History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 110

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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The Germantown Church was under the charge of , not having come to Pennsylvania till 1704. He re-

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

turned to Germantown after the death of Kelpius, where he practiced medicine, and obtained a wide reputation as a conjuror, root-doctor, botanist, natu- ralist, and astrologist ; indeed, a curious mixture of charlatan and sage. His death, at the age of ninety, occurred in 1765.

THE MORAVIANS.

The Moravians, or United Brethren ( Unitas Fra- trum), have a history that reaches far into the past, and is illustrated by deeds of heroism and endurance second to those of no other church in existence. They are the descendants, and still retain in some degree the ritual and discipline, of the old Bohemian and Moravian Churches of the Middle Ages. Near the close of the fourteenth century their organization had taken decided form. About the year 1400, John Huss, converted by the writings of the great Eng- lish reformer John Wyclif, organized the famous sect that (known as Hussites) were, after his martyrdom, persecuted with dreadful severity, and some of them took arms, and tried to free Bohemia from Ca- tholicism. The religious wars that followed were fearful in their fanatic ex- cesses and atrocities. The nobles were divided, and all the horrors of civil war swept over the land. Those who believed in peace and suffering rather than assault, were fused into a pure, simple, and beautiful organization, this occurring in the year 1457, to which date the present Moravian Church can refer its origin, thus being the oldest of the Protestant Churches. In 1722, Lewis, Count Zinzendorf, received a company of Moravian exiles on his estate Bertholdsdorf, in Upper Lusatia, and there they founded, under his direction and with his help, that village dear to the hearts of all Moravians, Herrnhut, from which so many mis- sionaries have gone forth. This date marks the reor- ganization of the noble church which had flourished a century before Luther's Reformation under the aus- pices of the ardent and eccentric Zinzendorf.1

I in Eenduty

I Nicholas Lewis, Count of Ziozendorf and Pottendorf, was born at Dresden, May 26, 1700, educated In the Lutheran Church by his grand- mother, Baroness Gersdorf, entered Halle In 1710, and the University of Wittenberg io 1716, took an Important government position in Saxony in 172I, but resigned It to preach the gospel in 1727. Ia 1734 he passed

One of the first Moravian colonies to America, sent to Georgia in 1735, failed of success, and its members were removed to the site of Bethlehem, their first permanent settlement in North America. They had spent the summer of 1740 in building a house for the famous George Whitefield, at Nazareth, on his five thousand acres of land, situated in the Forks of the Delaware, and now included in Upper Nazareth township. This tract, purchased early in the spring of 1740 from William Allen, a Philadel- phia merchant, was intended by the great itinerant as a colony for such of his followers as chose to leave England, and as the site of a school for negro or- phans, but circumstances prevented the fulfillment of his designs. His Moravian workmen, as first stated, were allowed to make a settlement there, and on Dec. 22, 1740, having fin- ished Whitefield's asylum at Nazareth, they began, ten miles distant, to rear Bethlehem. Father Da- vid Nitschman, their first bishop, and Bishop John Martin Mack helped to. fell the first tree to build the first house. Deep snow lay on the ground, and the cold was intense. The next year the timbers were squared and the stone hewn for a larger build- ing, whose corner-stone was laid Sept. 28, 1741, in the presence of seventeen brethren and sisters. The first house was torn down in 1823; the second is still standing in the west wing of the old row on Church Street, next to the Mora- vian Church, and is one of the most interesting me- morials of early Pennsylvania. The name Bethlehem was bestowed upon the colony by Count Zinzendorf, who expected it to become a station for missionary enterprises among the Indians. Instead of that it soon took the forms of an asylum, a school, and academy, and an organized Moravian centre.2

an examination in theology at the Stralsund Lutheran University. He came to America in November, 1741, uader the assumed name of S. Lewis von Thurnstein. After argaaizing the First Moravian Church he returned to Europe, Jan. 2, 1743, sad died at Herrnhut, May 9, 1760. " Bethlehem has had an interesting history. It is forever associated with self-denying devotion and arduous labor, and is of interest to Christians and to political economists, for here was a sort of society life, pure and kindly. Additions were made to the first buildings until there was a compact assemblage of walls aad roofe, massive sad foreign in appearance, and thought by many to be representatives of monasteries and nunneries in disguise, though the neages, customs, and spirit of the United Brethren are far different from that of the Church of Rome.

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In 1742, the death of Whitefield's friend and helper, William Seward, changed his plans, and he sold the entire Nazareth tract to the Moravians at cost price, the transfer taking place in London, in 1743, for £2200, or about two dollars per acre. The tract was transferred by the Penns with the rights of court baron, the only manor possessing that privilege, and the feudal right consisted in the payment of a red rose in June of each year. The "Rose Tavern," on whose swinging sign was this floral emblem, built in 1752, is mentioned in colonial history and lives in tradition. The whole domain was nominally the property of Erdmuth Dorothea, Countess of Zinzen- dorf. Their settlements, according to Reichel's " His- tory of Nazareth Hall," extended to and were made at Ephrata in 1743, in Old Nazareth in 1744, at Gnadenthal in 1745, at Christian Spring in 1748, and in Friedensthal in 1750; the total population of all these in 1754 numbering two hundred and seventy- nine. At this time the total number of Moravians belonging to the "Bethlehem Economy" or com- mune, and governed by its presiding board, including missionaries, numbered one thousand and thirty-four. The corner-stone of Nazareth Hall was laid May 3, 1755, and among those present were Delawares and Mohicans from Gnadenhutten Missions. Bishop Spangenberg presided, and some of the exercises were held on the green in front of the Ephrata stone house that Moravian hands had reared for Whitefield fifteen years before. Rev. Peter Böhler told of the com- mencement of Nazareth, aud of the first Moravian service held there in May, 1740, under an oak-tree near the Whitefield house. In 1759, June 6th, the hall was opened as a boarding-school for Moravian boys, beginning with ninety-two pupils, transferred from Bethlehem. J. C. Ekesparre was the first prin- cipal, and Rev. F. C. Lembke his successor. By 1764 there were one hundred and six pupils under his charge, but the church found itself unable to meet the heavy expense, and a system of retrench- ment was adopted ending finally in the closing of the Nazareth School in 1779. But it was reopened as a

Here the elders, bishops, and ministers lived, also the students, artiseos, and laborers, and also the self-denying women who established the first Moravian schools for girls. From here missionaries were sent out to the Mohicans and throughout Western Pennsylvania, and even as far east as Connecticut. Here Zinzendorf preached, and here, for fifteen years, Bishop Spangenberg, the friend and biographer of Zinzendorf, lived and lahored. At Bethlehem the sexes and varione conditions of life were divided into classes or choirs, residing in separate buildings, and each governed hy a spiritual adviser selected from its number. Until 1762 It was the head of a communistic association of all the brethren of Pennsylvania. The first important accession to their number was it 1742, when a colnay of fifteen married couples, five widowere, and twenty-two young men, all led by Bishop Peter Bühler, arrived from Herrnhut. Jan. 5, 1749, the first school for girls was opened in Bethle- hem with sixteen scholars, daughters of missionaries and of devont Moravian brethren. In October, 1785, this arrangement was developed intu a day- and hoarding-school, in other words, into the Bethlehem Female Seminary, which has continued to the present time with ever widening infinence for good. John Andrew Huebner wne the first principal, 1785-90. From 1785 until the present time there have been more then six thousand pupils at the Moravian Seminary at Bethlehem.

boarding-school for boys of all denominations in 1785, and has been in prosperous existence ever since.

Some allusion has been made to the social organi- zation of the United Brethren. As soon as they were established in Pennsylvania they began to develop their peculiar system of what deserves to be called " Christian Socialism," being a scheme that in some respects would have delighted the hearts of Ruskin and of Kingsley. It was a communion of labor. Ac- cording to the best authorities the lands belonged to the church, and the farms, workshops, and factories were worked for its benefit. No money was paid to any one. Members of the society devoted themselves to its service, and were put at work in whatever de- partment seemed to the elders most applicable; the pledge of the church was to furnish the necessaries of life to each family and each member. It was a little commonweath, choosing their officers, and making, under the circumstances, the most ardent and suc- cessful efforts to educate all the children, male and female. This is the fundamental fact in Moravian history in this country. Their early relations with the Indians also were such that when the French and Indian wars broke out they were enabled to be of great service to the colonies ; and the almost absolute seclusion of the homely, primitive settlements they had made in far-off and then frontier valleys, was broken in upon. The quiet and healthful influence of their quaint and old-fashioned customs and doc- trines spread more widely. Interesting, indeed, it is to learn that Zinzendorf's daughter, the young Count- ess Benigna, opened the first Moravian school in Pennsylvania in a house in Germantown, and it is said planted a pear-tree, still standing. The church was a church of missionaries. They had a fixed pur- pose, educational and progressive, and were active in Christian philanthropy. The limits of Pennsylvania in 1740 were the Susquehanna on the west, the Blue Mountains on the north. Indian villages abonnded, and danger of outbreaks was felt. Philadelphia had a population of but thirteen thonsand. The colony was settled by a mixture of all races,-French, German, English, Swedes, Dutch, and others. Especially the Germans were in great need of organized religious so- cieties. There were one hundred and twenty thousand of them in Pennsylvania, nominally Lutheran and Re- formed, but having not more than eight or ten minis- ters in their number, and no church organizations. These were Mennonites, or Simonians, from Holstein, with their offshoots, Flemingians and Waterlandians, Arians and Socinians, Old and New Tunkers, Sab- batarians, Hermits, who lived in retirement near Ephrata; and, in brief, there were representatives of almost every conceivable form of belief and mysti- cism. Zinzendorf, on his arrival, said that Pennsyl- vania was a Bahel. Spangenberg mourned over the irreligion and neglect everywhere manifest among the Germans. The need of the work the Moravian lead- ers tried to do was therefore manifest.

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

The first Moravian in Pennsylvania was probably George Böhnisch, who preached in 1734 to the Sile- sian settlers at Skippack. He organized the first Moravian congregation in Pennsylvania, under the name of the Associated Brethren of Skippack. They built a church upon the Wiegner farm, which is two miles south of Kulpsville, and about eight miles southwest of Hatfield, on the North Pennsylvania Railroad, in Montgomery County. Among the early members were Henry Frey, John Kooken, George Merkel, Christian Weber, John Bonn, Jacob Wenzen, Jost Schmidt, William Bossen, and Jost Becker, of Skippack ; Henry Antes, William Frey, George Stie- fel, Henry Holstein, and Andrew Frey, of Frederick township; Matthias Ginelem and Abraham Wagner, of Matsche ; John Bartolet, Francis Ritter, and Wil- liam Pott, of Oley; John Bechtel, John Adam Gruber, Blasius Mackinet, and George Bensel, of Germantown. This congregation at Skippack was the rallying point of early Moravians in that region, and when the congregations at Nazareth and Bethle- hem were afterward formed, the brethren, in their journeys backward and forward, generally stopped at Skippack on their way. Whitefield preached at Skippack (most probably at Wiegner's farm) on his way to view his purchase of five thousand acres of land at the forks of the Delaware, which he made of William Allen in 1740. He was surprised to find on his arrival that there were two thousand persons ready to listen to him.

The noted Bishop Spangenberg arrived in 1736, David Nitschman followed the same year, and George Neisser in 1737. Peter Böhler settled at Nazareth in 1740, and Christian Rauch began labor among the Mohicans that summer. The field was so large that these devoted apostles could not organize any distinct and individual church. That task was reserved for Zinzendorf at Philadelphia.

On the 10th of December, 1741, Count Lewis Zin- zendorf arrived in Philadelphia. He was a man of great talents, and strong desire to do good. He is said to have had a hope of uniting all Protestant Christians into a confederacy or league. As previ- ously stated, he assumed the name Lewis von Thurn- stein, and came on an unarmed merchant vessel. Zinzendorf accepted the invitation of Henry Antes, a pious wheelwright and farmer in Falkner's Swamp, now Frederick township, Montgomery Co., and at- tended a Synod or Conference at Germantown, Jan. 12, 1742. It was regardless of denominationalism, though the German Reformed predominated. Zin- zendorf, wishing to become acquainted with the people, went to Germantown before the Synod as- sembled, reaching there December 30th, and preached in the German Reformed Church on the 1st of Janu- ary, his first sermon in America, from the text, " And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness." January 12th, the first of seven so-called Pennsylva- nia Synods was begun. It was in the house of Theo-

bold Endt, a Germantown clockmaker, whose de- scendants, the Endts, still live in that vicinity. The house yet stands, in good repair, west side of Ger- mantown Avenue, near Queen Street, a quaint two- story stone house. Zinzendorf was made moderator, and for two or three days delegates and visitors from various sects met and discussed the best way of bringing about a more perfect union of all Protes- tant denominations. There were a number of Mora- vians present, but not as delegates, for no settled congregation of that sect as yet existed. In this and the succeeding Synods the end aimed at was a noble one, but no definite results were reached, though Zinzendorf's ideas impressed the assemblies, as may be seen by the form of some of their resolutions.

Through the earlier half of 1742, Zinzendorf preached at Oley, at Falkner's Swamp, at German- town, and other places, and gathered the nuclci of subsequent Moravian congregations. At Falkner's Swamp he organized a congregation on March 30, 1742, and at Oley the next day. It is probable that these congregations existed for a short time, but they were broken up by the superior attractions of Naza- reth and Bethlehem.

The establishment of a school at Germantown, which must have led to the formation of a religious congregation under the charge of the Brethren, was an early subject of care. It appears that Andrew Eshenbach, from Naumburg, preached at German- town in 1740, and was the means of drawing atten- tion to the Moravians. In the early part of 1742 the Brethren rented a house in Germantown of J. Ash- mead for Count Zinzendorf and his assistants, which was opened as a school in that year. The Countess Benigna assisted as a teacher, as did also Anna Nitsch- man, who subsequently became the second wife of Zinzendorf. In the annals of early Moravian settle- ments ( Reichel, p. 181), it is said, under date of March 25, 1742 (Sunday), that Brother Ludwig (Zin- zendorf) organized a congregation in Germantown, and preached in the Reformed Church, from Psalms xix. 21. On April 8th he preached there again, from St. John vi. 1-14. In the school on April 29th he preached again to the Germantown congregation from John xx. 24. A love-feast was held at his house on May 4th. The proposed school was opened at his honse, with twenty-five girls as pupils. The teachers were Brothers Seyffert, Zander, and George Neissor ; Sisters Benigna, Magdalene Muller, and Anna Nitsch- man. At this time Zinzendorf seems to have alter- nated between Germantown and Philadelphia. How long the Germantown congregation remained is not known. It must have died out after he left North America.

In Philadelphia Zinzendorf began ministrations in a barn on Arch Street below Fifth, then fitted up with seats and used in partnership by the German Reformed and the Lutherans. His Lutheran tenden- cies and training fitted him to take charge of a Lu-

RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS.

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theran Church, and May 30, 1742, the congregation above mentioned called him to take its charge. Indeed, it is said that he claimed to be inspector- general of the Lutherans, and had for some months supplied a Lutheran Church in Germantown. He accepted the call of the Philadelphia Lutherans, but wishing to do a certain amount of missionary work elsewhere, associated John Christopher Pyrlæus, a Saxony Presbyter, with him as assistant, and left mat- ters much in his charge. Rev. Henry Jacobson, in his "History of the Moravian Church in Philadel- phia," proceeds to tell what the consequence was. Pyrlæus, though evidently a hard worker, gave offense to a strong faction, and on the 29th of July, 1742, while in the pulpit, and officiating, a gang of his opponents dragged him down, and from his place, trampled upon him, and put him out of the church. The only accounts left do not enable us to identify the cowardly assailants, except that there seems to have been trouble between the growing Moravian element and the conservative Lutheran element. This affair was the prime cause of the establishment of a separate Mora- vian Church as soon as Zinzendorf re- turned from his preaching tour. With- out this event, to crystallize the tenden- cies of things, separation might have been long delayed. The foregoing ac- count of the causes which led to the organization of this congregation is that of Rev. Hermann Jacobson in his his- tory, but another view is strongly sup- ported by Mr. Westcott, viz., that the church was built by Zinzendorf, for the Lutheran congregation over which he claimed authority, upon his first arrival in the country, but the arrival of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, with direct au- thority from the University at Halle, in the latter part of that year, changed the tactics of Von Thürnstein (Zinzendorf), and so he made arrange- ments to transfer the church to the Moravians.

The congregation Zinzendorf organized consisted of thirty-four persons. They took up a lot on the east side of Bread Street aud south side of Sassafras [now Race] Street, which, on Aug. 20, 1742, was trans- ferred by William Allen and wife to Samuel Powell, Joseph Powell, Edward Evans, William Rice, John Okley, and Owen Rice, for a lot thirty-five feet east and west on Sassafras Street, by one hundred and two feet deep. The parties named were not all Moravians, but the deed was made to them in trust, according to the declaration of April 22, 1746, for " a certain con- gregation of Christian people, as well German as English, residing in the city of Philadelphia, belong- ing to the church of the Evangelical Brethren, who have caused to be erected thereon a new building for and to their use and service, and intended so to be and remain in their use and service for and as a

church and school-house to S. Lewis Thurnstein, knight, David Nitschman, Joseph Spangenberg, Henry Antes, John Broomfield, and Charles Brock- den." Twenty-five feet adjoining this lot were after- ward purchased, probably before 1746, of Lawrence Kunze, although the conveyance was not actually made until Jan. 15, 1782. The church building was commenced immediately after the conveyance of 1742. The corner-stone was laid Sept. 10, 1742, by Count Zinzendorf, and proceeded with such rapidity that it was dedicated by him on the 25th of Novem- ber following. This building was set back from Sassafras Street thirty-five feet. It had a front of forty-five feet on Bread Street, afterward called Moravian Alley, and was thirty feet deep. The building was about twenty feet in height to the eaves, from which started a broken pitch- or hip-roof of about ten feet to the upper ridge. There were two large windows on the eastern side, and two of corre- sponding size on the west. Two small windows were

THE ORIGINAL MORAVIAN CHURCH ABOUT 1742.

on the south, one to give light to the gallery. The discipline of the church requiring that the brethren and sisters should be separated in worship, the sisters' door was on the west side near the south corner of the building, while the brethren entered on the east by a door near the north corner. The church was a two-storied building, the first story being used as the church proper. Ritter's "History of the Moravian Church in Philadelphia," to whom we are indebted for these particulars, says that the lower audience- chamber, or church proper, was about twenty feet in height from the floor, wainscoted about five feet, and plainly whitewashed above to the ceiling, which was also whitewashed. Stairways, with old-fashioned broad hand-rails, on the north and south sides of the church, led to the galleries, which extended also on the east side of the church. The pulpit was on the west side of the room. Six steps led up to it, and the seat was a board built into the wall. In front of the pulpit a large " gloria" of wood, with carved rays, and

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

gilt, darted from the letters " I. H. S." in the centre. A square oaken table in front of the pulpit was covered with a green cloth, with an old-fashioned, high-back, rush-bottom chair behind it. An organ was in the gallery. A sconce and candelabra hung from the ceil- ing. The pews, ten in number on each side of the church, were separated by a broad aisle. They were really plain benches with a rail at top. The only touches of comfort in the room were the window- curtains on the western side, which were large and of green color. It is believed that in this little room the congregation worshiped for full fifty years, withont a stove in winter. This is more probable from the fact that when a stove was obtained, the building being without a chimney, the pipe was led through a window into the yard. The entrance to the hall, or upper chamber, was by stairways leading from the galleries. This room was in fact an attic, the east and west shaped by the roof, but the whole being wainscoted, so as to make the interior sightly. It was lighted by six small dormer-windows on the east and a square window on the south. It was fitted up with a table and chair for the minister or teacher ; plain benches; a hanging sconce or candelabra; side branches of tin with candlesticks; a small organ, which was placed on the south side of the room. The

Count Zinzendorf's zeal frequently led him to meas- ures which would seem strange to persons living at the present day. In a Philadelphia paper, published in 1743, is a letter from Zinzendorf to Frederick Vende, a cooper, residing at Germantown, and his wife, dated Philadelphia, Dec. 26, 1742. It seems to hall was, when the church was first opened, intended have been a demand for Magdalena, the daughter of Vende, who was claimed as a member of the Mora- vian congregation. It will show the manner in which the Count discharged his ecclesiastical duties :

to be used for night services. But it seems, from a statement in the newspapers of the day, that these exercises were so much interrupted by rude young men who made noises with some sort of an instru- ment, making a sound like that of a cuckoo, that the attempt had to be relinquished. This room was used for the more sacred ordinances of the church, the washing of feet, the communion, love-feasts, reception of new members into the congregation, and the trials of members for infractions of the ecclesiastical or moral law.

On the 30th of June, 1746, a parsonage house was commenced on the north of the church, which ex- tended to Race Street. It adjoined the latter, and, when finished, made the whole seem like one build- ing. It was thirty feet front by thirty-five feet deep. It was intended for the residence of the minister and of missionary brethren. There were four rooms on the first floor, used for parlor or reception-room, study, kitchen, and room for the family. Five or six sleep- ing apartments were in the second story, and a passage or door led into the hall or second story of the church adjoining, and it was used by the sisters upon occa- sion. A similar entrance in the first story admitted the minister. The entrance for the brethren was effected by the original door on the northeast of the church, access to which was had by a passageway ten feet wide, leading from Sassafras Street, on the cast of the parsonage. On the east and south of the church was a space reserved for a garden, which was neatly cultivated.

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History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 110

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