Rudolph S. Carpenter, Woodworker Extraordinaire

 

Included in the many priceless Lititz items displayed at The Lititz Historical Foundation are two beautiful, inlaid-wood grandfather clocks made by Lititz native Rudolph S. Carpenter. A stone mason by trade, Mr. Carpenter spent most of his free time in a workshop behind his home at 131 N. Cedar Street. His passion was inlaid wood furniture.

He made clocks, chests and tables using more than twenty different kinds of hard wood. Local oak, chestnut, walnut, holly, cherry, and maple were used as well as wood shipped to his workshop from a woodcutter in Germany. His main tool was a simple scroll saw. With his saw he cut as many as 50,000 pieces of wood, in small, intricate, symmetrical shapes to coincide with the finished design he had planned.

Albrecht Coffee Mill

 

        Recently (circa 2009) the Lititz Moravian Archives and Museum Committee received an inquiry from Dick Duez, an antique dealer from Bridgeport, WV, who has a special interest in early American coffee grinders. He wrote that there was a rumor of an 18^th-century grinder in a Lititz museum, and he wondered if it might be in the Moravian Museum? Dale Shelley, answering for the Committee, responded, “Yes, we have a coffee grinder on display that was brought to the Museum from the Church’s coffee kitchen in the 1990s. It is signed and dated: A. Albrecht, 1772.”

This was all Duez, a member of the Grinders Finders Club, needed to hear. Immediately he requested pictures and any information we had on the mill’s provenance. If possible, he wanted pictures showing the signature and date to print in the next Grinder Finder, a newsletter of the Association of Coffee Mill Enthusiasts. Here is what appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Grinder Finder, part of an article by Dick Duez and Don Drozdenko.

Pennsylvania Mills Pre-1800

 

From those early days to the present, there have been lots of box mills made to help quench America’s desire for brewed coffee. Since those early days in the United States seem to start in the 1820s, the design of the box mill has basically not changed. Pre-Civil War hand-made mills were over-built compared to the next generation that was mass-produced. Thus spelled the demise of those individuals who could not keep up with the demand and be cost effective for what had been a home cottage industry, which lasted around 40 years.

For many years of putting a sizable collection together, lingering questions were always out there. Where are the early mills, the prototypes? When did they start showing up here in the United States? Sure, there have been a few mills on occasion that appeared very early but never one dated before the 1820s.

We will attempt to show in this article a few mills that are familiar to most collectors and that have always been labeled 19th-century. Also, for several years a rumor persisted that a mill dating back to the 18th-century existed in a Lititz Museum in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. That museum turned out to be a very prestigious one, belonging to the Moravian Church that was organized in 1749. When contacted, museum authority Dale Shelley was very helpful in our request for information. That ‘rumored’ coffee mill turned out to be not only 18th-century, but dated 50 years earlier (1772) than the earliest known mills of the Pritz brothers, Daniel Small and Timothy Vogler of the 1830s. The mill maker, Andreas Albrecht (1718-1802), was a gunsmith and of German descent. He learned his trade while in the German army and in 1750 migrated to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and later to Lititz in 1771.

 

 

Much of Albrecht’s story is told in his own words, probably his Lebenslauf⁽¹⁾, published in the Biographical Entries for Lancaster County Gunsmiths. It’s hard to believe that a Moravian was such an important part of the Pennsylvania long-rifle story! Trained in Germany, he was the master gunsmith in Nazareth in the 1750s. Today there remain six known Albrecht rifles, and the Moravian Historical Society in Nazareth is home to one of them.

Albrecht came into contact with the Brethren during his service as gunstock maker in the German regiment garrisoned in Halle, Saxony, where Count Zinzendorf was educated. In 1743 he met and heard Zinzendorf preach and thought that he would one day join the Brethren. He continued to serve his regiment as gunsmith through the Silesian Wars. In 1748, he was dismissed from the regiment and that very next day he was on the road to the Moravian community of Herrnhaag. There he was quickly accepted into full communion; and in 1750, he left with 80 Brethren for America. He arrived in Bethlehem on June 27, 1750.

Shortly after his arrival in Bethlehem, he moved to nearby Christian Spring to live, teaching music at a boys’ school in Nazareth. All the time he continued to develop his skills as a gunsmith. In Europe, only the military and noblemen were permitted to have firearms, but in America the rifle was considered just another tool on the American frontier. It was not until after the massacre at Gnadenhutten that the Brethren would think of the rifle for self-defense.

In 1766 Albrecht married Elizabeth Ort in Bethlehem, and for five years they managed the Sun Inn at Bethlehem. In 1771 the Albrechts resettled in Lititz and there he established himself again as a gunsmith. The coffee mill was one of his first projects upon arriving in Lititz. The mill was long used in the old coffee kitchen of the church to make the Lovefeast beverage. It is reported that during the American Revolution, his rifles were included in shipments from Lancaster County gunsmiths to Revolutionary troops.

Albrecht died in 1802 and was buried in God’s Acre in Lititz.

 

by Robert A. Sandercox, CSJ, Fall 2009

 

Author's Note:

⁽¹⁾A life story written by one prior to one's death. It served as a self-assessment, a summary of one's spirituality, often one's admitted weaknesses.

 

1744 Saint James Graveyard

 

At the corner of what is now Pine Lane and West Center Street lies the remains of what has become the burial site for some of Lititz’s earliest converts to the teachings of Count Zinzendorf. The old St. James Church, a small, log structure also built on this plot of ground, was built in 1744 as a “union” church by the Lutheran, Reformed, and Mennonite settlers of Warwick Township. This church was the first public meeting place built after Zinzendorf’s first visit in 1742 and 12 years before the town of Lititz was established in 1756.

In 1905 Abraham R. Beck, noted Lititz educator and founder of The Beck Family School for Boys (now “Kadima Rehabilitation and Nursing at Lititz,” located at 125 S. Broad Street), wrote: “The Moravian Graveyards at Lititz, Pa. 1744- 1905.” His reference to plural “graveyards” included both the St. James and Lititz Moravian cemeteries.

Along Old Petersburg Road

 

What we now know as Woodcrest Avenue was still called the old Petersburg Road at the turn of the 20^th century. Like the avenue, the road began at Second Avenue and Spruce Street. The intersection was marked by three greenhouses and a brick dwelling that Calvin S. Loeffler⁽¹⁾ built on the northwest corner.

Loeffler apparently was a man of many talents. That he was a florist is apparent from his interest in greenhouses, but at different times he was also a teacher; a barber; a ladies’ tailor; and a producer of operas.⁽²⁾ In this last capacity he gave the town two productions, "The Fall of Jerusalem" and "Belshazzar." For these presentations, each requiring more than eighty participants, he used local talent. A stage was constructed over the pool at the head of the stream in the Lititz Park, and here the operas were given to large and appreciative audiences.

De Merlier Murals Restored in Former Theatre Lobby

     The Purple Robin Reserve at 47 East Main Street occupies what was formerly the lobby of the Lititz Community Theatre. The remarkable feature of the place is not its reuse of an older structure but the fact that it retains the principal decorations of the earlier enterprise.

    These decorations are a series of nine murals painted by Belgian artist Franz de Merlier when the theatre was being built in 1935. Depicting noted scenes and landmarks from Lititz, the paintings graced the theatre lobby until the showplace was closed and converted into shops and commercial space. They remained on the walls of one of the stores, but in over half a century had become badly soiled and faded.

The owners of the Piano and Organ Center, Dave and Hetty Andrews (early occupants), and the owners of the building, Lititz Improvement, investigated having the historic art works refurbished. The Lititz Historical Foundation agreed to foot half the cost. Engaged to do the work was the Twistback Conservation Center of Oxford, Pa. The price was set at $1,200. [Editor’s note: They have since been restored again by Brandywine Museum.]

Sunday School, by George

 

Editor’s note: George L. Hepp, long-time and beloved Sunday School Superintendent, passed away on Saturday, 10 July 1926, at the age of 61.  Memorial services were held at the church the next day during the Sunday School hour and at his home on the following Tuesday.  The typescript of this eulogy by Henry T. Muth was found in the Archives files.  Spelling, punctuation, and grammar are reproduced as they appear in the original. Handwritten surnames inserted into the text are indicated by italics and brackets.

"Attendance last Sunday 328." That is what it says on the bulletin board tucked away next to the Sunday School honor rolls hanging in the north east room on the third floor of the Brother's House. It must have been too hot or too cold for the lukewarm members to venture out on this day for surely with a total enrollment of 641 including the "Home Department" and the "Cradle Roll" the ordinary attendance figure would be much higher.

George L. Hepp was thirty two years of age in 1896 when he became Superintendent of the Lititz Moravian Sunday School which he would nourish for thirty prosperous years. "Mr. Hepp" as he was addressed by everyone was not overpowering but he was gifted with blessed assurance, a vital trait in a leader.

In the business world Mr. Hepp was a vender of "Diamonds, Watches and Fine Jewelry" at 21 East Main Street, the store with the largest glass show window in town. Because of its unique dressing this show window arrested the attention of even the most casual passerby and on days when you should attend Sunday School, a funeral, or celebrate a worthy holiday, the window's blinds were respectfully drawn signifying the occasion.

Tobias “Toby” Hirte

     Johann Tobias Hirte was born in 1707 in Euba, Upper Lusatia. Growing to a young man, he served in the Saxon Army, and eventually was converted to Christianity by the Moravian Brethren there. He was married to Maria Kloss at the “Great Wedding” held at Herrnhaag on May 27, 1743: Count Zinzendorf officiating. They were one of 24 couples at this famous mass wedding ceremony.

Johann Tobias, else unknown to fame, became a master carpenter while with the Moravians and so was called to Nazareth when the need for his trade became evident. He was to build “Nazareth Hall” for the pending residence of Count Zinzendorf, who was expected to become an inhabitant of the Providence. Working harmoniously with men of seven nationalities, Hirte finished the noble structure in the record time of five months in 1755. It is architecturally faultless.

The important issue from the marriage of Johann and Maria Hirte was a son named Tobias, called Toby by his friends. Toby was nurtured in the traditional Moravian atmosphere of the time, and therefore, was provided with an excellent education including musical instruction. He was proficient with violin, spinet, and vocal talents, along with reading, writing, and arithmetic, and could repair musical instruments. He was known to be a bookworm even later in life. Toby’s personal motto was “Liberty and Independence.” He enjoyed social activities with friends and strangers and had an outgoing, congenial personality. His attributes did not go unnoticed, for in 1771, he was assigned as assistant schoolmaster at Lititz, at the corner of Main and Water Streets, under the supervision of Moravian Brother Roessler. He resided in the Brothers’ House: a sworn bachelor.