Pennsylvania Conference UB Pastors

ARCHIVES OF THE SUSQUEHANNA CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

Preserving and Celebrating Our United Methodist Heritage in Central and Northeast Pennsylvania

On Line Data Bases

Pennsylvania United Brethren Pastors. Click on the first letter of the surname to enter the file of all the pastors for that letter. The instructions file gives information about this project, the dates at which various conference boundary changes occurred, and detailed bibliographic references.

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UNITED BRETHREN IN CHRIST

PENNSYLVANIA PASTORS

1800-1964

The United Brethren in Christ denomination was officially formed in 1800. The original Conference included appointments in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. This list attempts to document the service of every United Brethren pastor who served within Pennsylvania from 1800 until 1964 in any one of the following Conferences: Allegheny, East Pennsylvania, Hagerstown, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia. In 1964 the the former United Brethren congregations in Central Pennsylvania were merged into the Susquehanna Conference. From 1964 to the present, the lists in this archives are limited to Central Pennsylvania and may be found in the Susquehanna Conference file [currently under construction]. For forty years, from 1970 to 2010, the Susquehanna Conference was called the Central Pennsylvania Conference,

This list takes the view that the original United Brethren Conference developed into the Pennsylvania Conference and that other conferences were created from it as described in the notes below. Accordingly, all references not marked otherwise refer to the Original/Pennsylvania Conference.

(1) The following conferences were split off from the Pennsylvania Conference as indicated, and their pastors and circuits prior to the given date are included as part of the Pennsylvania Conference.

1830 – Hagerstown [later Virginia] Conference. For simplicity, this conference is always referred to as the Virginia Conference. Virginia Conference
pastors with no post-1830 Pennsylvania Conference connections do not appear in the list.

1839 – Allegheny Conference

1846 – East Pennsylvania Conference

(2) The Maryland Conference was formed in 1887 from the Virginia Conference, and in 1902 the Maryland Conference merged back into the Pennsylvania Conference. Maryland pastors with no pre-1830 or post-1902 Pennsylvania Conference connections do not appear in the list.

(3) In 1869, the strictly German congregations were set apart to form the East German Conference. The conference was officially named East German (1869 -1877), Eastern (1877-1881), East German (1881-1897), Eastern (1897-1901). In 1901 it merged into East Pennsylvania Conference, with the work north and west of the Susquehanna River merging into the Allegheny Conference and the Maryland churches eventually returning to the Pennsylvania Conference. For simplicity, all references (conference memberships, obituaries, etc) in the list refer to this German conference as the East German Conference.

(4) In general, the list attempts to include every pastor who was licensed by, ordained by, or served a church within the Pennsylvania, Allegheny, East Pennsylvania, and East German Conferences of the United Brethren Church. It does not include the northwest corner of the state served by the Erie and other United Brethren conferences.

(5) The United Brethren and Evangelical denominations merged in 1946 to create the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) Church, but separate overlapping conferences were maintained for several years. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the remaining former United Brethren conferences [Allegheny, Pennsylvania, East Pennsylvania] merged with their former Evangelical counterparts to form new EUB conferences. In 1970 those EUB conferences merged with their former Methodist counterparts to form new United Methodist conferences. This list follows the former United Brethren pastors from the Allegheny, East Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Conferences through their new conferences, but does not add any new pastors. Pastors entering the present conference boundaries after 1964 are given in the Susquehanna Conference files [currently under construction].

The 1968 Miller-Raker history, pages 338-366, identifies chronologically 819 known members of the Pennsylvania Conference during its official existence 1789-1964. For each person, that volume gives the available dates for birth, licensing, ordination, death, etc. The 1931 Fulton history, pages 258-267, gives the similar information for the first 533 members of the Allegheny Conference. The 1951 Gibble history, pages 497-512, does likewise in one alphabetical listing for previous members of the East Pennsylvania and East German conferences. The list that follows includes any Miller-Raker and Fulton numbers, and whether or not a person appears in the Gibble list. An occasional “Note” at the bottom of the page gives relationships to other United Brethren pastors and/or additional relevant information. While the lack of specific documentation regarding some statements may cause some frustration, this list is intended to be a workable resource – uncluttered with cross-references and footnotes. Remember that unless otherwise specified, all journal references are as follows:

1800-1964 Pennsylvania Conference (UB/EUB)

1965-1969 Susquehanna Conference (EUB/UM)

1970-2010 Central Pennsylvania Conference (UM)
2011- Susquehanna Conference

Most of the information in this list comes from the official conference minutes/journals – but the appointments do not appear regularly in the minutes until 1831, and then only for the itinerants and not the local pastors. In general, conferences did not publish their journals until the 1860’s. Prior to that, only hand-written records exist. The translated/transcribed 1800-1869 minutes for the Original/Pennsylvania Conference were reproduced in two mimeographed volumes in 1958, and page numbers for those years refer to that readily available work. Early translated/transcribed minutes of the Allegheny Conference are available on microfilm, but the pages are not numbered. No translation/transcription of East Pennsylvania Conference minutes exist, but microfilm copies of the original handwritten minutes are available.

Information supplementing the conference journals was obtained primarily from local church materials and the following conference histories:

1921 History of the Virginia Conference by Funkhouser and Morton.

1931 History of the Allegheny Conference by Fulton

1939 History of the Pennsylvania Conference by Holdcraft

1951 History of the East Pennsylvania Conference by Gibble

1968 History of the Pennsylvania and Central Pennsylvania Conferences by Miller and Raker

Other helpful information appears in the following books:

1897 Minutes of United Brethren Conferences 1800-1818 by Drury

1908 Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the United Brethren in Christ 1819-1824 by Weaver

1947 Lebanon Valley College Bulletin vol 36, no 2: Alumni Register 1870-1947