“Oh, if you’d study the Northern part of Indiana, you’d discover how necessary it is to send a true shepherd to us. The harvest is great, but, alas, there are no workers! But if it isn’t possible to send us a preacher, then send us a circuit rider in spite of this. We are hungry and thirsty for God’s Word!”– Adam Wesel, Elder of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana. 4 June 1838.

One Hundred Seventy years ago, during the Summer of 1838, tragedy struck the frontier town of Fort Wayne. Jesse Hoover, the young pastor of the newly founded St. Paul’s Lutheran Church had died suddenly of a heart attack. Grief-stricken and worried, the people of St Paul’s called out to Lutherans in the east for help.

Across the states of Indiana and Michigan virgin forests covered the richest farmland in the world. The brand new Wabash and Erie Canal brought German settlers by the thousands to settle the land. As they scattered among old growth trees, swamp and prairie, they found few congregations and fewer pastors to preach God’s Word and offer His sacraments in their native language. Pastor Hoover was one of them. His untimely death left no Lutheran pastor between central Ohio and Eastern Michigan, St. Louis and Indianapolis.

Adam Wesel put the pleas of his congregation into words. His open letter likely reached the hands of the Pennsylvania Ministerium’s mission society through newspaper editor C. E. Schmidt of Pittsburgh. They had no one to send. There were very few candidates in their seminaries that could speak German and English. They had to be content to send survey missionaries to the west. These men would ride from Western Pennsylvania to Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, preaching and teaching wherever Germans could gather. In one or two days, they would baptise, marry, confirm and commune dozens. Facing tears as they left, they would promise to send others — a promise they rarely could keep. In 1838, in a economic depression, only one candidate was available to serve. When he became ill, there was no one to go.

While all this unfolded, two young men arrived in the port of Baltimore. They were newly-ordained C. Wolf and F. C. D. Wyneken. Both men came to answer the call of God to care for His orphaned German Lutherans in America.