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ZIEGLER Meeting House

Rehrersburg, Berks County, Pennsylvania

Book History of Little Swatara Church of the Brethren

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One of the Little Swatara Church of the Brethren meeting houses
is now owned by the Old German Baptist Brethren with services twice a month
250th Anniversary was June 16 and 17, 2007

 

The church meetings started in 1757 most likely in homes and barns as was typical for the time. There was a brick building built on the Ziegler farm sometime between 1830 and 1860 for 300 members. In 1875 brothers Emanuel and Philip Ziegler of the 5th generation ZIEGLER's gave land for a new wood frame church and the Ziegler Cemetery, now a 15 row cemetery of ZEIGLER relatives listed in Floyd Mason's book Ziegler Family Record Revised, 1990, an update of Jesse ZIEGLER's 1906 book of the same title. An 1876 map shows the road going from the Ziegler Meeting House north between the farms of Samuel Gettle and the Ziegler Farms. Pictures were taken in 1918 and are shown below.

My families listed in the members of Little Swatara Congregation of 1770 German Baptist Brethren include Peter HECKMAN, minister and wife, his son John HECKMAN and wife who was Barbara MEYER HECKMAN, Jacob MOYER and wife - Barbara MEYER's parents, Philip ZEIGLER and wife the original ZIEGLER immigrant family and whose farm was passed down through the ZIEGLER family until 1972. Dwayne Wrightsman gave an interesting discussion of the Early Brethren Farms on Little Swatara Creek on the Brethren Mailing List. Google map Street Level View shows the current church.

The 1875 frame building is now owned by the Old River Brethren according to Dwayne Wrightsman in response to my October 9, 2007 query. The Mastoff Press sells the book History of Little Swatara Church of the Brethren, 1757-2007 which describes the Zeigler Meeting House on pages 161-164.

Elizabethtown College Photograph Collection has these ZIEGLER Meeting House photographs in The High Library Special Collections on the Access Pennsylvania Digital Repository web site seen below. Clicking the photo will take you to their web page.

Ziegler Meeting House sepia tone with border Ziegler Meeting House 1905-1915 J G Francis B & W Ziegler Meeting House sepia tone
Little Swatara Church Ziegler Meeting House in trees Ziegler Meeting House

There is also a photograph of the Merkey Meeting House built in 1846 another Little Swatara Meeting House.

Genealogy research is never complete, important details might be missing, and often contains errors, so let me know if your research contradicts mine. My Indiana and Ohio family research comes from conversations with relatives, scrapbooks, library research, online records, visits to courthouses, final resting places on family farms and cemeteries. Families in other states rely mostly on the research of others. Links to other web sites often change then won't work, so if you find broken links, have additional information on any families, corrections, photos, or anything to add to the history of our families, please leave a Comment in my Guest book, join my Follis Families on Facebook page for updates and new discoveries, or send an Email. The Wayback Machine archives most old web pages so copy and paste the broken URL address to find the missing 404 pages that disappeared. Read Dick Eastman's newsletter on using Unverified Data from the internet. This web site is designed to work with JavaScript and the latest browsers. If you experience display problems you may need to update your browser.

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