The Berg Church

Location: From Stanleyville, go north on TR 331 (Reeds Run Road) and Tr 332 to junction with TR 391.

The collage above represents quite a bit about the history of the church and the lives of its members. Starting from the upper left and going clockwise we see 1) the Berg Church building itself, according to Becker, originally build of logs and renovated or rebuilt several times, 2) top center, Jim Andris—seven of whose great great great grandparents attended this church at one time or another—photographs the interior of the building, 3) top right, gravestone marker commemorating Theobald Harth (1802-1879) (and wife, Katharina Nau,) great great great grandparents of Jim, 4) middle center, the interior of the church, which according to Becker, was modeled on the Altenkirchen church in the Kohlbach Valley of the Palatinate, 5) middle right, long shot of the memorial marker containing the names of those interred in the cemetery, 6) center, long shot of the tombstone of Daniel Hirsch, 7) lower right and center, the funeral of George Ludwig Noe, Civil War Veteran, held on June 9, 1925. 8) left middle, the gravestone of Adam Schultheiss (1844-1893), 8) a bench remembering the Barth name, and 9) bottom middle, one of the township roads winds out through cornfields and hills in the distance.

Founding of the church

It is challenging to separate out the histories of the Berg Church and the Highland Ridge Church before 1850. Highland Ridge is in the northern end of Muskingum Twp., about 6 miles directly north of Marietta, Ohio, as the crow flies. It seems definite that the Highland Ridge church can be traced from about 1835. The Berg Church is 6 miles north northeast of Marietta, Ohio as the crow flies. Highland Ridge and the Berg Church are about 3 miles apart on roughly the same parallel. Moving west to east, there is the serpentine Muskingum River flowing southeast into Marietta, then Highland Ridge, then Duck Creek, and then the Berg Church, right in the middle of northern Fearing Twp. The Highland Ridge Church of today is easily accessible by I-77 and County route 8, while the Berg Church is literally "out in the middle of nowhere:" several gravel township roads wind out to the intersection of T329 and T332.

German families which had settled in Fearing Township a mile or two east of Highland Ridge during the 1830s and early 1840s, experienced a hardship in attending church on the Ridge because of the distance and the occasional flooding of Duck Creek. Becker describes the founding of the Second Protestant Evangelical Church in 1846 through the sale by Peter Berg, who came to Ohio in 1841 with his wife, to Christian Schimmel through the buyers' representative, George Peter Lauer. The first church building was located near Whipple Creek which meanders northwest towards Whipple, a mile or two away. The congregation chose the Rev. Theodore Schreiner, then already the clergyman at Highland Ridge, to lead them in this new venture.

Daniel Hirsch, who had been forced to leave the Palatinate in 1850 for political activity, immigrated to Washington County. He settled with his family at the end of 1951 in Fearing Twp. and was chosen pastor by this newly organizing church community and paid by the members of the congregation. To this Pastor Hirsch, we owe an enormous debt, for he kept complete and systematic records of the members of various German-American communities in Washington County, and also complete records of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths, as well as records of important church transactions. These records were all painstakingly translated by Barbara Gerhart Matt from the original German fraktur script in the early 1990s.

Near the end of Daniel Hirsh's term as pastor in 1872, the congregation purchased land from Daniel Biehl and built on the present site of the Berg Church. This land is situated some distance south of the original church building. Frederick Charles Trapp was minister to the congregation for 1873-1883, save for one year. At some point during Trapp's tenure, the church listed 52 members. In 1878 the congregation wrote a constitution which named their church the First German Protestant Evangelical Church.

The recent Fry compilation of information notes that "The congregation ceased in 1955. Beginning in 1986, the Berg church has been restored and the Berg Church Association holds an annual homecoming in September.

References

• Becker, Heinrich, "Von den bergessenen Töchtern und Söhnen Dittweilers," in Wir "Diewiller Waffele:" Geschichten aus un um Dittweiler zum 675. Jubiläum der Erwähnung 1316 und 12. Kreisheimattag
• Becker, Heinrich, "About the Forgotten Daughters and Sons of Dittweiler,"
  translated by Jim Andris
• German-American Communities, Churches, Cemeteries, Records and other Sources Washington County and Adjoining Townships in Noble and Monroe Counties, Ohio, information compled by Millie Covey Fry of Marietta, Oh, December 30, 2001; December 4-7, 2006, January 30, 2007. Information provided by Donna Betts, Kurt Ludwig, Catherine Sams, Ernest Thode, and Dean Zimmer.
• Matt, Barbara Gerhart, translations of the Berg Church Records of Daniel Hirsch.
• Nikolaus, Walter, Daniel Hirsch: Lehrer—Revolutionär—Pfarrer: 1848; Freiheit und Einheit Deutschland un Europa, unpublished manuscript.
• Portions of an email from Ernest Thode to others on the Historical Background of St. Paul's and St. Lukes.
• Zenglein, Dieter, with collaboration from Walter Nokolaus and Heinrich Becker, To the Banks of the Ohio: An Essay on Emigration of People from the Kohlbach ("Coal Creek") Valley to America Especially Washington County, Ohio, in the 19th Century. tr. by Ernest Thode, 1988. (This work contains the following subsections: 1) Introduction, 2) Johann Theobald Schramm and Jacob Berg of Altenkirchen, Two Pioneers of the Kohlbach Valley in the New World, 3) The Great Emigration Wave from the Kohlbach Valley to Ohio in the 19th Century, 4) Daniel Hirsch, Teacher, Pastor, and Democrat: Fate of a Forgotten '48er, 5) The West Palatine Emigrant Community in Washington County, Ohio, and 6) Church Book of the First Evangelical Protestant Congregation in Fearing Township, Washington County, Ohio, begun in 1856 by Daniel Hirsch, formerly teacher in (D-6791) Altenkirchen, and continued until 1914.

Plaque Listing those Buried in the Berg Church Cemetery