Eighteenth century Pennsylvania had more religious denominations than any other place in the whole of Christendom, and the range of beliefs, especially concerning baptism, was extensive. The Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Moravians argued that baptism was necessary for salvation. For this reason, parents were urged to have their children baptized as soon as possible. The Anabaptists and the Baptists insisted that infant baptism was meaningless. In between these two groups there were churches of the Reformed faith, who viewed baptism positively, but allowed (in some of the churches) that infants could be saved without baptism. The Society of the Friends was at the extreme, as George Fox insisted that baptism was unnecessary for either infants or adults.
Anyone coming to Pennsylvania from England or Germany was coming from an environment where things were done in a well-ordered, structured way. Because the institutions were not prepared for the number of people in America, the situation changed. Everything became looser and more fluid. The rigid framework was no longer in place. In Pennsylvania, the majority of the meeting houses were in the hands of the Quakers, Mennonites, and Baptists. The only institutions practicing infant baptism were the Presbyterian, the Swedish Lutheran, and the Anglican churches. In the German counties, these churches were scarce. The population, at first, was not very dense. Finding a church within a traveling distance was not easy. So, several children had to wait for several years before they were baptized.
In 1753, sixteen ordained and eight unordained Lutheran ministers served an area now covered by twelve modern counties. Thus, two Lutheran ministers served an area now taken up by one county. But these ministers were not evenly distributed. The heaviest concentrations were around the cities of Philadelphia and Lancaster, and the rural areas were isolated. Many of the Germans were indentured to Quakers and Presbyterians, who were concentrated in area where Germans did not live. Families had to go to extraordinary lengths to have a child baptized, thus, many were not baptized.
Many children were baptized outside their parent's faith for a lack of a minister in the faith . As a result, records are not always where one might expect to find them. Some churches would not baptize from outside the faith. Roughly, the willingness went in the following order, from least willing to most willing:
In the Philadelphia area, many Anglican records of baptism record German names; however, it is not easy to recognize the names, because the name is usually given as an English name. For example, House was written for Haus . The reverse was also true, as many infants of English parents were baptized by Lutheran ministers.
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.