Index of Cumberland County Birth, Wedding, Divorce & Obituary Newspaper Records - 2003
This index runs from January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2003.
Bishop Henry Heisey Brubaker, Missionary from Mechanicsburg
While it may not be an historian's job to "praise famous men," it is his job to tell of men and women, famous or less so, and remember that they were human beings with a human capacity for the remarkable. Henry Heisey Brubaker—in the formal custom of the day, he always styled himself "H. H. Brubaker"—was an imposing figure in the Brethren in Christ Church during the middle years of the twentieth century. He was also my paternal grandfather's first cousin, a farm boy from Cumberland County stamped with the patterns of mind common to his age and origin. Just as those patterns shaped his life, through his life he reshaped them. It is my aim to sketch his life and offer his example for further study.
Christianity and violence have marked Germany since the eighth century saw the martyrdom of St. Boniface, Benedictine missionary from England. Seven centuries later the works of two Augustinian priests disrupted the common faith of Europe. The roaring criticism of Martin Luther and the wry humanism of Erasmus sparked lesser lights. Ulrich Zwingli, a priest sharing Erasmus' curiosity but not his loyalty, agitated in Zurich, perhaps hoping to reach the status later enjoyed in Geneva by John Calvin. Menno Simons, a bibulous priest in the Netherlands, discovered in himself sympathy for the Swiss Brethren rallied by Zwingli, and he traveled widely in the Rhine valley preaching pacifism and adult baptism. Erasmus had hoped for quiet, patristic renewal within the Catholic Church, and he was appalled at Luther's fulminations. Erasmus of Rotterdam died in Basel a saddened old man, taking solace in Scripture and the letters of St. Jerome. Luther and Calvin also died in their beds, but Zwingli and many others in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland were killed for causing civil and ecclesiastical strife.
The Heisey family came to America in 1727, having sailed from Rotterdam. They had originated in Switzerland, probably near Basel, and after renewed persecutions they migrated to the Palatinate around 1671.1 The Brubakers came to America around 1710, having come originally from near Zurich.2 Both families settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and both our subject's grandparents came to Cumberland County in 1880. His paternal great-grandfather, Henry Brubaker, was a Brethren in Christ minister, and his maternal great-grandfather, Daniel B. Heisey, was a Brethren in Christ deacon. Our subject's father was a deacon as well; his maternal grandfather was an elder. His cousins, the Niesleys, held the diaconate also, and one became a bishop. The Heiseys and the Brubakers were well-respected in their church for their piety and zeal.
The Brethren in Christ Church—at first and often called the River Brethren, after their origins along the Susquehanna River—formed in the 1770s from a split in the Mennonite Church. The River Brethren and the Mennonites differ, for example, on baptism, triple immersion of adults demanded by the Brethren. Until recent decades, though, both churches were ethnic enclaves, as clannish as Greek Orthodox or Hispanic Catholics. Noted for their austerity and rusticity, Mennonites and Brethren decried religious formalities while maintaining a rigid episcopal ecclesiology. They tended to be aloof, with distinct customs and a version of German separating them from popular culture. Henry S. Heisey, maternal grandfather to Henry Heisey Brubaker, was eulogized in 1907 as a faithful and patient man;3 within his family he is remembered also as a tyrannical tobacco farmer who beat his son, Isaac, for speaking English.