Gettysburg Religion: Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North

Divertimento

Divertimento Samuel Simon and Mary Catherine Steenbergen Schmucker S amuel Simon Schmucker, according to one modern scholar, was the “most prominent American Lutheran theologian of the early nineteenth century.” In 1826, with most of his career ahead of him, the twenty-seven-year-old came to Gettysburg to serve as the first professor of the new Lutheran seminary . Schmucker had been an outspoken advocate and energetic fundraiser in the founding of the institution, and the board of directors consequently selected this bright young preacher and scholar as their first instructor. Schmucker left his parish in Woodstock, Virginia, and relocated in Gettysburg while his teenaged wife, Mary Steenbergen Schmucker, and infant daughter stayed behind until the baby was old enough to travel. Schmucker was the son and grandson of Lutheran immigrants. In 1785 his family arrived in Pennsylvania, and two years later they settled permanently near Woodstock in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, then backcountry. Schmucker’s father , John George Schmucker, became a well-known Lutheran minister, a profession also followed by two uncles. In 1794 Schmucker’s father accepted a call to York, Pennsylvania, where Samuel was born. At age fifteen Samuel enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and two years later he accepted an offer to teach the classics at the York County Academy. Then, he furthered his education at the Princeton Theological Seminary and afterwards returned to his family’s roots in Woodstock to fill a pulpit. There the young preacher quickly married Elenora Geiger with a son coming in two years, but Elenora died six months later of complications from childbirth. In 1825 Schmucker, a widower with a two-year-old son, remarried, this time to Mary Catherine Steenbergen, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a wealthy local family with twenty slaves. Schmucker had married up. The couple moved to Gettysburg and soon built a spacious brick house near the seminary, located on a small but scenic ridge just west of town. The Schmucker marriage was warm. When thirty-eight-year-old Mary lost her teeth, Samuel proclaimed that their restoration would return her youthful 10 Divertimento Samuel Simon Schmucker, first professor and president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary and prominent theologian. (Courtesy of Special Collections, Musselman Library, Gettysburg College.) appearance, and he kindly added that “in every other respect you look as young as a twenty one.” The slaveholder’s daughter brought slaves to Gettysburg to lighten her domestic load. When Samuel arrived in town ahead of her, he learned that black servants were common in the Border North and that their status was identical to Samuel Simon and Mary Catherine Steenbergen Schmucker 11 slaves in Virginia except that at age twenty-eight they became free. Consequently, he advised Mary to bring two sixteen-year-olds “or a little less” for servants, who could serve her for approximately twelve years. Then, when these servants came of age, Mary could repeat the process with two more adolescents. After a few years in Pennsylvania, Samuel became an abolitionist, and the 1840 and 1850 Mary Steenbergen Schmucker, daughter of a Virginia slaveholder and a twelve-time mother. (Courtesy of Special Collections, Musselman Library, Gettysburg College.) 12 Divertimento censuses show black servants but not adolescent pseudo-slaves in the Schmucker household. One can only imagine the conversations between husband and wife about the South’s institution. Mary needed help, whether slaves or servants, because she spent most of her adult life either pregnant or recovering from pregnancy. In her twenty-three years of marriage, Mary gave birth twelve times with eight of her children surviving to adulthood. She died tragically. In 1847 at the age of thirty-nine, Mary was pregnant again. Returning home from a trip to town, she saw smoke from a fire kindled by a servant. Thinking that her house was in flames, she rushed to rescue a two-year-old son inside. Mary fell, miscarried, and developed an infection that claimed her life. Samuel had lost a second wife to childbearing. Together the Schmuckers represent several significant trends in Gettysburg religion. As Lutherans they belonged to the most prominent denomination in town. In addition to the seminary, its accompanying faculty, and its striking location on the ridge, Lutherans boasted of two congregations—and briefly three— plus a college. The Schmucker’s middle-class household—including books, paintings, and a commodious home—and Samuel’s prominence in higher education also indicate refinement. Moreover, the Schmuckers...