St. Paul's 125^th Anniversary Address by Dr. Charles Glatfelter, Professor Emeritus of History, Gettysburg College

Dr. Charles Glatfelter, Professor Emeritus of History, Gettysburg College, addressed the congregation of St. Paul’s on October 18, 1992, in ceremonies marking the 125th Anniversary of the founding of the church. This transcript is used by permission, which is gratefully acknowledged:

The white man, immigrants, our forefathers have been west of the Susquehanna for more than 250 years. Most early immigrants located in settlements, not off to themselves. The oldest settlement in what is now Adams County was located in the southeastern part along the Monocacy Road, which passed through what is now Hanover, Littlestown, Taneytown on to the Potomac, and it had a name by which it was well known. It was the Conewago Settlement and it dates from the 1730’s, some 260 years ago. Almost every settler in the Conewago Settlement was German or Swiss. Most of them were Lutherans or Reformed in Europe. They were interested in having the Church in their new homes, on their own terms, however, and not quite the way they had known it at home. One of the things they did not like particularly was the extent of authority in the Church back home.

Now between 1735 and 1743, a Lutheran pastor passed through the Settlement on his way to Maryland and Virginia about twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. He didn’t live here in Littlestown – there was no Littlestown of course – he lived near New Holland in Lancaster County and his name was John Casper Stoever. He baptized Lutheran children and Reformed children.

One of the outstanding characteristics of the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Pennsylvania in the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries was the fact that they suffered from a terrible shortage of pastors who could be considered regular Lutheran or Reformed pastors.

At the same time, these people started out quite poor. It’s hard to imagine moving into a brand new country where there was almost nothing of civilization already created, and these people were very poor until they had found markets somewhere for their surplus wheat and their surplus skins and their surplus meat. It took a while for that to happen. In the Conewago Settlement and in many other settlements there was much intermarriage where the father was Lutheran and the mother was reformed or the father was reformed and the mother Lutheran.

In a situation such as I’ve described, this terrible shortage of pastors, the poverty, and the intermarriages in many settlements, Lutheran and Reformed people banded together – they formed two congregations – one Lutheran and one Reformed – they built one church – and we know this as the Union Church. Lower Bermudian was a Union church; most of the early churches in York County were Union churches. But interestingly enough, there was not a Union church in the Conewago Settlement, and that might have been because there were quite a number of people there, maybe enough to support two congregations.

Now the first Lutheran church in the Conewago Settlement was founded in the eastern part and we know it today as St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Hanover, which is preparing to celebrate its 250th anniversary next year. They’ve had a hard time deciding where they wanted it to be – they’re now at their third location. First of all, they were between Hanover and McSherrystown and then they were out near Utz Potato Chip Company, before Utz was there of course, and now they’re in town.

The first Reformed church turned out to be in the western part of the Conewago Settlement, and we know it today as Christ United Church of Christ. Pardon me for calling the United Church of Christ people reformed from this point on. This church – Christ Reformed Church – is where it’s always been – they have never had the urge to move.

The Conewago Settlement was a success. The population grew, there was material progress and it eventually produced two additional congregations in the settlement. In 1763 a man by the name of Richard McAllister, who was not German, but Scotch-Irish, laid out a town in the eastern part of the Conewago Settlement, and that is the town of Hanover. Almost immediately – almost immediately – some of the Reformed people in the eastern part of the Conewago Settlement established a Reformed congregation in town, and we know it today as Emmanuel Reformed Church in Hanover.

Now if the Reformed were going to do that in the eastern part of the Conewago Settlement, would you not expect the Lutherans to do the same thing in the western part? And indeed, in 1763, the very year in which Hanover was formed, a congregation developed in the western part of the settlement, which was a Lutheran congregation. It was called the Congregation in Germany Township – that was its first name – and the first pastor opened a congregational register in which to record baptisms. He had a most beautiful handwriting. If I envy him, it’s that he could write a better hand than I’ve ever been able to write, or ever expect to be able to write. This is what he wrote on the first page of that register – he wrote it in German, but I’m going to read it in the English: “Church Book for the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in German Township. In the year of Christ 1763, the thirteenth of November, this Church Book was begun to the Glory of God and for the use of the Christian congregation; in which not only the names of all Christian children, but also the birth and baptismal dates together with their witnesses are written.”

The beginning was made by Carl Frederick Wildbahn, Evangelical Lutheran pastor. Where did he live? Here in Littlestown? Well, there was no Littlestown yet, no – he lived in Hanover. And where did he preach? Almost exactly the time that he opened a Church Book for the Congregation in Germany Township, he began to make entries in the register of St. Jacob’s, the Stone Church in Codorus Township in York County, and if you know where that is, you can’t reach it in fifteen minutes. He was also the pastor in Winchester, Virginia. He was also pastor in Sharpsburg, down near the Potomac. At times, this man had as many as eight or nine congregations he tried to serve from his home in or near the new town of Hanover.

In the first five years, Pastor Wildbahn entered forty-three baptisms in the register for the Congregation in Germany Township – forty-three in five years, which means there were a lot of Lutherans in and around the western part of the Conewago Settlement. And he entered a lot of baptisms in his other registers, too.

Now therefore in about two years, 1763, 1764, and 1765, we went from two congregations in the Conewago Settlement to four. It is obvious that they were not tiny, struggling congregations. A congregation of forty-three baptisms in five years can’t be a tiny, struggling congregation.

But now, at almost the very same time there was another important development. In 1765, Peter Little laid out a town along the Monocacy Road, which in his early deeds he said “shall forever afterwards be called Petersburg”. Within five or ten years, people were calling it Littlestown in spite of the founder’s admonition.

The land that Peter Little owned, and it came to several hundred acres, just happened to be a short distance east of this “Church in Germany Township”, which before very long got a “churchly” name – St. John’s. Some towns that were founded about this time were not particularly successful. They did not grow for a long time; they did not grow very much. Peter Little’s town was a success, and within a few years after he laid it out, the York County Court decreed a road that was supposed to start in the mountains opposite Shippensburg and come south and east and head towards Baltimore, and it just so happened that it intersected the Monocacy Road in the middle of Peter Little’s town, so all of a sudden this town is at the crossroads of two important roads, and it continued to grow.

I grew up in a town which was along the Northern Central Railroad, in which there was a foundry started in the 1850’s, a foundry which attracted people, a foundry which tended to give people of that time some encouragement, uplifted them and within a few years they got a charter from the York County Court as the borough of Glen Rock. Almost at that very same time, the Lutherans in that town, who had belonged to a congregation out in the country, decided that there should be a Lutheran church in Glen Rock. And within a very short time, there was.

Now at almost exactly the same time that the foundry was established in Glen Rock, Amos Lefever, a good Lutheran member of St. John’s, founded a foundry in Littlestown, and within a short period of time, there was a railroad that came from Hanover to Littlestown. During the Civil War, the leaders in the community of Littlestown decided that Littlestown should be separated from Germany Township and should be chartered as a borough with its own self-government. And in 1864 that happened. It is striking that between 1850 and 1860 the population of Littlestown went from four hundred to seven hundred and by 1870, it was eight hundred fifty – a town that in twenty years had more than doubled. How long, how long would it be before the Lutheran and Reformed people who lived in Littlestown would decide that they wanted their own congregation in town? The Reformed apparently decided just before the Civil War that they wanted their congregation in town. Their efforts were probably diverted by the war, but in August of 1868, they laid the cornerstone of Redeemer’s Church. The weekly newspaper of the Reformed Church soon thereafter carried a story written by someone who had been at that cornerstone laying, and listen to what he said: “The erection of this building is of great importance for the interests of our Reformed Church in that Section. Christ Church, in which the people worshipped for years, is two miles from town. The necessity of having a church in town was felt long ago, but it was not met until now. A commendable feature of the movement is that the members in the country, instead of resisting it, as is often the case, cheerfully lend their aid and are taking an active part”.

Well, so much for the Reformed - they got their congregation, and if they’re interested in its history, they’ll be celebrating an anniversary quite soon. Let’s come from the Reformed, over there in the eastern part of town to the Lutherans in the western part. We have to go back a little bit and get a running start.

Ever since Carl Frederick Wildbahn was founder and first pastor of St. John’s, either every Lutheran minister who served St. John’s or almost every Lutheran minister had lived in Hanover. In the late 1850’s, St. John’s was part of the Hanover charge, which consisted of five congregations. In 1858 the Synod agreed that the Hanover charge should be divided, that St. John’s and St. Luke’s at Bonneauville should be taken from the Hanover charge, and become what we might call the Littlestown charge, and that the new pastor should take up his residence in or near Littlestown. St. John’s decided to build a parsonage, only a few doors west of where we are now, and the pastor moved into the parsonage early in 1860.

Now the country is about to be engulfed in war, and little or nothing happens until almost precisely one year after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, when St. John’s – let me repeat it because this is incredible – St. John’s buys this lot – and proceeds to build a church. In the fall of 1866, in September, the cornerstone for this church is laid and the newspapers report in the succeeding months that “there is progress”, that “the Lutherans are building a new church in Littlestown, and that the Reformed are about to do the same”. And then the church is finished. On October 13, 1867, one hundred twenty-five years ago last Tuesday, this church was dedicated.

One of the newspapers said that “there was a vast concourse of people there”. One of the newspapers says “five railroad cars were jammed with people from Hanover who came to the dedication” and that this church was modeled after the old St. Mark’s (obviously not the new St. Mark’s) – the old St. Mark’s in Hanover, which was a peaceful secession of persons from the old St. Matthew’s church. One of the newspapers says that this church could comfortably seat five hundred people; one of them says later that this church could seat comfortably six hundred people, and one of them says that this church could set comfortably seven hundred people. Before I leave today, I want to count how many people could comfortably sit in this church and find out if was five hundred or six hundred or seven hundred.

There were six preachers here to participate in this dedication service. One of them went back home to Baltimore and wrote a story that appeared in the Lutheran Observer, which was the weekly Lutheran newspaper. He said, “The pulpit is in a recess, with a platform large enough to support the erratic propensities of even Henry Ward Beecher” which I take to mean that there’s enough room for a preacher to pace back and forth while he was preaching.

But.. but.. at some point between the time this lot was bought by St. John’s and this church was dedicated, the relations between John and Paul became strained. The people who built this church decided at some point, and I don’t know when, that they were going to organize their own congregation. And this they did, this month in 1867, and early in 1868 they got from the Adams County Court a charter which turned an unincorporated association called St. Paul’s into a corporation known as St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. It seems to me that it was all but inevitable that the people who wanted a church in town would want to organize a separate congregation. That’s what happened at Redeemer’s, that’s what happened over and over again, that is precisely what happened in the case of the church in which I grew up and in which was confirmed in Glen Rock – exactly what happened.

So the people of St. Paul’s asked the people of St. John’s to meet so that they could talk over some things. “Let’s talk over how we could share the services of Rev. Samuel Henry” - who lived in the parsonage a couple of doors west of here – “how can we share in his services?” The people of St. Paul’s pointed out that they had helped to build that parsonage; they had a certain right to it and they would like to sit down and discuss what that right was. They also wanted the right to bury in the graveyard. Some of the founding fathers of my home congregation chose not to be buried up on the hill in Glen Rock where the Lutherans have their cemetery, but out in the country at Fissel’s which had been the mother church, and the people of St. Paul’s thought that they ought to have the right either to bury at Mt. Carmel or out at St. John’s.

The fact is that the leaders of St. John’s said, “No, we don’t want to talk to you”. And the next thing they said was “We want Pastor Henry out of that parsonage”. So they went to the Justice of the Peace, presented their case, and said, “give us a warrant so that the constable can go and put Pastor Henry out”. The Justice of the Peace gave the warrant. The constable went and he was met by about twenty-five fathers of this congregation who in a way not described prevented the constable from serving the warrant. There were two other people who not only prevented the constable from serving the warrant but roughed him up and so the next thing you know, there is a case in the Court of Common Pleas of Adams County, a case against twenty-five persons, and I’m going to read what the description of the case is: “for resisting an officer in the discharge of his duty, arising out of an attempt to dispossess Rev. Samuel Henry from the Lutheran parsonage at Littlestown”. There was also a case against the two men who had roughed up the constable – that charge was assault and battery. That case was heard in the court about a year after this church was dedicated. What happened was this – Pastor Henry decided, “I’ve had enough” so he left and went pretty far away – he went to New Jersey. Then the court in Gettysburg, the judge in Gettysburg, looked at the case, came to the conclusion that the Justice of the Peace had no jurisdiction in the first place, and since Pastor Henry was out now, the case collapsed. The West Pennsylvania Synod – it hasn’t existed since 1938, but there might be a couple of people here who remember the time there was a West Pennsylvania Synod that included Adams County – the West Pennsylvania Synod, in deciding where to meet in 1868 decided it would meet right here, so they came here and by coming certainly gave their blessing to what had happened. If they had thought that what had happened here was very much out of order, they would not have come. Obviously while they were here, they tried to settle the dispute. They appointed a committee and the chairman of that committee was Rev. Samuel Simon Schmucker, who had founded the Seminary, who was the chief founder of the college in Gettysburg, who was one of the best known, probably the best known, and one of the best respected Lutherans in Adams County – in the Synod in fact – and he tried to bring the two sides together. One side – you may guess which side – said, “No, we’re not going to talk”. Consequently, all the committee could do was say, “Why don’t you make whatever private efforts you can, over a period of time, to smooth things over”.

Now, wouldn’t it be better in 1992 not to cover this ground at all? Would it be better in 1992 not be truthful about what happened one hundred twenty-five years ago? Would it be better not to confront again the fact that we are all fallible human beings? I don’t hear this much anymore, but when I was a youngster, I heard this over and over again: “we are creatures who fall far short of the Glory of God”. Obviously, I’ve answered these questions, and I wasn’t altogether sure but that someone might come up here and throw me out for covering the ground again. It does appear to me that the founders of St. Paul’s did follow a proper course of action in their willingness to compromise, and work out their differences with the mother congregation. But before you become all that smug, “we were right then, we are right now, we have always been right in between” – on this one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary maybe the best advice for you and for me – for all of us, comes from the same St. Paul after whom this congregation and church were named. In the tenth chapter of his first letter to the Christian Church at Corinth, “Therefore let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall”.