[There was a short absence on my part; it seems as if I caught a bug.]
Brenda Nay/Carter asked if the location of the Nay (Noeh/Nöh)family in Trupbach was known. I consulted the book, “ Ortsgeschichte Trupbach ” to see if it said anything about the Nöhs/Nays. I did not find it there. We know from the writings of B. C. Holtzclaw that Johannes and Maria Clara Noeh lived at Trupbach until 1734 when they emigrated to America (and lived then in the Little Fork area).
Johannes Noeh was born in 1694 at Klafeld. He married Maria Clara Otterbach of Trupbach in 1718 and thereafter the family appears to have lived in Trupbach. She was two years younger than Johannes, and was the daughter of Johann and Margarethe Otterbach, but no information is given about the exact house they lived in.
Tomorrow is the second Saturday in June and I will be at the Hans Herr House leading tours if the weather does not scare prospective visitors away. Normally, I would have been there last Saturday but the Pennsylvania German Society was holding a meeting at Trappe to which I wanted to go. Trappe is the location of one of the first church buildings that Henry Muhlenberg guided into existence in the year 1743. The building is normally kept locked so a visit inside is not always easy. The Society described the building as, “...the oldest Pennsylvania German Lutheran Church in America.” Of course, this is a very strange description and I chided the President of the Society about the phrasing, which could easily be misleading. The problem in describing the Trappe Church is that a lot of people would like to make it appear that it is older than Hebron church located outside Madison, Virginia. Sometimes they describe it as, “...the oldest unaltered Lutheran Church in America.” The adjective “unaltered” is meant to eliminate Hebron since Hebron had an addition to it. But this description even stretches the truth since in the 1800's the church at Trappe lost its roof in a storm and it had to be replaced, which might even be classed as an alteration, since some changes were probably made. This storm did other damage as the Trappe church had a Tannenberg organ but it was destroyed also by the storm. Much of the case was saved, but enough was lost so that it does not look like a Tannenberg organ.
Hebron can claim to be the oldest Lutheran Church in the Americas still in service as a Lutheran Church. The Swedes had Lutheran churches before Hebron and Trappe but they have changed their denomination.
So, if you are in the area tomorrow, come on over to the Hans Herr House just a few miles outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.
(14 Jun 03)
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.