ROOTS & BRANCHES

There are few terms applicable to Pennsylvania German genealogy that tend to confuse beginner family historians as much as “union churches.”

For example: “What’s that—a church that favored the North in the Civil War?”

Well, no.

My best shot at a definition would be “Two or more congregations of different religious denominations sharing ownership of a church building.”

I should know something about what I’m talking about since the church in which I was raised was such a union church during my childhood.

What I didn’t know until I was well immersed in genealogy was how many different versions of union arrangements there were, particularly among the Lutheran and Reformed congregations in rural Pennsylvania.

I also didn’t realize until well into my adulthood that there was a good reason that these union churches sprang up amongst the Pennsylvania German settlers of the mid-Atlantic who came to America in the 1700s, nearly all from the southwestern German states including many from the Pfalz or Palatinate region.

That’s because unlike the quick-and-dirty version of German history you might get in high school—in which it’s often said “the people had to follow the religion of their ruler”—the actual fact in the Palatinate was that the three faiths allowed to be state-established churches (Catholics, Lutherans, and the Reformed) were tolerated to a degree.

Yes, the established religion would be that of the ruler. But the other two weren’t banned; instead, they had to open their buildings’ doors to the established religion.

So what developed in the mid-Atlantic among the congregations of the 18^th century German-speaking immigrants had a precedent of sharing facilities that started in Europe.

So what does this all mean to the genealogist with roots among the First Wave Germans?

First and foremost is probably that even if a family is considered “staunchly Lutheran” (or either of the other confessions), all records generated by the congregations in a union church should be checked.

In the case of the church in which I was raised, what’s now called Bern Reformed United Church of Christ began solely as a German Reformed congregation in 1736 (and unlike many churches that tend to back date their founding by a generation or more, Bern has a record book to back up congregational activity almost back to that year!).

There is some evidence that Lutherans may have been a part of Bern church in the 1700s, but in 1836 they were granted the privilege of worship in a stone church from 1756 that needed repairs. By the next year, the Lutherans bought half interest in the property for $20 and helped build a new brick edifice.

The two congregations built a second brick church together in the 1910s before the Lutherans left in 1986 to construct their own building.

That’s one story of a union church. Next week’s “Roots & Branches” will profile some other iterations.