USA > Pennsylvania > Lebanon County > Lebanon > Old Salem in Lebanon : a history of the congregation and town > Part 4
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It was numbered lot 54. No. 53, the lot on which Boger's Drug Store now stands, was also sold shortly afterward by Stites to Martin Light. On the 4th of March Stites sold the lot at Eighth and Willow streets, where John Henry Miller's property now stands, just opposite the Salem church, on
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THE TOWN OF STEITZ.
Willow street, to George Hats .* Less than a week later John Huber buys from Stites lot No. 48, where the Court House now is, at a rent of six shil- lings annually .** Not so long afterward this Court House lot came into the possession of Jacob Stieb, one of the first members of Salem church. Lot No. 47, the central one on the Court House block, was sold to Philip Gloninger, and with lot 46, was fi- nally sold to Charles Greenwald and the County Commissioners .* In this same year lots No. 28, 29 and 30, beginning at Eighth and Cumberland streets, and running from the Central Hotel and First National Bank to the hardware store, Stites sold to Jacob Shofner .** Lot No. 27, further down, was sold to Peter Biecher. The P. O. S. of A. Hall property, on the opposite side of the street, Stites sold in the same year to Philip Ollinger .* Lots No. 31 and 32, now the properties of Dr. Mease and the Colonial Hotel were also sold this year .** On the 10th of July Stites sold a property on the west
*Fourteen years earlier, on the 18th of August, 1745, Rev. Stoever baptized a daughter of George Hats, John Adam Hambrecht and wife being sponsors.
This lot has had quite a history. The deed was witnessed by George Reynolds, Thomas Clark and Christian Gish. It was subsequently as- signed to Emanuel Harmen, John Snee, Sr., Conrad Reinoehl, Christopher Embich and George Heass. In 1864 and '65 the old log house on the property, occupied by a maiden lady named Henrietta Gabel, was still in possession of the Heass family, whose descendants, I believe, resided in Germantown.
** The witnesses to the deed were George Reynolds, John Scull and Jasper Scull.
*The deed is thus endorsed.
** They were transferred later to Philip Geenwald and Jacob Bushong. *This property was then assigned to Christian Spade, and George Miller in 1762; then to Philip Firnsler, unto Nicolaus Gebhart, to Christopher Waltz.
** They were subsequently transferred to Fred. Yensel and to Frederick Embich, both old Lutherans.
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OLD SALEM CHURCH.
side of Eighth street, between Chestnut and Wal- nut, to Joseph Trout .* On the third of August he gave a deed for lot No. 20, opposite the Salem prop- erty, on Eighth street, on which the brick Bowman building now stands, to Adam Ekard .**
In 1760, not earlier, Mr. Stites realized the ne- cessity of providing the town with facilities for re- ligious worship, and in this year he gave lots of ground to the present Salem Lutheran and the Old Reformed church, as we shall see hereafter. On the IOth of March, 1760, he also gave deed for lot 95 to Peter Shofe,* and at this time or earlier he gave Hennerich Raade one of the lots that con- stitutes a part of the Salem church property He further sold lot No. 9 to David Beecker .** No. 5, the property at Seventh and Chestnut streets,* he also sold at this time, and on the 10th of August Michael Ensminger bought a lot from him.
The following year brought the beginning of a great change in the ownership of the unsold Leb- anon lands. On the 19th of January, 1761, George Stites granted the two tracts of land for which he
*He sold it to Samuel Meyley and it then came into the ownership of Emanuel. Meyley.
** This deed was transferred to Benjamin Spiecker, to Christopher Uhler, to the Township of Lebanon.
*Signed and sealed in presence of John Scull, George Reynold and Jacob Vogt.
** This lot is a part of the property on Willow street near Eighth, lately owned by John H. Hoffer, and for many years used as a private academy for the town, and subsequently for the Girls' High School. The deed of this lot has the signatures of Stites, Reynolds and Trotter.
*The old Shamo and probably the Woomer property.
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THE TOWN OF STEITZ.
had received a patent from the proprietaries in 1753 to his grandson. He gave it in fee for the yearly rent of four shillings .* At this point the Stites' deeds stop and the George Reynold's ** deeds be- gin. These Reynolds' deeds are printed on parch- ment and are well executed and legible today yet. On the 16th of May, 1761, we find Reynolds selling a lot of four perches on Walnut street to Felix Mil- ler. On the 25th of June he sells lot 273 to Chris- topher Embich .* On the 13th of May, 1762, he sold lot II, in the neighborhood of Frantz's furni- ture rooms and Mrs. John Weimer's residence to Peter Schindel. He also sold No. 33, the northeast corner of Eighth and Chestnut streets, at this time .**
There are several essential features in the found- ing of Lebanon by Steitz and Reynolds that de- serve consideration. The first is that the town was not a gradual growth on irregular natural lines, but that it was laid out in streets, alleys and lots, of reg- ular proportions, and in rectangular plan from the very start. Hence Lebanon has none of those
*The lot deeds now read, - "Being a part of the tract of 365 3-4 acres, which George Stits, grandfather of George Reynolds, by his deed dated the 19th of January, 1761, and granted to the said George Reynolds in fee, for the yearly rent of four shillings." Why the transfer was made, we do not know.
** In 1760 George Reynolds was married to Eleonora, daughter of Robert and Maria Trotter. She was born on the 13th of October, 1736, and was baptized and confirmed. She had one child who married Thomas Clark. She died on June 30, 1798, a few weeks after the present Salem Church was dedicated, at the age of 61 years, 8 months and 2 weeks. Salem Church Record. She is buried in Salem graveyard.
** This deed is endorsed on the back by Woolrick (sic) Shnavely, Henry Reinail. Matthais Reinhardt.
*This lot was assigned on Dec. 21, 1762, to Frederick Yensel, a member of the Lutheran church.
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OLD SALEM CHURCH.
crooked winding ways, and very few diagonal streets, such as are found in towns of gradual and unplanned growth. Another point is that the orig- inal plan was drawn on ample and generous lines by its founder. Though the streets are not as wide as they might have been made, yet Steitz placed only three lots in a half square and gave each of the lots the full depth of a half square. A third im- portant point is that the sale of all the lots was on the ground-rent plan. The indentures or "deeds" were in reality an agreement on the part of Stites to sell the lot, and on the part of the purchaser to pay a yearly rental, generally of five shillings, and to put up a proper building on the lot within the space of a year or a year and a half. This last pro- vision tended to some extent to prevent property speculation, and to secure substantial progress in the building of the town. The ground-rent feature had one advantage for the purchaser .* It enabled a settler with a small amount of capital to become the owner of a house of his own more readily than would have been possible if he had been obliged to purchase the lot outright. But we shall see that the plan did not benefit the founders of the town, who went into bankruptcy, and many of the lot owners themselves found the plan unsatisfactory and secured release of the ground-rent and clear title by buying in the rights of the original owners. Other ground rents are still collected today.
*Those of the Penn land warrants which I have examined (in possess- ion of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania) are sales on the same plan.
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THE TOWN OF STEITZ.
If we could see the little village at the period of which we are speaking, we would find it to consist of five or six clusters of houses, perhaps fifty or more in all, with some scattering buildings in between, and with a large yard at the side and in the rear. Each house was a substantial log building "of the dimensions of sixteen feet square at the least," and was obliged to have "a good chimney of brick or stone, to be laid in or built with lime and sand."* Gradually, back of the house there would be built a bake-oven, perhaps a wash-house and a smoke- house, and on the rear of the lot a stable for cows, if not for horses, and a pig-sty. There would also be a large wood-pile, a vegetable garden, and some- times a potato patch upon each property. This was a long step in advance of the period thirty years earlier, when Michael Borst built his cabin in the wilderness, drank his water and milk out of a cala- bash, and as his first occupation every morning went out of his door and killed snakes .**
*Requirement in the deed.
** Rupp's History of Lebanon county. Rupp makes it still worse. He says, p. 304, that "Burst's first work in the morning was to klil snakes in and outside of the hut."
CHAPTER IX.
HOW SALEM CONGREGATION SPRANG UP.
T HE origin of the Salem HENRICH ANDONIUS& &DOEWLER The 17 69, church in the little hamlet on the Quitopahila dates back into the fifties of the Inscription last century, if not earlier. ANDORNO! The statements and facts A Portion customarily presented in Doeuler Communion Service regard to it are so partial as to be misleading, and we have found the subject to be one most difficult of investigation.
Whether the congregation was organized origin- ally by Pastor Stoever or by laymen who desired service to be held at the Quitopahila itself; whether its material was connected with that of the Grube church or not; where it worshiped, when it held its first election for officers and its first service, are all matters involved in obscurity.
The Rev. J. W. Early of Reading believes that by comparing baptisms of Nov. 7, 1752, (p. 27), with a number on page 47 and p. 54 of the Record, that the existence of a Lebanon congregation can be inferred as early as 1752. It is certain, at least that the Steitz deeds, in bounding contiguous properties, recognize the existence of the German
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HOW SALEM SPRANG UP
Lutheran church in Lebanon as early as 1760,* and that in this year it had two trustees and owned a part of its present property. We know also that a delegate from the Lebanon congregation at- tended the dedication of Trinity church, Lancaster, in 1761. We know further that the next year, in June, 1762, the Lebanon congregation sent a del- egate all the way to Philadelphia to a meeting of Synod which was held there .* * Moreover at this meeting, the Ministerium considered the reception of five new congregations, of which Lebanon is the first one alluded to. The Lebanon congregation had sent in a petition to the Ministerium and its delegate, Mr. Rade, had taken the long journey, no doubt, to see what action the Ministerium would take on the petition .* But the church that had thus appealed to Synod in 1762, found itself, with the whole of Lebanon, in a very different situation in 1763, and it was not till 1765 that its land for build-
*See deed.
** "Documentary History of The Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium, 1748-1821. Philadelphia, 1898," p. 60.
*Documentary History of the Ministerium, p. 64. The exact language (in a report to the Halle Fathers) is as follows: "As to the reception of new congregations, there were the following: 1 .- Lebanon, whose peti- tion to the United Preachers was read from a letter by Rev. Kurtz, Sr." It would be most interesting for us to know the contents of that petition, and to learn whether the Tulpehocken pastor, Rev. Kurtz, Sr., was not himself the original moving cause, or at least the encouraging spirit in the organization of the congregation, and whether it was done against the wish and desire of Rev. Stoever. Rev. Muhlenberg admits in another place without stating where or when or how that Pastor Kurtz, Sr., had interfered in Pastor Stoever's field without proper authority. Pastor Kurtz, Sr., was one of the best pastors the church had in that day, and was the first minister ordained by the Ministerium.
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OLD SALEM CHURCH.
ing was again secure, and it was only in 1766 that a building was erected .* Before going into detail on this point, it will be well for us to have two other matters in view. The one is the church building situation in Pennsylvania at this time, and the other is the life and work of Pastor Stoever in these days.
*Even this date is three or four years earlier than historians (except Dr. Lochmann, who endorses it) hitherto have assigned to the building, because they knew nothing of the circumstances described above and to be narrated hereafter and assumed that the petition signed by the members and justices of 1768 preceded all building operations.
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CHAPTER X.
THE FIRST CHURCH LOT.
Old Ing School-House on North best corner of Property next to J.J.Embich's
G
ERMAN towns in Pennsyl- vania were growing rap- idly in the middle of the last century. More than 12,000 emigrants from the Fatherland had ar- rived in the single sum- mer and fall of 1749. from a steles grade of the house which is will sonding intidependent District, Lebanon (Among these was George Henry Reinoehl, whose second son John George was born in Lebanon, July 10, 1752 .* ) And already in 1748 Lancaster had 400 houses, and the Luther- an minister's parochial school was crowded .**. In this year Muhlenberg organized the Ministerium of Pennsylvania and new churches were being built in many towns. The grand St. Michael's church in Philadelphia was being dedicated. The Lancaster church *** had been dedicated in 1747. The Tulpe-
*George Henry Reinoehl, emigrated with his wife, a Swabian, from Wurtemberg, Germany, arriving at Philadelphia November 9, 1749, on the ship "Good Intent." He was a French Hugenot, having fied from France upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He settled in Lebanon town- ship, then Lancaster county, becoming a naturalized subject of Great Britain in 1761. He had four sons, Henry, John George, Conrad and Christopher, the eldest being born in Germany. John George Reinoehl the second son, was born July 10, 1752, in Lebanon where he died in
** Even English and Irish parents applied to have their children ad- mitted to the school.
*** The one preceding the present Trinity edifice.
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OLD SALEM CHURCH.
hocken and Bernville churches had been built a few years earlier. The Germantown church was dedi- cated in 1752. And nearer at hand the Ziegel church at Swatara was being built in 1754.
Though the church-going people in little Leb- anon probably were in the habit of attending ser- vices in the Hill and Grube churches at this period, yet the fact that the Moravian church at Hebron, new and built of stone, was about three times as near to the town as the Hill church, and was in the centre of a settlement, and had pious brethren ac- tive there constantly, and very frequent services, would naturally operate to draw church-goers to Hebron rather than to the Hill or the Grube-land. It would be difficult, especially for the women and children to walk all the way out to the Hill church in winter weather. Besides this, as we have seen, the Indian troubles were now coming on and by 1755 people must have felt very uneasy when trav- eling in the country .*
October 19, 1832, leaving the following sons: Geoge Henry, Michael Hen- ry, John, Christopher, Tobias, Philip and Jacob. He owned nearly all the town-lots in the southern portion of the present borough of Lebanon, which were divided at his death, among his children, some of whom emigrated in the west. Those remaining were George Henry, Jacob, Tobias and Christopher. George H. Reinoehl was born November 11, 1775, and died May 10, 1852. He was a blacksmith by trade and followed that occupation a number of years subsequently engaging in farming in Lebanon township. He was a prominent man in his day, active and zealous in school and church affairs. His children were Samuel; George residing in Minnesota; Helena married John Marquart; and Mary mar- ried John Yorty. The Reinoehl family in our congregation are descend- ents of Samuel.
*Even the meetings of the Synod of Pennsylvania were interrupted from 1755 to 1759 on account of this difficulty and danger in traveling.
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THE FIRST CHURCH LOT
Under such circumstances, especially as the Lu- therans were increasing in the town, it would be . quite natural either that the Rev. Mr. Stoever, who lived at Sunnyside, should come in and preach for them, or that they themselves should decide to be- gin services* as best they could. "On account of the increasing growth of the number of church members," says Dr. Lochmann, "a house was hired in the town, in order to be able to hold service there." None can say in what year this house-ser- vice began. It probably was Mr. Steitz who pre- sented the congregation with their lot of ground, at least as early as 1760.
At that time, and how much earlier we do not know, the congregation must have had lots Nos. 40 and 41, each of a depth of 192 feet and of a width of 66 feet .** These lots were on what is now called Willow street, between the alley and the present church building. They ran in depth toward the Embich property. On the lower corner of the lot on which the church now stands, next to the home of J. J. Embich was an old log building fitted out as a school house, which may have been there before 1760 and used as a place of worship .*** The corner
*As the Rieth's church people had decided to do already in 1727. ** The quarter of deed of Stits to John Henry Raade, in my possession, proves this with reference to Lot 41.
*** The statement that the old school house was built by the congregation about 1766, is based on the phrase "having lately bought a school-house." (Petition of 1768) which perhaps does not refer to this building, which the congregation bought, not built. If there were two schoolhouses, the second one was on the corner where the church now stands, and was the last to be acquired, and the first to be removed. The first schoolhouse seems originally to have been a two-story dwelling house,
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OLD SALEM CHURCH.
lot, fronting along Eighth street, and on which the church now stands, was owned at this time by John Henry Raade,* the same Mr. Raade who went to Synod as the delegate of the congregation in 1762. I have just discovered the original Reynolds' deed made May 20, 1762, to Henry Rawdy, Butcher, in which lot No. 42 is "beginning at a post in front on a street called Water street and from thence four perches to a post. Thence along the Lutherian Church Lot twelve perches in depth to a lot taken up by Peter Swope, thence along the same four perches to a post, a corner of said lot, and from thence along another street called Walnut street 12 perches to a post, it being the place of beginning." This deed is in the church's possession. On the outside it is endorsed by a later, but last century hand, "3s. 4d. sterl. The Lutheran School House Lot."
The line, in modern terms, began at a post at 8th and Willow Sts. and ran 66 feet along Willow to a post. There it met the Lutheran Church Lot and
not such a building as a congregation at this period would erect, and it is possible that the property and building were presented or bought and used for service before 1760, when, we know, the congregation owned the property. The Halle Reports, Vol. II, p. 432, show that the congregation had no school house for school purposes in 1760.
The Reports are speaking of the flourishing schools in the congregation of the Synod, including Philadelphia, the well-ordered school of eighty or more in Reading, a school of forty in Stouchsburg, of thirty in Heidel- berg, and of eighty or ninety in Lancaster. They state that in Bernville William Kurtz (Salem's future pastor) was teaching a school of thirty children, which then grew smaller on account of the high waters. The Reports then say that "in Lebanon there are as yet no schools be- cause of the poverty of the people."
*See Stites' deed to Raade, 1760.
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THE FIRST CHURCH LOT
ran back twelve perches along the Lutheran lot to the Embich property, then 66 feet along the Em- bich property to Eighth St., and up Eighth to Wil- low.
This shows plainly that in 1762 the lots ran north and south in this block, and not east and west, as they are marked out on the Stoever, Lehman, Grit- tinger plan of the town.
After 1760, and no doubt before 1763, John Henry Rahdey made over to Philip Fernsler and Michael Rieter this Willow street lot, No. 42, in trust for "the German Lutheran congregation, set- tled, founded and established in that part of the country where the hereby sold . . . premises is sit- uated and for no other ยท purpose whatsoever forever."*
The First Reformed church of Lebanon also re- ceived its lot in 1760 by an original Steitz deed and by 1762 it had built a small log church upon the ground .** In July, 1761, the Moravians, no doubt, stirred up by the activity of Stites, "surveyed and laid out a town on a tract of fifty acres, on the south
*See deed or counterpart of deed in my possession. This deed was rescued from an old barrel in a garret in Lebanon several weeks ago. Its upper part and a small section below (containing the trustees' signa- tures) are lacking. The mice may have gnawed the time-stained docu- ment. The deed is countersigned thus: "Deed in Trust Mr. John Henry Rahdey to Messrs. Philip Fernsler and Michael Rieder, 2 of the Trustees to the German Lutheran congregation for Lot No. 42 in the town of Lebanon."
** In 1760 George Steitz, gentleman, "well regarding the advance- ment of true religion and piety," gave this "Dutch Presbyterian" con- gregation (as he calls it) its lot of ground for a church and for burial purposes. The lot was eight perches on Hill street, thence along Strawberry alley, thence along Partridge alley (See Dr. Klopp's History of Tabor First Reformed Church, p. 10). The deed was not acknowledged however, until August 21, 1764. It is the old burial ground site.
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OLD SALEM CHURCH.
side of the Quittopehella creek, . . . which they called Hebron." Hebron was never built; instead, the name was given to a large stone building oc- cupied as a chapel .*
The years 1760-1768 were the difficult years of the first building period of our congregation, and what the fathers did and failed to do in a small way in those first years, was a harbinger of similar prolonged attempts in after times. And even at the end of that first period, and for years afterward they were only half done with theirwork .** In 1760 the delegate who gave one of the lots saw the new St. Michael's, in Philadelphia; in 1761 delegates saw the Trinity church in Lancaster, and in 1766 they saw the new Zion church in Philadelphia, *** and the building of a church was undoubtedly in the minds of the people at this time.
*Editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History in an article in 1894 in which part of the Hebron diary, during the Revolutionary period, is translated.
** The congregation seems to have been building in some small and long- drawn-out way through a great part of the thirty-year period after 1760. It was a wise conclusion to which it came in 1796, to resolve to put up a building of the right kind.
*** This latter building was the largest and handsomest church in the land at the time and one of its finest specimens of colonial architec- ture.
CHAPTER XI.
STOEVER IN MIDDLE AGE AND THE TOWN OF LEBANON.
N 1764 the Rev. Mr. Stoever was about 57 years old. For thirty- five years, winter and summer, he had traveled as a missionary through the pathless wilderness. In 1750 he had passed through a severe illness and was unable to speak and almost unconscious for nearly a week. At that time he was still serv- ing five or six congregations and as he was pretty well to do, he did not need much support from them. He had passed through some severe ex- periences. His industry was untiring, but he seems to have been somewhat haughty, deter- mined and independent, and very rough and vio- lent in his manner. His actions in connection with the Tulpehocken quarrels did not commend them- selves to Muhlenberg. In May, 1750, Muhlenberg, who had gone to Lancaster to attend the wedding of Rev. Handschuh, unexpectedly met Pastor Stoe- ver, and Stoever told him that his sickness had made him thoughtful and repentant and had brought about a change in him. Muhlenberg
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OLD SALEM CHURCH.
then asked him whether he would not join the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, which had been or- ganized several years before. In the end Stoever did. The President of Synod and all the mem- from Muhlenberg, but in its place an invitation came to a private conference of pastors. This em- bittered Stoever and he wrote Muhlenberg a long letter. However, thirteen years afterward, in 1763, both Muhlenberg and the members of Synod agreed that Stoever should join the latter, and he did. The President of the Synod and all the mem- bers gave Stoever hand and heart, and put the old misunderstandings aside .*
Pastor Stoever must have been the most widely- known man in the region of the Quitopahila. He was absent from home on his journeys too much to be a constant pastor to the people, and was also engaged in the milling business at Sunnyside and in a large land transaction which we shall note presently. But it was he who entered the Leba- non families and baptized the children. It was to him that the young and sometimes older folks came to be united in marriage.
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