Page 62 - Pilgrims in Georgia

V The German Reformed

from the German Palatine to
Savannah, Georgia

In 1737 a group of Reformed believers from the Palatine area of Germany, consisting of forty-eight family heads and
representing three hundred people wrote a letter hoping to gain an opportunity to immigrate to the new colony of Georgia.

The letter was addressed to Samuel Urlsperger, the same person who had assisted the Salzburgers to come to Georgia, and
it indicated that they also were undergoing persecution in their lands for their faith by their Catholic magistrates who were
expanding their power. They hoped that Urlspergers connections with the Trustees of Georgia in London might make it

possible to start over, not only from persecution but from living conditions in their lands that gained them the descriptive
name, the “Poor Protestants”.

They were called “Reformed” because, like the Huguenots, the

Presbyterians, and the Congregationalists, they owed their understanding of
their Faith to the branch of the Protestant Reformation that came out of

Switzerland, particularly the school in Geneva overseen by the Reformer
John Calvin. Its followers had spread over Europe to France, Scotland,
England, Holland, Bohemia, Hungary and Germany. In Germany, on its

southwestern side is the area known as the Palatinate. It is in the Rhine river
valley, bordering France and its capitol at that time was the ancient city of
Elector Fredrick III
Heidelberg. It was here in 1562 that Elector Fredrick III, Prince of the Zacharias Ursinus
Palatinate, embraced the Reformed teachings and ordered that this creed be
written in the teaching form of a series of questions and answers called a

catechism. For this, Zacharias Ursinus a leading professor at the University of
Heidelberg, Caspar Olevianus a teacher there, and others wrote the

confession of Faith known as the Heidelberg Catechism. It was published in
1563 and spread through Germany so far as some estimate that as much as
one-fourth of Germany adopted this understanding of the Christian Faith.
Heidelberg Catechism Caspar Olevianus