 May 1798 Ihr alter war 67 Jahr 6 Monat 3 Wochen 2 Tage.
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LANDMARKS IN THE LEBANON VALLEY.
Hier Ruhet im tod IOHANNES LICHT
Er war gebohren im Jahr 1726 den 21ten Febr. Lebte mit seiner frav Anna inder Eh. 48 Iahr II Monat. Zevgte II Kinder Wovon noch 9 Leben 6 Sohn v. 3 tochter Starb den IIten Martz 1806 Ist alt worden So Iahr 2 woche & 3 Tage.
Liebe die Mich wird erwecken Avs den grab der sterblichkeit Liebe die mich wird bedecken Mit der Kron der herlichkeit Liebe dir ergeb ich mich Dein zu bleiben ewiglich.
There is another stone, with an epitaph to the mem- ory of still another Johan Licht, born 29th of December, 1767, died 10th of January, 1814. The relationship is very likely that of son to the Johannes Licht of stones No. 3 and No. 2, who, from the agreement in length of married life and the number of children, must have been man and wife. The one of stone No. I must have been a brother of same name or, possibly a cousin to the one of No. 3. Did one live east of town near this burial plot and the other northwest of town ? The writer can not tell, only in the early history of
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A WALK ABOUT STEITZTOWN.
Steitztown the land east and north of the borough was marked as the farm of John Light. We know that one of these lived a little west of the corner of Tenth and Maple streets, where the old hip-roofed stone fort, con- stituting his abode, and erected in 1742, is still stand- ing. We shall go to see it now.
THE JOHN LIGHT INDIAN FORT.
On our way to this landmark, however, let us take a peep into the old Lutheran parochial school-house, which formerly stood at the northeast corner of the Salem Lutheran cemetery, on Eighth street, until about fifty years ago. Its use having been displaced by the public school system, it was removed hither by a
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LANDMARKS IN THE LEBANON VALLEY.
Mr. John Harris, who turned it into a dwelling house. It is a log building, now weather-boarded and slightly changed. It is the present property of Mr. Charles Swope, and is located on Canal street, alongside of the stone quarry at the east end, and is at present unoccu- pied. The rear door -- double, like a shutter-is the same that gave entrance and exit to the young Luth- eran urchins of seventy-five years ago. It bears the marks of their jack-knives to this very day. If it could speak, what a story of woe and hardship it doubtless could relate, as one generation after another of young Germans were there graduated in their A 23 @'s, Psalters, Catechismis, and hickory birches.
But we repair to the Light Fort. Few of our citizens may know or remember that there is such an historic landmark so near. It is hid away from sight by other buildings as you go out Tenth street. You want to turn west on Maple at this point, and then it will soon appear to view, just across the canal to the south. In 1738, "the brass-button inaker " sold to John Light several hundred acres of land, who erected upon it, in 1742, the stone dwelling and fortification here alluded to. It is the best specimen near town of the style of roofing adopted in those days for larger buildings. The custom is Hollandish, and the style of roof generally termed the Dutch hipped- or broken-roof. This is quite a massive structure, and has a checkered history of refuge from the savages, of the worship of God, of domestic toil and struggle, and of liquor distilling.
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A WALK ABOUT STEITZTOWN.
The first owner, Mr. Light, was a Mennonite in re- ligion, who opened his house for religious services, and it was so employed once a month for a long period. This community must have abounded with Mennonites in that early day, as quite a congregation is said to have assembled here. But the house was also built as a forti- fication against the Indian savages. It is provided with a deep, arched cellar, into which subterranean refuge a flight of stone steps still leads the way from the inside. Hither the neighbors were often compelled to repair, to find shelter from their enraged, insatiable foes. Sixty families took refuge in it at one time. Because of these retreats for safety, it received the naine it lias borne ever since, that of "Old Fort." We recently visited the building, but found the older part of the house rifled and deserted by all except a flock of English sparrows, a saucy-looking goat, and a family of colored folks, the last of whom occupy a few dreary-looking rooms. The writer has strong suspicions that during the best days of canal navigation this building was used as a warehouse.
The attacks made upon the whites by the Indians remind us of a record made in the Hebron Diary con- cerning a cruel murder of one of that flock, which occurred in Bethel, May, 1757. The mangled body was brought to Hebron for burial, and had we then stood where I have led my army of explorers in this chapter, in the north of town, we might have seen the funeral procession, a large throng, pass this place on their way to burial. The following record is preserved
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in the church annals of the Hebron Moravians : "May the 16th, 1757, John Spittler, Jr., was attacked and killed by murderous Indians, not far from his house at the Swatara. He was in the 38th year of his age, and settled the preceding year, in April, at the Swatara. His greatly mangled corpse was brought hither on tlie 17th of May, and accompanied by a large concourse of people, was buried here on our graveyard." Mr. Spittler was son-in-law to Mr. Jacob Meylin, whose relatives are still abounding in the county.
But we must hasten on and complete our circumfer- ence of the old town. Of course, we are only after the ancient, and are going in imagination "in ye olden time." Hence we have no trouble with cinder-banks and furnaces and canal-ditches and planing-mills and engirdling railroads; we can just take our walk across John Light's meadow and some grassy fields, past the fine old farm houses of Martin and Barbara Funck (who now sleep, side by side with his parents, in a pri- vate burial-plot near by, within an environment of cin- der banks, stone quarries, smoking furnaces and puffing engines, he born Dec. 22, 1766, and died Feb. 17, 1838; she born Dec. 10, 1773, and died Jan. 15, 1853; while his parents' tombs show Martin Funck, Sr., to have been born Jan'y 30, 1732, and died Dec. 19, 1796, and his wife, Judithı Funckin, to have been born Jan'y 19, 1732 and died March 4, 1812) still standing, the one erected in 1810, and the other in 1824. Soon after pass- ing these landmarks we cross the Quittapahilla on the
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A WALK ABOUT STEITZTOWN.
west of town, to where George Gloninger's old home has long kept its watch on this stream-which historic homestead we shall visit at length in a later trip-and from here wheel to the south and be ready to take a glance at the spot where, before the middle of the last century, was already found a church in common use by the Lutherans and Reformed-known as the "Grubben Church." This spot is about two miles south of the town-center, on property owned by Mr. Jacob Brubaker. But we have not time to abide here, where Revs. Con- rad Templeman and J. Casper Stoever first dispensed the Holy Gospel of the Son of God to their pioneer flocks of German Reformed and Lutherans respectively. We must bring our inarch to a close, and prepare by another intermission of a week's rest and waiting to en- ter the city from the same direction the rebels invaded our Keystone state in 1863 and 1864-from the south. We prefer to enter the old town of Steitz from this di- rection, along the Cornwall pike-once a plank road- because from this point of the compass and along this celebrated and well-kept highway came the man who, more than any other one man, changed Steitztown into Lebanon-Mr. Robert H. Coleman. We will close this chapter by quoting a poem that was written and read by one of our most gifted and energetic citizens at a ban- quet, given some years since in honor of this second builder of our city, who did more for Lebanon in pro- moting its second growthı than George Steitz ever did in laying its foundations:
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