Rev. Dr. Calvin P. Wehr served as minister of Simeon Reformed Church, Gratz, Dauphin County, from 1905 to 1937.
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The Rev. Dr. Calvin Peter Wehr was the eldest son of Wilson Wehr and Rebecca [Werly] Wehr. He was born 10 January 1870 in Heidelberg Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, on the old Wehr homestead owned first by his grandfather and later by his father.
With only the advantage of a common school education, Calvin was examined by the School Superintendent of Lehigh County and given a certificate to teach in the public schools.
In 1889, he entered Keystone State Normal School at Kutztown and followed by entering the academic course of study at Ursinus College. He graduated in 1895 and continued his studies at the Ursinus College Theological Seminary from which he graduated in 1898.
Rev. Wehr was licensed to preach on 19 May 1898 by the Lehigh Classis, Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. In March 1898, he was elected to Friend’s Cove Charge in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and several years later he accepted a call to the Summit Hill Charge.
In December 1904, Rev. Wehr accepted a call from the Lykens Valley Charge and on 30 May 1905, at a meeting held at Killinger, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, he transferred his affiliation with the Lehigh Classis to the East Susquehanna Classis. Years later, he recalled the meeting:
I was but the stripling of a youth. This was the day of the horse and buggy. When you arrived it reminded one of a great country fair. One had a hard time to find a suitable place to tie his horse and lucky to find shade. one was more lucky to have a comfortable seat for himself and his family as they sat in the church. Often standing room was at a premium. What devout worshipers! The local choir furnished music to the very best of their ability. The Classis usually took four or five days. When we were ready to sing the doxology, the roosters were ready to climb on top of a building for safety, and rejoiced over our departure and having escaped with their lives. Those were not only horse and buggy days, but the days when the minister was looked to as a mighty force and ruling power in the community. When he entered the pulpit the people rewarded him as a man sent from God. The Bible was none else but the Word of God. The outstanding factor of a sermon was not its brevity but often the opposite was true. A sermon was an hour in length, and was regarded as too short and hardly worth while to drive three or four miles in mud, up over the horses feet.
Rev. Wehr remained in the Lykens Valley for many years serving at Simeon in Gratz, Peace in Berrysburg, Salem in Elizabethville, and St. Peter’s (Hoffman’s), Lykens Township, congregations. His ministry was successful in many ways. On of his legacies was the Carnegie Pipe Organ at Simeon’s, which through his influence was obtained and installed and was dedicated in April 1906 [or 1907].
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Rev. Wehr loved horses. For his own use, he wanted a horse that could travel four miles an hour. It is said that one day, he was late leaving Elizabethville for a funeral in Gratz, and with the pressure to arrive on time, his horse Ruby doubled her effort and ran the distance at eight miles in an hour.
On occasion Rev. Lehr bought old race horses and brought them to the track at the Fair Ground in Gratz. He remarked, that once on the track, “they knew what to do.”
On 6 November 1891, Rev. Wehr married his childhood sweetheart, Agnes E. Peters, who was born 30 July 1871, daughter of Franklin Peters and Catherine Peters. They had one child, Florence A. Wehr, born 13 August 1892. She never married.
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A brief biography of Rev. Stauffer appeared in a Gratz history published in 1997.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.