Important Persons in Zion's Early History

Johann Balthasar Pickel
In 1714, there was a man, twenty-seven years of age and unmarried, who throughout the remainder of his life was to manifest unwavering dedication this congregation. This man was Baltes Pickel. He would have been a most likely candidate for the office of Vorleser and one whom we would hardly expect Justus Falckner to have overlooked.
Baltes Pickel was born in 1687 at Durkheim in the Palatinate, the son of Hans Balthasar Pickel and Anna Eva Mullier. He was still just a boy when his father died and his mother was remarried in 1704 to Mattias Reinbold. With his mother and step-father, young Baltes joined the 1709/1710 emigration and was followed, some 17 years later, by an older brother Johann Nicolaus PIckel, who also settled in Hunterdon County.
That Baltes Pickel early assumed responsibility in the affairs of the congregation is evident by the use made of his and his mother’s homes. The place of the meeting in 1715 was given as Nine Mile Run and in 1716 as Mattias Reinbold’s place at Nine Mile Run. Remember that this was the home of Baltes’ mother and step-father, and possibly, therefore, his own. After Baltes’ marriage in 1718 to Anna Gertrud Reiter, the meetings were held in his home. Thus at least five of the eight services held by Justus Falckner after the one in 1714 were held in home of the Pickel family. It was Baltes Pickel who built, at his own expense, the Racheway Church (at today’s Potterstown) about 1729 and the Leslysland Church (serving the district between Whitehouse and North Branch) about 1735. When at last the Raritan congregation under Pastor Johann Albert Weygand reconsolidated itself and in 1749 built the Zion Lutheran Church at Oldwick, it was Baltes Pickel who generously contributed money and much effort to its construction. He also added £25 toward the purchase of Zion’s first organ. Up to 1750, when the parsonage was built, the hospitality of his home always extended to the Lutheran ministers. Finally, concerned with the church’s continuing prosperity, he bequeathed to Zion by his 1765 will the then magnificent sum of one thousand pounds.

John Augustus Wolf
In 1734, the Reverend John Augustus Wolf arrived from Germany. Wolf was a character totally unfit for the office of the ministry. It was only a few months until he entered into a series of disputes with the congregation concerning salary, parsonage, and his personal conduct. To settle these disputes, the first Lutheran Synod held on American soil was convened in this parish. The delegates and pastor were as follows: from New York, Re. Berkenmeyer, Charles Beekman, Jacob Bos; from Hackensack, Rev. Knoll, John Van Norden, Abraham Van Buskirk; from Uylekill, Peter Frederick; from Potterstown, Rev. Wold, Baltes Pickel, Lawrence Roelofson; from Pluckemin, Daniel Shoemmaker, Hendrick Smith. The Synod resulted in a peace which was short lived, and Wolf continued to menace the congregation’s spiritual welfare until 1745. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg came from Philadelphia in that year in response to our ancestors’ appeals, and disposed of the matter with his accustomed dispatch and justice. Wolf left immediately.

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg
The visit of Muhlenberg was the first of many and the service rendered then, welcome and helpful as it must have been, was but little when compared with the constant help the busy patriarch gave to the Raritan Lutherans in the next thirty years.
Muhlenberg was a native of Eimbeck, Hanover Province, Germany. A graduate of the University of Goettingen, he had taught one year in the Francke institutions in Halle. In 1714, at the age of thirty, he was superintendent of an orphan home school and pastor of a church. At this time he was asked to go as a missionary to the wilds of America. Accepting, he becomes pastor of the scattered congregations of Philadelphia, Germantown, Providence, and New Hanover in Pennsylvania. He soon was the recognized leader of Lutherans over a wide area. He set the doctrinal, organizational, liturgical, and practical precedents for American Lutheranism. He sent detailed reports of his work to the pastors at Halle and kept a diary for his personal reference. It is from these documents that much of the early history of the Raritan Congregation is drawn.