The Congregation of Bethesda Lutheran Church began its history with the arrival in Markham of 64 German Lutheran families in the fall of 1794. This band of 200 souls left Hamburg, Germany in 1792 under the leadership of William "Moll" Berczy. Berczy, an entrepreneurial artist, lead them to a planned settlement in the Genesee Valley in upper New York State, just south of Rochester. Things did not go well for them there, so they accepted an invitation from Lt. Governer John Graves Simcoe to settle in Upper Canada. Simcoe offered them land in Markham Township. John Henry Sommerfeldt's diary gives the following account.
"Late in the fall, shortly before Christmas, he let me have a yoke of oxen. Then I got under way, and also my wife, who carried one child on the back and drove the pigs. Between Christmas and New Year I came to my land, there I had to stay in the tent till spring. In that time we three went together, and chopped and brought wood together and built us houses. In spring we moved in."
This group has become known as the Markham Burczy Settlers. They started two congregations: St. John's on the 4th Concession (in Buttonville on Woodbine Ave.) and St. Philip's (now known as Bethesda) on the 6th Concession (on the east side of Kennedy Rd. north of 16th Ave.) John's closed its doors in 1925 and the church was torn down in 1933. The pews in Bethesda Church came from St. John's. Bethesda is the third oldest active congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada behind Zion, Lunenburg N.S. and St. Paul's Morrisburg, ON.
