Prior to the Revolution, there were three families of Barlows in the Robinson River Valley, where the Hebron Lutheran Church is located. At the church, there are not many records which pertain to the Barlows. Let's look at some reasons that might have influenced why this is so.
A new minister was to come late in 1775. The officers of the church decided to rewrite their baptismal records in a more logical form. They organized the data by family, bought a new book, and devoted, generally, one page to each family. Thus the minister could flip to the page and see just who the members of the family were and how old they were. In doing this, they used the rule that if a family had any children born before 1750, the family would not be included. This may have been because they had no records older than 1750 and no family was to be included unless it was a complete record up to 1775. This family oriented section takes up about 22 pages, with some pages having two families.
The new pastor, Jacob Franck, did not continue this method of record keeping. He used a chronological system. Each time he performed a baptism, he recorded the fact below the last record. What is more important, Rev. Franck was very energetic and popular. He brought people into the church that had not been there in years. So, all of a sudden, starting in late 1775 and running for about three years, we see names at church for the first time. This was his first pastorate; he had been a silversmith. In fact, he was on trial. At the end of three years, he decided to return to Philadelphia and return to silversmithing. Had he continued as pastor, we would have a lot easier time with our family histories.
After Rev. Franck left, there was an irregular supply of ministers. Some of the time there was no regular minister. Record keeping becomes poor. Attendance fell off. Not until the native son, William Carpenter, became the pastor in 1787, did record keeping become systematic and life at the church became revitalized. In the years of the hiatus at Hebron, the Baptists had made inroads into the community.
It is not surprising that most of the records of Barlows are for the years 1776, 1777, and 1778. This is when attendance at Hebron was booming. People were appearing who had not been coming; however, the failure of the Barlows to appear in the earlier years may not be due to their absence, but due to the fact that they had children born before 1750. These families were not included in the rewritten Register of Baptisms.
There are many puzzles in the Hebron Register. Though the internal data implies that it was started in 1750, since the earliest baptisms occur in that year, the book that we have today was started in 1775. In reconstructing the first twenty-five years, the writers took a few liberties and certainly omitted some of the data they could have used. Since the new book was describing the situation at Hebron in the year 1775, all references to families who had moved away by then were omitted.
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.