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1751, May - Land: Arts, Lauck and Shower to Heidelberg Lutheran Church

Excerpts from Charles Henry Glatfelter, Pastors and People, Page 244:

Heidelberg

The Lutheran congregation in Heidelberg township was organized about 1750 to serve the general settlement which the Reformed Heidelberg, or Cacusi, about four miles away, had been serving since the 1730s.

In May 1751, John Arts, Abraham Lauck, and Michael Showers contributed a total of about two acres of land to the congregation. (Die Shilgrut fun der Tulpehock 6 (November 1975):24). In a letter to Europe in June 1754, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg wrote about the "well built new church" at Heidelberg." (HN 2:188)

An agreement entered into about 1753 by the elders, deacons, and members "of the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in Heidelberg Township," and designed to provide rules for governing their congregational life, states that Nicholas Kurtz became their pastor late in 1750 and that they laid the cornerstone of their church in 1751.

Heidelberg was a union church from 1876 to 1905. The name St. Daniel's was given to it when the second church was built in 1814-1817. It has also been called the Eck church.

A ministerium congregation from the beginning, Heidelberg shared the long pastorates of Nicholas Kurtz and Emanuel Schultze in the Tulpehocken charge. Kurtz served from 1750 to 1770 and Schultze from 1771 to 1809.

This is St. Daniel's church, one mile north of Robesonia.

Sources:

DH; MJ; Lutherans in Berks County . . . (Kutztown, 1923), pp. 490-492.

Charles Henry Glatfelter, Pastors and People: German Lutheran and Reformed churches in the Pennsylvania field, 1717-1793, Volume 1, Pastors and Congregations, Breinigsville, PA: Pennsylvania German Society, 1980. Page 244, 1751, May - Land: Arts, Lauck and Shower to Heidelberg Lutheran Church.