I may have confused some of you by my references to where the Second Germanna Colony lived. Some people have identified it as the "Hebron" community, but that is unsatisfactory to me. Hebron would refer to the church that some of the Germans attended. So, referring to Hebron is not really referring to the entire community. And it would certainly tend to exclude the English who were living in the community. The other reason for not using the name Hebron is that, in the eighteenth century, the church was not called Hebron.
I prefer to call the community, to be more inclusive, the Robinson River Valley community. This better defines a geographical area, and makes no reference to any one set of people who lived in the community.
The Germans in this area generally fell into two religious groups, the Lutheran and the Reformed. The Lutherans did not call themselves Lutherans. They said they were the (German) Evangelical Church. "Evangelical" merely said they were Protestants. Often both Lutherans and Reformed said they were Evangelical, but sometimes they added words to distinguish between the Lutheran and Reformed religions.
In the Robinson River Valley there were several Reformed Church members, and they did not participate in the church services of the Lutherans. The exception occurs if a Reformed member married a Lutheran, and then the records may show that the Reformed member did participate at the Lutheran church. The records often make it clear that the person was Reformed. At some point, the Reformed people built a chapel of their own, but it appears that it never had a regular pastor. On some occasions they might have had a guest pastor. The Reformed chapel was on Hoffman's land, and the chapel is often referred to by this name.
When the name Hebron came into use is not clear. " The History of the Lutheran Church ", by W. P. Huddle and Margaret Grim Davis, does not tell us. At the time of the Revolution, official documents refer to the German Evangelical Church, which has sometimes been translated as German Lutheran, without any reference to the name Hebron. In fact, there is a hint that the church might have been known as "Hopeful", or the "Church of Good Hope". The English had a simple name for it. They called it the "Dutch" church.
Increasingly, I am referring to the larger community, which includes all nationalities and religions, as the Robinson River Valley; even the area which is often associated with those who lived there is broader than the Valley itself. In the eighteenth century, the more proper name for the church we now call Hebron would be the German Evangelical Church.
(08 May 01)
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.