Ruffians Mob Pastor and Cause Organization of First Moravian Church July 27, 1742

An affair occurred in Philadelphia July 27, 1742, which, disgraceful as were the proceedings, was the means of establishing a separate Moravian Church in that city.

Count Nicholas Ludwig Zinzindorf arrived in Philadelphia, December 10, 1741. He came with the hope of uniting all Protestant Christians into a confederacy or league.

Almost immediately upon his arrival Henry Antes, a pious wheel-wright and farmer in Falkner’s Swamp, now Frederick Township, Montgomery County, invited Zinzindorf to attend a synod or conference at Germantown, which had for its object a movement similar to that of the distinguisheddistinguished visitor.

Zinzindorf accepted the invitation and attended the Synod, January 12, 1742. Indeed he went there before that date, and preached in the German Reformed Church, January 1, his first sermon in America. He got acquainted with the people and earnestly began his great work.

This Synod was the first of seven. It was held in the house of Theobold Endt, a Germantown clockmaker. Zinzindorf was made moderator.

The delegates of the different sects met and discussed the best way of bringing about a more perfect union of all Protestant denominations. There were a number of Moravians present, but not as delegates, for no settled congregation of that sect as yet existed.

No definite results were reached though Zinzindorf’s ideas impressed the assemblies.

During the earlier months of 1742 Zinzindorf preached at Oley, Falkner’s Swamp, Germantown, and other places, and gathered the nuclei of subsequent Moravian congregations.

513A house was rented in Germantown for Count Zinzindorf and his assistants, which was opened as a school May 4, of that year. The Countess Benigna assisted as a teacher, as did also Anna Nitschmann, who subsequently became the second wife of Zinzindorf. The school opened with twenty-five girls as pupils.

In Philadelphia Zinzindorf began ministrations in a barn on Arch Street below Fifth, then fitted up with seats and used in partnership by the German Reformed and the Lutherans.

His Lutheran tendencies and training fitted him to take charge of a Lutheran Church, and May 30, 1742, this congregation called him to take its charge. Indeed, it is said that he claimed to be inspector-general of the Lutherans, and had for some months supplied a Lutheran Church in Germantown.

Zinzindorf accepted the call of the Philadelphia Lutherans, but wishing to do a certain amount of missionary work elsewhere, associated John Christopher Pyrlaeus, a Saxony Presbyter, with him as assistant, and left matters much in his charge.

Reverend Henry Jacobson, in his “History of the Moravian Church in Philadelphia,” proceeds to tell what the consequence was.

Pyrlaeus, though evidently a hard worker, gave offense to a strong faction, and on July 27, 1742, while in the pulpit and officiating, a gang of his opponents dragged him down from his place, trampled upon him, and roughlyroughly handled him, as they ejected him from the building.

The only accounts left do not enable us to identify the cowardly assailants, except that there seems to have been serious trouble between the growing Moravian faction and the conservative Lutheran element.

The affair was the prime cause of the establishment of a separate Moravian Church as soon as Count Zinzindorf returned from his preaching tour. Without this event to crystallize the tendencies of things, separation might have been long delayed.

Another view of this movement is that Zinzindorf built the church for the Lutheran congregation over which he claimed authority, upon his first arrival in the country, but that the arrival of Henry MelchiorMelchior Muhlenberg, with direct authority from the University at Halle, in the latter part of 1742, changed the tactics of Zinzindorf, and so he made arrangements to transfer the church to the Moravians.

The congregation organized by Zinzindorf consisted of thirty-four persons. They took up a lot on the east side of Bread Street and south of Sassafras (now Race) Street, which on August 20, 1742, was transferred by William Allen and wife to Samuel Powell, Joseph Powell, Edward Evans, William Rice, John Okley, and Owen Rice, for another lot on Sassafras Street.

The parties named were not all Moravians, but the deed was made to them in trust for “a certain congregation of Christian people, as well German as English, residing in the City of Philadelphia, belonging 514to the church of the Evangelical Brethren, who have caused to be erected thereon a new building for and to their use and service as a church and school house to S. Lewis Zinzindorf, David Nitschmann, Joseph Spangenberg, Henry Antes, John Bloomfield, and Charles Brockden.”

Additional real estate was acquired and the church building was commenced immediately. The corner stone was laid September 10, 1742, by Count Zinzindorf, and the work proceeded so rapidly that it was dedicated by him on November 25, following.

This building was set back from Sassafras Street thirty-five feet. It had a front of forty-five feet on Bread Street, afterward called Moravian Alley.

The edifice was two stories high, the first story being used as the church proper. This room was twenty feet in height from the floor, wainscoted about five feet, and whitewashed above to the ceiling. The roof was of the hip-roof design. There were large windows in each side. The congregation used this church for more than fifty years without a stove in winter.

The first Moravian congregation in Philadelphia contained those who had left the Lutherans when the Pyrlaeus affair occurred, and a number of Moravians who had been awhile at Nazareth and Bethlehem.

On the evening of his departure from America Count Zinzindorf organized these members into the First Moravian Church.