Germantown Baptist Church
Germantown Baptist Church dates back to 1838 in Germantown, Tennessee and is a large Southern Baptist church, formerly categorized as a megachurch. The church is 179 years old, and since its founding has moved from its location in downtown Germantown to an over building complex on a campus near the border of Germantown and Collierville on Poplar Avenue. As of October 2009, the church has an average Sunday worship attendance of 2,064 and an annual budget of $7,564,896. The original building for the church still stands on Germantown Road. Built twenty-one years before the beginning of the Civil War, Germantown Baptist Church is the second oldest church in the city of Germantown.
Germantown, Philadelphia
Germantown was founded on October 6, 1683, by German settlers: thirteen Quaker and Mennonite families from Krefeld. Today the founding day of Germantown is remembered as German-American Day, a holiday in the United States, observed annually on October 6. On August 12, 1689, William Penn at London signed a charter constituting some of the inhabitants a corporation by the name of "the bailiff, burgesses and commonalty of Germantown, in the county of Philadelphia, in the province of Pennsylvania." Francis Daniel Pastorius was the first bailiff. Jacob Telner, Derick Isacks op den Graeff and his brother Abraham Isacks op den Graeff, Reynier Tyson, and Tennis Coender were burgesses, besides six committeemen. They had authority to hold "the general court of the corporation of Germantowne", to make laws for the government of the settlement, and to hold a court of record. This court went into operation in 1690, and continued its services for sixteen years. Sometimes, to distinguish Germantown from the upper portion of German township, outside the borough, the township portion was called Upper Germantown.