THE
GERMAN LUTHERAN CHURCH at Wurtemburg, which has long been out
of existence, was the outgrowth of meetings held in the house of Jacob
Liebendorfer, about 1830-31, he having been a member of the
German Lutheran Church at Zelienople, Butler County, prior to that time.
The pastor of that church conducted the meeting in the Liebendorfer
home, his name being Rev. Schweitzerbart. Meetings
were subsequently held in private houses and for a time in the
schoolhouse, which was built about 1832-33, near where the United
Presbyterian Church now stands, and still later in a schoolhouse which
stood south of the creek. A church was not built until 1868-69, when a
frame structure was erected, north of town, on the New Castle road.
About the year 1877 there was a split in the church on the language
question, many of the members desiring services in English, and a long
drawnout law suit resulted. Finally a part of its members withdrew and
built a church, known as Zion’s, or Mt. Hope Lutheran Church, on the
Hariansburg Road, about two miles north of the old church. Some time in
the nineties the old church building was given to Rev.
H. Voegel, of Evans City, who removed it to Ellwood City, but
after a few years the congregation there died out. In 1903, Mr.
A. P. Lentz organized a congregation, composed entirely of
Austro-Hungarians, and services are conducted in German. The
congregation is very prosperous.
Twentieth
Century History of New Castle and Lawrence County, 1908, page 362