Inscription:

A Soldier of the Revolution born May 16th, 1757 died Aug 17th, 1837 aged 80 years, 3 months and 1 day posessed a strong, dear, penetrating mind and singular perseverance.

Died in the prospect of a happy immortal passenger.

If thou art a patriot, remember the services rendered thy country by he who sleeps beneath this marble.

470, Capt Peter Summers

https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/tree/69684...=vrP299&_phstart=default

Frieden Church and the surrounding area
Posted 20 jul 2008 by rkimmins160

The immigrants to this region, now making parts of Alamance, Guilford and Randolph Counties, came in wagons by the emigrant route of those days from Philadelphia, through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, bringing their household furniture and farming tools – accompanied by young men coming to seek their fortunes in this new country.  These came mostly from the counties of Berks, Lancaster, and Schuylkill and a few from Maryland from 1745 to 1760 perhaps. This was then Orange and Rowan, and these German settlements were made on the waters of the Haw River and its tributaries, Alamance, Reedy Fork, Beaver Creek, Stinking . Quarter, Sandy Creek, etc. These were the AIbrights, Clapps, Fauts, Holts, Sharps (Scherbs), Laws, Graves (Greff), Summers, Cobbs (Kaubs), Cobles, Swings {Schwenks), Cortners (Gaertners), Ingolds, Browers, Keims, Staleys, Mays, AInicks (Emigs), Smiths, Stacks, Neases, Ingles, Leinbergers, Straders, Wyricks, Anthonys, Schaeffers (Shepherds), Weitzells, Trollingers, longs, Weys, Shaffners, Fogelmans, Sthars, Brauns, Reitzells, with others.

Their first place of worship was in a log cabin near where Laws Church now stands, on the old road from Hillsborough to Salisbury, now in southwest corner of Guilford County.  It was a Union Reformed and Lutheran Church.

This union was brought to an end by the divergent sentiments growing out of the sentiments and feelings that culminated in the Regulation movement and the rebellion of the Colonies.  Rev. Samuel Suther, who had recently come from the County of Mecklenburg, an advanced patriot, was the Reformed pastor, and under his inspired guidance the Albrights, Goertners, Clapps, Fausts, Scheaffers, Ingolds, Schwencks and Leinbergers, who were of the Reformed stock, at once moved to a school house near where the Brick Church now stands, and there, undisturbed by factional differences, erected an altar where to serve God.  Slither was pastor until the close of the war, and was the animating spirit of the community.  Soon this small log house gave way to a larger and more comfortable place to worship, whose corner Stones a few years since could still be seen. In these years Clapp and Christian Faust were Elders, and Ingold and Leinberger deacons, and even in these dark years the Church grew and was prosperous.

In 1828, the pulpit service was heard in the English language for the first time. For the welfare of the church this was none too soon.  In 1841, Rev. G. William Walker took charge.  It. is a large congregation, mostly posed of the descendants of those early emigrants from Pennsylvania. In the grave yard hard by the church rest in unmarked graves Tobias Clapp and Peter Goertner, who were in the Regulation battle; and there also sleeps Capt. Wm. Albright, Barney Clapp, and Matthew Schwenck and others, who were soldiers in the War of Revolution, and the passerby who stops to read may find other humble graves of noble men, and that of George Goertner (Cortner), who was the civil leader of the community of Germans. "

The church which the Scherrers (Sherer, Shearer) attended, and which the Goodners must have also, was the Frieden Church, located some two miles north of the present village of Gibsonville, in the eastern part of present Guilford County.  It is now a Lutheran Church and has been for many years. but in its early days it was also used by the German Reformed people.  This church was organized in 1745. although there were some German settlements in the neighborhood as early as 1740.  The early records of the church were lost.  In 1771 it was re-organized and a second church building was erected.  To this church went Jacob Daniel Scherrer and his family. and Jacob Daniel lies buried in the churchyard. with a marker put on his grave by his grandson, Rev. Simeon Scherer.

This part of the county is a beautiful rolling countryside.  In this area lived the Wyricks (Wiricks). Tickles, Summers. Tades. Smiths.  Goodners and others. It is pleasing to think. and logical to suppose. that in this church Conrad Goodner and Elizabeth Scherer met and were married in the year 1782.  Here also marriages of the other Goodners may have been consummated.  The old log building has long since disappeared. and a new modern church now stands across the road from the churchyard, the whole kept in a very good condition.

Frieden means peace in German, and in naming their church Frieden Church. or Friedens Church, we have a good idea of what was in the minds of those early Germans.  It was sometimes called "Shoemaker's Church", and it received that name by the following incident.  A man by the name of Shoemaker was living within a few hundred yards of the church during the American Revolution.

"He was a Tory.  He passed over the battle ground at Guilford Court House just after the battle. when General Greene had fallen back, and finding the British in possession, was going home.  As he passed along a wounded soldier asked him for a drink of water but he refused to give it.  A squad of soldiers followed him, took him from his house, made him stand on the door step at the north door, and there shot him to death.”

The earliest settlers around Greensboro. North Carolina, were English and Welsh Quakers, German Calvinists & Lutherans. and Ulster Scot Presbyterians.  They were small freeholders.  The city of Greensboro occupies part of the original grant of 1749 from John Carteret. Earl of Granville. to the Nottingham Company for settlement of a colony of Ulster Scot Presbyterians on the waters of North Buffalo and Reedy Creek.  To the east on Stinking Quarter Creek, a German colony settled at the same time. Guilford County was also known as Unity Parish, and was formed in 1770 but the act did not become effective until April 1st, 1771.