source: Pope p. 78 The Lutherans The early settlers of the Dutch Fork, the area drained by Crim's, Cannon's and Second creeks, were Swiss and German. The former were of the Reformed persuasion, while the latter were Lutheran. The first congregation in this section consisted of Swiss Reformed and German Lutheran settlers; the first two ministers, the Reverend Christian Theus and the Reverend John Gasser, were Swiss Reformed. The records of eighteenth-century Lutheran churches in Newberry County are nonexistent, and hence it is almost impossible to state with certainty the actual year of the stablishment of the two oldest Lutheran churches in the present Newberry County - St. John's and St. Paul's. Both are on Crim's Creek, St. John's on the south side and St. Paul's on the north. Tradition is that St. John's was established in 1754, when Gasser received a grant to fifty acres on Crim's Creek. When John Pearson, the deputy surveyor and leading man of the Broad River valley during the pre-Revolutionary period, made his plat on June 27, 1763, he showed the adjoining property owners and the various roads and paths and a meetinghouse. In the margin of his plat he recited that pursuant to a precept dated March 1, 1763, he had laid out a tract of 100 acres on a branch of Crim's Creek between Broad and Saluda rivers to John Adam Epting and Peter Dickert, elders of the Dissenting Congregation on Crim's Creek. The adjoining landowners at that time were Melchior Lyner, the Reverend John Gasser, Henry Hertley, and John Sweetenbergh. The roads and paths crossing the 100 acre tract were stated to lead to the Widow Hollmans, to John Gartman, to Condromans, to Captain Hans Adam (Epting's?), to Countz, to Summers, and to Sweetenbergh. This tract then was in the center of a settlement and accessible from all directions. It was given "in trust for a glebe and building a meeting house to the minister of the said congregation for the time being." In 1787, fifteen Lutheran churches outside Charleston were incorporated as the Corpus Evangelicum by the state general assembly. The claim is often made that St. John's was included under the title of the "German Calvinistic Church of St. John's"' the fact is that the full name of this church was the "German Calvinistic Church of St. John's on the Fourhole" and does not refer to the St. John's Church now in Newberry County. continued.... ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com