Strieter Autobiography: Johann Jacob Hoffmann

[Continued from Part 27. If you have not yet read Part 1, click here.]

Hardships and Happenings (continued)

I wrote to Professor Crämer for an assistant. He replied that he was sending me J. J. Hoffmann. He said that he was still young and unsteady [leicht angelegt]; he was not yet able to be independent. He needed to work under me for at least another year yet, and I was supposed to keep a good eye on him.

J. J. Hoffmann

Hoffmann came.¹⁷ An impressive, youthful person, very gifted. I liked him a lot. But soon I notice that he is a light character. His favorite was idling away the time in the kitchen with the wife and the maid. I had him preach at Tagatz’s and told the congregation that this was my assistant. We would do the work together. He would work especially in Big Bull, but would also preach here, and I would go back up to Big Bull from time to time. Were they quite alright with that? They gave a unanimous “Yes.”

I now bought Fanny, a 5-year-old dark chestnut, a beautiful animal, for 120 dollars, a high price at the time and I had to pay in gold¹⁸ coin. But I obtained it on a one-year loan, and with zero interest. I now gave Hoffmann my good Rocky for 80 dollars, the price he cost me,¹⁹ also on a loan without interest, and for as long as it took him to get the money. I did that because Fanny was no riding horse, but was a fine runner in the buggy, easily trotting 12 miles an hour.

I now say to Hoffmann that he should go up to Big Bull and should stay 14 days and come back home. He went and came back after 14 days. I had him preach again at Schmidt’s. After the sermon he asked me on the way home how I had liked his sermon. On the previous Friday I had already given him Luther to study. But he soon set the book aside and went to find my wife and conversed with her, and not until Saturday evening did he jot a little bit down. I told him in answer to his question: “For sheer words, I have no idea what you said. Hoffmann, you’re going to turn into a miserable babbler this way. Why don’t you leave your studies of Greek and French” – for he had told me he was pursuing those – “and read Luther, so that you can preach something decent?”

He hung his head.

Corner of what is today Naugart Drive and Berlin Lane, c. 1909. The frame schoolhouse on the right replaced the original log schoolhouse where Hoffmann was called as pastor and helped organize the first Lutheran congregation in the area, behind Strieter’s back, on March 11, 1861.

He went back to Big Bull, soon comes back, and said that he had had them call him as an independent pastor.²⁰ I ask him how he could dare do that behind my back? Didn’t he know that the congregation belonged to me? I also now told him what Crämer had written me. He apologized to me. I now had to put a good face on the bad affair and install him.²¹ The man also came to a sad end. My dear old Strassen,²² long time president of the Wisconsin District of the Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, can sing a sad song about Hoffmann. So can the dear Dr. Schwan, president of the synod at large at the time.²³

Translator’s Postscript on J. J. Hoffmann

Just what the lyrics for the “sad song about Hoffmann” would say is difficult to surmise, in large part because the Concordia Historical Institute does not have any collection for Carl Strasen, and H. C. Schwan destroyed most of his correspondence before he died. What we know is as follows:

Johann Jacob Hoffmann (usually referred to by his middle name) was born on June 12, 1840, in Kuehndorf, Prussia, to Johann Valentin and Maria Christiane (Hohmann) Hoffmann. He was one of 17 children. He immigrated with his family to the United States around 1845 when he was around five or six years old. They lived for a while in Buffalo, New York, where his father worked as a tailor. Eventually the Hoffmanns moved to Michigan, where Jacob’s father farmed until his death.

Jacob began his studies for the public ministry of the gospel in Buffalo, then continued and finished them at the seminary in Fort Wayne. He was sent to serve as an assistant to Pastor Strieter in Marquette County early in 1861, where he was ordained on February 17. On March 11, the Lutherans in the town of Berlin northwest of Wausau called him to be their pastor and he accepted. As Strieter notes, this was somewhat rash on his part, but Strieter installed him on August 25. From his base in the town of Berlin, he served at least 20 preaching stations, traveling even as far as rural Neillsville, and making a mission trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1864.

Eduard Moldehnke

In a December 2, 1861, report to the Johannes Bading, president of the Wisconsin Synod, traveling missionary Eduard Moldehnke wrote of a chance meeting with Hoffmann in Wausau on September 23, during a mission trip to the area. Moldehnke reported:

On September 23, I traveled 35 miles by stagecoach to Wausau, a village surrounded by a ring of black stumps. It has a charming location on the Wisconsin River and is basically the last village in that direction. I arranged to stay at the home of Mr. Paff. In the evening I preached to about 30 people. Earlier I had just so happened to meet a Missouri man, Hoffmann. He would like to live there, but the people are rejecting him. He has a congregation in the bush about 10 miles from Wausau, but he hurries by horse to about 30 stations and fails to accomplish anything substantial by splintering his efforts this way, meager as they already are. He was very rude to me, even though he is only about 21 years old. Naturally I repudiated his attacks, though too mildly, I fear. … With his domineering manner Hoffmann has caused scandal everywhere he’s preached. Even some in his own congregation would gladly be free of him. So he preached in Wausau in a private home and when Mr. Paff asked him how he managed to preach there without permission, he said that he was a preacher and had the right to preach anywhere, and so on.

On January 20, 1862, Jacob was united in marriage with Johanne Rosinalde Erneste von Anschuetz (in records, Jacob referred to her as Rosine or Rosa for short) by Rev. Friedrich Lochner in Milwaukee. Rosine was 18. God blessed their marriage with 11 children:

1. Ernst August Wilhelm, b. October 7, 1862
2. Johann Valentine Ernst, b. March 31, 1864
3. Johann Jacob Ernst, b. December 10, 1865
4. Ernst Georg Heinrich Martin, b. December 10, 1865
5. Clara Renata Coeleste, b. January 13, 1868
6. Theophilus Oscar Ernst, b. July 2, 1869
7. Adolphe August Ernst, b. August 28, 1871
8. Otto Wilhelm Ernst, b. January 15, 1874
9. Eduard Oscar Arthur, b. December 31, 1875
10. Wilhelm Philipp Ernst, b. August 18, 1878
11. Harry Hubert, b. November 1, 1882

The first nine Hoffmann children had 6, 6, 8, 6, 8, 5, 7, 5, and 9 sponsors, respectively, including six different pastors and a schoolteacher. Rosa was a capable and intelligent mother, teaching her children in the evenings.

Hoffmann accepted a call to St. John’s in Portage in February 1867. There he took pride not only in preaching but also in teaching, writing in the back of their record book, “My attention was directed at the school above all.” When he began teaching in June of 1867, there were 22 children. By 1868 the congregation had erected a new schoolhouse and there were 75 children. At the dedication of the school in December, Pastor Hoffmann read a document he had composed in which he boasted of his accomplishments. In his concluding remarks he said:

I sincerely and earnestly ask that every father please send his children punctually and consistently each day when school is being held. I beg that every father please buy his children the necessary chalk tablets and books. I furthermore ask that every father please punctually pay the trivial amount for exercise books, ink, and quill pen, which I supply the children myself, just as I do the German books. That way they will come by them fairly and will always be provided with what they need.

One more note in closing: I will do my best to continue to hold school in the future as much as possible. I will also continue to do my best to do it as well as possible. I will do my best to teach every child what is necessary and beneficial at the proper time. But I ask you trust me enough to assume that I must know what is most necessary and what a child needs to learn first. Nevertheless, everyone may make his wishes known to me, and if they are acceptable, I will take them into consideration.

This excerpt is part of a 9-page feature that he wrote about himself in the back of St. John’s record book, after having devoted just over 1 page to all of his five predecessors combined.

St. John’s 150th anniversary booklet says that 1870 was a stormy time in the history of the congregation, supposedly owing to “great opposition to strict biblical practices.” It also reports that Pastor Hoffmann resigned “‘for the sake of peace’ and with broken health” sometime around the middle of July 1872. He appears to have moved to East Tawas, Michigan, near Tawas City. (This may have been where his parents were living.)

Hoffmann then accepted a call to St. Paul’s in Sheboygan Falls and St. John in Plymouth, Wisconsin, at the end of 1872 and was installed in January of 1873. His firstborn son Wilhelm died on June 4, 1873, at 3:30 p.m. from fever and smallpox. He was 10 years old. In recording his son’s death in the records, Hoffmann called him “a gem of a Lutheran and a gem of a Missourian.” It was probably not long before or after this that his second son Ernst, at age 9, fell down the cellar and broke his leg below his hip, which crippled him for life. What effect these tragedies had on Hoffmann’s psyche is not known.

In June of 1878, the 150th anniversary book for St. John, Plymouth, reports that Hoffmann went on a missionary tour through the Lake Superior region for several weeks. “Adverse reports occasion the resignation of Pastor Hoffmann from the Sheboygan Falls-Plymouth parish in November.” In the record book for St. Paul, Sheboygan Falls, Hoffmann made his final entry in the Confirmation section as follows:

On the 23rd of November, 1878 [a Saturday], the following children were confirmed by me in the Lutheran church in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, and admitted to the Holy Supper, by special, fervent request on the part of the children:

1. Johann Jacob Ernst Hoffmann, born December 10, 1865 [12 years old]
2. Ernst Georg Heinrich Martin Hoffmann, born December 10, 1865 [12 years old]
3. Clara Renata Coeleste Hoffmann, born January 13, 1868 [10 years old]

The two twins had already finished confirmation instruction in 1875, and again in 1877, and had thoroughly learned all of Dietrich’s [edition of Luther’s] Catechism at that time. The girl had also taken part in all of the confirmation instruction in 1877 and had learned well the chief questions and all the passages in Dietrich’s Catechism. — All three of them were, as far as knowledge is concerned, some of the best of the confirmands, and just because of their young age had stay back from the Holy Supper, which all three of them have already desired most passionately. Therefore I was no longer able to refuse them given the situation. — God bless them in time and eternity. Amen. J. Jacob Hoffmann, Pastor.

A note was later added in the margin by Hoffmann’s successor:

J. J. Hoffmann was already deposed [from his office as pastor] at the time and consummated the action [of confirmation] without witnesses. J. M. Hieber

The following “Announcement and Warning” appeared in the July 15, 1879, edition of Der Lutheraner:

The Northwestern District of the Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States hereby announces that J. J. Hoffmann, formerly pastor at Sheboygan Falls and Plymouth, Wisconsin, is no longer to be regarded as one of your own. He has been officially dismissed from his position because he has occasioned much scandal and offense by his conduct, in spite of all our admonition.

Representing the above-named synodical district
C. Strasen, President

Later reports from the The Lutheran Witness place him in New Orleans spreading slanders against the Missouri Synod and its leadership and ministering to a French Lutheran mission congregation. In 1882 he accepted a call back to Wisconsin, to serve some of the same members he had previously served. This occasioned a lasting split among the Lutherans in the area and the founding of Grace Lutheran Church in the town of Maine. Hoffmann served in the area until 1885. From 1890-1895 he served in Sheboygan and was unaffiliated with any synod. He appears to have returned to New Orleans in 1895, but he drops off the radar after 1897. By the time eight Lutheran congregations northwest of Wausau celebrated a joint 50th anniversary in 1910, the Wausau Daily Record-Herald reported that Hoffmann was deceased.

All of these pieces are part of the “sad song about Hoffmann” that Strasen and Schwan could sing once upon a time. There does not appear to have been one super-scandal that ruined Hoffmann’s ministry. Rather, his life and ministry seem to have been characterized by a steady buildup of headstrong activity. He thought of himself more highly than he ought to have (cf. Romans 12:3), craving attention, recognition, and praise, and wanting always to do things his own way, without concern for what his brothers in the ministry thought or what his members thought, whom he probably perceived as being ignorant and uninformed by comparison. He also seems to have been lacking in people skills. His knowledge, skill, and energy are undeniable, but so are his arrogance, lovelessness, and folly.

Endnotes

¹⁷ From the “Church News [Kirchliche Nachrichten]” section of the March 19, 1861, issue of Der Lutheraner: “Mr. J. Jacob Hoffmann, candidate for the holy preaching ministry [des heil. Predigtamtes], was recently sent to me from Fort Wayne as an assistant and, after receiving a call, he was ordained by me and solemnly bound to all the symbols of our church on Invocavit Sunday, the 17th of M., at the behest of the Mr. President of the Northland District. — J. Strieter. Address: Rev. J. Jacob Hoffmann, Stone Hill, Marquette Co., Wisc.” (p. 23). The “M.” was either a mistake by Strieter or a misprint by the editor of Der Lutheraner. Invocavit Sunday fell on February 17 in 1861, not March 17.

¹⁸ “or silver” was crossed out in lead and then in ink.

¹⁹ Strieter had traded a 60-dollar horse for Rocky, plus paid another 20 dollars.

²⁰ A document has been preserved, titled “Formation of the Congregation in the Town of Berlin, Marathon County, Wisconsin,” apparently authored by the August Schmidt mentioned later in this footnote. It reads in part: “After the Lutherans in the vicinity of Wausau had asked Mr. Pastor J. Strieter from the towns of Newton, Christal [sic] Lake, and Shields, Marquette County, Wisconsin, to visit them and he had refreshed them with the word of God 3 times, Pastor Hoffmann, formerly a student at the seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and assistant pastor of the aforementioned congregations, came to these people, and after he traveled through the area, a meeting for the purpose of founding a congregation was held on March 11, 1861, the proceedings of which are inserted here:

Proceedings of the congregational meeting for the towns of Berlin and Stettin, Marathon County, Wisconsin, assembled in the district schoolhouse near Mr. Heinrich Beilke on March 11, 1861.

The meeting was opened by Mr. Pastor Hoffmann with prayer. Mr. Friedrich Krentz was elected president, and Mr. August Schmidt was elected secretary. — After Mr. Pastor Hoffmann was given an explanation of his compensation…he was unanimously called by the following persons, who hereby organized themselves as an evangelical Lutheran congregation, to conduct the ministry among them according to the confessional writings of the Lutheran Church…” This is followed by the names of 58 adult males, not including the secretary himself, for a total of 59. The location of the district schoolhouse mentioned here (a log building at the time) is today occupied by an empty, unused brick schoolhouse on the southeast corner of Naugart Drive and Berlin Lane.

²¹ From the “Church News [Kirchliche Nachrichten]” section of the September 17, 1861, issue of Der Lutheraner: “Today, namely on the 13th Sunday after Trinity [August 25], Mr. Pastor J. Jacob Hoffmann, my former assistant preacher, after first being issued a call, was installed by me into his congregation by Wausau at the behest of the most honorable presidium of the Northern District. May the Lord make him a blessing for many. The address of the dear brother is: Rev. J. JACOB HOFFMANN, Box 38, Wausau, Wisc. — J. Strieter” (p. 23).

²² Strieter’s spelling of Strasen, i.e. Karl Johannes August Strasen (1827-1909), pastor in Watertown, Wisconsin, and president of the Northwestern District from 1875-1880 and of the Wisconsin District from 1880-1885.

²³ Namely, at the time Hoffmann was ejected from the synod in 1879. H. C. Schwan was president of the Missouri Synod from 1878-1899.

[Read the next part here.]

Strieter Autobiography: The Accident

[Continued from Part 15. If you have not yet read Part 1, click here.]

Into the Ministry

In 1852 synod convention was in Fort Wayne at the end of June and beginning of July. A pastor came from Holmes County, Ohio, B[esel],¹ a Basel student who colloquized and was taken up as a member of the synod. B[esel] came to Crämer and requested a preacher for a congregation by Coshocton which he had taken from a United preacher.² Crämer sent for me and told me that I had to take my examination and go with B[esel]. Röder³ and I were actually slated to be missionaries to the Indians. Crämer even gave us private instruction. That was delightful! He had the book of Matthew in the Chippewa language. There Röder would sit on one side and I on the other, each with his Testament open. Crämer would read to us in Indian and we would repeat it. Then we would copy down the dreadful words in order to memorize them for homework. Chippewa had long, difficult [welsche] words. But the reason for that was because the language had so few words and everything had to be paraphrased. Miessler, subsequently a doctor in Chicago, who became Baierlein’s successor in Bethany, told me when he left us (much to our chagrin) that Chippewa had its roots in Hebrew.⁴ I asked Crämer not to send me away yet, but my pleading was in vain.

At eight o’clock I had to take my seat in front of my Crämer and Dr. Sihler. My schoolmates sat behind me. Crämer examined me until ten o’clock; then, after a short break, the doctor tackled me. His first question was, “Strieter, what’s in Matthew 13?” Fortunately I knew. But now I was also supposed to say what was taught in those parables. How that went I don’t remember any more, but I received a certificate saying I was sufficiently qualified for the preaching ministry [Predigtamt].⁵

On July 4 we headed out from Fort Wayne on the canal amid fanfare [mit Musik]. In Toledo we boarded the steamer to Sandusky; from there to Monroe; from there to Detroit; from there to Cleveland. At midday there was bloody beefsteak etc. Schaller and others did not want to eat the steak, but Schwan⁶ and I dug in. In the evening Schaller thought that if the steak was served again, he would eat it, but it did not return. In Cleveland B[esel] and I went with Schwan, who lived in a small little frame house; his son Paul was a small boy.

Soon we traveled a stretch on the railroad, then continued on the canal. We got off in Massillon. On shore stood an old, respectable Pennsylvania Dutch⁷ farmer by the name of Arnold. He received us joyfully and led us down the street to a small inn. A young man from the east, a baker, was with us, who was going to visit his mother. Arnold had a fourteen-year-old fellow with him who worked for him. Now the horses were retrieved – four splendid animals, the oldest eight years old – and harnessed to a wagon. The old father had brought a load of wheat to market. His wagon did not have a box, but planks on the side, with a small board across them on which B[esel] took his seat with Arnold. The baker positioned his trunk behind those two and he and I sat on that. Behind us stood a plow and a sack of salt. The back horse on the left had a saddle on his back, the front horse on the left had the reins, and the young fellow took his seat in the saddle.⁸ I ask, “Can the boy even drive?”

“Oh sure! He drove the whole way here.”

We start out; the horses are in a walk. When we went a little downhill, they trotted a little and then continued at a walk. Arnold had a lot of questions about the synod convention and B[esel] told him about it. Now we went uphill, probably for a mile or more. The path went up in snake turns. At the top it was level again, then downhill. It didn’t take long before the back left horse whinnied and fired out, and now we were off and running, all four as fast as they could.

B[esel] cried, “Hoh!”

Arnold cried, “Hoh!”

But the horses did not want to hoh!

Arnold called to the boy, “Hang on tight!” Arnold grabbed the pieces of wood in front of him and hung on and let the horses run as they wished.

At first I thought, “You go to the end and drop yourself down; it’s not too high.” But then another thought came to me right away: “You are the only one who can still maybe provide help. If the horse stops kicking out, then make your way out on tongue and get on the horse behind the boy and draw the front horses to the side.” But the animal wouldn’t stop kicking. You could always see the shiny horseshoes on the bottom of his feet flashing in the air. On the right the water had torn a deep ditch, in places at least six feet deep or so. The wagon often came so close to going in this ditch that I thought, “Now it’s going to tip over,” but it always kept going past.

Finally we came to the climax. There was just one man who wanted to get up the hill with his load. “Now,” I thought, “something’s going to happen!” I was right. He quickly got off to the side when he saw us coming, but his back wheel was still on the rut. Our back axle met with his, and just like that I was lying in the distance, not far from the fence. A small sandbank was there, runoff from the hill; I shoot like an arrow headfirst into the sand, making a hole in it as big as a hen’s nest. Right next to this hole, a handbreadth or so away, a stone is lying in the ground as large as a plate and protruding from the ground. I sit up and rub the sand out of my ears and think, “Well, our dear God has sure protected you from a sudden death.” For if I had landed on that stone, I would have bashed my brains out. My baker slid down fairly close to me without injury, ran to me right away and said, “Are you hurt?” and marveled with me at my good fortune that I had not hit the stone.

On the path stood the baker’s trunk, planks were lying there, and behind me, over there along the fence, were the back wheels, the plow, and the big sack of salt, with half of it spilled out from the bottom. The others were gone. We looked around, and here comes my B[esel]. He had hung on tight to the crosspiece on which the shaft sits that holds the front and back parts of the wagon together, thinking that the back wheels were still on and would run him over and kill him, and he let himself be dragged over the stones of the washed-out path. Finally he could not take it any more and let go. There he lay, untouched. He pulls himself together and runs toward us screaming, “O my head! O my shoulders! O my hips! O my legs!” The blood was already running into his shoes.

In the distance stood a house; from there the residents saw everything. The man of the house came over and took B[esel] with him, hitched up his buggy, loaded B[esel] up, and went home with him.

My baker and I bring the trunk and planks to the side and go wandering after our cart. Below ran a small brook with a little bridge. On the other side the bank went straight up at a steep angle. At the top it’s dug out and the path bends off to the left a bit. There the wheel ran up and flings the old father over the side,⁹ so hard that his shoulder turns yellow and black, and he had to carry his arm in a sling. But he still went after his horses.

The path went through the valley and back up the hill in the distance. There the saddlehorse tumbled and the boy fell, right between the horses, who dragged him by the saddle strap over the stones up the hill. When they reached the top, the strap ripped, and my boy lay there. A house stood close to the path. The people come out and carry the boy inside. The man hitches a horse to a stone drag; they lay the boy on it and bring him to the inn, several miles or so further.

In front of the inn, where the horses usually stopped for a midday rest, stood a post and a water trough. The horses ran through between the post and the corner of the building. They still had the axle and one wheel on the tongue and they ran against the corner of the building with such force that they tore out a large stone at the bottom. The inn shook so much that the ladies inside thought that there was an earthquake and ran outside, but they soon saw what had happened. The one lady ran to the field to get the men; it was harvest time. The other one ran around the stall and grabbed the front horses by the head so that they would not run any further. They had run from the watering hole across the street alongside the stall towards the fence.

When my baker and I also arrived, the boy was lying on the floor. His mother was with him, a widow who didn’t live too far from there. The doctor was next to him. The others were standing around him, including old man Arnold, and were holding his arm. The poor boy! His back looked like a piece of raw flesh, his arm was crushed, his shoulder was dislocated, his leg was broken, and several ribs were cracked.

When the doctor was finished, he said he did not know what he looked like on the inside, but everything seemed to be all right, and the external injuries would heal quickly. I comforted the wailing mother as well as I could. —

After six to eight weeks the young man was all right again. —

B[esel] brought the bad news home and now all the sons of the old father – I believe there were four of them – went together on horseback to see what had happened to “Dad.” They gathered up the parts of the wagon and loaded everything back up. The old father said to me, “Jack will stay here” – his youngest, a handsome young man, eighteen years old – “and I will too, and you take Jack’s horse and ride home with the others.”

I said, “No, Father Arnold, you take the horse and ride home, and I will stay with the wagon.”

Arnold got on and off he went. My Jack took his four horses out of the stall and hitches them up, takes his seat in the saddle, but brings along his blacksnake. My baker and I sit on the trunk again. Jack heads out. Right away the path goes somewhat downhill and my horse on the right whinnies again and starts to cut loose, but my Jack lashes him around his body, so that it whistles. The horse jumps forward. Jack turns his whip around and whacks the animal on the forehead with the thick, yellow¹⁰ knob so hard that I expected the animal to collapse. If the horse jumped forward, it gets one one the forehead; if it jumped backwards, it gets one around the body. “Just wait, I’ll run off on you! [Wart, ich will dir weglofen!]” Jack said. He put them into a strong trot, called out, “Hoh!” and bump, they stopped, and he repeated that a number of times. It didn’t take long and the horses were like lambs.

Endnotes

¹ Here we encounter the first of Strieter’s many name abbreviations. The 1852 convention proceedings for the Missouri Synod list among the voting preachers a Friedrich Besel in Holmes County, Ohio. Besel left for the Iowa Synod in 1881.

² “United” refers to the Prussion Union, which merged the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Prussia.

³ Ernst Gustav Hermann Miessler (1826-1916) worked with Baierlein at the Bethany mission station from 1851 to 1853, when he succeeded him. He left the preaching ministry in 1871 to study and practice medicine in Chicago, which he did from 1874-1899.

⁴ Strieter received a “satis” diploma. This is a classic sentence in Strieter’s autobiography, and many pastors can doubtless relate to it when recalling their seminary education.

⁵ Heinrich Christian Schwan (1819-1905) had been taken up as a member of the Missouri Synod in 1850. He served as pastor of Zion in Cleveland, today the second oldest church in the synod, from 1851-1899. He helped to popularize the use of the Christmas tree in American churches by placing one in Zion in 1851. He was known as a staunch, tactful, sharp, wise, modest, and refined Lutheran pastor.

⁶ The Pennsylvania Dutch were early German immigrants to America in the 17th and 18th centuries from what is today western and southwestern Germany. Many were refugees of war. Usually Dutch refers to the people of the Netherlands and their language, but in the label Pennsylvania Dutch it is an Americanization of Deutsch, meaning German. Since they also had their own dialect, the label was also used to refer to their descendants.

⁷ I.e., on the front left horse. The saddle on the back left horse remained empty, as will be made clear.

⁸ If I’m imagining this correctly, the horses turned left with the path on the other side of the bridge, but were going so fast that the wagon ran up partially onto the bank, thus tipping to the left, with the right front wheel higher than the left front wheel, and knocking old man Arnold out onto the path on the left side of the wagon.

⁹ Carl Strieter translates gelben as brass.

[Read the next part here.]

Strieter Autobiography: Seminary Life in Fort Wayne

[Continued from Part 14. If you have not yet read Part 1, click here.]

Seminary (conclusion)

The campus occupied by the Fort Wayne Seminary from 1849-1861, as depicted in a 50th anniversary publication by Concordia Publishing House in 1896

Upon arriving [in Fort Wayne] I went to find the seminary right away. Steinbach³¹ later told me that when they saw me approaching with my suitcase, they thought, “What kind of hobo do we have here?”

The gentlemen students directed me over here to Dr. Sihler.³² He was sitting in the kitchen and was right in the middle of fixing a pony for his son Christian; he was tying his colorful, silk handkerchief on one of its legs. I said who I was, where I came from, and why I was there. He asked about Crämer; I had no information to give him. I arrived in Fort Wayne on October 10, 1850, and dear Crämer ended up arriving on the 24th. Dr. Sihler called upstairs, “Rauschert!” Above his small study the Dr. had a room that was also our lecture hall. Two students who boarded with Sihler lived in it, Rauschert and Werfelmann.³³ Rauschert came down. Sihler said, “Bring Strieter to Mrs. Bornemann, sir.” She was a widow who foddered me for some time. “Do you have money, sir?” the doctor asked me.

I said, “No.”

He said, “That’s fine. Payment is due every quarter-year. When it’s due, go to Mr. Griebel and he will give you money.” And that’s how it worked. Every quarter cost three dollars, which I went and got from my patron. The people in the country brought us a whole bunch of stuff – whole or half hogs and a lot of fine sausage. I soon filled out at the seminary.

That was where studying really began though. It was almost enough to drive a man insane! Crämer gave the twenty of us guys a dreadful amount of homework. Many a night I only slept for two hours. We soon contracted a lot of headaches. It started around eight; around ten there was a piece of bread, but dry. At midday we always had beans; around one back at it until four; then down to the river, behind the milldam for a bath. Occasionally the doctor came and took one with us.

Ottmann³⁴ and I were the best swimmers. One time when the water was very high, Ottmann said to me that we should try to swim across. Off we go. Once we reach the other side, he says he should try to see how close to the dam we can swim past. Off we go, but that took some work. When we came to the middle, the water wanted to take us away. We breasted the water and at the same time worked our way sideways. We finally arrived, but completely exhausted. We looked at each other and said nothing. That night the water conducted a tree trunk with roots and branches, but left it lying on top of the dam. Sommer,³⁵ whom I had already gotten to know in Sebewaing, a very friendly and very active person, tried to replicate our work of art the next day. But when he came to the middle of the current, it dragged him away and left him hanging in the branches of the tree trunk. He sat down on the trunk and began to sing. But we hollered at him, “Okay, just get over here; we all know what it’s like now.”

He worked his way over to us along his tree, and once he was on dry land he started in: “O you dear brothers, do not do that again. That is putting God to the test. If the tree had not been there, the water would have taken me away, and death would have claimed me by now.” He was alluding to the large boulders down below. Later Pastor Kalb, who was supposed to become a professor at the teacher seminary, drowned at that spot; Fleischmann,³⁶ who tried to save him, almost did too.³⁷ —

I had been in Fort Wayne for six weeks when I had to teach a Catechism lesson on the Seventh Commandment. We had to go over to Dr. Sihler’s residence several times each week. There the lectures and Catechism lessons were given up in Rauschert’s and Werfelmann’s room. The catechist in question had to go and get six to seven students from Teacher Wolf. They would come up here and sit down on a bench; the seminary students would stand around them against the wall. The doctor would sit on a chair and Mr. Catechist in front of his boys, and now we were ready to go. That gave us some angst. I had already gotten to know the Seventh Commandment pretty well from experience. I explored everyday life with the students and showed how all people are thieves no matter what their station. At the conclusion the doctor would ask everyone for his criticism one by one. He himself went last. To my knowledge no one criticized me, not even Mr. Doctor; instead he praised me highly for being so practical. I was pleased and encouraged by that. Soon I also had to give a lecture on the false teachings about the Lord’s Supper. For that, however, I borrowed from a lecture by Ottmann, which I utilized well. Dr. Sihler praised me again, but he didn’t know that I had plowed with someone else’s heifer, and I said nothing about it either.

One time I had to do a funeral for a child in a house in the bush country. When we were singing, two people behind me were looking over my shoulders and singing along robustly, but in the middle of the verse they sang differently and knocked me off the saddle. I had the music book and was following along too casually. During the next verse it happened to me again, but during the third verse I watched what I was doing and went at it fearsomely, also turned my face towards them a little; now I stayed on track.

I also catechized in the surrounding area. One time I had to mount Sihler’s pulpit to give a funeral sermon. Another time I had to go to Huntington to preach for Pastor Stecher at festival time. For that Dr. Sihler advised me to borrow a horse from a farmer. The man gave me a large, black nag that was still young. I get on, put my umbrella under my arm, and start out. I’m riding on the tow-path for the canal. It starts to rain and I open my umbrella, but now my Black takes off. Fortunately I soon came to a quagmire; my nag got all fours stuck up to his belly. By the time he worked his way out, I had my umbrella closed. The man told me later that he had forgotten to say that I should not open any umbrella, because the horse could not stand that. —

Crämer accepted a call to a congregation on the side and made me his vicar; it was called Nothstein.³⁸ A man lived there whose name was Nothstein. Others lived in the surrounding bush country. It was twelve miles away. Every fourteen days I had to go out there. In the morning I headed out on foot, preached and held Catechism instruction with the little children, and headed back here in the afternoon. I was relieved by others twice, otherwise I kept my arrangement. One time the river was very swollen. Behind Rudisill’s was a small bridge over a brook that came from the marsh, but now the river had torn the little bridge away, and the water was flowing in reverse from the river into the marsh, and with considerable momentum. What now? I looked for a staff, found a branch, took it in hand, and started off into the water. In the middle it just about knocked me over, but I got across anyway; the water went up to my waist. I still had two miles to go, but now I ran.

Endnotes

³¹ Friedrich Steinbach from Saxe-Weimar

³² Wilhelm Sihler (1801-1885) was won over to confessional Lutheranism from rationalism. After serving as a private tutor for a number of years, he came into contact with Löhe and came to America in 1843. He initially joined the Ohio Synod, but left it in 1845 due to its lax confessionalism and unionistic practices at the time. With the support of Löhe he started a Nothelferseminar in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1846. Nothelferseminar literally means emergency assistant seminary. Its purpose was to train pastors quickly so that they could provide the pastoral care urgently needed by the many immigrants and fledgling congregations. Often Nothelferseminar is more euphemistically translated practical seminary, as opposed to a theological seminary, since the students in Fort Wayne were given instruction in confessional Lutheran doctrine and pastoral practice, especially preaching and teaching, but received no instruction in the Hebrew and Greek of the Scriptures. This seminary was deeded to the newly formed Missouri Synod in 1847. Sihler was president of the seminary from 1846-1861. He was also Vice President of the Missouri Synod and overseer of the synod’s congregations in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan from 1847-1854.

³³ Jakob Rauschert from Franconia and Heinrich Werfelmann from Hanover

³⁴ Friedrich Ottmann from Franconia

³⁵ Wilhelm Sommer from Saxon Lusatia

³⁶ Philipp Fleischmann (1815-1878) was a professor and director of the teacher seminary in Fort Wayne from 1857 until his resignation due to eye trouble in 1864.

³⁷ The opening article of the July 27, 1858, issue of Der Lutheraner (vol. 14, no. 25), penned by Dr. Sihler, details the tragic death of Pastor J. Paul Kalb (1828-1858) on June 8. He was bathing in the spot Strieter mentions here, between 4 and 5 p.m., with Professor Fleischmann. Fleishmann, “some distance away from [Kalb], all at once saw him disappearing and hurried over to his rescue, since he is skilled at swimming.” But “after he had already succeeded in expending all his energy in bringing his dear friend close to the shore, by God’s ordaining his arm suddenly became paralyzed on him and he was robbed of his senses in such a way that he could no longer hold on to, no longer see his friend, no longer tear him away from the deep into which he had now sunk, and only with the utmost effort, more dead than alive, did he himself reach the not too distant shore, where he lay powerless for some time and could only still manage one loud, prolonged, agonizing cry from his constricted chest.” Kalb’s body was not found until ten days later, five miles downstream.

³⁸ There is a Notestine Cemetery, established in 1834, at 10521 St Joe Road, just north of the intersection with Notestine Road, about nine miles northeast of Fort Wayne along the St. Joseph River. Without knowing the history or people of the area, it is difficult to determine where exactly Strieter’s preaching station was, since he goes on to say a) that it was twelve miles away (presumably from the seminary), and b) that it was two miles from a brook that flowed from a marsh into the river. The station was perhaps located along what is today Notestine Road near the intersection with Wheelock Road.

[Read the next part here.]

Strieter Autobiography: To Fort Wayne

[Continued from Part 13. If you have not yet read Part 1, click here.]

Seminary (continued)

Crämer told me he had a call to be a professor in Fort Wayne, and that I should now go home to Freedom, bid my siblings farewell and adieu, and then meet up with him in Detroit for the continued journey to Fort Wayne. My brother-in-law had made me a trunk. I shut my things inside it and we were to make the trip with that and Crämer’s luggage. I took just a few things with me and marched back to Ann Arbor. In the evening I arrived there and rode with a man to my old home. It was late when I arrived at the farmyard. My brother had a large, handsome dog, white with large yellow spots; he had gotten it from a “nigger”²⁵ from the South. Everything was already dark in the house. The dog began to bark. I said, “Penter, come!” He stopped barking and came. I knock.

“Who’s outside?” I heard my brother say.

I said, “Your brother.” He got up out of bed; his wife did too and opened the door. The dog went inside with me, posted himself in front of me, began to sniff me up until he had reached my face. He lets out a loud bark and starts licking me all over; I could not escape.

I visited my siblings in Freedom and Bridgewater. They provided me with a number of other items and I took my leave. My brother brought me to Ann Arbor, and I boarded the railroad car, for the first time in my life. A railroad ran from Detroit to Jacksonburg.²⁶ It was nighttime when I arrived in Detroit, where guys were standing in front of a chain and hollering dreadfully; they wanted people for their hotel. I waited till everyone was gone. Then a man came to me and asked if I wanted to spend the night. I said, “Sure!” He took me along. When I was with my siblings I had also bought myself a suitcase [Büchsenranzen] and I had put all my effects in it. He took my case for me, hung the strap over his shoulder, and off we went. We marched a good stretch, then he turned to the side, opened a door, and there we were.

I heard Irish voices coming from the kitchen. The man asked if I wanted to eat. I said, “Sure!” He went to the kitchen and soon came a piece of beefsteak with potatoes and bread. The steak was tough and bloody, but I was hungry and enjoyed the meal. Pretty soon he asked if I wanted to go to bed. I said, “Sure!” Now he took a tallow candle – that was the only kind we had back then – opened a door, and we went up the stairs. Right in front stood a bed and behind it a few more. By the first bed he said I should undress. I lay my paints on the chair, hang my waistcoat on a nail along with my pocket watch, and climb into bed. He grabbed my pocket book out of my pocket, took my watch, and laid both of them under my pillow for me and left. In the morning I ate again and paid just 25 cents.

I now went to find Pastor Schaller.²⁷ On the slope not too far from there, toward the river, stood a large, simple, old frame house. Here lived Pastor Schmidt’s brother-in-law,²⁸ and upstairs, Pastor Schaller. The latter was just coming down the stairs, and I introduced myself to him. He had a cobbler friend in his congregation, married, but without children. He directed me to him. Eight days I stayed with those folks. They lived quite a ways out, in the upstairs at a Catholic tailor’s house. He was a strict Catholic. One time I’m chopping some kindling for my hostess with a small hatchet. Over yonder across the fence, in the next lot, stood an old, single-story frame house, from which several women would come out. One woman, fairly young, stations herself in front of me, lays her hands on the fence and her chin on top, and stares at me without saying a word. I keep pecking away at it, and the wench won’t leave. I toss my hatchet to the side and run inside to the tailor: “I say, what kind of people are actually over in that place?”

He says, “Those are whores, who want to entice you over there.” And now he also gave me a speech, warning me never to get mixed up with bad women folk.

In my host’s shop I also bought myself a new pair of boots. They were definitely somewhat large, but the cobbler said, “You are still growing. I have made these myself. You are getting a good deal!” And he was right.

After eight days Schaller told me I should head out on my own. I went down to the river and boarded the ship, took deck passage though, since I didn’t have a lot of money. The ship set sail for Toledo, where I wanted to go. Soon I noticed a young fellow who was my size and age, who was dressed like a sailor with a little sailor cap on his head. He immediately made my acquaintance and told me that his home was between Tecumseh and Clinton.²⁹ He said his father was a farmer, but he could not stand it on the farm; he was now a sailor. He was now going home for a visit. When it was midday and the meal was taken below for the sailors, he slipped down into an opening and motioned for me to follow. Below we ate a marvelous meal together, but he told me afterwards that we now had to treat the guys; we did that too. He asked me where I was from and what my name was and where I was headed and what I wanted to be. I told him. Then he cried, “Oh, you fool! Go with me to my parents, and when I go back to the ocean, I will take you along and make a fine sailor out of you. You don’t need to be afraid of me; I’m no bad guy.”

I found the fellow extraordinarily pleasant and I was always happy when I was on a ship. My favorite picture as a child was a ship with three masts in full sail. We arrived in Toledo, grabbed the fellow’s trunk at both ends, and went to the hotel. We ate and slept in the same bed. In the morning he paid the bill. “Now John, what do you say?”

I said, “I’m still going to go to Fort Wayne.”

He said, “Then good bye.”

I got on the canal boat and rode to Fort Wayne.³⁰

Endnotes

²⁵ This was a common way of referring to African-Americans at the time, both by those who wished to refer to them disparagingly and by naïve immigrants who simply heard others using the label and didn’t know any better. The word itself originates from the Latin word niger, meaning black (man). Strieter’s quotation marks indicate his own uncertainty about the appropriateness of the term.

²⁶ Jacksonburg(h), Michigan, was founded in 1830. Its name was changed to Jacksonapolis and then shortened to Jackson in 1838, but apparently it continued to be called Jacksonburg informally.

²⁷ Johann Gottlieb Michael Schaller (1819-1887) came to America in 1848, largely at the encouragement of Löhe. After accepting a call to Philadelphia in 1848 and Baltimore in 1850, he accepted a call to Trinity in Detroit in 1850. He had joined the Missouri Synod in 1849 and was won over to Walther’s position on church and ministry at the synod convention in St. Louis in 1850. He was the father of the eventual Professor John Schaller of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, who authored Biblical Christology.

²⁸ From Pastor Schmid’s letter dated March 19, 1861, we know that Pastor Hattstädt (rf. endnote 3) married a sister of his. But Strieter is likely talking about a different brother-in-law here, since Hattstädt, as Strieter notes earlier, remained in Monroe for the duration of his ministry.

²⁹ More than 50 miles northwest of Toledo in Michigan

³⁰ Via the Maumee River

[Read the next part here.]

Strieter Autobiography: Life in Frankenmuth

[Continued from Part 12. If you have not yet read Part 1, click here.]

Seminary (continued)

There was a young man my age there [in Frankenmuth], Kundinger, Crämer’s sister’s son, who was supposed to be trained yet and and then become Kühn’s schoolmaster in Frankenhilf. Old man Moll of Frankentrost said, “Help the Franconians [Hilf den Franken] is what we want to call it.”¹⁴ Crämer gave the two of us daily instruction in the Augsburg Confession. Teacher Pinkepank lived with his wife, Moll’s daughter, across the street on the north side in a long log house that was half residence and half schoolhouse. After he was done teaching school, he instructed us in reading, writing, singing, etc. We also did some scraping on the violin. Kühn gave me a Book of Concord and a small little book called Luther’s Life [Luthers Leben].¹⁵

Friedrich August Crämer

Since I was not happy with how I was doing, I was expecting my dismissal from Crämer every day. But look at this! One morning after the class hour he clapped me on the shoulder: “Cheer up, my dear Strieter. You are doing quite well. You, sir, are going to the seminary.” Now I was filled with joy.

Stone marking the location of the original log parsonage in Frankenmuth, next to a more recently built museum. Copyright 2013 Red Brick Parsonage.

Crämer’s house stood on the south side of the path, north of the Cass River, and was a log house. A kitchen took up the entire width on the west side of the house. The eastern side was divided – a small section toward the road was a combination bedroom and study. I can just see the diligent Crämer sitting there at his small, simple desk in front of the window. The other section was a living room. There the stairs went up. The space beneath the roof was also bisected. In the back room toward the west slept the maid and the children, and we slept in the front room – Kühn, Kundinger, and I. There were bedbugs galore.

Every day there was service in the morning and in the evening. We would sing a hymn, then Crämer would mount the low, small pulpit and preach. Later we took turns singing; the men would sing one line and the women would sing the next. It was incredibly lovely. Every Friday there was private confession and every Sunday there was Lord’s Supper. The log church stood somewhat uphill from the parsonage to the west. Next to the church was a framework in which two bells hung, one larger and one smaller, which the dear Franconians had brought along with them from Germany. Every day the prayer bells were rung. Then everybody would stop what they were doing on the path, in the field, in the house, the men would remove their caps, hands were folded and everybody prayed, “Lord Jesus Christ, with us abide,” and so on. It was just too lovely!

But the dear Franconians had their fun too. One time I was sitting by a dear man who was telling me how it was in Germany, how the light afternoon meal [Vesperbrot] had been brought out to the field and there had been beer with it. When he came to the part about the beer, he paused, turned his face upward and called out, “O, a good beer – I could go for one now! [O, a Bierla, wenn i hätt!]”

There were two tall, handsome men there, the Hubinger brothers. The older one ran the farm, the younger one the mill that they had constructed on the Cass River. Everything was built very solidly and laboriously. Because of that the water could do nothing but drive either the saw or the milling gear. A fine, strong dam was there, which had a swing-gate and an exit chute. Off to the east of Frankenmuth lay Tuscola, several miles away. The people there sued the Hubingers because of their dam, for the Tuscolans were floating timber downstream. One day Crämer said to me, “You, sir, are going with the Hubingers to Tuscola today. You will appear with them on their court date and take what is spoken in English and make it German.” The two men and I went up there. We had to wait a long time. Finally we headed out of town to a schoolhouse. Hubingers had arranged for an attorney from Saginaw, who arrived on horseback. His pants were torn up at the bottom. Now the affair was underway. The attorney gave a lengthy speech and read from a book that he had brought along under his arm. The judge reached his decision: “Not guilty!” We went home in cheerful spirits, and the Tuscolans left the Hubingers in peace.

One time Crämer sent me to Frankentrost to fetch Pastor Gräbner. I don’t remember what the deal was. It was Sunday afternoon. I go through the beautiful forest and come to an opening. There a path stretches out and small log houses are standing on both sides. In the middle was a long log house, partitioned: The western half was the pastor’s residence and the eastern was the church and school. I went inside. Pastor Gräbner was actually in the middle of Catechism instruction. I whispered in his ear, but he calmly went on teaching until class was over. Then he went over with me into the little parsonage. It was one room. In the one corner stood an oven, in the other a bed with a curtain around it, and next to it a desk in front of the window. That was the living room, bedroom, and study. Gräbner put on his long boots, slipped into a coat, lit up a German pipe with a porcelain bowl, hung his tobacco pouch on his coat button, took his large walking-stick in hand, and now we headed to Frankenmuth.

The Frankenmuth church bells today. Strieter often rang the large bell on the right. Copyright 2013 Red Brick Parsonage.

Also in Frankenmuth both bells were rung every Friday at 3 o’clock, to signal the suffering of Christ. I often rang the large bell, even one time with Crämer. —

It was time to start Frankenhilf. A carpenter was there from Huntington, Indiana, who was, I believe, acquainted with the Franconians. Out there in the virgin forest, seven miles or so northeast of Frankenmuth, tree trunks were felled and rolled on each other in square, about the height of a man, and soon it was time for dedication. Kühn went out there and took me along to sing. They still did not have any Missouri hymnals there. They had brought along a thin little book from Löhe, as big as a Fibel,¹⁶ which had beautiful songs in it. I had to sing, “The Lord Hath Helped Me Hitherto.”¹⁷ Kühn delivered an address on those words [1 Samuel 7:12] to the carpenter, a handful of young fellows, and Father Ammann, the only head of household with a family. Kühn cried a lot as he gave it and I felt deeply sorry for him. His Frankenhilf must have weighed very heavily on his heart. Now we headed back home through the thick virgin forest on the Indian path. —

It was time for the synod convention, I believe in St. Louis. My sister in Sebewaing had a maid from Frankenmuth, a gem of a child. She had to go home to get married. My brother-in-law mounted one horse, the maid the other, and they rode some forty miles to Frankenmuth through the woods. I was supposed to go down with him to keep my sister company until the pastors came back. We rode off to Frankentrost. On the other side of Frankentrost we met up with an old path and continued on that. We came across a pole bridge that looked suspicious at the end. The wood was rotted, you could see some water there, and it looked very marshy. “We’ll get stuck there,” said my brother-in-law.

I had the young horse. “I’ll get over,” I said. I turned my horse around and got a running start— I was over on the other side. Like a fox my horse easily cleared the spot, which was perhaps three paces wide. My brother-in-law came after me, but his horse didn’t quite jump far enough and his back legs sank all the way down into the muck; but he was out in a jiffy. When we were close to the bay we came to a river, which was deep, not very wide. Fortunately a canoe was available in front of us. We take the saddles off, each of us takes his horse to the side and off we go. The horses pulled that little boat across splendidly. On the other side saddles back on and we continue on our way.

My brother-in-law now traveled to the synod convention. Back then you went up around the lake and then down on the Mississippi; it took a long time.

We had an Indian – he was hard of hearing – who would go up to the prairie very early in the morning and shoot a young buck, and every time his daughter of twelve years would bring us a nice piece, a leg or a loin. We were not able to stow it. I tell my sister, “Just tell the child that she shouldn’t bring us any more.”

“Yeah,” she says, “I don’t dare do that, otherwise the old woman will be insulted.” We ate what we could; the rest we secretly gave to the pigs.

While I was there I had another ride too. I’m taking a young horse out of the stall, on which no one has ever sat, but like a dummy I leave the door open behind me. I swing myself up on it, but just like that it wheels around and goes inside to its stall. I tried to keep myself steady with my heel in the back and with my hand on its neck, but I fell on my back against the threshold and the horse goes right over me. It stepped down at my waist between my legs and scraped me badly, and came down with the other foot at my neck and also took the skin with it there. My back was in considerable pain and the scraped skin stung, but I went and got my horse out again, but closed the door this time, and got on again. But now it went like mad. I let the animal run as long as it pleased; then I rode home slowly, and from then on the horse went fine. —

One evening my sister looks out the window and cries, “Oh boy, here comes the crazy doctor.” An old bachelor lived in Scio, a conceited, learned, and widely traveled man. They said that he had gone out of his mind due to a failed love affair. When he was alone, he would chatter away to himself, otherwise you couldn’t notice anything strange about him when he was with someone. He was already in the area from early on and would trade for rarities from the Indians and send them to Germany. He came and brought a box with all kinds of small and sundry items for exchanging. He took off every morning and returned in the evening. One time it was cold and wet, and my doctor comes home and has a wound on his hand; he said he had scraped himself. The hand was swelling up. My sister says, “Mr. Doctor, let me bandage your hand, sir.”

He replies, “Oh no, Mrs. Missionary, it has to heal that way.”

He comes home again; his hand is even more swollen and the wound looks bad. Then he takes a sharp knife, pricks around in the wound over and over. My sister says, “Mr. Doctor, you are really aggravating your hand. Let me tie something on it, sir.”

He replies, “Oh no, Mrs. Missionary, there is already rotten flesh in it, which has to be cut out,” and he keeps working around on his hand with the knife. Then he takes off again and when he comes home he goes upstairs and doesn’t eat any supper. In the morning he doesn’t come down. I go up there and call him, but he doesn’t want to come down. We eat and then my sister goes and gets him down and makes him a bed in an adjacent room, but by now she has to undo his coat and shirt with the knife, because his hand and arm were so swollen and were more black than white. “Mrs. Missionary,” he cried out, “I have the black gangrene. The hand or the whole arm must come off. Please fetch a doctor.”

I mounted the horse, took another one next to me, and went down to Shebeyang to fetch Jacob Graverad. When I arrived, a squaw told me that they were over yonder on the island. I jumped into a canoe and went over. There I found him. He went with me, borrowed Nage Dschickamik’s (the great chief)¹⁸ pony and rode to Frankenmuth to fetch Dr. Koch. Scarcely was our Jacob gone when my brother-in-law comes home, sniffs around in the air and asks, “What smells in here so noticeably?”

My sister opens the door to the doctor’s room and says, “See for yourself!” My brother-in-law, the missionary, was an okay doctor. He puts olive oil¹⁹ in a receptacle, makes it hot, soaks a rag in it and covers the doctor’s entire arm with it and stays up with him through the night. In the morning the arm is fine again, and nothing bad can be seen on the hand but the wound. Here comes my half-Indian [Jacob Graverad] on horseback, along with the doctor. When he enters, my doctor calls out from his bed, “Mr. Doctor, you come too late. You see, sir, I am an old, widely traveled physician. I have even doctored the wives of the sultan in Turkey, and I am unable to help myself. Mr. Missionary here knows more than I; he has cured my hand for me.” Koch ate, we foddered his horse, the doctor gave him ten dollars, and he rode back home.

My brother-in-law transported me back with the boat. By Lower Saginaw we took a little jaunt out of our way. By an island in the river we turned right and went into a tributary²⁰ to go to Frankenlust. The river was full of tree trunks and one could scarcely get through; there were also a lot of reeds and grass in it. We came to a clearing. In the distance stood a little log church and not far from that a frame house that was still not quite finished, the parsonage. It was the pastor’s property. His wife received a fortune from her father, as she told me, and dear Sievers used it to build himself a house over in the forest and to help many people out of their distress. When we entered the house, a handsome, very friendly, endearing man stood before us, Pastor Sievers. From the side door stepped in a nicely dressed young lady in the prime of her youth, a half-year older than I, and introduced herself to us as Mrs. Pastor Sievers. —

Example of a grain cradle

From there we headed back to the Saginaw River and up to Upper Saginaw. There my brother-in-law bought me some black cloth for a suit. I marched to Frankenmuth and felt very happy about my fine, handsome cloth. In Frankenuth lived a Bernthal family on the lower street (two streets led to Saginaw, the upper and the lower)²¹ along the river, where the church was also located. The old father was a wagonmaker and worked diligently in his workshop. He had several sons and a few daughters. The second son, if I’m not mistaken, was a tailor, and he made me my suit, the handsomest one I had in my life, and also the best; I had it for a very long time. I worked off the tailor’s fee with the cradle in the wheatfield.²² Things were definitely still tight for the people. As soon as possible the wheat was threshed. The sound of it would carry up to us in bed very early in the morning: 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.²³ It was a splendid thing to hear! Women came from Frankentrost, each one with a small sack of grain on her head, three or four in a row, to go to the mill and then back home. It was so nice in Frankenmuth and our dear God let me experience a tremendous amount of good there. May he reward everyone for everything! —

Crämer never stopped concerning himself with the Indians either. In an old shanty not far from the church lived an aged chief and his old wife, who was pushed to the side though, with a few of her youngest boys and the chief’s young wife and a few of her small children. On Sundays all of them would come to the parsonage after church and Crämer would give them a speech. His son Heinrich had to translate; they called him Wabshkentip, White-Head, because he had very light-colored hair.²⁴ The old chief would justify himself though, wherever he could. After the service they would get a bowl full of corn soup with bacon, which they were mighty glad to eat.

Endnotes

¹⁴ In other words, they had named the settlement Frankenhilf – (God the) Helper of the Franconians – but the way things were going, they thought a better name would be Hilf den Franken – (God) Help the Franconians.

¹⁵ This was possibly Luthers Leben für christliche Leser insgemein (Luther’s Life for Christian Readers in General) by Moritz Meurer (Dresden: Justus Naumann, 1850). This was an abridgement of Meurer’s more scholarly multi-volume work.

¹⁶ A German primer

¹⁷ This three-stanza hymn was penned by Ämilie Juliane (1637-1706), Countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. It was sung to the tune, “All Glory Be to God on High.” Juliane’s hymn was translated into English by August Crull and is, for example, hymn 71 in the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary.

¹⁸ Rf. endnote 31 in Youth.

¹⁹ German: Baumöl. Carl Strieter renders it “oil of turpentine” here.

²⁰ Dutch Creek

²¹ The upper street would be Genesee Street, which turns into Junction Road, and the lower street would be Tuscola Street, which turns into Tuscola Road, and eventually joins with Junction Road several miles west of town.

²² The cradle is also called the grain cradle or cradle scythe. It consists of an arrangement of fingers attached to the handle of a scythe, such that the cut grain falls on the fingers and can be cleanly laid down in a swath for collection.

²³ Representing either one person threshing in sets of four strokes with a flail, or four people threshing together, each taking a stroke in turn.

²⁴ According to “The Ojibwe People’s Dictionary” online, waabishkindibe means he has white hair (ojibwe.lib.umn.edu; accessed 15 September 2015). Heinrich was about 10 years old at this time and was not Crämer’s natural son, but the son of his wife Dorothea, whom Crämer had met on the ship during the voyage to America and had married shortly after landing.

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Strieter Autobiography: Career Decision

[Continued from Part 11. If you have not yet read Part 1, click here.]

Seminary (continued)

The idea now occurred to me of becoming a minister [Diener] of the Church myself, even if only as a teacher. I carried the idea around with me and couldn’t get rid of it. I sought refuge in prayer. Over at the edge of the woods stood a white ash, behind which I knelt down and prayed that God would please remove the idea from my heart, because I was unfit. Daily, often several times, I went to find my prayer altar, but the idea only grew more and more intense.

Finally I opened up about it to my brother-in-law Auch. He advised me against it at first, because, in fact, I did not have the gifts necessary for becoming a missionary, and being a missionary’s assistant was too unstable. He furthermore cited the fact that I did not have the educational background for such studies, and that I also did not have the means. In all these points he was absolutely correct. Instead he now made me this proposal: “Stay with us. We have no children. You’ll be like our very own.” He offered me a horse as a gift, a young and beautiful animal, and – get this – he told me he had 700 dollars available, if I’m not mistaken, and that he wanted to lend it to me without interest as long as I wanted. I should use the money to acquire some land. The land on which they were living and the surrounding land was school property and would soon be for sale, 50 cents an acre. In five years there would be a small town here, he said, and I could then resell the acres for 100 dollars apiece. He had purchased 40 acres at the mouth of the river in order to cut off the speculators. The Indians were prophesying an abundant whitefish harvest in the fall. He said I should buy myself a “bag net,” hire a man, buy barrels and salt, stretch the net across the creek in the evening and pull it out full in the morning. Out in the distance, a mile or so away, were two small little islands; a ship could moor along one of them. I could take my fish there with our boat and get three and a half to four dollars a barrel. And actually the promised catch of fish did turn out to be so abundant that a Frenchman and his assistant caught 1200 barrels full off of Fish Point, which is what they called a promontory not too far from the mouth of the river. What he said about the small town also came true.

“Thousands!” I thought. “This way you can become a fairly rich man without a lot of work. Do it!” But I didn’t accept right away.

Auch said, “Think it over!”

I now often ran back to my white ash, but the more I prayed, mostly to be rid of the idea of studying, the more fervent the idea became.

“So,” my brother-in-law asked one day, “what do you want to do?”

I said, “I want to stay true to my idea.”

“Good,” he said. “The next conference is at my place. I will present it to Crämer then.”

Auch traveled to Saginaw with his boat and brought Crämer, Gräbner, Clöter, Sievers, Baierlein, Kühn and a man named Sommer, who was still supposed to be at the seminary, and Mr. Bergrat Koch, Siever’s father-in-law, who had just recently brought his daughter from Germany to be dear Pastor Siever’s wife. The conference was held in the schoolroom. After the conference the gentlemen, especially Crämer, had another serious debate, with Mr. Koch. Mr. Koch thought that the secular arm was needed for the spread of the Church, and we were lacking that here. Crämer and the others didn’t want to have anything to do with a secular arm. Crämer took me aside and said, “You, sir, are going with me to Frankenmuth, and I will see if you’ve got what it takes. If you are fit, then you will go to the seminary in Fort Wayne, and if not, you will go back to Sebewaing.”

I packed my bundle. Meyer’s wife was also there. When it was time to go, they both cried and I did too. Brother-in-law Auch brought the group to Saginaw by boat. Then I headed to Frankenmuth on foot.

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Strieter Autobiography: The Franconians

[Continued from Part 10. If you have not yet read Part 1, click here.]

Seminary

J. K. W. Löhe

In the first half of the [18]40s the men sent by Löhe¹ came with their colonies. First came Ernst and Burger.² Burger soon died, leaving behind a widow and two little boys. The oldest eventually married the daughter of my youngest sister, Margaretha, and currently still resides in Adrian, Michigan. Then came Hattstädt to Monroe, Michigan.³ He and Sievers are, to my knowledge, the only ones in our synod who never left their positions. Crämer and his Franconians came and established a colony on the Cass River, fourteen miles east of Saginaw.⁴ Gräbner and his Franconians came and “settled” [„settelten“ sich] eight or so miles north of Frankenmuth⁵ – the name they gave to the place just mentioned – and they named their settlement Frankentrost.⁶ Sievers and his Franconians came and settled on the western shore of the Saginaw River, opposite Lower Saginaw, and they called their place Frankenlust.⁷ Clöter was in Upper Saginaw.⁸ Kühn came with Franconians, but they stayed in Detroit for the most part; only one family and a number of bachelors came along to Frankenmuth. Kühn was to establish the colony of Frankenhilf.⁹ Friedrich Lochner also came with Sievers.¹⁰

Hattstädt, Crämer, and Lochner traveled to Ann Arbor to Pastor Schmidt and held a conference with him. Schmidt made a very Lutheran impression and uncompromisingly professed his loyalty to the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church. They established fellowship, and the mission was to be run jointly, for Crämer was also doing mission work among the Chippewas.¹¹ Missionaries Auch and Meyer now entered into close brotherly fellowship with the Franconian pastors and held conferences with them. But it wasn’t too long before Schmidt separated from the Franconians and went his own way again. Indeed, the Franconians were decried as half-Catholic: They burned candles at the Lord’s Supper; the pastor chanted at the altar; he turned his back to the people; he made the sign of the cross. Especially the sign of the cross was regarded as the living Satan. Missionaries Auch and Meyer, however, remained with the Franconians. In 1847 our synod, the Missouri Synod, was called into being in Chicago, and now the Franconians joined this synod, including Missionaries Auch and Meyer. Thus the mission in Sebewaing and Shebeyang came into our synod.¹²

The mission house in Shebeyang was built; I helped as much as I could. A long log house made from squared fir trunks, the house was divided in the middle, one half being the missionary’s residence and the other being the church and school. It was dedicated. Baierlein from Bethany preached;¹³ Jacob Graverad translated. His father, an Englishman, a liquor dealer among the Indians at one time, was Auch’s translator at first. But the Indians who already understood some English told Auch, “Graverad does not say what you say at all. He often says the opposite.” So Auch dismissed the elder and employed the younger. The tall Jacob, however, knew well how to speak good Indian, but was bad at English. He called everything “she”.

Endnotes

¹ Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe (1808-1872) was a confessional Lutheran pastor in the village of Neuendettelsau in Franconia, Bavaria, Germany, from 1837 until the end of his life. In 1841 Friedrich Conrad Dietrich Wyneken traveled around Germany pleading the cause of the spiritually needy Lutherans in America. From his small village Löhe answered the plea in a big way. (See the following endnotes.) One of his men, Wilhelm Sihler, sent over in 1843, founded what would become Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in September 1846, which was eventually entrusted to the Missouri Synod, in whose founding Löhe played a large role. Löhe separated from the Missouri Synod in 1853 over the doctrine of church and ministry. He helped found the Iowa Synod the following year.

² Adam Ernst (1815-1895), formerly a journeyman shoemaker, and Johann Georg Burger (1816-1847), one of Ernst’s friends, were two volunteer helpers whom Löhe sent to America in 1842. Ernst eventually became a member of the Ohio Synod, and Burger eventually ministered in Hancock and Van Wert Counties in Ohio.

³ Georg Wilhelm Christoph Hattstädt (1811-1884) was sent to America by Löhe in 1844.

⁴ Friedrich August Crämer (1812-1891) met Löhe in 1844 and was sent to America in 1845. He was pastor in Frankenmuth until 1850, when he accepted a call to be a professor at the seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. See also next endnote.

⁵ All the names the Franconians gave their settlements were personalized paraphrases for God. Frankenmuth means the (Source of the) Franconians’ courage. A Historic Site sign outside of St. Lorenz Evangelical Lutheran Church on West Tuscola Street tells the story of Crämer and the city’s founding.

⁶ Johann Heinrich Philip Gräbner (1819-1898) was sent to America by Löhe in 1847. Frankentrost means the (Source of the) Franconians’  comfort. Today Frankentrost is a small unincorporated community about eight miles east of Saginaw, identified by Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church (LC-MS) on the southwest corner of MI-46 and Mueller Road.

⁷ Georg Ernst Christian Ferdinand Sievers (1816-1893) was sent to America by Löhe in 1847 and became pastor in Frankenlust, Michigan. Frankenlust means the (Source of the) Franconians’ joy. Today the location of the original colony is marked by St. Paul Lutheran Church on the southwest side of Bay City on the southern corner of Westside Saginaw Road (MI-84) and Ziegler Road.

⁸ Ernst Ottomar Clöter (1825-1897) was sent to America by Löhe in 1849. He was installed as pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Saginaw by Pastor Sievers (see preceding endnote) on November 30, 1849.

⁹ Frankenhilf means the Helper of the Franconians. Eventually this colony was founded in 1851. Today it is the village of Richville.

¹⁰ Strieter is in error here. Friedrich Johann Carl Lochner (1822-1902) came with Crämer in 1845, not with Sievers in 1847. Lochner was first the pastor of a “United” congregation in Toledo, Ohio, but left when he failed to have it constituted as a Lutheran congregation. He then served Lutheran churches in Madison and Macoupin Counties, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Springfield, Illinois, where he was also an instructor at Concordia Seminary.

¹¹ In a letter dated November 21, 1845 – which Pastor Schmid appears to have written in stages – he wrote: “In a very surprising but very pleasant manner, brotherly participation and help was offered us from Bavaria, without any request on our part or knowledge thereof. The Lord arranged to have real help from the old fatherland in our Indian mission, which in this part of the world has received very little support up to this time. A small colony of believing souls, with their own preacher, arrived here last summer in order to work as a mission colony among the Indians, and to be as a light to them. They occupied a fitting location on the Cass River in Saginaw County, buying a piece of land which I had selected before their arrival. There is also a piece of land for the mission. … Reverend Mr. Löhe, who wrote us concerning the whole matter, expressed his wish and the wishes of many other participating friends, namely to spread the kingdom of Christ also among the poor Indians. In doing this, he asked nothing of us up to this point which would be contrary to our conscience and conviction; pure teaching and adherence to the Lord and the Holy Sacrament, according to the creed of our Evangelical Lutheran Church, is his condition, with which we, who for many [sic] years have founded a Lutheran synod, are in agreement, convinced that up to this point our Evangelical Lutheran Church has remained pure and true in her teaching and the administration of the sacraments, adhering to God’s holy word, and in doing so we here have never been led into controversy with either the Reformed or the Lutherans. As far as forms and customs are concerned, we shall continue to love them and will put incidentals in their relation to the great prime things, and I would never like to render judgment of any sort about our brothers who call themselves Evangelical… If the brothers of Bavaria do not ask anything which is contrary to our conscience, then we can very well carry on our work of the Lord with them… A colony has settled on the Cass River about 25 miles from the above-mentioned [mission] station [in Sebewaing]. Pastor Crämer, who suffers from fever a great deal, hopes in a short time to begin a school for Indian children. At the present time they are very busy erecting a building for a mission house…”

¹² In his letter dated January 31, 1848, Pastor Schmid gives no hint of any strife. But his next letter to the Basel Mission Institute, written three years later, on April 29, 1851, he records the breakup from his perspective: “For nearly eighteen years I have served numerous congregations here with the Holy Word and Sacrament, in which there are Lutheran and Reformed from the homeland. Yet I have never had to experience the slightest criticism on the part of the Reformed because of teachings and creed. As far as church practice is concerned, I maintain everything according to our Württemberger church, except that we from early times did not have Communion wafers. If the divine truth is proclaimed in a godly and powerful manner and the pastor lives in the strength of the gospel, then the truth-loving and the truth-seeking people of both confessions can get together through the strength of the Word; and this will also occur without any attempt to force a union. For that reason there are, I think, many in the congregation here whose parents were Reformed, but I am not certain of it. I do not inquire about it, for they are united and happy with and through the proclaimed Word of the cross and the holy sacraments. Firmness in the teachings and in the creed is required here, and if this exists, then the Spirit of the Lord will be with his Word… As far as the rigid Old Lutherans are concerned, with whom I have come into contact without learning to know them, I respect their sound teachings, but these people are mostly lacking in living faith, and for that reason there is so little love and so much harshness toward others. Their rigid ceremony and their strong condemnation of others are terrible things to me. … I could not join this synod [the Missouri Synod], out of conviction. We too had a synod among us here, but it lacked firm foundation and therefore collapsed; some wanted an organization strictly Lutheran, others not so strict, and as a result a lengthy paper was drawn up but when one wanted to follow its path, the wind blew it away. … That we have erected a mission here and that we have already worked a year among the Indians with blessing in this state is already known, and that our missionaries joined the Old Lutherans and that they demanded from us what we couldn’t do, you probably also know. Thus we had no choice but to turn over the mission with its missionaries to the Old Lutherans, and thus our mission endeavor is restricted.” In a letter dated February 9, 1857, Schmid reports that he had joined the Ohio Synod the previous fall, but in a letter dated November 14, 1859, he says that the Ohio Synod did not suit him because of “their stiff and strict forms and ceremonies,” and on March 19, 1861, he reported that he and several brothers had resurrected the Michigan Synod (the so-called Second Michigan Synod) in December 1860. Pinpointing Schmid’s theological position is difficult. He certainly seemed to breathe an evangelical spirit, and it seems that the early Missourians could have learned something from him in this regard. But the Missourians’ charge of doctrinal duplicity against Schmid is also hard to refute. In the final analysis, Schmid made too big a deal out of the Missourians’ ceremonies (something Schmid himself said earlier he did not want to do) and his accusation against these early Missourians for lacking a living faith is unfounded, as evidenced, among other things, by this autobiography.

¹³ Eduard Raimund Baierlein arrived in Frankenmuth to serve as a missionary to the Ojibwe in 1847. He labored at the Bethany mission station in St. Louis, Michigan, about 34 miles west of Saginaw, from 1847-1853.

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