Autograph document signed by John and Eliza Ann Wolf. Washington County, Maryland, 5 March 1853. 4 pages, folio. Witnessed by Jacob Blenker and T. R. Humphries. 

This deed reflects John and Eliza Ann Wolf signing their land over to Jacob Reichard, John Emmert and John S. Rowland for “Forty Dollars current money.” In exchange, Reichard, Emmert and Rowland were allowed to create a congregation on the land “of the Church who call themselves Brethren, (the said church of Brethren is the same church, which in an act of the general assembly of the state afforesaid, in 1816 chap. 182 is denominated Dunkers)”.

The Dunkers, named for their form of baptism, originally formed in Germany in the 18th century as the German Baptist Brethren. By the 1850s, when this deed was written, the Dunkers began to collect local farmland to build their new congregation in Maryland, starting with Samuel Mumma in 1851. The Dunker church is remembered mostly for its role during the Battle of Antietam, where “the church was the focal point of a number of Union attacks against the Confederate left flank,” according to the National Park Service. When the battle was over, “the Confederates used the church as a temporary medical aid station.” 

[Civil War, Union, Confederate] [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs]