What’s considered the “parent Lutheran church” in and around Calhoun and Orangeburg counties will hold its homecoming service on Sunday, Oct. 20, at 11 a.m.

St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, located at 1628 Old Number Six Highway, Creston, was organized in 1737.

It celebrates its 287th anniversary this year.

The historic marker erected at the church notes that the Rev. John U. Giessendanner began his work in the Lutheran church in 1737. After Giessendanner’s death, his nephew, who had the same name, continued Lutheran evangelistic work in the South Carolina backcountry until 1749.

In 1749, England mandated an unjust law that no church could hold property without an ordained Episcopal minister, according to church records.

St. Matthew’s operated as an Episcopal church until 1760, according to previous news coverage about the church in The Times and Democrat.

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Some of the surnames rooted in Swiss and German ancestry in the early years of the church included Rast, Haigler, Holman, Felkel, Brandenburg and Barber.

Today, generations after St. Matthew’s Lutheran’s 18th-century beginnings, family names like Heape, Smith, Cooke, Lowery, Edgemon, Cochran, Westbury and Mizzelle still maintain strong ties to the church.

By the 1760s, St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church established a meeting place a few miles from its present location on Lyons Creek in the Half Way Swamp community.

By 1826, the congregation had built a structure at its current location, and in 1900, it completed construction of its sanctuary, which is in full use today.

St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church aided in the start of 10 new churches including Pine Grove in Lone Star, Trinity in Elloree, Mt. Lebanon (now known as Resurrection) in Cameron, Epiphany in St. Matthews, St. Mark’s in Fort Motte and Orangeburg Lutheran in Orangeburg.

The Holman family donated the land where the church sits just prior to 1900.

St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church is the oldest Lutheran church in the South Carolina Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The church’s current sanctuary dates to 1901 and the fellowship hall was added in 1976.

A covered dish meal will follow Sunday’s homecoming service.

The church is providing meat and drinks. All attendees are asked to bring a side dish and a dessert.

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