Newspapers of the German Baptist Brethren
(Church of the Brethren)
before 1883

This web site is here to provide a short history of the major church newspapers and a index to the obituaries out of these papers between 1851 and 1883. In 1883 the two major brethren newspapers The Primitive Christian and Brethren At Work merge into what is The Gospel Messenger. The Church of the Brethren has put out a complete index of obituaries for the The Gospel Messenger CD (1883-1964) then search on Gospel Messenger. 1964 was the last year the Gospel Messenger published obituaries in the paper.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Gospel Visiter (Visitor) was the first monthly Brethren paper. It was started in 1851 by Henry Kurtz as private undertaking. It was followed by Christian Family Companion a weekly paper in 1864, The Pilgrim in 1870, the Der Bruderbote in 1875, later called The Brethren at Work and lastly the Primitive Christian in 1876.

New periodicals appeared almost ever year (Thirty-four of them between 1870 and 1883), but many lasted only a year or two. Mergers of newspapers and name changes were frequent in this time period.

It was not until the 1882 Annual Meeting of the Brethren (the Old German Baptist Brethren had withdrawn in 1881) that a The Primitive Christian (A merger over time of The Gospel Visitor, The Primitive Christian and Christian Family Companion papers) was recognized as the official organ of the church

History	Link to a history of the major newspapers of the church.
Gospel Visitor	The Gospel Visitor April 1851 - 1873 Before 1856 it was called the The Gospel Visiter
Christian Family Companion	Christian Family Companion 1864 - 1873 NEW The year 1872 Christian Family Companion and Gospel Visitor were combined
Pilgrim	The Pilgrim & The Weekly Pilgrim 1870 - 1876
Primitive Christian	The Primitive Christian 1876 -1883 This includes the time the Primitive Christian and The Pilgrim were merged and printed under both titles 1877 to 1879
	The Brethren At Work 1875 - 1883
Brethren's Advocate	The Brethren's Advocate Dec. 1878 - Sept. 1882 NEW
	*Gospel Preacher & Progressive Christian*

OR/WA	Link to Brethren Churches in Oregon and Washington
South Dak.	Brethren churches that were in South Dakota
Utah	Link to the only Brethren church organized in Utah
Almanac's	Brethren Almanac's
E-Mail	Please E-mail your comments or questions to orwahist@aol.com Thank you.
Link	Link to COB Fellowship of Brethren Genealogists