NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY BIOGRAPHIES: Rev. Rudolph Duenger PART I Copyright (c) 1999 by John Paul Deeben. This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives. jdeeben@aol.com USGENWEB NOTICE: Printing this file by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. The Life and Ministry of Rev. Rudolph Duenger, D. D.: German Reformed Circuit Rider of the Lower Mahanoy Charge, 1808 - 1902 by John Paul Deeben RELIGION, MOST PEOPLE WILL AGREE, played a seminal role in the formative years of American society. From the Puritans of New England to Pennsylvania's Quaker and Plain German sects and Maryland's Calvinists, fledgling communities of the Colonial period and Early Republic looked to the church, and indeed to the overall freedom of religious expression, as their source of strength and sanctuary in an often uncertain and hostile frontier environment. The emergence of the small country parish in the isolated hinterland came to characterize one of the primary cohesive features of the new American nation. This nurturing religious presence and influence can readily be seen in the early history of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. Pioneer clergymen of all denominations-from Lutherans such as John Peter Schindel and Frederick A. C. Muhlenberg to the Presbyterian licentiate Philip V. Fithian- traversed the county as circuit riders throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, forging a cohesive, communal bond among the scattered homesteads of the sparsely-settled landscape. The life and ecumenical career of the German Reformed minister Rev. Rudolph Duenger, D. D. (1808-1902) offers yet another exemplary illustration of this salutary influence. A German immigrant of privileged birth, Duenger served the faithful of the German Reformed Church for nearly seventy years in the Lower Mahanoy and surrounding coal regions of Northumberland County. EARLY CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION, 1808-1832 RUDOLPH DUENGER WAS BORN in Stuttgart, the majestic medieval capital of the Kingdom of Wurttemberg in central Europe, on January 30, 1808. He was the first child of Karl Friedrich Dunger (1778-1832) and Heinrike Charlotte Bloss (1779-1853). A younger brother, Hermann Duenger, was born the following year on September 29, 1809. (Little else is known of Hermann Duenger at the present time, except that he had a daughter, Elise Hermine, who was born May 31, 1847. The identity of her mother has not been established. Elise Duenger later married a man named Jakob Paul Burkhardt on June 18, 1878. Stuttgart parish records indicate no children ever resulted from this marriage, making Rudolph's lineage the only known surviving Duenger line. Hermann Duenger died, presumably in Stuttgart, on August 8, 1871.) [1] The Duenger name, existing records suggest, may have been a fairly old and well-established one in central Germany. Parish registers reveal Duengers in the Gauern and Linda districts of Saxon-Anhalt in Thuringia from the early 1660s until the 1840s. (Thuringia comprised one of the original historic provinces of central Germany and also was part of communist East Germany until the reunification in 1991.) Other Duengers appeared around Niedernhall in Wurttemberg during the first half of the nineteenth century as well. Although additional research is still required to identify Karl Friedrich Dunger's immediate forebears, there is little doubt Rudolph came from one of these old family lines.[2] Of even more interest concerning Rudolph's background, there is strong evidence to suggest that Duenger's family belonged to the German nobility. Contemporary sources on Rudolph consistently indicate his family name originally may have been "von Duenger." The "von" surname prefix, at the very least, would have associated the family with the landed gentry if not the aristocracy itself.[3] More compelling evidence of privilege can be found in Karl Friedrich Dunger's vocation and title. The Evangelical Kirchenregisteramt, or Church Register, of Stuttgart identified Dunger's occupation as that of oberfinanzrat. While there is no direct English equivalent, the term may be translated loosely as "chief financial minister for revenue." This, undoubtedly, was an influential position within the government structure of Wurttemberg, a post that could have been reserved for members of the nobility.[4] Additional sources provide more detail about the types of financial matters Karl Friedrich supervised. Between 1803 and 1806, it appears that he held several interrelated administrative positions which governed the financial aspects of construction activities as well as the supervision of public grounds. From July 19, 1803 to May 242, 1805 he served as Bauamts-Offizianten und Gartenkassier--cashier responsible for the gardens and matters of constructing--for Ludwigsburg, a city district north of Stuttgart. He also held the title of Bauverwalter in Ludwigsburg, which similarly translates to mean an administrator for building construction. In this capacity, Duenger signed a document called the Konkordienformel on July 20. 1803. The Konkordienformel was a Lutheran Church instrument which required endorsement for certain construction activities. On March 18, 1805 Duenger again signed the Konkordienformel, this time as Obertaxamtssecretarius und Buchhalter, or secretary and accountant for the Obertaxamt, the central government authority for taxes. During this same time period, finally, Karl Friedrich also served as Rentkammersekretaer, or secretary to the central authority for financial matters. He was the third such official to hold the title since Philip H. Braitmayer in 1799.[5] The occupations of both Rudolph and Hermann Duenger, finally, provide evidence of privilege as well. While Rudolph entered the ranks of the German Reformed clergy, Hermann Duenger became a baurat, or architect (a significant vocation in and of itself considering Stuttgart's centuries-old renown for its architecture.) [6] In the nineteenth century, both vocations, regarded as highly skilled professions, were commonly reserved for the sons of the aristocratic class. These collective factors certainly point towards a privileged setting into which Karl Friedrich von Dunger's children may have been born. When considering the early circumstances of Rudolph Duenger's birth, it is interesting to note that Duenger entered the world at the height of one of the most turbulent and exciting periods of European history-the era of the Napoleonic Wars. Europe in 1808 comprised a divided, armed camp. On one side stood the French Empire and its satellite states: Spain, the kingdoms of Italy and Naples, the (Polish) Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the German states of the Confederation of the Rhine. The Kingdom of Wurttemberg, as a member of the Confederation along with the kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony and Westphalia, and the grand duchies of Berg, Baden, and Hesse-Cassel-Darmstadt, thus stood as an ally of Napoleon. Arranged against France were the allied powers of Great Britain, Prussia, the Habsburg Empire (Austria), and Russia.[7] The year before Duenger's birth witnessed major military operations by the French against Russia, which followed on the heels of Napoleon's decisive victories over the Austrians at Austerlitz in 1805 and the Prussians at Jena and Auerstadt in 1806. Military confrontations at Eylau, Heilsberg and Friedland in eastern Prussia between February and June led to the Peace of Tilsit on July 7, 1807. The following year, when Rudolph was born, Europe enjoyed a momentary truce, with Napoleon focusing his attention on the periphery of his empire. There, Bonaparte took measures to extend French influence in Spain and Portugal. Following a series of operations, he successfully expelled British expeditionary forces from the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the year. Hostilities against Napoleon's principal enemies would resume in 1809, but for the first year of Rudolph Duenger's life the homeland of Wurttemberg enjoyed relative peace.[8] A few details have been discovered concerning Duenger's early childhood and education. Rudolph appears to have been a rather sickly youth, which ironically led to his life of ministry. According to Duenger's obituary many years later, Rudolph was "a very delicate child." Consequently, Charlotte Dunger vowed to dedicate Rudolph's life to the Church if he were spared his frail condition. The mother's prayers, of course, were answered and Duenger began preparation for the clergy at an early age. Following his formal education at the public Gymnasium in Stuttgart, where he also received some early theological training, Rudolph attended the Lower Seminary of Wrackland at the University of Tubingen. He was probably graduated sometime between 1831-32 at the age of twenty-four.[9] In 1885 Rudolph eventually received the advanced theological title Doctor of Divinity, however it has not yet been discovered from which institution he received this degree. EARLY MINISTRY IN AMERICA, 1834-1836 IN 1832 DUENGER, NOW a German Reformed licentiate but not yet an ordained minister, left Wurttemberg for America. He came immediately to southern Pennsylvania. The following year, under the written recommendation of Rev. Lewis Mayer, D. D., a professor at the Theological Seminary in York, Duenger went to the Pittsburgh area to assist the Rev. Christian Berenz. Berenz served the Woodcock Valley Reformed Charge in Huntingdon County, near Altoona, which was part of the West Pennsylvania Classis of the Reformed Church. (One source indicates that Duenger may have been related to Pastor Berenz, which might account for his migration to Pennsylvania. Such a relationship, however, has not yet been proven.) [10] In 1834 Duenger and Berenz attended the annual meeting of the West Pennsylvania Classis in Pittsburgh. There, Rudolph was formally accepted as a candidate for ordination. His recommendation for licensure examination was sent to the General Synod of the German Reformed Church in the United States. When the Synod convened in session in Pittsburgh on November 12, 1834, Duenger was examined by a panel of ministers and then licensed and ordained as a minister of the German Reformed faith. His ordination ceremony took place at St. John's (Potter's) Church in Pittsburgh, and was presided over by a Synod committee comprised of Revs. Jonathan Zellers, S. K. Denius and H. G. Hekens. Rev. Duenger was immediately installed as pastor of the Fannettsburg Reformed Charge in Franklin County.[11] During the first year of his ministry, Duenger also served congregations in Chileothstown, Frankstown and Martinsburg in Blair County, and Conemaugh Township outside Johnstown. In 1835 Duenger was elected as a delegate to the Synod from the West Pennsylvania Classis. He attended the annual meeting, which assembled that year at Chambersburg. There, he learned of a vacant charge of several congregations in lower Northumberland and Schuylkill counties, called the Lower Mahanoy Charge. (Other sources have also identified Lower Mahanoy as the Greenbrier or Lower Mahantango Charge.) Pastor Isaac M. Gearhart of Millersburg, Dauphin County, who was president of the East Susquehanna Classis headquartered in Sunbury, Northumberland County, strongly urged Duenger to visit and accept the Lower Mahanoy pastorate. In February 1836 the congregations of this charge unanimously called Rudolph Duenger to serve, and he began his ministry in the Northumberland County circuit almost immediately.[12] THE CIRCUIT RIDING PROFESSION SOME MENTION MAY BE MADE at this point regarding the early practice of circuit riding, so that we may frame Rudolph's career within a larger context. Due to the sparsely-populated, wilderness nature of most early American settlements along the eastern seaboard and Allegheny-Appalachian mountain ranges, clergymen found it absolutely necessary to perform their duties in missionary fashion. They traversed the land on horseback to reach and tend their isolated pockets of followers. Unlike the present-day custom of holding worship services every Sunday, ministers usually preached to their congregations on a rotating basis, visiting each parish in turn until they completed their "circuit." At that time they would begin the rotation again. In this fashion, most parishes on average observed public worship every two weeks, and in some cases only once a month. (Rudolph Duenger's first circuit in the Altoona area, for example, was spread across both sides of the Allegheny Mountains and thus took approximately four weeks to complete on horseback.) Sometimes, geographical limitations (such as mountains and rivers), and the primitive conditions of nineteenth-century travel (where many principal highways were often nothing more than narrow dirt tracks), also forced many congregations of a common parish or region to be supplied by different ministers. (This practice was quite evident in Rudolph Duenger's later parishes, where he often appeared as pastor on the rolls of one church while another Reformed minister attended other congregations of the same charge.) Where no formal churches existed, finally, many traveling preachers often held worship services in private homes or local public houses.[13] Circuit riding was truly an interdenominational occupation and it was demonstrated nowhere more readily than in central Pennsylvania in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As early as 1742 Moravian missionaries led by Count von Zinzendorf and Conrad Weiser, who was Pennsylvania's colonial Indian agent, made frequent visits to the Indian settlements around the forks of the Susquehanna River at Shamokin (present-day Sunbury.) In 1775 Philip V. Fithian, a licentiate of the First Presbytery of Philadelphia, visited the colonial settlements of the Susquehanna River basin, conducting worship services along the way.[14] Lutheran missionaries exhibited perhaps the most prolific activity during this period. Circuit riders made their way into Northumberland County well before most Lutheran congregations took shape; their activities in fact provided most of the impetus for church organization in this area. Rev. Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg, son of the renowned Lutheran theologian Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg, first penetrated the Northumberland wilderness in 1771. He traveled the Tulpehocken Path, an Indian trail from Reading to Sunbury, and came to the Susquehanna just below Mahanoy Mountain. There he administered to the spiritual needs of the settlers on the Isle of Que (just below Selinsgrove in Snyder County.) Muhlenberg was followed by such missionaries as John Michael Enterline, who tended to scattered settlers from Stone Valley on the east side of the Susquehanna in lower Northumberland to Mt. Pleasant Mills, Freeburg, and areas outside Selinsgrove between 1775 and 1788; Daniel Lehman, who conducted regular preaching tours between Sunbury and Catawissa (in present day Columbia County); Christian Espich, who traveled a route from the Buffalo Valley north of Sunbury to the southern part of Northumberland between 1794 and 1800; and John Peter Schindel, who at one time or another served most of the Lutheran churches in Northumberland, Snyder and northern Dauphin counties from 1812 to 1851.[15] German Reformed activity closely followed that of the Lutherans. Many of the Reformed congregations in fact were established simultaneously with the Lutheran ones, a practice which gave rise to the numerous "union" churches of the day. (The common German heritage of the Lutheran and Reformed faiths probably facilitated these joint religious ventures as well.) Records from the Reformed coetus (the local governing ministerium which covered Sunbury) from May 1776 indicated at that time that "several congregations at Shamokin [Sunbury] asked to be alternately visited by ministers," a call to which the coetus membership resolved: "ministers shall visit them several times in the year to preach for them and to perform other ministerial acts."[16] Reformed ministers who subsequently preached in the region included William Hendel, who remained until 1782; Samuel Dubendorff, who supplied from 1778-90; Cyriacus Spangenberg (1783-86); Jonathan Rahauser (1789-92); and George Geistweit (1794-1804). The Lutherans and Reformed were followed by the Methodist Episcopal Church, which in 1812 established a wide- ranging circuit from the Susquehanna to Broad Mountain between Mahantongo and Nescopec creeks, called the Shamokin Circuit.[17] By the time Rudolph Duenger came to Northumberland County in 1836, circuit riding and the formation of scattered congregations into common parishes, or charges, was an established practice and system of organization. ____________________ [1] Evangelical Kirchenregisteramt, Stuttgart, to Mr. John McBryde, July 16, 1976. The original letter is in the possession of Duenger descendant Victoria Kitzmiller McBryde, Cherryville, North Carolina. [2] Parish records from Linda and Gauern in Thuringia, and Niedernhall in Wurttemberg, were obtained through the LDS archives in Salt Lake City, Utah by Victoria Kitzmiller McBryde, Cherryville, North Carolina. [3] Reformed Church Almanac (1903), in Guy Breachy, ed., "The Fathers of the Reformed Church," Vol. 3 (typescript, Schoff Library, Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society, Lancaster Theological Seminary, n.d.), pp. 47-48. Hereafter cited as Breachy, "Fathers of Reformed Church."; Ashland Evening Telegram, March 17, 1902. [4] Kirchenregisteramt to McBryde, July 16, 1976. The author is further indebted to Mrs. Maria Underkoffler of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, whose additional translation of this letter brought to light the significance of the social, political and hereditary implications of Karl Friedrich von Dunger's government position. [5] Walter Pfeilsticker, Neues Wuerttembergisches Dienerbuch, Vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1957), pp. 982, 1727, 1911, 1919. The entries for Karl Friedrich Duenger were translated from the German by Sebastian Platz, Stuttgart. [6] Kirchenregisteramt to McBryde, July 16, 1976. [7] Michael Glover, The Napoleonic Wars: An Illustrated History, 1792-1815 (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1979), p. 122. Hereafter cited as Glover, Napoleonic Wars; Russell F. Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 390, 408. Hereafter cited as Weigley, Age of Battles. [8] Weigley, Age of Battles, pp. 410-13. [9] Reformed Church Almanac; Evening Telegram, March 17, 1902. [10] Ibid. [11] Ibid.; Pastor James W. Morris, Shamokin, to Margaret Duenger Morgan, October 28, 1970. [12] Evening Telegram, March 17, 1902; Breachy, "Fathers of Reformed Church," p. 47. [13] W. W. Munsell, History of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania (New York: W. W. Munsell & Co., 1881), p. 219. [14] Herbert C. Bell, History of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: Brown, Runk & Co., 1891; reprint by Northumberland County Historical Society, 1991), pp. 40, 88. Hereafter cited as Bell, History of Northumberland County. [15] John P. Deeben, "A History of the Eden Evangelical Lutheran Church at Plum Creek, Rockefeller Township, 1844-1961," (Unpublished manuscript, Eden Lutheran Church Records, United Lutheran Church Archives, Sunbury, PA, 1996), pp. 3-4. [16] Minutes and Letters of Coetus of the German Reformed Congregations in Pennsylvania, 1742-1792, pp. 354-55, as quoted in Charles H. Glatfelter, Pastors and People: German Lutheran and Reformed Churches in the Pennsylvania Field, 1717-1793, Vol. 1 (Breinigsville, Pa.: The Pennsylvania German Society, 1980), p. 446. Hereafter cited as Glatfelter, Pastors and People. [17] Bell, History of Northumberland County, p. 508.