PENNS

REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

PENNSYLVANIA-GERMAN SOCIETY

T

AT ITS

ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING

ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1901.

HE Executive Committee of the Society held its regular quarterly meeting in the rooms of the Dauphin County Historical Society during the evening of October 24, for the transaction of its business.

MORNING SESSION.

The eleventh annual meeting of the Pennsylvania-German Society was held in the Board of Trade Building, Harrisburg, Pa., on Friday, October 25, 1901, and was very largely attended.

The gathering was called to order by the President, Prof. Charles Francis Himes, Ph.D., LL.D., at 9.30 A. M.

The Rev. Theodore E. Schmauk, D.D., of Lebanon, Pa., offered the opening prayer.

INVOCATION.

Our Father in Heaven: we lift our voices to Thee in thanksgiving. Clothed with majesty and strength, Thy throne is established of old. Our fathers have told, yea our fathers have told the wonders of Thy grace. Blessed forever, bountiful in mercy, beautiful in holiness, boundless in might, O God of our fathers, open our hearts to Thy resplendent brightness and be Thou glorious in the eyes of these Thy children's children.

Behold again the day is come in which Thou wouldst admonish us, and fill us with joy and gladness. Vouchsafe to lift us to the heavenly vision and interpret unto us the passing hours. Make Thou the outgoings of this morning and this evening to rejoice in the scenes that are gone by. Draw our hearts to the pavilion in which Thou ever hast kept our kindred, and to the shelter in which they have lain within Thy fold.

In Thee, O God, have our Fathers trusted. Thou didst hide them in the shadow of Thy mighty hand. Thou didst redeem them through the saving strength of Thy right hand, and in Thy name did they set up their banners. Through the blood of Thy precious Son do they now stand faultless before Thy presence. Unto the third and fourth generation, yea unto thousands of them that love Thee and keep Thy commandments, has Thou transmitted the blessings of a common blood, a common faith, a common land, and a common love.

Assembled this day from far and near, by the banks of the broad-bosomed stream whose majestic windings in the realm of the setting sun Thou didst ordain as a path in the wilderness, as a pathway of deliverence from the rigors and the hard-hearted Pharaohs of the north, as a gateway to the good lands to which our fathers came; and whose

tributaries, Conewago, Conestoga, Codorus, Wisconisco, Swatara and all streamlets of the Kittatinny, were as waters of life and highways of travel to those who were guided by Thy rod and Thy staff, we offer thanksgiving unto Thee; who thus hast led Thy people through the way of the land of the wilderness, round about through the way of the winding river, and who broughtest them hither with the promise, "God will surely visit thee."

Thou didst regard Thy servants of old, the fathers and mothers whom we have loved. They thirsted not when Thou leddest them through the deserts. Thou causedst the waters to fall out of the rock forever.

Thou didst establish them in the valleys and on the hills didst Thou permit them to plant to Thy praise their temples of the living God.

We thank Thee, our Father, for the homes from which they came beyond the sea, and the land, the German Fatherland from which they and we in them are sprung. Seat and strength of sovereignty that was earnest and incorruptible in ages that are gone, home of the seriousminded, home of the humble toiler, home of the brave warrior, home of scholarship and learning, home of music and sacred song, home thrice riven by the gathered storms of a continent, home rising from the flame, from a baptism of blood and iron, to modern greatness-we thank Thee for this German Fatherland.

And here, O our God, on this new soil and at the crossings of the stream, toward which were drawn as a common center the king of the Susquehannocks from his home, the king of the Delawares from the east, the king of the Potomacs from the south, the king of the mighty Onondagos from the north, and the founder of this commonwealth from across the seas, we thank Thee for the substantial

frame of the state that has been reared upon its borders, for the substantial men of our blood who have established its councils, and for the substantial place, through its Germanic virtues, Thou hast permitted us to occupy in our nation; and we pray Thee that the ungodliness and iniquity which ever threaten to consume it may be made to bite the dust!

We thank Thee that at last shining as the star of morning, soft gleaming as the star of eventide after the deep horrors of the storm have swept by, burning as the sun at noonday, filling with the glory of its presence every corner of our commonwealth, is the testimony to the honesty, integrity and patriotism of our humble fathers. Here at this seat of government do we thank Thee for their homes, hidden for generations in the forests, for their hamlets, slumbering peacefully for decades in our great valleys, for the smoking, dreaming, sounding cities, rising on our plains and clinging to the crests of our hillsides; and we do beseech Thee that the fathers with the children may be gathered as Thy peculiar people to the one great commonwealth above, the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God, through the blood of Him who died to save us all, who with Thee, the Father, and Thee, the Spirit, liveth and reigneth, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

ADDRESS OF WELCOME.

This was followed by a cordial welcome extended to the Society by the Rev. David McConaughy Gilbert, D.D., of Harrisburg, on behalf of the citizens and resident members, who said:

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have been charged with the pleasant duty of speaking to you a few words of cordial greeting, on behalf of the resident members of our Pennsylvania-German Society, and bidding you welcome to the Capital City of the Commonwealth.

We rejoice in the existence of our society and count it a privilege to be associated with those who make up its goodly fellowship. It came into being in recognition of the great truth that no generation of mankind can be rightly regarded as independent, but that each has the position and connections of a link in the long chain of human history; that each is largely conditioned and influenced by the generations which have preceded it, and, in turn, has its share in influencing and conditioning those which follow; that every generation, therefore, is inseparably bound by ties of privilege and duty both to the past and the future and is under solemn responsibilities as regards the right use of its heritage and the nature of its bequests.

It was especially felt in the organization of this society that it was due alike to those who have gone before us and to those who shall come after us, in our line of Teutonic descent, that the character and work of our proudly claimed ancestry should be more fully and accurately ascertained and made matter of permanent record. For as one, not of us, has justly pointed out, of the five races whence chiefly came the population of Pennsylvania the German forms a very important part of the bedrock of the civilization of the State, and one can really know little of that civilization who is ignorant of the special history of the PennsylvaniaGermans. Abundant proof of this may be found in almost every locality within the broad limits of the Commonwealth.

You meet here to-day, for example, in a community