This week I was away from home four days so I had little opportunity to write Notes. In the last two days, Andreas Mielke and I were checking names in the German Lutheran Church records in Madison, Virginia.
Just a word about the name of the church, it had no formal name for the first century of its existence. The members of the congregation were content to call it the Evangelical Lutheran Church , the German Lutheran Church , or the Madison Lutheran Church . They favored the words which described it as German and as Lutheran. The word "Evangelical" merely described it as Protestant, without any other implication. The two main line churches in Germany today are Katholic and Evangelisch (both as spelled in the German language). The latter is a combination of the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches. Sometimes an Evangelisch church will note whether its heritage is Lutheran or Reformed. Other Evangelisch churches besides the Reformed and the Lutheran are called "Frei" Evangelisch or "Free". They are independents.
The first record that we have found in which the Lutheran Church at Madison, Virginia , is named as Hebron was about 1850.
Andreas Mielke and I have been working on the communion lists for this German Lutheran Church. We have a microfilm of the records, though the quality is not the best. We have the work of several others who have went over the records and have contributed readings. There were points of disagreement between all of us. So we decided to look at the original records. This takes advance preparation and an appointment must be set up. I do not advise the casual observer to do this. They would be better off to take the prepared lists. In the end we resolved the names, excepting one or two on which it was impossible to reach an agreement or even any suggestion as to what was intended.
It is our hope shortly to have a revised and an augmented (compared to previous) list of names for publication.
On the way back to Pennsylvania, we decided to go by way of the Shenandoah Valley. Our interest in it is due to the ministers who crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains to serve congregations on the other side. Some of these were the German Lutheran ministers in Orange, Culpeper, and Madison counties, who went West. Also, there were ministers going in the other direction to serve the congregations in Culpeper and Madison counties. This part of our trip took us to New Market, Edinburg, and Winchester. As we traveled, we remembered that Klaus Wust lives at Edinburg. Everyone that we talked to urged us to visit him. So we gave him a call and he invited us out to his farm.
(16 Nov 02)
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.