USA > Pennsylvania > Lebanon County > Lebanon > Old Salem in Lebanon : a history of the congregation and town > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13
On May 10th, 1729, an event of great importance took place. Lebanon Township was cut off from Chester by law, and with the present counties of Lancaster, Berks, Dauphin and York, was consti- tuted Lancaster county. It was now no longer nec- essary to go a full hundred miles to find a court, a sheriff or a prison.
mann; Aug. 30, 1737, Johan Christoph Meckel; Oct. 5, 1737, Peter Mahr- steller, Georg Casper Fernsler, Hans Georg Krause; Oct. 31, 1737, Mi- chael Reuter; Sept. 9, 1738, Philip Gebhart; Sept. 3, 1739, Michael Krause; Dec. 11, 1739, John Reitenauer, Sr. and Jr .; Nov. 20, 1741, Henrich En- sminger, Hans Niclas Eiesenhaur, Johan Peter Eiesenhaur; Sept. 3, 1742, Johan Valtentin Gloninger; Sept. 2, 1742, Balthasar Groh; Oct. 13, 1747, Georg Philip Groh; Sept. 20, 1743, Jost Folmer; Sept. 30, 1743, Johannas Schnei, Michael Steckbeck, Casper and Johan Reitenauer; Sept. 27, 1746, Johannis Krause.
*Sherman Day's Historical Collections of Pennsylvania, p. 388.
** The church is still active and is served by Rev. E. S. Brownmiller.
CHAPTER III.
THE NEW TOWNSHIP OF LEBANON.
The forest was resounding with the blows of the art. A few log cabins were going up.
T AND before this time the virgin wilderness of the Quitopahila was startled. Hoofs of horses were be- ing heard on the stones. The creek was being forded. Cows would be soon browsing here and there upon the banks. The forest was resound- ing at wide intervals with blows of the axe. A few log cabins, often far apart, were going up. The Noacre and Spyker families were here, several miles east of town as early as 1723 .* Balzer Orth with his two boys, Balthazer, aged II years, and Adam, aged 7 years, came about 1725. George Loesch toward Womelsdorf and Adam Kettering may have been in the same vicin- ity of Hebron. These were all to the east of the site of Lebanon.
Michael Burst came up in August, 1729, along the Manatawny and the Tulpehocken, and squatted down on a tract of land two miles northwest from the present site of Lebanon .**
*Egle's "History of Lebanon County."
** He was Daniel Rupp's maternal grandfather. See "Rupp's History of Lebanon County."
12
NEW TOWNSHIP OF LEBANON.
Steitz came in soon after and located southeast of Burst on the Quitopahila. The Reynolds located to the southwest. The Bechtels and the Meyleys probably were in the township, each with a little babe. And now, in 1731, the year in which the Old State House building in Philadelphia was be- gun, the first wedding was celebrated in the Leb- anon wilderness, and the ceremony was performed by the first Lutheran minister who had ever come to these parts. The parties were Francis Reynolds and Catharine Steitz. George Steitz possibly be- came the brother-in-law of Francis Reynolds, thereby, and these were the two men who, with the son of this marriage, afterwards laid out Leb- anon. The two Lights took up their farms to the north, the one where our Fifth and the other where our Sixth ward is now erected. In September, 1732, John Peter Kucher, the prominent blacksmith- farmer, came over from Germany in the Loyal Ju- dith, and settled east of Lebanon along the Quito- pahila, near those already at Hebron, but toward Lebanon. A large number of the settlers and their families were Lutheran, and George Steitz and Pe- ter Kucher signed their names together, along with John Caper Stever, Andreas and Peter Kreutzer, Peter Gebhard, Adam Ulrich, John and Martin Waidmann, George Eichelberger and 156 others, to the letter, binding themselves to services in the "true and pure Evangelical Lutheran religion, based upon the Word of God and in accord with the unal- tered Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles,
I3
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
Symbolical Books, and the two Catechisms of Lu- ther," which was deposited in the corner-stone of Christ church, Stouchsburg, eleven years later on. In this year, 1732, the Heylmanns and a number of other settlers arrive. It is only now (1732) that the land of Lebanon county is actually purchased from the Indians by the State proprietaries, and in 1734 the settlers begin to take out warrants for their lands. Among these are George Steitz for 300 acres, to which he added 350 more within the next half-dozen years; John Frederick for 200 acres, and Rudy Hunsigger. The next year Michael Baughman and Balzar Orthtakeout warrants. Two years later Peter Kucher and Caspar Stoever take theirs. The year following, Adam Fulmer, Martin Cofler, John Reynolds and Ulrich Cross take theirs out. The Lights waited four or five years longer still.
During these early years, there was no Lutheran church, except the troubled little Rieth's church, built at Stouchsburg in 1727, nearer than* Falck- ner's Swamp, in the valley of the Perkiomen, and the Swedish churches in Philadelphia; and the first appearance of a young clergyman in these regions must have been a marked and welcome event. Though not arrayed in broadcloth, nor adorned with a high hat and gold-headed cane, this clergy- man, in accordance with Lutheran custom of that day, had a better education in his line than some of our college graduates possess to-day. In addition
*The Swedish Church at Molattin may also have been an exception.
14
NEW TOWNSHIP OF LEBANON.
to theology, he had studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French. He was a man of marvellous energy, a born pioneer, a man who traveled, as a hardy and independent missionary, over the counties in East- ern Pennsylvania for fifty years, combining the qualities of an outspoken country squire and land- owner with those of a sturdy and self-denying min- ister of the Church. His name was John Caspar Stoever.
CHAPTER IV.
JOHN CASPAR STOEVER.
STORVER'S HOME AT SUNNYSIDE, BUILT BY HIMSELF, IT37 .صـ
N THE IIth of September, 1728, John Caspar Stoe- ver arrived in Philadel- phia on the ship Good Will, David Crocket, master. He was a theo- logical student, and only 21 years of age. He went to the neighborhood of the Trappe,* and spent his first year there. We know that in the year 1729 he officiated at some marriages and baptisms at Philadelphia and at Lan- caster .** On March 8, 1730, he baptized a young child at the Trappe, a daughter of John George Marsteller, and began perhaps the earliest existing Lutheran church record in Pennsylvania .*** Dur- ing his second year in America, in May, 1730, Stoever removed to New Holland, Lancaster county. In the summer of 1731, Stoever traveled to Raritan, N. J., and presented himself to old Pastor Daniel Falckner as a candidate for ordination. After hearing Stoever's trial sermon, Rev. Falckner re-
*This was the congregation to which Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg came when he landed 14 years later.
** In 1733 he entered these in the church records he began of the congre- gations at these places.
*** See Kretschmann's "History of The Old Trappe Church," p. 3, for a fac- simile reproduction in Stoever's handwriting of this old record.
16
JOHN CASPAR STOEVER.
fused to ordain him, and Stoever returned to Penn- sylvania. Whether Falckner detected any lack of spiritual-mindedness in the young man, or saw some defects of character in him, or whether his views or ordination forbade the administration of the rite in such a way, it is impossible to say.
At this time there was probably not a single or- dained Lutheran minister in Pennsylvania except the Swedes in Philadelphia .* Under such circum- stances it was almost inevitable that young Stoever should begin pastoral work at the request of the people. He baptized, he married, he buried. He became one of the most extraordinary and inde- fatigable missionary pastors and preachers that the State of Pennsylvania has had .** In 1731 he traveled to many places in Lancaster, Berks, Phil- adelphia and other counties, and performed pas- toral acts. Perhaps he got to Lebanon township as early as 1731, and there married Francis Rey- nolds and Catharine Steitz. In 1732 he repeated his journeys. In 1733 he went from New Holland to Philadelphia, and having been ordained in a barn at the Trappe by a pastor Schultze, who came over from Europe for a short time, the young man acted as the temporary pastor of the German Phil- adelphia congregation, and began the Church Rec-
*On account of the political differences between the Swedes and the Germans on the continent of Europe at this time, there was no inter- course between the German and Swedish Lutherans before 1740. See "Genesis of German Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania," "Lutheran Church Review."
** Stoever's work, in contrast with that of Muhlenberg, was that of a personal pastor, and not that of an organizer of the church.
17
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
ords there. Ninety-five persons were at his first communion in the Fall of 1733-
Meanwhile he continued traveling, gathering the people into congregations and beginning their church records. He was pastor in New Holland from 1730 to 1746. He may have organized Old Trinity, Lancaster, as early as 1730, at least in 1733, at which time he preached there with some regularity. On the eighteenth Sunday after Trin- ity, 1733, he had 149 communicants in Lancaster. In 1733 he began the Church Records of Muddy Creek, New Holland, Lancaster, Bernville, Tulpe- hocken, Hill Church and Philadelphia. In Sep- tember, 1733, he organized the congregation at York (there was no town there then), and came once a month to York from New Holland (or later from Lebanon) for a period of about ten years, when he resigned at York. In the year 1733 he had 20 marriages; in 1734, 25 marriages; in 1735, 28 marriages; in 1738, 53 marriages, among which was that of Peter Kucher, the blacksmith, on the Quitopahila, on October 6, of this year; in 1739, 75 marriages .* In 1735 Stoever also became pas- tor of the opposition party at Rieth's church, Stouchsburg, and remained such until 1743, when he was at the head of one of the parties founding the new Christ church.
In the region of the Quitopahila at leastas early as 1733, he gathered the scattered Lutherans and or-
*These are those recorded in Pastor Stoever's diary, but the Church Records show that he performed pastoral acts not mentioned in the diary.
18
JOHN CASPAR STOEVER.
ganized what is now known as the Hill Church. Rev. Stoever had been married in 1733, and on March 1, 1737, he took out a warrant for 300 acres of land, and warrants for additional land later on. In 1737, he undertook the erection of that substan- tial home on the Quitopahila which is still standing and in use. Three years were consumed in finishing this solid mill structure, with its walls three feet thick. Finally the building was ready for occu- pancy, and in 1740 Pastor Stoever removed from New Holland to the new home on the Quitopahila, where he lived and where he died 39 years later. Though he continued to travel until near the end of his life, he permanently identified himself with our community, and we shall meet him as pastor, as the head of the land company of Lebanon, and as one of the founders and pastors of Salem church.
CHAPTER V.
THE HILL CHURCH.
O N the southern slope of the gravel ledge, bor- dering the Quitopahila Valley, about three and a half miles west of Lebanon, in a heavily-wooded district, the original Church on the Quitopahila, or as it is now called, the Berg Mr. Kirche, was built in the year 1733.
Stoever is said to have organized the congre- gation already in 1732. Apart from the rec- ords which Mr. Stoever began in 1733 and which are still preserved, the knowledge of the founding of Hill church is derived from a para- graph in an article of Dr. Lochman's, in the "Evan- gelisches Magazin" for 1812, Vol. I., p. 20. Dr. Lochman says that among his congregations the Hill church congregation is the oldest. "Already in the year 1733 it was gathered at a time when the Indians still made frequent incursions into the re- gion and murdered. Mr. J. C. Stoever was preacher at that time, and interested himself in the scattered sheep. The people met together, took up a vacant piece of ground, and built a wooden church. In the beginning they were content to bring it under roof, and to use logs as seats and only after a number of years were they able to finish it. The hunger for the Word of God, and the zeal for divine service must have been very great at that time. For the hearers gathered from far and near, and did not
1
20
THE HILL CHURCH.
inserbuch und Protocol
in Lebanon TownShip 2.
fowol Dis gaben Hun Kinderen
Vi copalishe abow in Iam Strand how to fo ringfinger to
fiobelow for Non Anno 1733 in maisons angonon markeryolio
gomaiala fiformin gabargo Likliter
fund High" Jobrun Foryour @Lowen fermaligen
yowol Finfor all wefoundman antonfire? Gemeinde in Lancaster County low Province HuyilHame To goffen fish December, Arno Christi.
Lasfun po. L. Factor an Bufoglie If
Offar
. ..
FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE PAGE OF STOEVER'S ORIGINAL HILL CHURCH RECORD, 1733.
on als and
21
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
permit themselves to be kept away by any dangers. Frequently guns were taken along to church for defense on the road, not only against wild animals, but also against the far wilder Indians; and when service was held, men with loaded arms were fre- quently set as sentinels. After the death of Pastor Stoever this congregation was served by Pastor Melsheimer, and from the year 1794 on, by Pastor Lochman. The church stands about four miles northwest of Lebanon, and is held in union by the Lutherans and Reformed and possesses sixty acres of land, of which the half belongs to Lutherans." There was no floor in the log building, and it is said that in the winter months a wood-fire of logs was built on the outside of the church, around which the people would sit and warm themselves before the service and until the minister arrived.
For a whole decade this little Lutheran congrega- tion* worshiped under the guidance of J. Caspar Stoever in its unfinished log cabin. But now a num- ber of events were occurring which doubtless stirred the congregation up to complete the structure. Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg had arrived in Penn- sylvania in 1742 and was organizing congregations more thoroughly and building churches. The Mo- ravian missionaries were extraordinarily active in making converts in Bethel and Tulpehocken, and had come even to Hebron. In 1738 the Reformed
*There do not seem to have been any Reformed participating in the organization of 1733. The Heilman family which had settled in the township in 1732 were Lutherans.
22
THE HILL CHURCH.
Heilmans had come in and the Kelkers had arrived in 1743, and there was thus the nucleus of a Re- formed congregation in the region. To crown all, Rev. Stoever had been publicly deposed from the ministry in the quarrel at Tulpehocken by Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians in 1742, and in 1743 the new Christ church which Stoever's friends had helped to build, and of which he had hoped to be- come pastor, had at the suggestion of Muhlenberg elected Tobias Wagner as pastor. It was no won- der, therefore, that Stoever, thus cut off, should turn his energies to the completion and improvement of the Hill church. Tulpehocken had had its great dedication in 1743, and Stoever, no doubt, decided that the Hill church should also be improved and completed and have a ceremony of dedication. As his people were few in number, and the Reformed element now also needed church accommodation, and as the Reformed doubtless contributed liberally to the completion of the building, and as both felt the necessity of saving themselves from inroads that were being made by the Moravians, the two denom- inations united in the adoption of a mutual agree- ment which specified that both had built and both should have a common interest in this church. This agreement seems to be in the language of Stoever and was probably drafted by him. It was signed on the day before the dedication, Rev. Stoever be- ing at the head of the Lutheran congregation and Rev. Conrad Templeman the pastor of the Re-
23
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
formed congregation .* The dedication occurred on the 12th of August, 1744. The agreement con- sisted of twelve articles and each congregation bound the other in the full sum of 100 pounds Penn- sylvania currency to keep the agreement "firmly, strictly, constantly, at all times and inviolably with- out a single perversion and without any guess work, according to the true literal meaning." It was "Done at Lebanon the IIth of August, the year of our Saviour 1744." We reproduce the first five of the articles :**
HILL CHURCH. RULES OF 1744.
Lancaster County, in the Province of Pennsylvania. In the name of the most Holy Trinity, of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Whereas, it has pleased God to unite the hearts and minds of those men and inhabitants in the region Quitebehoehle, in the Township of Lebanon, (who profess both the Evangelical Lutheran and Reformed Religion,) in peace and love, so that they have unanimously and in common built a church and house of God, bounded on the south east by John Kreuter's plantation, south west by Thomas Clark's, north
*Conrad Templeman settled in Lebanon County at Templeman's Hill near the present village of Rexmont as early as 1727. He was forty years old at the time and a tailor by trade. He taught school and offi- ciated somewhat after the manner of a lay reader at the Reformed services, remaining unordained for the first twenty years of his activity here. His ministrations to the Reformed people of Lebanon County extended from 1727 or 28 to 1760 or 61. He took up two hundred acres of land from the Government. Rev. Michael Schlatter, the Father of the Reformed Church in the State, came to America in 1746, and in 1747, while visiting many localities in Pennsylvania, and encouraging the Reformed congregations to unite themselves into a Synod, also paid a visit to Templeman and found him "a man of correct views, quiet and peaceable in his spirit, by which he has won the love and respect of the community." Schlatter recommended that "the old man should be or- dained." Rev. Templeman also preached at the Grube Church, and at Swatara. In 1760 he was stone blind and could hold service only in his own house. He died about 1761. See Dr. Klopp's "History of Tabor First Reformed Church."
** As they are given in "The Trial of John Keller and others, Lebanon, 1842," p. 27, in translation.
24
THE HILL CHURCH.
west by Peter Heylman's, north east by John Ringer's. Now as this house and church shall, on tomorrow, the 12th of August, it being the 12th Sunday after Trinity, be the first time consecrated and blessed by the members of these two congregations, and those attached to their respective denominations, by means of the preaching of the word of God, and the administering of the Holy Sacraments, to which God may, from above, abundantly impart His grace and blessing by the ald of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ. Now, in order that, as well at pres- ent as in future, no controversy, discord, or quarreling whatever, may arlse, either among us or our posterity, in the mutual use of this house but that regard be at ail times had to it, with all diligence, that the name of God be honored and praised, both by the respective ministers and hearers, the kingdom of Christ increased, our neighbor built up and as far as possible the happiness of ail men promoted. It has been agreed In regard to the following points, to set theni down on paper, and to sign them, by which both congregations bind themselves to each other, by the help of God, to observe them at all times strictly, firmly and in- violateiy.
1. No other doctrine shail be proclaimed in It, nor the Sacraments be otherwise administered, than solely according to the ciear and pure rule and guide of the Word of God, In the whole of the Holy Scriptures, both of the Oid and New Testament, and according to the institution of Jesus Christ, to which is added on the part of the Evangelical Lutherans the unchanged Confesslon of Augsburg, and the symbolical books of the same; but on the part of the Evangelical Reformed, the Heidelberg Catechism, together with their Confessions.
2. The respective ministers shall avoid in thelr sermons ali unneces- sary dispute and offensive controversy In relation to matters of reilgion, but rather direct their mind and thoughts upon this, that the Word of God be preached as weil pure and unadulterated as also clearly, intellig- Ibly, and in an edifying manner.
3. No other preachers but such as have been regularly called either by the whole congregation, or at least by most of the members of the congregation, shall have right and power on elther side to perform their official duties in the same.
4. It shall absolutely not be allowed by either party to any preachers, let them call themselves Lutheran or Reformed, if they have but the slightest external fellowship with those so called Herrnhuthian or Mora- vlan Brethren, much less if they should even teach their principies, nor yet to any other Sectarian ministry, of whatsoever name they may be, to teach in this church, nor even to perform the slightest clerical service.
5. Should it ever happen, sooner or later, that such a preacher, let him call himself Lutheran or Reformed, or otherwise, should come in sheep's-clothing, and persuade the congregation by iles and deceptlon, to accept him as ciear and true, but the deception be some time after revealed but in the slightest degree, then such an one shall Immediately, without delay, be dismissed.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHURCH IN GRUBELAND.
COMMUNION FLAGON
FEW years after the estab- lishment of the Berg Kirche, the Grube Kirche sprang up. The one church was in the hill country, the other in the limestone valley. The one site was in the "Gravel-land," the other site in the "Grube-land." This "Grube-land" is the
heavy clay land of South Lebanon township. Unlike the "Berg-land," it was not heavily timbered at the time of its first settle- ment, and was covered densely with a low, rank growth of vines, bushes, and weeds, which it be- came necessary to "grub" out before it was possi- ble to plough, or even to use a rude path .* Here, about two and a half miles southeast of Lebanon a church was organized by Rev. Stoever on the Lu- theran, and Rev. Templeman on the Reformed side.
*Rev. J. W. Early in The Lutheran of 1879. Rev. Early says he can- not vouch for the correctness of the tradition, but states that it was generally accepted as the true explanation of the term "Grubeland" forty or fifty years ago. This is corroborated by Messrs. John and Tobias Reinoehl, who state, further, that the necessity of digging such deep wells ("Brunnen graben") in "Grubeland," in contrast with the surface waters in the "Gravel-land," had something to do with the be- stowal of the name.
26
THE CHURCH IN GRUBELAND.
On the Brubaker farm evidences of the foundation of this building and of the old graveyard are still to be seen. It seems impossible to dispel the mys- tery that hangs over the origin and history of this congregation, from which undoubtedly a part of the membership of Salem church was drawn. It was supposed for a long while that old Father Roland, of South Lebanon township, had documents and the records of this church in his possession, but such seems not to have been the case. In any case the substantial farming population of South Lebanon township worshiped there before Lebanon was laid out, and the church seems to be the onereferred to as having been used by the Moravians for their communion in 1750.
Apparently years after its erection (and possibly because a new location for worship in the proposed town of Lebanon was being spoken of), "on the 7th of January, 1755, Jacob Hocker (or Hocker) conveyed by deed two acres of land to Christopher Long, George Ellinger, Jacob Grove and John Wolfersberger, for the use of the Reformed and Lutheran congregations at Grubbenland, on which the church was built."* Two years later the con- gregation received a chalice marked, "A. W., 1757," for the administration of the sacrament, and three years later a flagon marked, "J. E., 1760," was added. These are the earliest historical me-
*Dr. Klopp's "History of Tabor First Reformed Church," Lebanon, Penna., p. 8.
27
OLD SALEM CHURCH.
morials of Salem church .* The Moravian church at Hebron, and the holding of Lutheran services in Lebanon, together with the erection of a Reformed church there in 1762, ** may have caused the mem- bership to decline, and the building was said to have been in a dilapidated condition by 1768 and to have ceased to be occupied by that time.
On the 22nd day of November, 1762, JohnKarn- sher and wife conveyed to John Steiger, Frederick Wolfesberger, Martin Hiller and David Harpster, trustees and wardens, for the use of the German Lutheran and Calvinist congregations, the [two] acres and twelve perches of land between George Glassbrenner and John Hamsher, now in S. Leba- non Township, for the sum of five pounds .*** This was for burial purposes.
*The Chalice of 1757 and the flagon of 1760 do not seem to be among the historic communion vessels of Salem Church. One well acquainted with these vessels states that she remembers years ago a little upright tankard or pot which was kept with them, but if such was the case it has disappeared.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.