John Walter, Annville, Lebanon County

Before I get into today's subject, I just want to give a shout-out to my fellow local author, Scott Morro. I've mentioned Scott before as having written The Washington Pursuit, an enthralling young adult mystery set in Moravian Bethlehem. He announced on Twitter yesterday that the sequel, The Albrecht Society, will be released later this year and he's anticipating a launch event on August 20th. I very much enjoyed Pursuit and am looking forward to being there. Congratulations, Scott!

Fun fact: Scott's new book actually has a relationship to today's blog post. Well, sort of.

The marker stands in the front yard at 10708 Jonestown Rd.,
Annville, directly opposite the cemetery

John Walter, the subject of this post, was born near Quakertown, Bucks County, on August 12, 1781. Not much is known about his family. What is known is that as a very young man, he became acquainted with Jacob Albright, about whom a lot more has been written; he has his own marker (and appears on a couple others) so I won't talk about him a lot, except to say that he was a wildly popular evangelist. An ordained Methodist minister, he went out into the world to preach to the German-speaking settlers of Pennsylvania by bringing them the Gospel in their own language. Albright was the Anglicization adopted by his family after his death; Jacob himself went by the surname of Albrecht. As in The Albrecht Society. 

Okay, it's a tenuous connection, but it still counts. Details about Scott's book are currently being kept tightly under wraps, so I don't know for sure that his Albrecht Society is in any way related to Jacob Albright. All things considered, though, I would be surprised if it weren't.

Anyway, as part of his wandering preaching, Jacob often visited the Quakertown area, where he met the young John Walter. John's father, Peter, was a member of one of the first Evangelical classes Jacob organized; John was likewise inspired by Jacob and converted to the older man's faith. Jacob, who by this point had lost several of his own children to dysentery, took a liking to the teenager and brought him back to his home in Lancaster County, where he took him as an apprentice in his brick and tile-making business. It was soon obvious that John's talents lay elsewhere, however, and he became an itinerant preacher just like his mentor. This was a challenge, because John had received virtually no education (his family had been extremely impoverished) and he first had to learn to read.

A contemporary, Rev. William W. Orwig, described him thus:

"He preached with uncommon energy, and could truly be called a 'son of thunder'. Some that heard him preach though they had never heard the like before... it seemed as if the keys of the understanding of the Holy Scriptures had been given him... He sometimes preached on great and deep texts, to the great astonishment of his hearers. He was, at the same time, an active, faithful, and humble instrument in the service of his Master, and his labors were abundantly blessed [in] the salvation of many souls."

Because Jacob Albright's own post will have a lot to do with the founding of the Evangelical Church, I won't get into that here. Instead, I'd like to tell you more about John's personal contributions to his faith. Considering how late in life he received any sort of education, John was a remarkably gifted writer. His contemporaries praised him as a talented poet, and many of his original compositions are still used as hymns in the Evangelical Church even today. These include, to use the English translations, "Come brethren, come, we hasten on" and "Who will go with us to Zion?" He also translated many English hymns into German for the better use by his flock, which was an impressive feat considering that John's understanding of English was not great. 

In 1810 he created and published the first hymnal of the Evangelical Church, which up to that point had been forced to make do with hymnals borrowed from the Lutheran and Reformed faiths. It was published by John Ritter & Co. "for the author," and bore the lengthy title of A small collection of Spiritual Hymns, old and new, for the edification and use of all souls who love God, compiled and published by John Walter, minister, Reading. It contained just 56 hymns, so it was too small to be considered "official," but it was a labor of love and gratefully accepted by the Evangelicals.

John, as far as I can determine, never married and had no children. He only lived a few years after the publication of his life's work, passing away in 1818. He is buried in the extremely small Mount Nebo Cemetery in Lebanon County, although it's noted that he may have been originally interred elsewhere and then moved. He has a beautiful tomb, pictured here, beneath the spreading branches of a shade tree; his historical marker is in the front yard of a house just across the street. A large plaque on the headstone gives immortality to John's contributions to the Evangelical Church. It reads:

Rev. John Walter, first co-laborer of Jacob Albright in founding the Evangelical Association, was born near Quakertown, PA, Aug. 12, 1781. He began to preach in 1802. His health failing, he retired from active service in 1813, and died Dec. 3, 1818.

Walter was a young man without an education when he first started to preach. He had to spell the hymns and texts which he desired to read to his congregations, and yet ere long he became one of the most effective preachers of his day; frequently preaching from two to three hours, with great enthusiasm and power.

He was the first poet of his church. Among the hymns he wrote are "Wer will mit uns nach Zion gehn." and "Kommt, brueder, kommt, wir eilen fort." He translated a number of English hymns into the German, and published the first song book for his church.

Peter Walter, his father, was leader of the first class organized by Albright in 1800.

This memorial was erected by order of the East Penna. Conference of the Evangelical Church, and was dedicated Sept. 30, 1934.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Yeakel, Reuben. History of the Evangelical Association: 1750-1850. Thomas & Mattill, 1894. Digitized for Google Books by the University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2009.

Pennsylvania Historical Marker Series: John Walter by The Hometown Historian. YouTube video, uploaded October 5, 2021.

Rev. John Walter at FindAGrave.com

John Walter at the Historical Marker Database

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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.