Porter: the first congregations

From the county histories, on Porter township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the errors the scanner made. It has not been rewritten, summarised or added to.

Prior to this arrangement the church was connected with other congregations in forming a parish. The Keller Reformed Church of Canoe Valley. , The Reformed congregation was organized at an earlier day, and embraced members living in Sinking Valley, Canoe Valley, and Porter township. The Rev. John Deitrick Aurandt came among the adherents of that faith in 1798, and made his home in the Canoe Valley, living in what is now Catharine township until his death, April 24, 1831. He was buried in the cemetery by the Stone Church, which he had helped to build a dozen years earlier. Then the eongregation had'as pastors Revs. Jonathan Keller, Moses Kiefer, and from Nov. 5, 1843, to Oct. 1, 1852, the Rev. Samuel H. Reid. In the third year of his pastorate the cóngregation withdrew from the Stone Church and divided itself into three parts, according to the locality in which they lived, each erecting its own house of worship and being a separate ae cora di being connected as a charge, having .the same pastoral supervision. Under this arrangement the members in Canoe Valley built the Keller Church in Catharine township, near the Morris line, in 1846. Itis a brick house, with accommodations for four hundred and fifty persons, and the congregation worshiping there in was composed of eighty members. The church council had as elders James Patterson, Enoch Isenberg, Samuel Downing, and William Landis; as deacons, J.J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883) · character 2,122,817 of the scanned text

Quoted from the county histories

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