History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 109

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992

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Rev. Alexander Mack, Jr., and Christopher Saur were occasionally assisted by Philip Weaver, Na-

monks that cluster thickly about the vicinity. George ' thaniel Shriber, and Daniel Leatherman. Weaver Lippard and Dr. William Fahnestock drew abun- dantly on the wealth of literary material in this beau- tiful valley of the Wissahickon. afterward went to Pipe Creek, Ind., and Schreiber and Leatherman to North Carolina. Rev. C. Saur preached regularly until 1778, and occasionally until In 1770 the Tunkers built their meeting-house, which still stands on the main street of the modern Germantown, above Sharpnack Street, and held their April, 1780, when he removed from Germantown to Mathatchey, where he died in August, 1784. The Rev. Peter Keyser succeeded Rev. Christopher Saur,

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and was made bishop Aug. 22, 1802.1 Although he resided in Philadelphia, his connection with the Ger- mantown meeting remained. He was always ready to conduct the services on Sundays, although he had to come from Philadelphia for the purpose. This duty, without regard to weather, he was never known to neglect. After he was installed as bishop he was assisted in the ministry at Germantown by Charles Hubbs, Christian van Lashet, and John W. Price.

The first Tunker Church in Philadelphia was or- ganized by Bishop Keyser in 1813, and for more than four years the members worshiped in a school-room at the northwest corner of Fourth and Vine Streets. March 19, 1817, the members of this congregation held a meeting for the purpose of considering the expedi- ency of building a meeting-house, when it was stated that nearly five thousand dollars were already sub- scribed. It was resolved to undertake it, and James Lynd, George Gorgas, Jacob Ziegler, James Gorgas, and John Rink were appointed a committee to pro- cure a piece of ground. They purchased a lot on the east side of Crown Street, below Callowhill, from Jesse Stellwagen for four thousand two hundred and fifty dollars. It was forty-five feet front on Crown Street, running through of that width to Fourth Street, being about eighty-six feet from street to street. Peter Keyser, James Lynd, John Heisler, John Fox, Christopher Lehman, J. Gorgas, Chris- topher S. Langstroth, Michael Keyser, and John Leibert were appointed trustees, and also were the building committee. Strafer & Ritter agreed to "lay the brick at two dollars and sixty-seven cents per |

1 Bishop Keyser was for sixty-three years pastor of the Germantown and Philadelphia Churches, of forty-seven of which he was the bishop. Fle was a most efficient preacher in both the English and German lan- gunges. Beside his profound knowledge ot Scripture he was also dis- tinguished as an eloquent orator, and whenever he preached he drew crowds of hearers from all denominations. " He was diligent in busi- ness, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord," for beside faithfully discharg- ing his numerous secular and ministerial labors, he was engaged in almost every measure for the good of his fellow-man. He was long a member, and for n while secretary, of the Board of Health, inspector aod treasurer of the prison, an active member of the Society for Alle- vinting the Miseries of the Public Prisons, and was director and con- troller of the public schools when the system was first adopted. Ger- maut wn was his birthplace, and be was baptized by Martin Urner, of Coventry, on the 25th of September, 1784, in the eighteenth year of his nge. He was called to the ministry in 1785. In his early youth he was remarkable for his quickness of conception and wonderful retentiveness of memory, which enabled him to commit whole chapters of Scripture with very little lubor ; and he soon had the whole of the New and Old Testaments indelibly fixed in his memory. In 1794 he relinquished the fanning business in Germantown and removed to Philadelphia to enter into the Inmber business, which he carried on with his brother-in-law, George Gorgas, under the firm of Keyser & Gorgas, until 1828, when he retired on a competeney, and moved back again to Germantown, into the house left him by his father. The Tunkers, like the Friends and The Mennonites, do not behove in their ministers devoting themselves

entirely to preaching. Bishop Keyser was a descendant of a family rooted for Its martyrs. Loonard Keyser, the Mennonite, was publicly uint to death nt the stake near Schaarding, Bavaria, in August, 1527.

The family moved from Germany into Holland, settling in the city of Amsterdam, from whence Duck Keyser, with his little son, Peter Direk Kryser, emigrated to America in 1655, and were among the original settlers of Germantown.

thousand, and the stone at seventy-five cents per perch, and make an allowance in the bill." W. Steinmetz agreed to furnish the brick " at eight dollars and fifty fifty cents per thousand, and give a donation of three thousand brick." William Jones offered to " plaster the house at ten cents per yard, and make a present of fifty dollars." These prices, of nearly seventy years ago, are perhaps worth record.

The house was consecrated Oct. 12, 1817. In the morning Bishop Keyser spoke from the ninth chapter of Hebrews, first to fifth verses. In the afternoon he spoke from the nineteenth chapter of Luke, forty- sixth verse; and in the evening from the twenty- sixth chapter of Acts, twenty-second and twenty-third verses. March 5, 1818, he presented the church with a fine, large pulpit Bible, which was in use until April 21, 1854, when it was replaced by a new one.

The first additions to the church in Philadelphia took place in the baptism of Christian Flower and Catharine Evans, on Easter day, April 6, 1817, in the Schuylkill, by Bishop Keyser. He (Keyser) was as- sisted by James Lynd, John Heisler, Timothy Bangor, John Righter, Thomas Major, and John Fox in his ministrations to the Philadelphia Church during 1818 and for some time after.

At this time (1884), the denomination of Brethren or Tankers have two churches in this city, as follows :

Marshall Street above Poplar, Rev. Joel K. Reimer presiding elder ; Main Street above Sharpnack, Ger- mantown, Rev. J. R. Reinse.

THE MENNONITES.

The sect known as Mennonites has erroneously been claimed by some writers as Baptists. Dr. William Cathcart, in his "Baptist Encyclopedia," sums up the article upon " Menno and the Mennonites" by the declaration, "The Mennonites of to-day are a little nearer us than are the orthodox members of the Society of Friends, but they are not Baptists." Nor, althongh nearer to the Society of Friends than to the Baptists, are they identical with the Quakers. At present they have two churches in Philadelphia, and in the United States they have one hundred and twenty churches and twenty thousand members. They have three divisions,-Mennonites, Reformed Mennonites, and the Omish Church, whose discipline is more strict than either of the two first. Mennonite colonists gave early Germantown much of its distinctive character, and among their number were men quite as remark- able in their way as Zinzendorf, Muhlenberg, and Thomas Elwood. It was left for the poet Whittier to discover the hidden literary material in the quiet life and pastoral beauty of that humble colony, and to write of Francis Daniel Pastorius as "The Penn- sylvania Pilgrim." Though in later life he joined the Friends, or Quakers, Pastorius was socially and politically the Mennonite leader in early German- town.

We have said that mild and pure Mennonites much

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resembled the Friends, or Quakers, in their religious beliefs, and the sects readily harmonized. Barclay's "Religious Societies of the Commonwealth" says the early leaders of "Society of Friends took great interest in the Mennonites." The Yearly Meeting of 1709 gave fifty pounds (then a large sum) "for the Mennonites of the Palatinate, who had fled from the persecution of the Calvinists in Switzerland. This required the agreement of the representatives of above four hundred churches." Jacob Felner, a Netherland Mennonite, wrote, Aug. 6, 1709, to Amsterdam, from London, saying that the English Friends had "sent eight families to Pennsylvania and helped them lib- erally." Quakers joined the Mennonite Church at

Quaker Societies in England and in America. The two first histories of the Quakers were written in Holland. William Sewel, the historian, is said to have been a Mennonite. Of all the Germans and Hollanders who came to Pennsylvania during Penn's administration, none were so much in accord with the spirit and hopes of that great lawgiver and statesman. If there is, as there should be, much in religious her- itage, no sect in America could lay claim to a nobler history, quiet and seemingly unknown though it be. : The Mennonites assert themselves, with good reason, to be descendants of and heirs of the doctrines of the Waldense communities of the twelfth century, and later, the Poor Brethren of Lyons, the martyrs of Provence and of Switzerland. The Waldenses were mostly weavers, tradesmen, and farmers, and they spread over Europe in comparative obscurity, settling in Flanders, thence extending to Holland, where they went by the name of Tisserands or Weavers. The Anabaptists of the sixteenth century drew Mennon- ites to their ranks. John of Leyden, and Thomas Munzer, those fanatic iconoclasts and socialists, probably had some Waldense followers, but the real strength of the sect sided with the far different move- ment of Menno Simons, Dirck Philips, David Jovis, and Battenburg, at their noted convention at Buck- hold, Westphalia, in 1538. Menno was the first to teach the complete severance of church and state. He also taught the doctrine of the inner light, also non-resistance, and denounced war, infant baptism, and the taking of oaths. They were bitterly perse- cuted, two hundred and twenty-nine being put to death, seventy-four by fire in Antwerp alone. They were crushed with weights, broken on the wheel, cruelly mutilated, driven from their homes, and so caused to found silk and linen manufactures at Ham- burg, in Prussia, and up the Rhine. The men who organized the early Baptist Churches in England had been Mennonites at Amsterdam, and from these Baptists, George Fox, so Barclay says, imbibed many of his views. Hardly anything in the history of the early Quaker missionaries is more interesting than their account of the welcome they received among the Mennonites in Holland and elsewhere, and their

naïve astonishment that the doctrines of the two sects should be so similar. Thomas Story, recorder of deeds, left Philadelphia in 1715, and visited the Dutch Mennonites, preaching in many of their assem- blies, and entertained by them in staid and cordial fellowship. In religious matters he said they "had no difference."

In the year 1683, William Penn offered a refuge to the persecuted Mennonites, and they settled in Ger- mantown that autumn, having arrived in Philadel- phia October 6th. On the 12th of that month a war- rant was issued to Pastorius for 6000 acres of land ; a fortnight later fourteen divisions were allotted, the colonists drawing lots for choice. By May, 1684,

Haarlem and at Crefeld. Mennonites joined the ' Pastorius had shared out 5350 acres, as follows : to

the purchasers in Frankfort, Germany, Jacobus van de Walle 535 acres, John Jacob Schutz 428, Johan Wilhelm Uberfield 107, Daniel Behagel 3563, George Strauss 178}, Jans Laurens 535, Abraham Hosevoet 535, total 2675 acres; to purchasers from Crefeld, Germany, Jacob Telner 989 acres, Jan Streypers 275, Dirck Sipman 588, Govert Remke 161, Lenert Arets 501, Jacob Isaacs 161, total 2675 acres also. Pastorius received 200 acres, and Jurian Hartsfelder 150 acres. It is said also that Heinrich Frey and, probably, Cornelius Bom were of the first colonists. Pastorius dug the first cave, and others followed his example, and built log huts in which they passed the first winter. Most of the purchasers in Germany seem to have sent friends or relatives with Pastorius. Walter Seimens, Isaac van Bebber, and Jacob Tel- ner, the central figure in the migration, afterward owner of Telner township, on the Skippack, came over in 1684, and for thirteen years lived at German- town in close business and social relations with the principal Friends. He was the largest land-owner and the first burgess in Germantown, and sold two thousand acres to the Op den Graeffs. In 1698 he removed to London, and was a merchant there as late as 1712. Though often preaching in company with the Quaker ministers, and, indeed, claimed as of that persuasion, he called himself a Mennonite. We shall hear more of Van Bebber, whose brother and father arrived in 1687. Another emigrant of 1684 was Jan Bockenogen, from Haarlem, and an ancestor of the late Henry Armitt Brown, of the Philadelphia bar. Many settlers arrived in 1685 and 1686, among them the Kassels, who brought with them the manuscripts of Ylles Kassel, a Mennonite minister of Krisheim, born before 1618, and graphically describing the suf- ferings of his inoffensive and pilgrim-like brethren, poor, persecuted, industrious wanderers as they were, hoping and searching in vain for a refuge, until they found it in the peaceful vales of Pennsylvania. Mnhl- heim, a town on the lower Rhine, also sent many colonists. One by one all but two of the original Crefeld purchasers visited Germantown. Professor Siedensticker, of the University of Pennsylvania, "shows that before 1692 all of the original thirteen

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purchasers, except Jan Lensen, had been in one way or another associated with the Quakers." In 1688 the first Mennonite minister in Pennsylvania, Willem Rittinghuysen, great-grandfather of the famous scien- tist David Rittenhouse, came to Germantown with his family and others, and two years later built, on Wissahickon Creek, the first paper-mill in America. IIis ancestors had long been paper-makers in the cities of Arnheim and Broich, Holland.

Glimpses of the daily life of the colonists abound. Pastorius says that it will " not be believed by coming generations, in what want and need and with what Christian contentment and persistent industry this German township started." Wilhelm Strypers, in 1784, wrote home, " I have made a brave dwelling- house, and under it a cellar fit to live in, and have much Indian corn and buckwheat." In 1785 the honest Wilhelm had " two pair of leathern breeches, two leather doublets, handkerchiefs, stockings, and a new hat." Bom wrote that he had no rent-tax nor excise to pay, and that the "next year [1685] he would plant an orchard." Most of the Crefeld emi- grants were weavers, and Germantown grew to be called a place

" Where live High German people and Low Dutch, Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much."

Pastorius, therefore, when a town-seal was needed looked ont on the fair clover fields, the delicate blue blossoms of slender flax, and the broad arbors of vines under which the honest weavers sat, and he chose a trefoil clover-leaf, bearing a vine, a flax stalk, and a weavers' spool, with the inscription, " Vinum, Linum, et Textrinnm." Hendrick Sellers gave the ground for the first Mennonite Church at Germantown, but little further is known about it. Klas Jansen was one of the earliest Mennonite preachers in the region. Pastorius went to Assembly in 1687 and 1691, and Abraham Op den Graeff in 1689, 1690, and 1692. It was on the 18th of February, 1688, that Pastorius, Hendricks, and the two Op den Graeff's, Dirck and Abraham, sent to the Friends' Meeting the first public protest against slavery ever made upon this continent, and from Germantown their protest went to the Phila- delphia Quarterly Meeting, in April, and thence to the Yearly Meeting, at Burlington, in July, being there laid on the table. In 1691 the Keith contro- versy among the Quakers extended to Germantown, and Pastorius wrote two pamphlets on the subject.

In 1694 Cornelis Plockhoy and his wife, both aged and destitute, sole survivors of the twenty-five Men- nonites who had, in 1662, founded the first colony of that sect at Ilorekill, on the Delaware, came to Ger- mantown, were given a home and cared for. Their colony had been destroyed by Sir Robert Carr in 1664, and of the missing twenty-three colonists no record whatever has ever been found. The same year, 1694, about fifty Pietists and Chiliasts reached Ger- mantown, led by Daniel Falkner, Johannes Kelpins,

and others, and founded on the Wissahickon the so- ciety of the " Woman in the Wilderness," of which we shall give some further account.

Falkner's Swamp, in Montgomery County, was named after Daniel Falkner, who became a man of considerable note. Reynier Jansen, afterward the printer, arrived about November, 1698, and began printing in Philadelphia in 1699, being the second printer in the middle colonies, and producing books that are now almost unique. The first school was begun December 30th in Germantown, with Pas- torius as teacher. The village stocks had been built in 1795, being thought needed to terrorize evil-doers.

In 1702-3 we find the first mention of organiza- tion for church purposes. One of Samuel W. Pen- nypacker's fine historical essays on the early German settlers (printed in the Pennsylvania Magazine of His- tory, and collected in a volume) states that, "Feb. 10, 1703, Arnold van Fossen delivered to Jan Neuss, on behalf of the Mennonites, a deed for six square perches of land for a church, which, however, was not built till six years later." Other sources of infor- mation complete the story. It was May 23, 1708, that the Mennonite Church at Germantown was estab- lished in a building of their own, they having pre- viously met at private houses. There were fifty-two members, Rev. Jacob Godtschalk and wife, William Rittenhouse and wife, Harman Casdrop and wife, Martin Kolb and wife, Isaac van Centern and wife, Conrad Johnson and wife, Henry Cassel and wife, Harman Taylor, John Kry, Peter Coernerts, Paul Klumpkes, Arnold van Fossen, John Kolb, Wynant Bowman, John Gorgas, Cornelius Classen, Arnold Koster, Mary Tuynen, Helena Krey, Gartrude Con- ners, Mary van Fossen, Barbara Kolb, Anna Bow- man, Margaret Huberts, Mary Sullen, Elizabeth Husters, Margaret Tuysen, Altien Revenstock, John Nise, Hans Nise, John Lensen, Isaac Jacobs, Jacob Isaacs, Hendrick Sellen, John Connerts, Peter Key- ser, Herman Koster, Christopher Zimmerman, Sarah van Centern, Civilia Connerts, Altien Tuysen, Cath- arine Casselberg, and Civilia van Fossen. Branches from this church were established at Skippack, Con- estoga, Great Swamp, and Manatawny before 1726, and by that date they had added, as ministers and exhorters, Henry Kolb, Martin Kolb, Claes Johnson, Michael Ziegler, John Gorgas, John Conerads, Claus Rittinghuysen, Hans Burghaltzer, Christian Herr, Benedict Hirschy, Martin Beer, Johannes Bowman, Velte Clemer, Daniel Langanecker, and Jacob Beghtly.

In 1702 the Skippack settlement, of which some- thing has been said in the record of the Moravians and Lutherans, was founded as an outgrowth of the Crefeld purchase and of the Germantown colony. It was in Perkiomen township, in what is now Mont- gomery County, but then was part of Philadelphia County. Matthias van Bebber bought and located six thousand one hundred and sixty-six acres, and so

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the settlement was long called Bebber's township. The colonists brought here under this patent were mostly Mennonites. One hundred acres were given for a church of that denomination, which was built in 1725, the first trustees being Hendrick Seller, Hermann Kuster, Klass Jansen, Martin, Henry, and Jacob Kolb, and Michael Ziegler. The Van Bebbers, or Van Bibbers, were men of means and energy. Their descendants are still persons of mark in Del- aware, Maryland, and Virginia, as well as in Penn- sylvania, and many have won eminence as soldiers, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, or writers. A Van Bebber was one of the boldest of the Indian fighters in Western Virginia during colonial times.

In 1727 the Confession of Faith of the Mennonites, translated into English, was published at Philadel- phia. It embraced a translation of the Confession of Dortrecht, adopted in 1632. In 1740 the teacher in the Mennonite log church in Germantown was that quaint, pious, and modest pedagogue Christopher Dock, who in 1718, or perhaps 1714, had opened his first school on the Skippack. His treatise on his methods of teaching, finished in August, 1750, formed a fifty-four page pamphlet, published by the younger Saur in 1770. It is thought to be the earliest publi- cation of the kind in America, and Mr. Pennypacker has translated most of it, and also some of Dock's curious hymns, still in use among the Mennonites. Meanwhile the mystic community of Tunkers at Ephrata, Lancaster Co., had obtained a hand print- ing-press (in 1745) and printed more than fifty books, hymns, and pamphlets. In 1748 they completed the translation from Dutch into German for the Mennon- ites of Pennsylvania of the latter's great historical book and martyrology, "The Martyr's Mirror" of Tideman Jans Van Braght, which contains much elsewhere unattainable in regard to the origin of their peculiar tenets. It was a massive, brass-clasped folio of fifteen hundred and twelve pages, and is one of the most rare and valuable of the Americana most sought for by bibliophilists.

Dr. J. G. De Hoop Scheffer, of Amsterdam, in a recent work, says that intercourse between the Ne- therlands and the American Mennonites ceased in 1758, but that a few years later the distinct Mennon- ite communities near Philadelphia were the following : Skippack, Germantown, Deep Run, Plain, Perkasie, Salford, Rockhill, Saucon, Great Swamp, Mateschen, Lower Milford, Hosensak, and forty near Conestoga. In 1770, however, we get better information from Morgan Edwards, who says that at that time they had in Pennsylvania thirteen churches, forty-two meeting- houses, fifteen ordained ministers or bishops, and fifty-three probationary or licensed preachers. Their families numbered about eight hundred and ten, con- taining about four thousand and fifty souls, of whom fourteen hundred and forty-eight were baptized members of their churches.

one of their ministers, but his name is not known. Of the earlier ministers only Benedict Hirschy was living. The same writer, describing their peculiari- ties, says,-

"They will neither swear, nor fight, nor bear any civil office, nor go to law, nor take interest for the money they lend (though many break through thie last). Some of them yet wear their beards. Nor are the ancient ritee of washing feet, etc., wholly out of uee among them. They, like the Tunkers, use great plainnees of speech and dress. Thie last ie so capital a point with them that some have been expelled from their societies for having buckles to their shoes and pocket-holes to their coats."

In a preceding paragraph we spoke of Kelpius and the "Society of the Woman in the Wilderness," begun about 1694. This was the popular name for them, but hardly did justice to their undoubted sin- gleness of purpose, character, and zeal. They num- bered about fifty, and after being a short time in Germantown, chose their permanent abode on the Ridge in the neighborhood of the Wissahickon, where they lived in log huts and caves or "dug-outs." John Kelpius, their leader, was from Sieburgen, in Transylvania. The only others whose names are known were John Seelig, Daniel Geissler, Conrad Mathias, Bernard Kuster, Daniel Falkner, and Chris- topher Witt. All were highly-educated men, much influenced by the mystic views of the medieval mys- tics, such as Eckart, Tauler, Weigel, and Böhme. Kelpius wrote and read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Ger- man, and English. The hermits were properly classed among the Pietists. Kelpius argued that there was a threefold state of progression in the soul,-the barren, the fruitful, and the sacrificial or transcendent, which last was that of the elect and chosen, who had put everything else aside. We are told, more definitely, that these hermits believed that " the Woman in the Wilderness," mentioned in the Revelation, was prefigurative of the great deliverance that was soon to be displayed for the church of Christ. " As she was to come up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved," so the beloved in the wilder- ness laid aside all other engagements because being hermits, trimmed their lamps, and adorned them- selves with holiness, that they might be prepared to meet the same with joy. Therefore they observed the signs of the times and every new phenomenon, whether moral or preternatural, of meteors, stars, or colors of skies, if peradventure the harbinger might appear. The hut or house of Kelpius was upon what is now called Hermit's Lane, about half way between the Ridge road and the Wissahickon. He died in 1708, and was buried in his garden. The remaining hermits began controversies among themselves upon the subjects of matrimony and celibacy, which led to a breaking up of the community. Some married, and some went to Ephrata. Seclig resided for a number of years with William Levering, near the present Roxborough Baptist Church. He died in 1745. Christopher Witt was not one of the original hermits,

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History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 109

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 992

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992