Brickerville United Lutheran Church

Brief History of Brickerville United Lutheran Church

(Emanuel and St. John Lutheran Churches)

​

• Brickerville United Lutheran Church traces its roots in Lancaster County when the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in Warwick was founded in 1730.  The congregation would take the name Emanuel in 1805, split into two congregations with two separate buildings in 1875—Emanuel and St. John—and re-unite as a single congregation again in 1989.

 

• According to the church records, the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in Warwick was founded in 1730.   Lutheran pastoral patriarch Henry Melchior Muhlenberg was a frequent visitor to the Warwick parish, which is considered the oldest “Muhlenberg” Lutheran congregation established in Lancaster County.  Muhlenberg was a frequent guest of Baron H.W. Stiegel, the local iron and glass maker who, more influential in the Manheim congregation, was a benefactor at Brickerville, teaching and even living in the parsonage at one point.

 

• Within a few months after Pastor John Stoever came to Brickerville, (1743), four trustees—Alexander Zartman, Jacob Kline, Lawrence Hoff and Conrad Glassbrenner—acquired twenty-nine acres from John Penn, Thomas Penn and Richard Penn. The congregation erected a crude, log-cabin church, according to traditional sources.

 

• Alexander Zartman and his wife, Ann Catharina Zartman, and son Jacob, aged five, came to America from the province of Wuertemberg, Germany, in the summer of 1728, arriving at the Port of Philadelphia on August 31, 1728.  Zartman became a citizen on September 4, 1728. Appropriately, an impressive stone marker was erected in Emanuel Cemetery bearing the names of Zartman and his wife. This was dedicated on August 4, 1913. The Zartman family holds a yearly reunion at Brickerville in August.  Three volumes of genealogy are in print.

 

• Pastor Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, son of patriarch Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, served this congregation from 1770 through 1773 before taking a call in New York City; F.A.C. Muhlenberg would become the first speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.  The log church building served as a hospital during the Revolutionary War; hence the burial of Continental and Hessian (British mercenary soldiers) therein. 

 

• At a congregational meeting on May 23, 1805, it was resolved to build a new church. The following building committee: George Weidman, Michael Kline, Leonard Miller and Alexander Zartman. The comer stone was laid on August 12, 1806. It was on this occasion that the name of the church was changed from the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in Warwick Township to Emanuel Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Brickerville. The new church building was consecrated on October 25, 1807.  The original wine-glass pulpit was reached by climbing 16 steps.  There were two stoves in the sanctuary that heated the church.  There was an organ in the white sanctuary that included a three-sided balcony.

 

• A parsonage was authorized at a congregational meeting held on March 19, 1812, and was completed in May 1814. About the same time the old school house was rebuilt by Leonhard Miller and Johannes Brecht in the present grove area. A few years later, 1819, the stone wall enclosing the burial ground was erected.

 

• Sometime around 1840, Pastor Miller was serving more than just the Warwick congregation, perhaps as many of seven!  The Warwick congregation officially became part of a “parish” with

       Swamp, Kiesselberg, Weiseichen and Manheim under the pastoral leadership of Pr. Christopher Friederich in 1842.

 

• A steeple was added to the church building and a 520 pound Meneely bell was installed in 1860.

 

• In the summer of 1875 when the church was without a pastor and, the Church Council was divided eight to four on the matter of calling a pastor from the Ministerium or the East Pennsylvania Synod. Pennsylvania Lutheranism was divided into camps at that time: Modernist American Lutheranism (Samuel Schmucker/Gettysburg Seminary/English language/freer worship style) and Traditionalist Lutheranism or “Confessional” Lutheranism (Muhlenberg legacy/Philadelphia Seminary/German), of which Emanuel had aligned itself.  The effect on this congregation was a split of the Emanuel congregation in 1876 over the call of a pastor.  The imminent split fostered a long series of law-suits over a period of ten years. A final decision handed down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1886 resulted in the establishment of another church by the adherents of the East Pennsylvania Synod. This new congregation, St John’s, built within half-a-mile west of the Emanuel Church.  St John’s was dedicated in 1887.

       Between the two church buildings lay the individual cemeteries—which exist yet today as legal entities separate from the Church.

 

• Emanuel organized a Sunday School around 1887.  Records indicate the tradition of the church picnic (now held on the first Saturday in July) began in 1888, with the introduction of chicken corn soup by Mrs. Clara Palm a few years later.

 

• Emanuel Lutheran underwent a major remodeling beginning in 1921 that was completed in 1922.  The result was that the sanctuary was built on the second floor, spanning the balconies; the first floor became a Sunday School area.  The memorial stained-glass windows were placed during this time.

 

• For the next century, the two congregations existed separately in Brickerville.  Both shared pastors in separate parish arrangements with other congregations. 

 

• In 1973, Emanuel and St John Lutheran Churches agreed to share a pastor for four years in a transition period that eventually brought the two congregations into a single identity, Brickerville United Lutheran, in 1989.  The existing BULC building addition was dedicated in 2000 that included kitchens, classrooms, and office space wrapped around the 1807 brick building which was restored to its original configuration of a first floor sanctuary and three-sided balcony.