October 31 is Reformation Sunday, a date observed throughout the world among denominations that trace their development through the Reformation. Reformation Sunday memorializes the day in 1517 on which Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg.

Luther's act inititated a chain of events that resulted in the British Crown employing recruiting agents on the continent of Europe to locate German Protestants to settle in America. In 1714, some 42 German Reformed colonists were settled at Fort Germanna on the Virginia frontier; three years later (during the bicentennial of the Reformation), they were joined by a much larger group of German Lutherans from the Kraichgau area of Baden-Wurtemburg.