The Schwenkfelders in Pennsylvania

The crossing of 1734

After being told to leave Saxony, the main body of exiles set out from Berthelsdorf on April 20, 1734. They went down the Elbe by boat to Altona, near Hamburg, then to Haarlem and Rotterdam in Holland, where they boarded the English ship St. Andrew under Captain John Stedman. After a stop at Plymouth in England, they sailed on July 29 and reached Philadelphia on September 22, 1734, after five months of traveling.

They were not the first. George Scholtz had come in 1731, and eleven more arrived in 1733. Smaller groups followed in 1735, 1736, and 1737. In all, about 209 Schwenkfelders in 52 families made the crossing, and roughly four in five of them came on the 1734 voyage.

The day after landing, the men aged 16 and over swore allegiance to King George II, as every German immigrant had to. The day after that, September 24, their leader George Weiss led a service of thanksgiving for their safe arrival.

Gedächtnistag, the Day of Remembrance

That first thanksgiving became a yearly custom the Schwenkfelders call Gedächtnistag, the Day of Remembrance. It is held on or near September 24, usually on the closest Sunday, and the Schwenkfelder Church describes it as the oldest continuous thanksgiving observance in the country. It has a sermon or historical talk and a simple meal of bread, butter, and apple butter. Large anniversaries were marked in 1884, the 150th, and in 1934, the bicentennial.

Making a home in the Perkiomen country

There was no single large tract of land for sale, so families bought or rented farms wherever they could. Two main settlements took shape. A lower district grew up in Salford, Towamencin, and Worcester townships near present-day Lansdale. An upper district formed in the Perkiomen valley, in Upper Hanover and Hereford townships and over the line into the Hosensack valley of Lower Milford and Washington Township in Berks County.

The first years were hard. Families cleared woodland, built log houses, and worked as farmers, weavers, and laborers. They were surrounded by other German-speaking settlers, so language was not a barrier, and in Pennsylvania no one fined them for meeting. For decades they worshiped in homes. In 1782 they organized the Society of Schwenkfelders, and they built their first meetinghouse, at Hosensack, in 1790, followed by the Washington meetinghouse in 1791. Later generations gathered the community's books and papers into a library, begun in 1885 and moved in 1892 to the Perkiomen Seminary, now the Perkiomen School, in Pennsburg.

The church and Pennsburg today

The society was incorporated as the Schwenkfelder Church in 1909. Today it has four congregations, all in southeastern Pennsylvania: Palm, Central in Worcester, Olivet in East Norriton, and one in Philadelphia. Palm, near Pennsburg, was dedicated in 1911 and took the place of the old Hosensack and Washington meetinghouses.

Pennsburg is a small borough in upper Montgomery County. It was named for William Penn at a meeting in 1843, became a borough in the late 1880s, and had 3,889 residents in the 2020 census. It is home to the Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center at 105 Seminary Street. The collection was begun in 1885, became an independent nonprofit in 1947, moved into its own building in 1951, and opened its expanded Heritage Center in 2001. It holds Schwenckfeld's writings, including the 19-volume Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum completed in 1961, fine Schwenkfelder fraktur, quilts, furniture, family papers, and church and cemetery records. The large painting of the exiles landing from the St. Andrew, made for the 1934 bicentennial, hangs there.

The Genealogical Record of 1923

In 1923 the Board of Publication of the Schwenkfelder Church published The Genealogical Record of the Schwenkfelder Families, edited by Samuel Kriebel Brecht. Its full subtitle calls them seekers of religious liberty who fled from Silesia to Saxony and thence to Pennsylvania in the years 1731 to 1737. At more than 1,750 pages, it traces each immigrant family and its descendants, with a reference number for every person.

It remains the starting point for anyone with Schwenkfelder ancestors, and this site offers the book online for family members to search. Since 1980 the Schwenkfelder Exile Society has been collecting updates to it, and descendants are invited to send in their own branches.