Results tagged “German Reformed” from York Town Square

June Lloyd wrote the book on a form of fraktur used to illustrate York County, Pa., birth and baptismal certificates in the 1700s and 1800s. A sample is found on the her book's cover. "Faith and Family" is available at the York County Heritage Trust. Background posts: PS Harrisburg grad school: 'Set my feet even more firmly on the path into the world of Fraktur' and The Four YorkBloggers write and Nature had its way with short-lived York Furnace Bridge in southeastern York County

Former York County Heritage Trust Archivist June Lloyd is looking for folks who have early American birth and baptismal certificates.

She compiling a database of these works of fraktur, known as taufscheine.

June told an audience at the Heritage Trust's Second Saturday program over the weekend that she has records of 1,500 such certificates and regularly adds to that total as she learns of them.

The following is a sampling of the points she made on this Pennsylvania Dutch (German) practice of commissioning such art to mark these important passages:

A steel and fiberglas cupola is guided onto its base at the top of the tower of Zion UCC in York in 2002. The reproduction of a cupola removed from the church in 1974 houses antennas for PCS One. The original cupola (see photograph below), taken down after a structural analysis, had open windows and a bell, which is now inside the church.

Did you know the tower of a venerable York church hides all kinds of high-tech gadgetry?

It's a bit of a story so read on.

A recent post featured four towers from the 1800s captured by artist Lewis Miller.

One of those steeples, that on the German Reformed church, went down wihen the church was demolished in the early 1900s. Its successor, Zion United Church of Christ, went up facing Penn Park. (Trinity United Church of Christ is the other direct successor to the German Reformed church's, but that's another story, actually a Civil War tale.)

A cupola sat atop the church's tower until it a lightning strike prompted its removal in 1974.

Move ahead 30 years. ...