Abstract The Smithfield German Evangelical Protestant church was founded in Pittsburgh in 1782. At that time Pittsburgh was only a hamlet on the frontier. Twenty five years earlier no village was there at all, only Fort Duquesne, a French military outpost. In 1782 the German church had organized and found a place to meet, a log cabin that it rented, but it had no minister. So the congregation sent a letter to the German Reformed Synod in eastern Pennsylvania, saying, in effect, "Please send us a...