Excerpt from book "The Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania: 1638-1800" featuring the church at Morlatton (now St. Gabriel's)

Series of three digital images depicting a 5-page section from the book ”The Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania (1638-1800),” Vol. I, by Theodore Emanuel Schmauk, D.D., Lancaster, PA, The Pennsylvania German Society (1902). The section herein is featured on pages 235-239. The excerpt gives a brief history of the church at Morlatton (in text referred to as Molatton) and its eventual transition from a Swedish Lutheran congregation to one under the auspices of the Church of England. The succession of ministers is related as well as the church wardens and vestrymen (in 1765). Repair and construction of the original log structure that housed the congregation is also discussed. A perspective drawing of a (presumably conjectural) log church, captioned “Swedish Church at Molatton,” is included in the essay. In his Journals{a} from 1748 to 1787, Reverend Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, who often preached at the “Swedish-English Church” there, referred to the village as “Molatton” or “Molotton”, occasionally applying the earlier regional toponym “Mahanatawny”, which was more commonly identified as “Manatawny” in earlier sources. In his entry for April, 1748, the itinerant pastor, who rode on horseback to preach to the Amity flock by Sunday afternoon, noted that the residents of Molatton included “a few old Swedes, the English, the Irish, and Germans.” {a} The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, Three Volumes, Philad.: Muhlenberg Press (1942; reprinted, 1958) ^Added Note: Louis Richards, early 20th century historian and President of the Berks County Historical Society from 1902 to 1917 read a paper to the Society on September 12, 1911 entitled “The Ancient Swedish Settlement At Morlatton”. This address was published in 1923 in Volume III of the “Transactions of the Historical Society of Berks County.” Included is the statement that “The region for many miles surrounding was known in provincial history as Manathanim, derived from the Indian name of the Creek…The name Morlatton, by which this church has been known for nearly a century and a half is, I have no doubt, a corruption of Manating, a later version of the name Manathanim…subsequently …employed to designate the locality.”