Lutheran and Reformed churches of Frederick Co., MD.
Differences between the Lutheran and the Reformed church, Frederick Co., MD.
The following is extracted from Dr. WEISER's book on Lutheran marriages and burials:
"The earliest concentrated settlement of Germans in western Maryland was
located in what is known as Frederick County today, but what in the
middle of the 18th century was known far and wide as the Monocacy
settlement, for the river which flows southward toward the Potomac
through it and makes something of a valley between the Catoctin Mountain
on the west and ridges on the east. . . . the first institutions to
emerge among these settlers were their churches. Since these Germans
had come from the Palatinate in Germany, in which the Calvinist
[Reformed] and Lutheran faiths existed side by side, we find churches of
these denominations established early in the period of settlement. .
.Undoubtedly, the two groups worshipped side by side in a church built
in 1743 in a location somewhere near Jimtown, as yet -- in spite of many
claims -- not positively located. By 1746 the Lutherans and very likely
the Reformed began to worship also in the new village of
'Fredericktown'. Within a few decades there are only occasional
references to the mother church -- 'the church in the hills,' they
called it -- and presently the site was completely abandoned and any
members associated with it had gone to other, newer churches.
Generally, the Lutheran element seems to have outnumbered the Reformed
element.. . ."