In the last note, I mentioned the reluctance with which the European churches passed control to the churches in the colonies. This was brought home by a comment in the book, " Understanding and Using Baptismal Records " by John T. Humphrey which I was reading last night.
"The Church of England kept the centuries-old tradition that the bishops should perform the rite of confirmation. This position had significant implications for the Anglican Church in the American Colonies prior to 1787. Simply stated, before 1787 there were no Anglican bishops in the Colonies who could confirm church members. Any member of the Church of England who desired confirmation had to journey to England for its administration. Thus, no pre-1787 confirmation records exist for members of the Church of England in American record depositories."
While we are interested in the German churches, this was a typical behavior pattern. To overcome such limitations, our laymen ancestors proved imaginative in finding solutions on their own.
In the Robinson River Valley, probably in 1732 but perhaps in 1733, a school teacher by the name of Johann Caspar Stöver passed through, going from North Carolina where he was teaching, to Pennsylvania, where a son, of the same name, was a pastor. Whether this was the preferred route for travel or whether he wanted to visit the German community there is unknown. He was probably aware of the community. Any outside stranger who brought news was welcome; this was the principal means by which news was disseminated. The leaders of the Lutheran church, such as it was, made an offer to Stöver. Come and be our minister, they told him. Though Stöver was an educated man with university training, he was reluctant as he felt he needed more theological training.
The community did succeed in getting him to accept their offer. In order that he might begin his duties as soon as possible, they sent him with one of the older members of the congregation, George Sheible, to Pennsylvania where they found a Lutheran pastor who was willing to ordain Stöver. Whether this ordination met all of the specifications normal to the situation is debatable. The congregation was willing to accept the fact that he was ordained.
To support Stöver, the congregation agreed to make a fund raising effort, to procure a farm for him and to supply him with a house. Andrew Kerker was elected as treasurer and he kept a set of books for this period which have been preserved for us. A few years later, Kerker died and he may have been holding some of the funds. To make a public accounting and to clear his estate of any obligation, this account was filed in the Orange Co. Court House and has been preserved for us. Genealogically, the document is a bust but it does say a lot about life in those times. We will look at some items in it in the following notes.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.