THE MYSTERY OF LUTHERANISM IN MARION COUNTY, FLORIDA, PART 2

Last week I was puzzling over the beginnings of the Lutheran Church Florida. Why did the first missionary pastor, Charles H. Bernheim, come to Marion County? The first clue lies in the way Lutherans developed missions: they looked for a place where there were Lutherans and then sent pastors. They didn’t go off into the middle of nowhere hoping to convert whoever they found. The first act was always to gather together Lutherans who were already present in an area.

Many of the early settlers in Marion county were from South Carolina, and one area of South Carolina in particular, Dutch Fork, was populated by Lutherans. So I needed to find people from that area in Ocala.

The break through I needed came from a recent article “Adam thought Pineapple would do well” in the Ocala Star-Banner, May 16, 2010, written by David Cook. Mr. Cook, a former editor of the Star-Banner, is an avid local historian who writes the most fascinating articles. The Adam mention in this article refers to  Adam Eichelberger (pictured below). A German name immediately caught my attention. Was he a Lutheran, perhaps? The article mentioned that he was born in Newberry, South Carolina. That was a center of the Lutheran Church.  When I later learned his full name was Adam Luther Eichelberger, I was convinced. 

Doing some genealogical research, I learned that Adam was the son of Col. John Eichelberger, Jr. John Eichelberger is remembered for having donated the land in Pomaria, South Carolina, for what would become Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. Furthermore, Adam was not the only son who moved to Marion County. I found at least three of his brothers were here: Jacob Walter Franklin, John Bainbridge, and  Wade S. Eichelberger. There were several other Eichelbergers in Marion County as well.  Both Adam and Wade owned land near Long Swamp where the first Lutheran Church in Marion was organized in 1859 according to the report of Pastor Charles H. Bernheim.

Not far from Long Swamp lived another South Carolinian of Lutheran extraction, Colonel Adam G. Summer, a second cousin once removed of the Eichelbergers (if I have the relations worked out right). He was from Pomaria where the seminary had its first home.  (By the way Summerfield in Marion County was named for him.)

Now we turn to the Rev. Charles Bernheim. I found this biographical sketch of him in a genealogy.  

Charles Bernheim was born April 6, 1831 at Cologne, Germany. His parents were the Rev. John Herman and Lisette (Delmann) Bernbeim. His father of a distinguished Berlin Jewish family, was a convert from Judaism, and became a Lutheran minister. In the infancy of Charles Herman his family settled in western Pennsylvania. He was educated at the Theological Seminary. He was married to Jane Todd in 1855. They had several children. From 1868 to 1874 the Rev. Bernheim served Friedens, Guilford Co.; St. Paul, Alamance Co.; St. James, Concord and other churches in Davidson and Forsyth counties. Bernheim died January 20, 1901, and was buried near Conover.

Informative, but not very helpful in understanding his work in Florida. I know  that Bernheim was an 1855 graduate of Southern Seminary. When he was at the Seminary, the president was Lewis Frederick Eichelberger. I haven’t worked out his relationship to the Florida Eichelbergers.  What was Bernheim doing between his graduation in 1855 and his move to Florida in 1859? So far I have discovered only one clue.   

Dec. 24th, by Rev. Charles H. Bernheim, Dr. Wm. T. McFall, to Miss Mary Ann, daughter of Jacob Singley, all of Newberry, S. C. Marriages and Deaths, Lutheran Observer and Southern Lutheran, Issue of January 29, 1858, p.174  

So that puts his ordination not later than 1857 and places him in Newberry in December of that year. Of course, Newberry is where the Eichelbergers were from. I think the Eichelbergers and Summer could have provided the core for the Long Swamp Lutheran church.

One more deduction. In 1859 Bernheim reported to the South Carolina Synodical Missionary Society that “Three churches are about to be erected, and a school house large enough to answer as a temporary house of worship. Twenty-four white and twenty colored members have been received, and others are prepared for taking this step as soon as an opportunity is offered.” The South Carolina Synod minutes showed the reception of the Columbia County congregation with 23 members and the Long Swamp congregation with 18 members. Do the math and it is clear that both churches had African members–slaves. This is the unwritten chapter of Florida Lutheranism. The book Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord reaches the inevitable conclusion that nearly half the first Lutherans in Florida were slaves.  This would fit with what we know about the Eichelbergs and Summer. They were all slave holders in Marion County.

One more surmise.  Bernheim had mentioned a school house being built that could serve as a place of worship. I’d venture that the school house was used for Freestone Springs Academy which he established at Camp Izard. A look at the map in last week’s blog shows that both Long Swamp and Camp Izard were in the Southern part of Marion County. Although there was no direct road between the two locations in the 1850s, there were roads that would have allowed people to travel from one location to the other without going all the way into Ocala. I find it interesting that the first source I discovered for the school came from an oral report by W. E. McGahagin, a prominent resident of Long Swamp.

What happened to the church in Long Swamp? It probably closed after the Civil War. With emancipation the former slaves would not have remained in their former master’s church. Adam Summer died in 1866. Jacob Eichelberger moved to Sumter County between 1868 and 1871.  Pastor Bernheim had moved to North Carolina by 1868. Bethlehem Church in Columbia County had no pastor between 1864 and 1869. When Pastor S. W. Bedenbaugh arrived there in 1872, his attentions were confined to expanding the work in Columbia County*. 

My guess at this point is that Lutheran work in Marion county ended with the departure of Pr. Bernheim, not to be revived until a Missouri Synod Pastor, F. J. W. Reinhardt began preaching in Martin, north of Ocala, around 1890. That work came to nothing. Information gleaned by E. P. Weber from Edgar  Brammer, Pastor in Gainesville 1938-1941, indicated that the church in Martin served a group of English-speaking Lutherans from Pennsylvania who eventually returned to the north. That's another chapter than needs investigating.

It intrigues me that a line drawn between Long Swamp and Camp Izard would pass very close to where my congregation, Our Saviour in Marion Oaks, is located. We don’t qualify as historic: the church was organized in 1979.    

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne









*Note: In case anyone else reads this in working on Lutheran history, the mysterious reference in the Florida Synod history to an Ebenezer church served by the pastor of Bethlehem almost certainly refers to a Lutheran church in the community of Ebenezer, Columbia County. At the point of this writing I also know work was done at Ft. White (1885-1893) and Mt. Tabor, both in Columbia County.)






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