During the month of February, research associate Emma Hartman will be sharing information that she has uncovered here at the Historical Society of Montgomery County as well as other Montgomery County repositories while looking into the lives of African Americans living in the Perkiomen Valley in the 1700s and early 1800s.
In the eighteenth century, the Perkiomen Valley was home to many German-speaking Protestant, Anabaptist, and Pietist groups, including Reformed, Lutheran, Schwenkfelder, and Mennonite congregations. Copies of the records of these churches can be found at the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center, the Montgomery County Historical Society, and other organizations throughout the region. Records of several early churches in the region document key events in the lives of not only their white German-speaking church members, but of enslaved and free black individuals living in the area as well.
For example, the records of Falkner Swamp Reformed Church in New Hanover note “Isaac, an Ethiopian and his wife, slaves of Mr. Mebery” (iron mogul Thomas Maybury) was baptized at Old Goshenhoppen by Pastor G.M. Weiss in early 1761 and Isaac’s daughter Maria Catharine was baptized in April of that same year. The records of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, “Six-Cornered Church”, in Upper Hanover, contain an entry for Maria Elisabeth, a black child born to parents Andreas Parris and Elisabeth, baptized by Pastor Peter Friederich Neimeyer in June of 1780. The records of Old Goshenhoppen Church in Upper Salford note the 1789 baptism of Dorothea, whose parents were an unnamed black man and his wife Sophia.
Occasionally, an entry includes details that hint at a larger story, such as that for the baptism of Jessy or Jessias on August 22, 1791 at Falkner Swamp Reformed Church. The record states that Jessy is a “mulatto”, or mixed race child, aged 5, whose mother is Catherine Major and whose father is unknown. Benjamin Schneider and his wife Elizabeth, white members of the congregation, served as sponsors for the baptism and the record also notes that they were raising the child. While this record leaves much to speculate about concerning the lives of Jessy and his mother Catherine, the trail runs cold here, and it is difficult to determine what Jessy’s life was like in the Schneider’s household or how he perceived his own racial and religious identities as well as his place within the New Hanover community.
Baptisms are not the only place in which Africans and African Americans appear in local church records. Although less common, we also find evidence of marriages between enslaved persons, such as the March 1782 marriage of two mixed race enslaved persons, “James, David Evans’ mulatto and an unnamed mulatto woman of Jacob Krauss of Longswamp.” David Evans continues to appear in the tax records as enslaving only one mulatto in subsequent years, indicating that the couple likely did not live together after their marriage, remaining separated by the cruel laws of the system of slavery.
It is important to recognize that these records offer only a brief glimpse of the lives of those mentioned in them and do not provide any information from the point of view of the enslaved people themselves, often neglecting to even state the enslaved person’s name. Simply knowing when someone was baptized or married and in what church tells us very little about their personal spiritual lives and beliefs. Nonetheless, these records often reveal familial relationships that might not have been documented otherwise and point to the broader social context of the eighteenth century Perkiomen Valley in which these African and African American individuals lived.
Research Associate Emma Hartman shares information from her work uncovering the lives of African Americans living in the Perkiomen Valley in the 1700s and early 1800s. This project of the Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center in partnership with the Historical Society of Montgomery County is funded by the Philadelphia Funder Collaborative for the Semiquincentennial.