PHOTOS: Hymnals in our Archives

The following photos are a few musical items in our archives. Feel free to schedule a visit to view these or other artifacts and records in our collection.

Mennonite Hymnal in German

The Mennonitisches Gesangbuch is a hymnal German-speaking Mennonites would use for worship. In our early years as a denomination, all worship was in German and we would use this hymnal. Note that the hymns have no music notes. The superscript to each song with tell singers what tune the lyrics were written for. Congregations would sing the tune from memory.

The Rose of Sharon hymnal

This hymnal is the work of a few key leaders of The Pennsylvania Conference of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ. The committee was H.B. Musselman, W.G. Gehman and E.N. Cassel along with J.F. Barrall and CH Brunner. The book was published in 1917 and contains 755 hymns. Here is a PDF of the hymnal.

A Hymn by W.B. Musselman

One of our pastors and the Presiding Elder of the Gospel Worker Society, W.B. Musselman, wrote the lyrics to this hymn. The note says that it is to the tune of Gospel Trio #137. Gospel Trio is the name of a hymnal published in 1891, the music can be found here.