THE VISIT OF JOHN BACHMAN TO FLORIDA

A couple of years ago I posted several blogs about the early History of Lutheranism in Florida, especially in Marion County. I have recently come across some more information to share. The biggest surprise has to do with The Rev. John Bachman (pictured), one of the greatest leaders in Southern Lutheranism and an oft-neglected figures in 19th century American History. Bachman (1790-1874) was a Lutheran minister who served as the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Charleston, South Carolina, for 56 years. Her also served as President of the South Carolina Synod, and was one of the founders of both the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary a,d Newberry He was also a naturalist. He worked with his friend John J. Audubon to produce the monumental Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.

In the Spring of 1860 Bachman traveled to Florida for his health. Here is a protion of a letter he wrote to his wife.

LONG SWAMP, MARION COUNTY, FLA., April 1st, 1860.

My dear, blessed Wife : Night before last was a very happy evening to me. Col. S. had taken me on an expedition of sight-seeing and of pleasure to Withlacoochee river and to Panasofkee Lake, where we remained two days. We returned Friday at five P. M. It was mail day and I hoped to hear from home ; so off we started through the pine woods and circled around the trees for sixteen miles. At eight o'clock, P. M., in the moonlight, we reached our destination. Sure enough, there was your long and most delightful letter, written with your left hand. It repaid me for my night's ride ; it relieved my mind of anxiety and enabled me to sleep like a top. Thank God for all his goodness !

I preached to-day, (Sunday), and baptized Bachman Hazelius a boy of twelve, with a skin as black as Corvus-Americanu. Now I think that it will be no sin, and no playing the April fool, if I write you a letter.

There it is: Bachman was a visitor to the community at Long Swamp in Marion County. Long Swamp was the site of one of the three Lutheran Churches begun by Pastor Charles H. Bernheim in 1859. The Col. S. mentioned is undoubtably Col. Adam Summer, formerly of Pomaria, South Carolina whom Bachman had known for some years.

I am convinced that Bachman must have preached on April 1 to the congregation that Bernheim had organized in Long Swamp. And now I have the name of one of the African American members of that church Bachman Hazelius who Bachman baptized. This again underlines that slaves were members of this Early congregation.

Bachman was a contradiction in regard to African-Americans. He supported the Confederacy and slavery, yet he worked aggressively to include African-Americans in his congregation in Charleston. He even encouraged several African-Americans to become ministers. His attitudes probably reflect the tensions that existed in the ante-bellum Lutheran churches in Florida. They included black and white members, but within the social and legal distinction of slave and slave-owner.  Those churches in Marion County couldn’t survive the upheaval of Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction.

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

Wayne




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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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THE MYSTERY OF LUTHERANISM IN MARION COUNTY, FLORIDA

It’s fairly well known that the oldest Lutheran Church in Marion County, Florida, is St. John Lutheran Church in Summerfield, organized 1922. Oldest, however, doesn’t mean first. Lutheranism in Marion County dates back to the mid 19th century. Indeed, the first Lutheran Pastor in Florida was located in Ocala, the county seat of Marion County. And in that lies the great mystery of Lutheran Church history in Marion County.

The Florida Synod of the Lutheran Church in America published a history of the synod with this discussion of Lutheran beginnings.

The earliest record of Lutherans in Florida indicates that there were scattered groups of them in the north central part of the state. Settlers who had located in Columbia County a few miles south of Lake City had come there in the 1850's from South Carolina where they had been members of Lutheran congregations. Their names indicate that they were of German descent.

In 1858 the Evangelical Lutheran Synod and Ministerium of South Carolina and Adjacent States (cited hereafter as the Synod of South Carolina) appropriated $300 to send a missioner to Florida. By using this fund the Synod was able to send a pastor into Florida to investigate the need for pastoral services among the Lutherans who had settled there. This pastor, the newly ordained Charles H. Bernheim, made Ocala his headquarters. Having heard of Lutherans in Columbia County, he went to visit them and began holding services. In 1859 he organized a congregation with the name of Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church, a congregation still in existence.

This congregation, whose members were engaged in agriculture, was first related to the Synod of South Carolina, and later to the Evangelical Lutheran Synod and Ministerium of Georgia and Adjacent States (cited hereafter as the Synod of Georgia) which was organized July 28, 1860. The pastors of Bethlehem Church were members of these synods.

Meanwhile, Missionary Bernheim explored the territory surrounding his Ocala location. He reported to the Synodical Missionary Society, which held a meeting in connection with the Synod's convention in October, 1859, that he had organized two congregations, and was preparing to organize several others. “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 Minutes of Synod list Bernheim's parish as consisting of congregations at Long Swamp, Ocatee, and Columbia County, Florida. The Long Swamp congregation was in the process of erecting a building The Synod received a request signed by twenty-three members of the Columbia County congregation for admission to Synod, and a similar petition from eighteen persons of the Long Swamp group. The Synod accepted both congregations into its membership.

It is not clear why only Bethlehem Church in Columbia County survived, nor what became of the other congregations. For some time in the 1870's and 1880's the pastor of Bethlehem Church ministered also to Ebenezer Church, which is not otherwise identified, and also in 1883 to St. Stephen's Church whose location is not stated.

The members of Bethlehem Church preserved its life during the years of the Civil War and the Reconstruction Period when they had no pastor. Even a hurricane in 1896, which destroyed the church building and devastated the area, did not defeat them, for they rebuilt the edifice and continued the life of the congregation.

The whole story is curious. Why did Pastor Bernheim come to Ocala in the first place? There were other places less wild in Florida to work in. (The Seminole Wars had ended less than 20 years before.) I like solving mysteries, so I have started in on this one.

My first issue was where the information came from that is in this history. Always check your sources. Some of it was from Synodical minutes, the rest from a thesis: History of the Lutheran Church in Florida by E. P. Weber. It took me less than a week to track down the thesis and, $13 later, I have a copy of the pertinent pages before me. Where did Pastor Weber get his informtation? From “The Beginnings of Lutheranism in Florida, and an Outline of the History of Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, Columbia Country, Florida, 1859-1939” by the Rev. E. C. Witt. I need to get a copy of that to see what’s in it, but the source is first-hand information. E. C. Witt was not only the pastor of Bethlehem Church at three different times, he was a son of one of the founding families. The only problem with this is that the whole perspective is from that congregation. As far as I can tell, no one has investigated what was going on in Marion County other than looking at old maps to find out where Long Swamp was. (It’s near modern-day Belleview.)

So off I went to look in local histories for information. The name of Charles H. Bernheim does appear, but always in only one connection. Here’s what it says in "Ocala Prior to 1868" by Eloise Robinson Ott:

There were at this time several private schools, one of which was the Freestone Springs Academy a few miles southwest of Ocala, conducted by Chas. H. Bernheim, a Lutheran minister.

Several sources repeat the same information noting that the school was near Camp Izard,

situated in a strictly moral neighborhood where children and youths are free of the ruinous influence of evil company and the temptation of spending money.

I have confirmed that Pr. Bernheim was living in Marion County in 1860 as his name appears on the 1860 census. However, there is nothing in local records that I can find so far that confirms an establishment of Lutheran Churches here. The history shows that Pr. Bernheim resigned from Bethlehem church in 1861 to be replaced by the Rev. Festus Hickerson. My new discovery is that Charles Bernheim was still in Ocala in 1865 and 1866. I found records of marriages that he performed between January of 1865 and April 1866. Unfortunately the records before that date that are available to me do not record the name of the ministers. I also discovered one marriage performed in 1865 by William A. Julian, the other Lutheran pastor who was sent to Ocala and who would serve Bethlehem church as pastor from 1893-1898 and did subsequent work in Melrose, Florida.

I have some further speculations about Lutheranism in Marion County, but I’ll save them for a future blog.

May the Lord who holds past, present, and future together, bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

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