File:04 First German Reformed Church Site and Cemetery.jpg

Summary

The First German Reformed Church Site and Cemetery outside Lovettsville is the resting place of some of Brunswick's founding families, including several generations of names like Smith, Wenner, George, Souder and Arnold. The church was founded before 1748 by Elder William Wenner and the congregation met in members' homes until the first log meeting house was built prior to the American Revolution.

Those were the early days of what was then known as "The German Settlement", now Lovettsville, in the northernmost part of Virginia bordering the Potomac River. German immigrant farmers, whose families had left Europe during the Protestant Reformation, had migrated there from Central Pennsylvania in search of fertile farmland.

Thanks to ferry services across the river into Maryland, many of these families found the farmland and eventually the railroad to have been of equal or greater value and settled on our town, which was then known as Berlin.

(Photo by Peter Wenner)