Two 1982 photographs: Friedens United Church of Christ, Hegins, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania (top photo); and Christ United Church of Christ, Fountain, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania (bottom photo).
In “Focus… on the West End,” October 12, 1982, Marcus Schneck, staff writer for the Pottsville Republican, presented an article entitled, “Two UCC Congregations’ Pasts Intertwined.”
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HEGINS TOWNSHIP — Friedens United Church of Christ, Hegins, and Christ United Church of Christ, Fountain, go back a long way together through a history of shared churches, jointures and dissolutions.
Church records indicate that from the time in 1817 that the log Friedens Church was built near the site of the present Friedens Evangelical Lutheran Church to the present, the two churches have been linked.
That small log church built on land donated by Charles Witmer and William Witmer of Reading, served parishioners from both churches as well as those of the Lutheran faith.
Today one pastor, the Rev. Robert Stewart, serves both United Church of Christ congregations in their separate churches as the Hegins Charge, while Lutherans worship in their own church in Hegins.
Michael Kessler, an early settler near Deep Creek, started the history of the churches in the dawning years of the 19th Century.
In 1800 he bought a tract of land along Deep Creek, setting aside eight acres of that land for school and church purposes.
The following year he built a log school house on the tract, an act which soon resulted in the formation of Friedens German Reformed Church, which met in the school house. The small congregation was served by preachers traveling from communities outside the Hegins Valley.
In 1817 the Lutheran and Reformed congregations of the valley formed a union to build Friedens Church, near the site of the present Friedens Evangelical Lutheran Church.
From 1848 to 1874, residents of Fountain traveled to that church in Hegins to attend services.
Some also attended services held in the William A. Stutzman home, which was also the hotel and post office in Fountain. Both Reformed and Lutheran services were held there and the worshipers came to be known as Christ’s Congregation.
Plans were set in motion in 1873 to tear down and replace Friedens Church, which left those people of Fountain who traveled to Hegins for services feeling they had no church of their own, according to the 100th Anniversary booklet of Christ Church.
As the Reformed and Lutheran congregations in Hegins went ahead with the construction in 1874 of a new brick church, which is today Friedens Evangelical Lutheran Church, the parishioners in Fountain met in Stutzman’s Fountain Hotel and decided they would build their own church in their own community.
In the fall of 1873 they bought a half-acre of land from George Dinger at the site of the present Christ Church in Fountain.
By 1874, the Lutheran and Reformed congregations in Fountain had their joint, as did the two congregations in Hegins.
The little church in Fountain was not without its problems as disputes between the Lutheran and Reformed parishioners soon broke out over which group had use of the church at what times. This was settled with a jointly agreed schedule.
In 1921, lightning hit the steeple of Christ Church, sending a large part of it to the ground. The remainder was removed and never replaced.
Meanwhile, the Lutheran and Reformed parishioners in Hegins were also outgrowing their shared facilities.
In 1934, Friedens Reformed and Lutheran congregations in Hegins decided to separate. The Lutheran congregation paid $5,000 to the reformed congregation for its share of Friedens church and its contents.
The Reformed congregation began work on Friedens Evangelical and Reformed Church across Main Street from the church that had served both congregations and by Easter Sunday, March 28, 1937, the parishioners were ready to occupy their new church, the present Friedens United Church of Christ.
The debt resulting from the church’s construction was paid by June, 1941.
Five years later, in 1946, a building committee was appointed to begin plans for a new Reformed parsonage in Hegins.
The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Paul W. Yoh were the first occupants of that new parsonage on Chestnut Street moving in December 10, 1947.
The dissolution of the two-faith union at Christ Church waited until 1968, when Christ Lutheran Church decided to disband. The last Lutheran service in the church in Fountain was held on September 15, 1968, leaving the structure to the United Church of Christ congregation.
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News article from Newspapers.com.
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