Abraham Blumer, Allentown, Lehigh County

I'm learning a lot about Pennsylvania history while doing this project, as you might expect. However, the lesson that I'm learning most often is that, as much as I know about the history of Pennsylvania, and Lehigh County in particular, I don't know as much as I think I do. I'm constantly being surprised.

I celebrated my birthday earlier this month, and my husband Kevin and I spent part of the day at the Lehigh Valley Zoo, of which we are members. (Hi, zoo friends!) It was a great day, with beautiful weather, and I got to feed Murphy the giraffe. As we were leaving, I checked the list of historical markers and realized that there was one more or less on our way home, so we headed for the Jordan United Church of Christ just off of route 309. I was puzzled, to be honest, because I've driven past that church many times over the years and I have never noticed a blue and gold historical marker.

Well, that's because there isn't one.

The plaque is mounted on a concrete
marker near the main entrance of
the church facing Church Road

The marker for Rev. Abraham Blumer isn't blue and gold. It's a bronze plaque, nearly a hundred years old, and it's different in almost every possible way from every other marker I've recorded for this blog thus far. It's at least twice as big, it technically honors two people instead of just one, and if you look closely, it doesn't even have the PHMC name at the bottom. Before the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission became, well, that, it was the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, and they co-sponsored this particular marker with the Valley Forge chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution.

I'm going to interrupt my own narrative here to try to explain a little about the local geography. Northampton County, at that time, was enormous, covering an extremely large swath of land in eastern Pennsylvania; it wasn't until much later that it was broken down into the counties we know today, and for that reason, the historical records are sometimes a little confusing. It's also worth noting that the official address of the church where this marker is situated is Allentown; however, it's more commonly identified as South Whitehall Township, which includes part of Allentown but not all of it, and which includes other communities as well. I'm guessing this is the reason why the official list of markers at the PHMC website states that the marker is in Whitehall rather than Allentown. It technically isn't, although it is close to the border between the communities.

So, who was Rev. Blumer? He was - as the plaque states - born in Grabs, in the canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland, on December 14, 1736. Both his father and his grandfather were also ministers, and members of the Blumer line had held various offices of distinction in Switzerland for several generations.

View of Jordan UCC, taken while standing
near the marker pillar

Rev. Blumer spent several years as a teacher and minister, including as a military chaplain in the service of the King of Sardinia. He left Switzerland in 1770 (on the same day in September when I found his marker, which I thought was a bit uncanny) and reached New York the following January. The next month he began to serve as the minister of four different congregations, one of which was Jordan Reformed Church. 

Of course, the big thing going on at the time of Rev. Blumer's arrival in the States was the beginnings of the American Revolution. The Lehigh Valley isn't home to any Revolutionary battlefields, or any battlefields at all for that matter; but local sentiment was strongly in favor of the cause. Lorenz Guth - the guy who shares Rev. Blumer's marker - was a farmer who owned quite a bit of land outside of Allentown, and in May 1776 there was a gathering of some 900 locals on his property for the purpose of voting on the matter of declaring independence. Rev. Blumer was there, and before the vote, he preached a sermon on Jeremiah 29:7, to "seek the well-being of the city." The events of that day are regarded as the beginning of the American Revolution in the Lehigh Valley.

Being no stranger to military service - as noted above, he'd been a military chaplain in Switzerland - Rev. Blumer joined the first battalion of militia in Northampton County in 1781, under Lt. Col. Stephen Balliet. As interesting as that is, however, and even though that's what his marker recognizes about him, this isn't his most remarkable contribution to the Revolution. A few years before he joined the battalion, Rev. Blumer was involved in a very important mission. 

Most Pennsylvania schoolkids learn, sooner or later, that the British forces occupied Philadelphia in September 1777. The Brits intended to commandeer bells in the city and melt them down, including what was then known as the State House bell. To prevent this, eleven bells were smuggled out of Philadelphia by two local farmers, Frederick Leaser and John Jacob Mickley. At great personal risk, they hid the bells in a wagon caravan and brought them to Rev. Blumer's Allentown church - known today as the Zion United Church of Christ. Rev. Blumer concealed the bells under the floorboards of his church because, really, who would ever think to look for them there? The church was temporarily being used as a military hospital at the time, and the bells were kept safe there for more than a year. 

(I'll talk more about Frederick Leaser in another blog post, as he has a plaque elsewhere in Lehigh County. John Mickley, meanwhile, was part of a large, land-owning French immigrant family; the family name is still attached to a number of locations in Whitehall. He doesn't have a marker of his own, but he does have a memorial plaque at Zion UCC.)

The State House bell, known today as the Liberty Bell, is on display in Philadelphia, and is possibly the most-visited landmark in the city. I remember learning, many years ago, that every state capital in the United States has a replica of the Liberty Bell except Harrisburg, and that's because the one that would be in Harrisburg is instead in Allentown. Zion UCC, more often known as the Liberty Bell Church, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is home to the Liberty Bell Museum, where visitors can see this replica and even the stone foundation at the exact spot where Rev. Blumer hid the real one. 

Update July 2022: The Liberty Bell Church now has a marker of its own, so you can learn more about the daring rescue of the bells in this post.

Rev. Blumer married Susanna Frary in 1772. They had five children; their son Henry married Sarah Mickley, the daughter of John Jacob, who brought the bells out of Philadelphia. Two of the men who saved the bells share descendants. Rev. Blumer retired in 1801, and died on April 23, 1822.

As for Lorenz Guth, who hosted that very important meeting, we have to jump back in time a bit. It took a little work to sort through the records and confirm which Lorenz Guth was honored on that marker, because there were two men in this area of the same name, and in some records the name is spelled as Lorentz, and there was another Lorenz Guth in Wisconsin around the same time who kept coming up in my searches. That's history for you! The Lorenz Guth in question was born in Bayern, Germany, in 1711; he and his wife, Maria Gertsch, came to the United States in 1738 with their two oldest daughters. They had several more children after their arrival, including Lorenz Junior, who was the source of some of my confusion.

Guth purchased his first farmland from Nicholas Kern, the founder of modern-day Slatington (and my ancestor), and over the next several years he continued to purchase additional nearby tracts of land. Part of his property became known as Guthsville; the Guth family home can still be seen, on Wehr Mill Road in Allentown, and in excellent condition. It's regarded as one of the finest surviving examples of colonial architecture in the region. It's still a private residence and was yet in the hands of Guth family descendants as of a few years ago, although I'm unsure whether it is today.

In 1752, he presented fifty acres of his property for the foundation of Jordan Reformed Church, and a log cabin was constructed there which served as the original church building. This was the church in which Rev. Blumer preached when he arrived in the area in 1771; the second building, the one which still stands today, was constructed in 1808. Guth did not live to see this new church, as he died in 1800. He and Maria are buried in the church cemetery, as are dozens of their descendants. His tombstone identifies him as the founder of the church, which is now Jordan United Church of Christ.

Today, the congregation has turned part of Lorenz Guth's legacy into their Peace Garden. In fact, the historical marker is pointed directly at it - from the marker, just cross Church Road and enter two and a half acres of greenery. It has walking trails, a wedding gazebo, and picnic facilities, among other offerings.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Official website of Jordan United Church of Christ

Official website of Zion United Church of Christ

WikiTree record for Abraham Blumer

Geni record for Lorenz Guth

Jordan UCC at FindAGrave.com

History of South Whitehall Township

Whelan, Frank. "America at 225." Published in the Allentown Morning Call on July 3, 2001; reproduced at Knappenberger.net.

Assorted authors. History of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Lehigh Valley Publishing Co., 1914. Available courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Abraham Blumer at FindAGrave.com

Abraham Blumer at the Historical Marker Database

If you've enjoyed this, please leave a comment!

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.