THE STRANGE HEADSTONE AND THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AT WACAHOOTA

This headstone is at Shiloh Methodist Church cemetery, Marion County, Florida. Laura Frances Geiger Born 19 May 1858, Died 25 Nov 1864. Why is it strange? There was no Methodist church at Shiloh until 1880 and the first burial was 1883. This peculiarity is partly cleared up when we discover the land on which the church is built was given By Mary “Polly” Nunnmaker Geiger, the mother of Laura Frances. According to an article by David Cook,* the headstone was found buried on the church grounds. Frances Geiger was actually buried at the Lutheran Church at Central which was destroyed some time before 1880.

Articles about the Dreher, Geiger and Letiner families indicate that they had originally belonged to the Lutheran Church at Central, a community now vanished, in Northwest Marion County. Mary Geiger’s son-in-law Luther Dreher was the grandson of Godfrey Dreher, one of the founders of the South Carolina Evangelical Lutheran Synod and Ministerium. These families were from the Dutch Forks area of South Carolina which had been settled by Germans.

That’s about all that can be found in local Ocala resources. Another part of the story can be traced by following the work of Charles H. Bernheim, the first Lutheran minister to work in Florida and in Marion County. See  http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/2010/05/mystery-of-lutheranism-in-marion-county.html  and 

http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/2010/06/mystery-of-lutheranism-in-marion-county.html

In 1860 he reported to the South Carolina Synod.

Rev. C. H. Bernheim, our Missionary in Florida, seems to be still prosecuting his work with untiring energy, having now five or more places at which he preaches. The Church, near Long Swamp, has been completed; and also the one at Wacahoota, and the membership of his charge amounts to forty communicants.

Wacahoota was the largest town in Northwest Marion County, although it’s exact location seems to be vague. Old maps show it sometimes in Marion County, sometime to the north in Alachua County and sometimes to the west in Levy county. It might be taken as the general name for the area rather. Eventually Shiloh  would form to the east of Wacahotta and Central between them. The church Bernheim writes of in Wacahoota must be the same as the church in Central.


In 1863 he reported again to the Synod.

Rev. C. H. Bernheim, of Ocala, Florida, informs me that he has resigned the charge of Luther Chapel. He writes: "The Church must be supplied with a pastor, or else the members there will be lost to us." He further states that he has "three other preaching places," that "the Church at Wacahoota is in a flourishing condition, and the audience respectable, but at the other two places the attendance is small."

I have no information about Luther Chapel at this point.

The years following this were filled with turmoil. In 1864 the only major battle of the Civil War in Florida took place in Olustee, about 90 miles north of Ocala. A small battle took place in Gainesville, 45 miles north of Ocala.  Between 1864 and 1866 Bernheim wrote several times to the Synod that he was leaving Florida or that he had changed his mind and was staying. The Synod advised him to transfer to the recently formed Georgia Synod.  For a few years from 1863-1865 he was joined by another Lutheran minister, William Julian.

According to marriage records in Marion County, Bernheim performed three weddings on February 25, 1866 and one on April 18, 1866. That is the last wedding by a Lutheran minister in Marion County in this time-frame. George Wesley Leitner married Caroline Lavinia Geiger on May 31, 1866 at Central Lutheran Church. The minister recorded was E. S. Tyner, a Methodist.

It was not unusual for clergy to serve churches of other denominations. In 1867 Bernheim was working for the Methodist Episcopal Church in Apalachicola, Florida. I think Bernheim left Marion County sometime in the spring of 1866 leaving the church at Wacahoota-Central to fend for itself. Sometime before 1880 the church at Central was destroyed, possibly in a fire. There is no trace of the church or cemetery today. In 1880 Mary Geiger formed a Methodist Episcopal church in her home in Shiloh. It appears that the families that had formed the Lutheran Church at Wacahoota-Central became part of the Shiloh Methodist Church. 

So ended the Lutheran churches in Marion County until the abortive attempt to establish one at Martin a decade later See http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/2010/07/short-history-of-lutheran-church-at.html

That’s what I have for now. I hope to do more research in The Crumley Archives in Columbia, South Carolina this fall to fill in some more of the blanks.

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


Wayne

*David Cook published his last article on the history of Ocala this past Sunday, August 30, 2015. He will be missed,