John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 555

The first major Germanna genealogy book was " Genealogy of the Descendants of John Gar, or More Particularly of His Son, Andreas Gaar Who Emigrated from Bavaria to America in 1732 ".  This was published in 1894 and was the work of two men, John Wesley Garr and John Calhoun Garr, who were father and son.  The research for the book started about 1850 and went on for decades.  Unfortunately, the father never lived to see the finished book.

Very little history of a general nature is included.  The book concentrates on the sixteen thousand descendants of Andrew Garr/Gaar who had been identified at the time of the book.  One page is included on " The Old Dutch Church ", which has comments on the church we know as Hebron Lutheran Church.  There are some errors in these comments.

It says the title deed for the church property was made in 1720.  Actually, no deed was executed for the property until about fifty years after the church was built in 1740.  In the late 1700's when the church was being extended and restored, it was noted that there was no deed to the property.  It stood on the original Kerker property which had been inherited by John Carpenter.  The trustees obtained a deed from Michael Carpenter, the nominal owner of the property.

The Garrs observed the pipe organ in the rear of the church which they said was presented to the church by Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden.  The organ, they said, was made at Lutzen, Sweden, under the direction of the King, expressly for this church and was transported from Philadelphia by wagon.

Wondering where the idea of a Swedish origin arose, I consulted the works of Rev. Slaughter, but I cannot be sure who was the first to arrive at this erroneous conclusion, Slaughter or the Garrs.  Both probably gained their knowledge from an oral tradition.  Slaughter does say that the organ was purchased with money raised in Europe, including that raised in Sweden, where the King had contributed.

Dr. Andrew Grinnan of Madison, Virginia, added corrections to Slaughter's work in Green's book.  He doubted the story of the origin of the organ and quoted, from memory, a New York newspaper saying the organ was built in Listy, Pennsylvania by John Thornburg, a German, in 1760, at a cost of $300.00.  This was a little closer to the truth but still it was far from being correct.

The organ was built by David Tannenburg in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and was installed in 1802 at a cost of $200.00 for the organ, plus the costs of installation and hauling.  Everyone agrees that the organ was brought by wagon from Pennsylvania.  It is hard to say where the money for its purchase came from, for the money raised in Europe during the 1730's was put to work to purchase a farm and laborers, not a church organ.

(NOTE: From the Web Manager of these pages.  As an addendum to John's Notes, here is an article concerning the organ in the Hebron Lutheran Church.  You may see photos of the church, outside and inside, and the cemetery, on the Hebron Church Photo Page .)

"Just a stone's throw to the west of rip-roaring U.S. 29, some 30 miles north of Charlottesville near Madison on 231, lies a magically still and tranquil valley settled in 1717 by indomitable, God-fearing people.

"Their spirit pervades the valley, centered in the little Hebron Lutheran Church which looks out across lush lowgrounds to White Oak Run.

"Scarcely larger than a hand-span, tailored as it was to the timbers they felled in 1740 to build it, the church is nonetheless big enough to house one of the treasures of this nation - a Tannenberg organ of 1800.

"It is impossible to overestimate its significance," said William Van Pelt of the Organ Society of America, the good shepherds of old organs.  Their goal is to rescue them from the valley of the shadow, and find green pastures for one and all.

"The Tannenberg has one of the few existing 18th-Century wind systems in the entire world," according to George K. Taylor, organ builder who restored the instrument in 1970.

"The Madison Tannenberg is one of the earliest organs made in America and the largest one unaltered since its creation by David Tannenberg of Lititz, Pennsylvania.  A few Hebron Lutherans brought it home from Lititz by ox cart in 1802 and installed it on the brief ledge of loft under the barrel-vaulted ceiling, and there it has remained.  It has never been moved.

"A testimonial to the German virtue of using and taking care of whatever is at hand, the organ is played every Sunday.  It has always been played every Sunday, with Clores, Yowells, Utzes, Criglers, and other direct descendants of those first 17 families singing with it today, as they have for 178 years, Martin Luther's own hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."

...
"Somehow the Tannenberg that came to Hebron Lutheran Church in 1802 seems more of an event, for the men who commissioned it were not emperors but German immigrants still wresting a living from the land.  Their hardships seemed to whet their dedication to God.  Seventeen families had left Alsace near the Seigen Forest in 1717 as religious persecution against Protestants intensified.  After building their church in the new land in 1740 and enlarging it in 1790, they resolved to purchase an instrument suitable for the worship of God.  They knew about David Tannenberg of Lititz, the first professional American organ builder.  Originally a cabinet maker, Tannenberg worked with sometime-organ builder Gottlob Klemm, who had learned the craft in Germany.  Tannenberg apparently was guided in the fine points by a hand-copied treatise on organ building by a European, Georg Andreas Sorge.  Tannenberg built 48 or 49 instruments, and the Hebron treasure is one of his last.  The church's pastor, William H. Hall II, knows the history of the organ and the church as well as church order, for he has soaked it up for 10 years, ever since his graduation in 1970 from the Southeastern Lutheran Theological Seminary in Columbia, S.C.

"Tannenberg himself was a Moravian and built organs principally for Moravian congregations. One such is the Single Brothers House in Old Salem, N.C., but is was not blessed with the hands-off policy of the Hebron Lutherans, as a result much of the original mechanism and pipework have been replaced.

"In 1799 Hebron Church opened negotiations for the organ. It dispatched a delegation 200 miles to Lititz to talk to Tannenberg who agreed to build the organ for 150 Pounds Sterling.  In 1802 men from Hebron returned to Lititz with an ox cart to trundle the organ home.  Tannenberg sent his son-in-law, Johann Philip Bachmann, back home with them to install the organ properly.  (There should be a better word than "properly" for a job that has lasted almost 200 years.)  The Moravian diaries of Lititz note that Bachmann returned from his assignment in December, 1802.

"The charmed life of the Tannenberg even brought it unscathed through the Civil War when the metal pipes of other organs were ripped out to melt down for bullets.  The pewter pipes of the Tannenberg were not touched.  The church itself was not so lucky.  It caught the eye of an Italian band leader in the Union forces, named Odina, who in 1868 devoted himself to decorating the ceiling in the Victorian manner.  The original barrel vault with its massive exposed beams had been covered over by a low ceiling (except for the organ loft), giving Odina a splendid expanse for his anachronism.

"The incredible Tannenberg epitomizes the near-immortality of a fine-crafted mechanical tracker system, according to the Organ Clearing House, and from tracker systems they take their text. The tracker is the wooden linkage between the keys and the pipes (to oversimplify) which can always be kept in repair.  In 1960, for example, the first time the Tannenberg was ever worked on, a major part of Tom Eader's job was not installing new parts but removing a bees' nest.  When the organ was restored in 1970, it needed only cleaning and releathering the twin bellows.  The bellows were lined with David Tannenberg's German newspapers published in Philadelphia - one in 1769 and one in 1772. They are displayed in the church hall.

"Apart from the fact that now and then the D-sharp acts up, or the pipes vibrate, Mrs. Elvin Graves, organist, gives high marks to the Tannenberg after playing it 15 years.

...
"As for the incredible Tannenberg, it may be heard any Sunday in the Hebron Lutheran Church raising hymns to the glory of God as it has each Sunday for almost two hundred years."

(end of article)