Please HELP find the records of St. Peter’s German Evangelical Church!

1940s photo of the church building

BeeLines - May 24, 2018

By Marybelle Beigh, Westfield Town & Village Historian

Please HELP find the records of St. Peter’s German Evangelical Church!

The following email request was written and sent to St. Paul’s UCC in Erie PA on Monday, May 21, 2018. It is hoped that faithful readers might be able to assist in this ongoing records-search. An October 2017 BeeLines article was attached to the email, which will be reprinted with this BeeLines, including the photos.

Hello,

My name is Marybelle Beigh, and I am the Westfield NY Town and Village NY State Government Appointed Historian.

A few months ago, I received a request from a historian client to help locate what became of the records of a church that closed about 70 years ago.

Below I’m summarizing the information that has led me to ask if there is any chance that the records of St. Peter’s German/Evangelical & Reformed Church of Westfield might have been archived at St. Paul’s UCC in Erie PA.

The church was variously named St. Peter’s German Church, St. Peter’s German Evangelical Church, St. Peter’s Kirche, & St. Peter’s German Evangelical & Reformed Church over the years between approximately 1858 and 1947. My research indicates that it was NOT a German LUTHERAN Church, nor was it an Evangelical Lutheran Church.

What I’ve been able to determine so far is that this St. Peter’s German Church, formed circa 1860, was under the “umbrella” of The Evangelical Synod of North America, which was founded by six German ministers in 1840, also known in its early years as the Evangelical Union of the West. In 1877 the Synod of the denomination changed its name to German Evangelical Synod of North America, and in 1927 dropped the word “German” from its name. In 1934, this denominational Synod merged with the Reformed Church in the US, to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church. Then in 1957, the denomination again merged, this time with the Congregational Christian Churches denomination to create the United Church of Christ.

To add to the confusion of names, some writers of historical articles about Westfield NY made the assumption about this church being Lutheran (because of the German origin of the group) and so led down a dead end when trying to locate the records through the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Research of the history of the St. Peter’s German Church has determined that the last Westfield-resident pastor of the church was the Rev. C.F. Fleck in 1924, and that after that, the pastors who provided official communion services as well as confirmations, baptisms, marriages, and funeral services, were sent from some German Evangelical churches in either Dunkirk NY or Erie PA. Among those from St. John’s Evangelical in Dunkirk were Rev. Carl G. Hass in 1926, and Rev. Carl Zimmerman, who was the last pastor from Dunkirk in 1940.

Names from Erie PA:

1. In April 1926, a Westfield Republican notice includes the following statement that after the service at the German Church – St. Peter’s Evangelical- on the following Sunday, a congregational meeting would be held to elect a delegate to attend the district convention to be held in the St. Paul’s Church in Erie PA, and…

2. there is a notice in January 1939, that a Rev. A.F. Abele from Erie PA served at St. Peter’s Evangelical church.

So, based on the above various leads of information, it seems that it could be possible that either the Dunkirk or Erie churches that provided pastors to St. Peter’s, or were locations for conventions of the Synod in which St. Peter’s was located, MIGHT be possible locations to which the records of St. Peter’s were sent for archiving when the church building was sold to the Christian Science Society in 1947.

In digging through notes and printouts of old newspaper articles, some other bits of information have been located. First, there is a record somewhere, which I’ve not yet located, that indicates the name of the church was changed to St. Peter’s Reformed Church, and The Rev. John Grantor was pastor in 1944. But the date may be a typo because it was 1934 when the Evangelical and Reformed denominations were merged. Also, in 1944, the church building was being used by an Assembly of God congregation, and the article about that situation indicated that the German congregation had not been active for some time.

Finally, about 3 months ago, I did receive one phone call in response to my October 2017 BeeLines article from a woman who was doing genealogical research for her son whose ancestors were pastors in both the Dunkirk St. John’s church and the Westfield St. Peter’s Church back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She also provided a link to a Dunkirk Observer history of St. John’s Evangelical in an August 5, 1937 issue, that lists all of the pastors from 1856 through 1937 for St. John’s Dunkirk. Maybe these names can provide you with further leads to locating the records.

Thank you very much for any information or suggestions you can provide to assist me in my continued search for what became of the records of the St. Peter’s German Evangelical & Reformed Church of Westfield NY.

Please contact Marybelle Beigh at westfieldhistorian@fairpoint.net or 716-397-9254, or the Town of Westfield Clerk’s office or the Village of Westfield Clerk’s office.

THANKS!