Small things found while correcting and translating the scans — how the journal was made, who did the work, and where the printing went wrong. Every item cites the page it came from, and most link straight to it.
These came up as a side effect of checking something else. A cumulative index is only as good as its digits, and a page of Fraktur is only as good as the reader who doubts it; both kinds of doubt turn up oddities that are worth keeping.
The ten-year index was made by a parish pastor in Baltimore
Not by the editorial office. He compiled it, and mailed it in, twice, five years apart.
Volume 4 of this archive's copy carries both of the journal's cumulative subject indexes: one to the first five Jahrgänge, one to the sixth through tenth. Between them they index the whole first decade, 1855 to 1864, keyed by volume and page — 1,710 references in fourteen printed pages. Each heading carries a footnote in six-point type at the foot of the page. They are not notes on scope. They are credits.
*) Die geehrten Leſer verdanken dieſes die Benutzung gegenwärtiger Zeitſchrift ſo erleichternde Regiſter dem liebevollen Fleiße Hrn. P. Keyl's in Baltimore. D. Red.
Our esteemed readers owe this register, which so eases the use of the present journal, to the loving diligence of Pastor Keyl in Baltimore. — The Editors.
Register to Jahrgänge 1–5, foot of its first page
*) Durch die Güte Hrn. Paſt. Keyl's ſen. uns zugeſtellt. D. R.
Sent to us through the kindness of Pastor Keyl senior. — The Eds.
Register to Jahrgänge 6–10, foot of its first page
Who he was, from the journal's own pages
The journal names him in full in a footnote of the same volume: Ernst Gerhard Wilhelm Keyl, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran St. Paul's congregation in Baltimore. He appears throughout the run as a contributor — pieces headed Eingesandt von Pastor Keyl run in Jahrgänge 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10 — and by Jahrgang 7 he is signing as a District President. [the footnote naming him — Jahrgang 4, printed page 207]
Why he was the one to make it
Because compiling was what he did. Jahrgang 6 reviews his catechism exposition — an anthology of Luther drawn from across Luther's works — and puts it exactly:
Hier hat die fleißige Hand des Herrn Paſtor Keyl, gleich einer Biene, aus den verſchiedenſten Schriften Luthers die ſchönſten, klarſten, kernigſten, kräftigſten, ſchlagendſten Stellen zuſammengeſtellt…
Here the diligent hand of Pastor Keyl has gathered, like a bee, from the most various of Luther's writings the finest, clearest, pithiest, most forceful, most telling passages…
Jahrgang 2 says it more flatly: hardly anyone, it remarks, has studied Luther's writings as Keyl has. A cumulative subject index is the same instinct turned on the journal itself. [Jahrgang 2, März 1856 — Jahrgang 2, printed page 96]
The word sen. is doing real work, and it can be dated
The first footnote, printed around 1860, says simply Hrn. P. Keyl's in Baltimore. The second, printed around 1865, says Hrn. Paſt. Keyl's ſen. — the elder. Searching the whole ten-volume run for the name shows when the journal started distinguishing: through Jahrgang 7 he is always plain Pastor Keyl; the first sen. anywhere in the run is in Jahrgang 8, and it recurs in Jahrgang 10. A second Pastor Keyl becomes findable in print somewhere between the two, and from then on the editors mark which one they mean. The two register footnotes sit on either side of that line, which is why they read differently.
What this does not establish: the journal never names the younger man. That is a question for someone with the family papers, not for the scans. [the first sen. in the run — Jahrgang 8, printed page 339]
February 1858 is numbered No. 1 — the same as January
The standing masthead was never advanced.
The dated rule line under the nameplate carries the volume, the month and the issue number. In this volume it goes 1, 1, 3.
Heft
printed page
the dated line as set
1
1
Jahrgang IV. Januar 1858. No. 1.
2
33
Jahrgang IV. Februar 1858. No. 1.
3
65
Jahrgang IV. März 1858. No. 3.
March recovers. February simply went to press with January's number still standing in the forme. It is worth knowing for anyone who wants to cite this journal by its issue number rather than by month: for one month in 1858, the number on the page is wrong. [the February opening — Jahrgang 4, printed page 33]
The journal disagrees with itself about one of its own titles
The table of contents says und. The article says oder.
The February number carries a piece on Luther and Johann Arndt, contributed by a Pastor Kalb. The volume's own table of contents lists it as „Luther und Arndt!“ The article itself is headed „Luther oder Arndt!“, and so are its running heads on the pages that follow.
The article is right and the contents is the slip — which the journal confirms five months later, when it returns to the quarrel under the title Noch einmal: Luther oder Arndt?, "Once again: Luther or Arndt?" The question the piece asks is a choice between two men, not a pairing of them; one letter changes it from a question into a coupling. [the article and its heading — Jahrgang 4, printed page 33]
The journal corrects itself, forty pages later
Three errors from the April number, listed at the foot of a page in May. All three are still there in April, exactly as described.
At the foot of printed page 128, under the heading Errata im vorigen Heft, the editors list three things that went wrong in the previous number:
Seite 87 Zeile 5 von oben lies nach „Conſiſtorium“ — ſondern auch in andern luth. Kirchen Laienpresbyterien neben den Conſiſtorien. Seite 88 lies anſtatt „Greher“ — Greſer. Seite 90 lies vor „Löhe“ — Pfarrer.
Page 87, line 5 from the top, after "Consistorium" read: but also in other Lutheran churches lay presbyteries alongside the consistories. Page 88, for "Greher" read Greser. Page 90, before "Löhe" read Pfarrer.
Because those pages are transcribed too, each correction can be checked against the thing it corrects — and all three hold.
Page 87 is the interesting one. The sentence sets up nicht nur — not only — and then never delivers the sondern auch that must answer it. The printed text reads "we find not only in some Lutheran churches lay presbyteries and synods to the exclusion of consistories," and stops. A whole clause had dropped out in composition, leaving the grammar hanging in mid-air; the erratum is what puts it back. [the page with the dropped clause — Jahrgang 4, printed page 87]
Page 88 names a sixteenth-century Saxon superintendent four times over, and every one of them reads Greher. The man is Daniel Greser, born at Weilburg in 1504. The compositor took an s for an h and then repeated it down the page, which is how a single wrong sort becomes four unfindable mentions. [Greher, four times — Jahrgang 4, printed page 88]
Page 90 says Herr Löhe where the rest of the same page says Herr Pf. Löhe. A dropped courtesy title, in a passage sharply critical of Löhe — which may be precisely why somebody noticed. [the missing Pfarrer — Jahrgang 4, printed page 90]
The errors themselves stay as printed here, because that is what the page says. But the correction and the error sat forty pages apart in the bound volume, and a reader of page 88 had no way of knowing that page 128 was waiting to tell him the name was wrong. That is a thing an archive can fix and a book cannot.
A capital L that never printed
And the line is indented by exactly the width of the sort that is missing.
In the May block of the table of contents, one entry begins utheriſch-theologiſche Pfarrers-Bibliothek. The recurring department is Lutherisch-theologische Pfarrers-Bibliothek — a standing feature that appears under that name five other times in the same volume. Here the initial capital simply did not print, and the whole line sits a letter's width to the right of its neighbours, which is what tells you the sort was absent rather than merely faint.
A blot over a page number, and a book that answers around it
The digit is unreadable. The reference is not.
In the December block of the same contents page, a blot of ink covers the last digit of a page number. Only 37_ survives. There is no point zooming; there is nothing under the ink.
The book settles it anyway. An article's first page carries only its number in the running-head position, with the title set as a display heading below; continuation pages carry the title. Printed page 373 has the bare number, and 374 and 375 both run the Excerpte head. The article begins on 373. Nobody had to see the digit.
An index to 1864, bound into a book from 1858
Which makes it back matter of the volume, not of the year.
The second cumulative register covers Jahrgänge 6 through 10 — that is, through 1864. It is bound into volume 4, which is 1858. No 1858 volume was ever printed with an index to 1864 in it. Whoever had this copy bound gathered both registers up and put them at the back of the wrong year, long after the fact.
The two registers are not even the same piece of work. One sets its heading with the Fraktur double hyphen, the other with a plain one, in a larger face; one carries no page numbers at all, the other is foliated in roman numerals; one is six pages, the other eight. They were set years apart, and bound together by a third party later still.
Both registers contain a reference to a page that does not exist
The same wrong number, in two indexes, five years apart — pointing at two different places.
Each Jahrgang of this journal ends at page 384. Both cumulative registers contain a reference to a page 387. Neither is a scanning error — both are printed plainly, and each survives in two independent copies of the same setting of type.
Where each was meant to point can be recovered from the archive's own full text. The first, under Oeſtreich, cites 3, 387; across the whole of Jahrgang 3 the word Oesterreich occurs on exactly one page — 287. The second, under Sternberg, cites 10, 387; in Jahrgang 10 that name occurs on five pages, and the register's own two other figures for him land exactly on two of them, leaving 381. [where the first was meant to point — Jahrgang 3, printed page 287]
The tempting move is to call this a pattern and correct every 387 the same way. The two intended values are different, so there is no rule here — only a coincidence, and a reminder that two instances are not a series.
How to tell a reader's pencil from the printer's type
Collate two copies. What differs between two impressions of one setting cannot be the type.
Each register survives in two scans of the same setting. Only one of the two — the copy bound into volume 4 — has been gone over by a reader with a pen: ticks beside particular entries, a stroke down a margin. Optical character recognition, which cannot tell ink from ink, read several of them as type, variously as a stray digit, an em-dash and an opening quotation mark.
The other copy is clean. Same type, different paper. Anything that appears in one impression of a setting and not the other is by definition not part of the setting, and can be dropped without further argument. It is the cheapest proof available in this whole archive, and it exists only because a binder once put two copies of one index into two different books.
Names taken down by ear
Three men in the registers are unfindable under their own spellings.
A compiler working from German and English sources, in Baltimore, writing foreign names into an index by hand: Pregegianer for the Pregizerianer, the Swabian revival following Christian Gottlob Pregizer; Bravenſon for Orestes Brownson, the American convert and controversialist, filed out of alphabetical order as well; Calenſo for Bishop Colenso, whose book on the Pentateuch had just set off a crisis in England.
Each was checked letter by letter against a control elsewhere on the same page, so these are his spellings and not our misreadings. All three are kept as printed. All three mean that a reader searching for the standard form will find nothing, which is exactly the sort of thing an index is supposed to prevent.
An index entry that indexes nothing
A headword, a subject, and no reference at all.
In the first register, between two ordinary entries, stands Menius, Amt und Prieſterthum. — Menius, the ministry and the priesthood — with no volume and no page after it. The line was read at full width on both copies to be sure nothing had dropped off the end. Nothing had. The subject is there, correctly alphabetised, pointing nowhere at all.
A congregation that named itself after the word Amen
It looked like a scanning error for Armenische. It was not.
The register has an entry reading Gemeinde, Ameniſche. One letter from Armeniſche, Armenian, and this is a journal that reports on Armenian congregations. The obvious conclusion is that a scanner dropped an r.
The page it points at says otherwise. The journal explains that the sect calls itself so because it holds that all the prophecies are now Amen — that is, near their fulfilment — and takes its name from the word. The register was right and the reader was wrong, which is a useful thing to be reminded of before correcting an old book. [the page the register points at — Jahrgang 4, printed page 383]
The volume spells the same month two ways, eight pages apart
Oktober in the table of contents. October on the number it is indexing.
The contents page at the front of the 1858 volume lists the tenth number under Oktober, with a k. The masthead of that number, on printed page 289, sets its dated line Jahrgang IV. October 1858. No. 10. — with a Latin c. Both were read off the images, and neither is damaged type.
German was still settling the spelling of the Latin month names in the 1850s, and this printing house was not consistent with itself. The journal's earlier volumes print October; the 1858 contents page prints Oktober; the 1858 masthead goes back to October. The same volume keeps December with a c throughout, so the two words were not moving together. [the masthead — Jahrgang 4, printed page 289]
A reader's pen, and where it stops
Underlines and checkmarks run for thirteen pages, then end exactly where the article does.
Somebody read this copy with a pen in hand. The marks run continuously across printed pages 225 to 237 — underlines and checkmarks, always on sentences carrying the argument rather than on names, dates or curiosities — and they stop at the end of Von der Versetzung der Prediger, on the transfer of pastors. They resume later on the article about synodal fellowship, and nowhere else. This was not somebody marking a book at random; it was somebody working through two questions. [where the marks begin — Jahrgang 4, printed page 225]
The marks also had an effect nobody could have intended. A pen stroke through a line of Fraktur breaks the letterforms for optical character recognition, so the machine reads those lines worst of all — which means the passages a nineteenth-century reader thought most important are, a century and a half later, precisely the passages that need a human to go back to the page. His attention and ours land in the same places, for unrelated reasons.
The marks are his and not the printer's, and that can be shown rather than assumed: the registers bound into this same volume survive in a second scan of the same setting of type, and the pen marks appear in one copy and not the other. Whatever differs between two impressions of one setting is not the type.
A quarrel about a man whose name the journal could not spell consistently
February asks Luther oder Arndt! July answers Luther oder Arnd?
In February 1858 a contributor sent in a piece headed „Luther oder Arndt!“ — Luther or Arndt — on whether the devotional writer Johann Arndt should stand beside Luther in a Lutheran pastor's reading. Five months later the journal returned to it under the heading Noch einmal: Luther oder Arnd?, "Once again: Luther or Arnd?", dropping the final t. [the July article — Jahrgang 4, printed page 220]
Neither is a misprint to be repaired. Across the volume the name is set Arndt 64 times and Arnd 19 — both were current in the 1850s, and the compositor evidently followed whatever each contributor sent him. The volume's own table of contents adds a third wrinkle: it lists the February piece as „Luther und Arndt!“, with und for oder, turning a question about choosing between two men into a phrase pairing them.
That contents page misspells four of its own article titles one way or another. It is a reliable guide to where a piece begins and no authority whatever on what it is called — which is worth knowing before citing this journal from its index rather than from its pages.
The camera went back over the same leaves, twice
Synodical Conference, 1874: twenty pages of the scan are repeats, and pencil marks prove it.
The Google Books scan of the 1874 Verhandlungen does not run in printed order. After folio 33 it goes back and shows folios 20 to 33 again, then 34 and 35, then 30 to 35 once more, before carrying on at 36. Folios 30 to 33 are in the scan three times. The 1872 volume does the same with folios 64 and 65.
These are not two copies of a book bound together. The Harvard copy that was scanned carries a reader's pencil, and the same slanting pencil lines above folio 30 appear in all three pictures of it, the same tick beside folio 33 in all three of its. The images differ in size, crop and curl, so each is a separate photograph of one and the same leaf. [folio 30, first photograph — 1874, printed page 30]
This archive keeps the first photograph of each leaf in reading order; the repeats are noted, not read twice.
Eleven pages with their tops wiped away
Synodical Conference, 1876: the first lines of PDF pages 49 to 59 are smeared in the scan.
On eleven consecutive pages of the 1876 volume the first two to four lines are wiped or smeared in the scan, always at the head of the text block, sometimes at the right and sometimes at the left. It is a fault of the scan or of a wetted leaf, not of the printing, and the transcription marks every lost word with [?] rather than guess at it. Among the casualties are the sentence recording Wyneken's death and the heading of the Lehrwache resolution. [the first of the eleven — 1876, printed page 49]
ſitäten entſtanden, war wohl hauptſächlich eine [?] Kirche in ſo viele von einander geſonderte Landeskir[?] Unſere Abſicht iſt vorläufig nicht, eine Univerſität zu er[?]
…universities arose, was probably chiefly a [?] church into so many separate territorial churc[hes] [?] Our intention for the present is not to [found] a university [?]
Talking about a future university, with the right-hand ends of the lines gone — [1876, the joint-seminary debate — 1876, printed page 49]
The 1877 volume has a smaller loss of the same kind: an ink blot sits on the last digit of the year in the notice of the next convention. The date it gives, the third Wednesday of July, 17 July, fits 1878. [the notice of the next convention — 1877, printed page 52]
The Synodical Conference's own treasury
Five dollars and forty cents, untouched for a year. Later, fourteen cents.
The Conference raised and spent large sums for its missions, but these passed through the mission treasuries. Its own cash box, which paid for little more than printing, is another matter. In 1877 the auditing committee received the account book together with the money in it:
Eine Committee berichtete: „Ihrer Committee war das Rechnungsbuch der Synodal⸗Conferenz nebſt $5.40 übergeben. Da im letzten Jahre weder Einnahme noch Ausgabe ſtattfand, ſo bleibt der vorjährige Kaſſenbeſtand von $5.40.“
Your committee was handed the account book of the Synodical Conference together with $5.40. Since in the past year there was neither income nor expenditure, the previous year's balance of $5.40 remains.
In 1879 the book showed $2.00 received, $12.42 spent and $2.00 in hand, and a bill from M. C. Barthel of St. Louis for $146.00, for whose payment, the committee wrote, means were to be found; the resolutions that follow deal with the debts for printing the reports. [1879, XII — 1879, printed page 49]
Der Kaſſenbericht des Kaſſirers der Synodalconferenz wies einen Beſtand von 14 Cents auf. In den verfloſſenen zwei Jahren hatte die Kaſſe weder Einnahme noch Ausgabe.
The treasurer's report showed a balance of 14 cents. In the past two years the treasury had had neither income nor expenditure.
Hebrew, pointed — and a misprint in “flesh of his flesh”
Synodical Conference, 1878: the paper on the deceased wife's sister sets its Hebrew with vowels.
Walther's 1878 theses on marriage with a deceased wife's sister turn on the Hebrew of Leviticus 18:6, sheʾer besaro, “flesh of his flesh”. The printer set it in Hebrew type with the vowel points, on page after page; every Hebrew word in the volume has been re-read letter by letter from the sheet. The one exception is a quotation from Löscher on page 32, printed without points.
The German of the same argument did less well. In the sentence that sums up the rule about “flesh of flesh”, the compositor dropped an l:
nes Vaters Fleiſch, oder meines Sohnes Fleiſch, kurz meines Fleiſches Fleiſch iſt, zur Ehe zu nehmen, verbietet mir eben dieſe einfache Regel: Niemand ſoll ſich, ehelich nämlich, zu ſeines Feiſches Fleiſch thun.
…my father's flesh, or my son's flesh, in short my flesh's flesh — to take her in marriage is forbidden me by just this simple rule: No one shall approach, in marriage that is, his [fesh's] flesh.
Synodical Conference, 1876: one vowel turns Hölle into Hülle.
In the debate on licensed preachers, a speaker describes the ignorant man who sets up as a physician of souls. The printed line has the right word and the wrong one side by side:
kopf her, der nichts weiß, und erfrecht ſich, er will ein Seelenarzt ſein, der die Leute vom Wege zur Hölle abbringen will, und er geht ſelbſt zur Hülle. Iſt
…[such a straw-]head comes along, who knows nothing, and presumes to be a physician of souls who would turn people from the way to hell [Hölle], and he goes to hell himself [printed Hülle, a husk or covering].
Synodical Conference, 1876: the case against licensed preachers, told as satire.
The fifth convention spent part of its Thesis 11 debate on the American practice of licensing a man to preach and baptize for a time. A speaker described an examination of a newcomer from Germany:
wurde er von den amerikaniſchen Kirchenräthen examinirt. Stellte es ſich nun bei ſolchem Examen heraus, daß er nicht wußte, ob Johannes ein Pro⸗ phet war oder nicht, ob die Offenbarung St. Johannis am Ende der Bibel oder vor den fünf Büchern Moſis ſteht, ob David vor oder nach den Rich⸗ tern gelebt hat, ſo ſagte man: Der Mann muß wohl noch zu tieferen Ein⸗ ſichten kommen, aber er kann doch auch ſchon Gutes ſtiften. So gab man ihm denn einen Zettel, laut deſſen er die Macht hatte, — die Leute zur Hölle
If it turned out at such an examination that he did not know whether John was a prophet or not, whether the Revelation of St. John stands at the end of the Bible or before the five books of Moses, whether David lived before or after the Judges, they said: The man must still come to deeper insight, but he can already do some good. So they gave him a slip of paper by which he had the power — to lead the people to hell.
Discussing the apostolic order of parishes, the 1874 convention wanted to say that order helps the church without being the means of grace. It reached for the railway:
Gemeinde ausſchüttet, ſondern nur ein Geleiſe. Das Geleiſe treibt keinen Dampfwagen. Das thut nur der Dampf. Das Geleiſe hilft nur, daß der Wagen durch den Dampf bequemer fortgeführt werden kann. So helfen
…only a track. The track does not drive the steam car; only the steam does that. The track only helps the car to be carried along more easily by the steam.
Synodical Conference, 1874, on an invitation to a colloquium open to every Lutheran.
The General Council had invited Lutherans to a colloquium, and its letter used two different phrases for who was invited. The Conference chose to read them alike, because the alternative was unthinkable: if everyone who wanted to be called Lutheran came, where would the discussion begin?
Das würde ja, hieß es, einen polniſchen Reichstag abgeben! Dann wäre
Synodical Conference, 1877: a casuistic case put to the whole Conference.
Hierauf kam noch folgender caſuiſtiſcher Fall vor: In einer Gemeinde wird beim Kirchbau der Altar ſtatt nach Oſten in den Weſten geſetzt. Das ſtößt ein Glied, welches nahe bei der Kirche wohnt, ſo ſehr, daß es in eine
In a congregation, when the church was built, the altar was placed in the west instead of the east. This offends a member who lives near the church so much that he goes to a Lutheran church 5 miles away …
— where, the page goes on, the altar happens to stand in the east. The answer: do not drive the man away, for he may be acting from an erring conscience, but examine him sharply for spiritual pride, show him that an eastward altar is no command of God, and find out whether it was his own proposal at the building that was voted down. [the answer — 1877, printed page 34]
A salary paid in thirds of a cent
Synodical Conference, 1878: the first Negro Mission accounts.
Missionary Döscher was called at $300 with free housing or, while no house could be given, $1000 a year. The mission's first accounts pay the $1000 rate by the month exactly, fractions and all:
2. Gehalt für die Monate October und November 1877 @ $83.33⅓ (Qtg. No. 1.)........................................................... 166.66⅔
Salary for the months of October and November 1877 @ $83.33⅓ … 166.66⅔
The next line books December to June at $583.33⅓. On the same page the receipts are added to $1392.20, one cent less than the printed items make.
Rolls that do not add up
Synodical Conference, 1878 and 1879: the printed totals disagree with the printed names.
Each convention ends its roll with a count. In 1878 the delegates named and not marked absent number 56; the page says 57. [1878 — 1878, printed page 5]
Somit waren alſo zugegen 86 Glieder, nämlich 45 Delegaten und 41 berathende Glieder.
Thus there were present 86 members, namely 45 delegates and 41 advisory members.
Counted name by name from the 1879 roll, there are 47 delegates present and 42 advisers. One pastor, J. A. Schulze, is printed twice, once among the Ohio delegates and once among the Ohio advisers; even counting him once, the roll gives 88.
A church to be built for the bell
Synodical Conference, 1890: Meherrin, Virginia, raises money in the wrong order.
Student Lankenau erklärte ihnen, es ſei ihre Pflicht, ſelbſt Hand an's Werk zu legen, wozu ſie ſich auch ſofort willig zeigten und in kurzer Zeit $11.20 für eine Glocke und $7.95 für eine neue Kirche aufbrachten. Freilich ein ge⸗ ringer Anfang. Vorausſichtlich wird das Geld für eine Glocke viel ſchneller aufgebracht werden, als für eine Kirche, und werden wir dann ſchließlich wohl eine Kirche bauen müſſen für die Glocke!
Student Lankenau explained to them that it was their duty to set their own hands to the work, which they at once showed themselves willing to do, and in a short time raised $11.20 for a bell and $7.95 for a new church. A small beginning, to be sure. Presumably the money for a bell will be raised much faster than that for a church, and we shall then in the end probably have to build a church for the bell!
Synodical Conference, 1894: folk magic, in the discussion of Hönecke's theses.
In the minutes of Professor A. Hönecke's theses on Schwarmgeisterei, the enthusiasts' way of forcing God is compared with something nearer home, said to be found in “our, even old, congregations more than we believe”:
finden iſt, als wir glauben. Dieſe Zauberer, Blutſtiller, Puſter und Be⸗ ſprecher ſagen: Für leibliche Hülfe iſt das, was Gott an die Hand gibt (Ge⸗ bet, Medicin, Aerzte), gleich Nichts. Die Schrift ſagt: Alle Dinge ſind
These sorcerers, blood-stoppers, blowers and charmers say: for bodily help, what God puts in our hands (prayer, medicine, doctors) is as good as nothing.
A congregation sends its pastor to the World's Fair
Synodical Conference, 1894: Bethlehem, New Orleans, and the Columbian Exposition.
nommen. Die kleine Gemeinde gab ihrem Paſtor einen erfreulichen Be⸗ weis ihrer Liebe und Dankbarkeit, indem ſie ohne ſein Wiſſen unter ſich eine Collecte erhob, damit er eine Erholungsreiſe zur Weltausſtellung in Chicago mache, und reichte ſelbſt die Bitte an die Commiſſion ein, ihm den nöthigen Urlaub zu bewilligen. Ferner beſtritt die Gemeinde in dieſem
The little congregation gave its pastor a gratifying proof of its love and gratitude by taking up a collection among themselves, without his knowledge, so that he might make a holiday journey to the World's Fair in Chicago, and itself handed the Commission the request to grant him the necessary leave.
Synodical Conference, 1898: a statistical table reaches back seven centuries.
The 1898 statistics list the Missouri Synod's charitable institutions, orphanages among them, with their year of founding. The Concordia-Heimath at Delano, Butler County, Pennsylvania, is given as founded in 1183. The figure is sharp on the sheet; 1883 is evidently meant, and the transcription keeps what is printed. [1898, Waisenhäuser — 1898, printed page 66]
Two figures out by exactly a thousand dollars
Synodical Conference, 1896 and 1898: one digit, set wrong.
In the 1898 table of the Negro Mission's stations, the five gifts printed in the column add to $2882.33; the total beneath them is printed $3882.33. [1898 — 1898, printed page 47]
In 1896 the Illinois District's mission fund for 1895 is printed $15194.51. Both the row total and the Missouri column total are what they would be with $14194.51; the one cell is a thousand too high, and the totals were added from the right figure. [1896 — 1896, printed page 82]
The “Satanspresse”
Synodical Conference, 1873: asked to fight the secular press, it declines to found a newspaper.
The Minnesota Synod asked whether the Conference could not take vigorous steps against the secular and political press, which worked “like a corrosive poison in the whole life of the people”. The minutes head the item „Die ‚Satanspreſſe‘ betreffend“. The Conference agreed about the poison but would not publish a political paper itself: [1873 — 1873, printed page 26]
geſchriebenes politiſches Blatt herauszugeben. Zu geſchweigen, daß ein ſolches Blatt den verſchiedenen örtlichen Anforderungen der Leſer unſerer Kreiſe nicht genügen kann, muß unſere Körperſchaft auch den leiſeſten böſen Schein meiden, als ob ſie einen politiſchen Einfluß ausüben wolle. Einſtweilen verbreite man nur, um die Schandblätter möglichſt zu
…to publish a political paper written in a Christian spirit. Not to mention that such a paper could not meet the various local needs of our readers, our body must avoid even the faintest appearance of wishing to exercise political influence.
Instead it urged the members of its congregations, „in ihrer Eigenſchaft als Bürger“ — as citizens — to form associations and found good political newspapers themselves.
Luther's word, printed with dots
Synodical Conference, 1872: the founding convention minds its language.
noch ſo großen Schein der Weisheit oder Heiligkeit haben, auch der Einfäl⸗ tigſte mit Füßen und nennt es Teufelsd . . ck. Das iſt die Urſache geweſen,
…however great a show of wisdom or holiness it may have, even the simplest tramples it underfoot and calls it devil's d . . ck.
The word is Teufelsdreck, devil's dung, a word of Luther's. The page sets the first letter of the second half and its last two, and leaves the rest to the reader.
A harmless hope: that the Conference swallow every synod
Synodical Conference, 1875: an example from the chiliasm debate.
To show that a mistaken hope which overthrows no article of faith is not heresy, the 1875 convention heard an example close to home:
eine nichtketzeriſche Hoffnung wurde z. B. angeführt: wenn Jemand unter uns die Hoffnung hegte, daß die Synodalconferenz einſtmals noch alle luthe⸗ riſchen Synoden dieſes Landes verſchlingen würde, ſo würde es uns gewiß nicht einfallen, einem Solchen, wenn er ſonſt alle Glaubensartikel mit uns bekennt, die Kirchengemeinſchaft aufzuſagen.
…if someone among us cherished the hope that the Synodical Conference would one day yet swallow up all the Lutheran synods of this country, it would certainly not occur to us to end church fellowship with such a man, if he otherwise confesses all the articles of faith with us.
Synodical Conference, 1900: the case for the parish school, from the American papers.
Arguing that Sunday schools alone could not do what parish schools did, the 1900 paper collected evidence from the American religious press: a Presbyterian Sunday school in Los Angeles where four tried to recite the Ten Commandments for a prize and none won it, and this, from the Episcopalian Churchman of 16 December 1899:
vom 16. December 1899: Auf der Harvard⸗Univerſität ſtellte ein Student in dem Univerſitäts⸗Fragekaſten die Frage: „Wo finde ich etwas über Simſon?“ Die Antwort lautete: „Im Buch der Richter.“ Am nächſten Tage fragte der erſte weiter: „Wo finde ich das Buch der Richter?“ und es mußte ihm erſt mitgetheilt werden, daß es ein bibliſches Buch ſei. Auf
At Harvard University a student put the question in the university question box: “Where do I find something about Samson?” The answer was: “In the Book of Judges.” The next day the first asked further: “Where do I find the Book of Judges?” and he had first to be told that it was a book of the Bible.
A Harvard shelfmark in ink, and an owner's name on the Indiana copy.
The volumes of 1872–1879 were scanned from the Andover-Harvard copy, those of 1890–1904 from Indiana University's. Both copies left their marks. The first text page of 1872 carries the library's ink notes at the head — „906 / Luth. 6 / 2985 / A / 1872-1879“ (the first characters cut by the edge of the scan), the last showing that the eight reports were bound as one book — and the Harvard copy has a reader's pencil in its margins. [1872, first text page — 1872, unnumbered page]
The 1890 title page carries the Indiana University Libraries stamp and, in ink above the title, a name read as „Rev. Dr. Wichmann“ (the reading is uncertain), with „13 – 20“ beside it. [1890, title page — 1890, unnumbered page]
The same wrong verse, in two different alphabets
Synodical Conference, 1873 and 1874: a thesis reprinted with Greek type, and the old mistake.
The theses on parish boundaries of 1873 forbid a preacher to be an allotrioepiskopos, a busybody in another man's charge — the word of 1 Peter 4:15. In 1873 the word is printed in Latin letters, and the reference given is 1 Pet. 3, 15:
17.), nicht in ein fremdes Amt greifen oder ein allotrioepiscopos ſein (1 Pet. 3, 15.) und nicht auf einen fremden Grund bauen (Röm.
…not reach into another's office or be an allotrioepiscopos (1 Pet. 3:15) and not build on another's foundation (Rom.
Synodical Conference, 1902–1904: life insurance, and what the minutes actually say.
In 1902 a committee recommended two things: that another committee's report on the Nebraska District's views of life and fire insurance be laid on the table, and that the next convention discuss the question „etwa in einer Nachmittagsſitzung“. The minutes record: „Es wurde beſchloſſen, die Empfehlung unter No. 1 anzunehmen.“ Number 2 was not adopted. [1902 — 1902, printed page 84]
Two years later the pastors of the Oregon and Washington District wrote asking the Conference to carry out the resolution it had made at Milwaukee, to treat of the sinfulness of life insurance in an afternoon session. The answer:
verſicherung zu handeln. — Beſchloſſen, den Brüdern mitzutheilen, daß vor zwei Jahren wohl ein derartiger Vorſchlag gemacht, aber kein Beſchluß darüber gefaßt worden ſei.
Resolved to inform the brethren that two years ago such a proposal had indeed been made, but no resolution had been passed on it.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1879: the first number went out under the wrong title.
In its second number the paper apologizes for its first. That number had gone out under another title, which, the editor had since learned, already belonged to an existing paper; the name was changed, and the first number was sent again to every subscriber.
We sincerely regret that through an oversight of ours the name “Lutheran Evangelist” was placed at the head of our paper.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1880: an illustration about false labels.
Arguing that no one has the right to call himself a Lutheran who will not hold to the Lutheran confessions, the writer tells a story from the time of the British war with the Zulus. A speculator toured Germany with some Black people presented as genuine Zulus from South Africa; in Berlin a professor examined their heads; then someone who spoke Zulu addressed them, and they could not answer. [1880, the article on the Confessions — 1880, printed page 14]
Now, you know, Louisiana is not in South Africa, and the colored people of Louisiana are no Zulus. Thus the people had been cheated.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1888: an Easter solo meets the building fund.
A LAUGHABLE INCIDENT occurred in one of the churches on an Easter Sunday. The clergyman announced that the offerings would be applied to reducing the debt on the church. During the singing of the music, while the collection was being taken up, the tenor, who is a German, had a solo in which occurred the words, “and the dead shall be raised.” He succeeded in electrifying the congregation by giving out at the top of his voice, “Und ze debt shall be raised in ze twingling ov an eye.”
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1904: a Lutheran family paper in Greenland.
Quoting The Foreign Missionary, the paper describes Kalovikmik, an illustrated monthly published at Godthaab on the west coast of Greenland, whose editor was also its printer, publisher and newsboy.
The price of the Kalovikmik is one seal for a year; two geese for three months; and a young wild duck for a single number.
The editor of the Pioneer adds that the editor of Kalovikmik need not look for subscribers among the Pioneer's readers.
Sunday school in his trousers only
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1905: a teacher's memory of the old Sailors' Home school in New Orleans.
In the third part of a retrospect, a former teacher recalls a pupil at the Sailors' Home Sunday school in New Orleans, “Charley Brown, about five or six years old”, who one Sunday stood at the door instead of coming in, almost undressed. [1905, “A Retrospect. III.” — 1905, printed page 39]
“Why, Charley,” said I, “where are your clothes?” “Mother hid them,” he replied, “because I should not come to Sunday school.”
He nodded when asked whether he would still like to come, and the teacher took him by the hand and seated him in his class.
Forty-one, or fourteen
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1910: two digits the wrong way round.
A CORRECTION.—In our January number it was erroneously stated that the class of catechumens confirmed at Rocks, N. C., numbered 41. The number of catechumens was 14.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1912: a compliment that needed translating.
Bethel congregation at Greenville, N. C., had lost its rented chapel when the owner sold it to a sectarian preacher. At the dedication of its new building the two sister congregations of Charlotte were present, with Lutherans from Concord, Mount Pleasant and Dry's Schoolhouse “and many friends and strangers from Greenville”, and the report records what one visitor said.
The pastors heard one remark which was made, namely, “I did not know that the Lutherans could sing so well; why, they sing terribly,” meaning they sang excellently.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1916: the editor's inventory of liquor shipped to Africa.
The following enormous quantities of alcoholic liquors passed through a single African port in one week: 28,000 cases of whisky, 30,000 cases of brandy, 30,000 cases of Old Tom, 36,000 barrels of rum, 800,000 demijohns of rum, 24,000 butts of rum, 15,000 barrels of absinthe, and 960,000 cases of gin.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1917: Rosa Young on the road in Alabama.
Travelling to open a school at Midway, Rosa Young waited for a train until two in the morning, standing in the cold until her hat was white with frost, and reached Kimbrough at half past three. [1917, Rosa Young's letter — 1917, printed page 43]
Kimbrough is a very small place, but I found a Colored family that claims to be running a boarding house. When I lay down, I looked up through the holes in the roof and saw the stars, and when I looked down through the holes in the floor I could see the pigs!
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1920: a headline in the wrong state.
The report of the first Lutheran children's Christmas service at the new station of Plaquemine, Louisiana, is headed “A Lutheran Children's Christmas Service at Plaquemine, Ala.” Its first paragraph puts the town where it belongs. [1920 — 1920, printed page 10]
But in Plaquemine, La., it was something unknown before our mission was established here.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1921: the church and school at Taits, Alabama.
A photograph shows a log building with a shingle roof. The caption reads: “Church and School at Taits, Ala. The plowshare extending to the right serves the purpose of a bell.” [1921, the photograph — 1921, printed page 21]
A church for sixty-one dollars
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1922: the writer anticipates the reader's doubt.
At Buena Vista and Tinela we are in need of buildings. The church at Tinela was built four years ago at a cost of $61.42. No — that is no printing mistake, it cost just sixty-one dollars and forty-two cents!
The little building, he goes on, had become too small, and people at times had to be turned away for lack of room.
A kneeling boy that nodded for a coin
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1923 and 1927: mission boxes sold through the paper.
In 1923 the paper offered its readers a mission box in the form of a kneeling Black boy in a white garment, to be set up in church, school, Sunday-school, society hall or home. [1923, “A Most Appropriate Mission Box” — 1923, printed page 95]
Many a nickel and dime will find its way into the mission treasury that would be lost to the cause, were it not for the silent, but insistent appeal of this little kneeling Negro boy in his white garment, who gratefully and most politely acknowledges even the smallest gift by a nod of his shapely head. Size, 5×7×11 inches. Price, $3.00, plus 15 cents for postage.
Four years later a poem by H. A. Schroeder addressed the figure as a “Dark-hued missionary”, and a note beneath it gave the price of “Our Missionary Negro, a fine missionary savings-box” as $3.50. [1927, the poem and note — 1927, printed page 64]
A letter looking for a twin sister
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1923: “An Echo from Slavery Days.”
The writer had received the letter more than twenty years before as minister of St. Paul's Church in New Orleans; finding it again among his old letters, he printed it as it was written. The envelope was addressed to “SANT PALL Church / minester I charge / NEW Orlans City”. [1923 — 1923, printed page 45]
Norfolk va October the 5 1902 to the mister of this church My sister Was sold at speculater sale buy betsey griffern at perry carter tawer [tavern] my Mother Was Name pattsy Griffenn My sister Was Name famine Griffen My Name is sophia C Griffen sister famine Was My twin sister sam Winnborne bogh Me. We all Was sold in Muffbrro N C i Would like to heare frome her if she is alive i trust God Will help Me to inquire and to heare frome her please ancer this at once Mrs james ferguson 72 salter st norfolk Va
The bracketed word is the paper's. — [1923 — 1923, printed page 45]
He closes: “As stated above, I was not able to locate the inquirer's twin sister and was obliged so to inform her.”
Probably the oldest Lutheran in the world
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1924: arithmetic from the War of 1812.
It may be of interest to our readers to know that among its members Grace has probably the oldest Lutheran in the whole world. This is James Spencer. During the War of 1812 he was a boy of ten and hence is now 122 years old.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1924: a service at Ingomar, Alabama.
At the house of Bob Dennis, a member at Ingomar, his sister Hannah Bercy sat before the fire waiting to be confirmed. By the time all was ready it had grown dark, and there was no lamp. [1924 — 1924, printed page 100]
While Pastor Schmidt read the service, old Bob held a blazing piece of pine-wood and thus furnished the necessary light.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1928: a winter in the Black Belt.
Reporting from Selma for 1927, G. A. Schmidt counts 1,127 communicant members and 3,468 communions in the year, “an average of more than three times a year for each communicant”, and adds a reason to be more thankful still. [1928, G. A. Schmidt's report — 1928, printed page 27]
But when we add that during the first three months very few Communion services could be celebrated because of lack of wine, we have even more reason to thank God for the splendid attendance at the Holy Supper.
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1928: statistics put to a theological use.
For this reason the death-rate among our Lutheran Negroes is much lower than the average death-rate among the American colored people. According to statistics which we have at hand, the annual death-rate among Negroes is 18 per thousand. In our colored Lutheran Church, however, the death-rate was only 9 per thousand.
The “reason” is the sentences before, on St. Paul's words that a man in Christ is “a new creature”: “This is also true of our Lutheran Negro. His heart, mind, thoughts, and words become new.” The source of the statistics is not given.
Named after the man God kicked out of heaven
The Lutheran Pioneer, 1931: a student missionary in Mississippi.
Student Johnson of Immanuel Lutheran College, serving at Jackson, Mississippi, describes his conversations with people who had been taught that they must be good before faith would come to them. [1931, “An Interesting Story from Mississippi” — 1931, printed page 130]
“A Lutheran missionary.” They say, “What! Is your Church named after the man that God kicked out of heaven?” However, when they are told the story of the Reformation, they answer, “I see.”
The Lutheran Pioneer: what the page image settled.
About 87 per cent of the words the machine reading of the Pioneer produces are dictionary words, and several of the oddities proposed for this page turned out, on the image, to be errors of the reading rather than of the printer. Luther's German Bible was not dated a century late: the page says it “was completed in the year 1534”. [1904, “Translating the Bible” — 1904, printed page 76]
“Christmas comes but once a year” is spelled correctly in print. [1906 — 1906, printed page 96]
The treasurer did not date his January list of 1916 to the year 1010. [1916 — 1916, printed page 16]
The advertisement for Half a Century of Lutheranism Among Our Colored People dates the mission's beginning to 1877, not 1817. [1931 — 1931, printed page 16]
A confirmation class at Piney Woods, Mississippi, was confirmed on 26 March 1933, not 1983. [1933 — 1933, printed page 69]
Phifer's stations at Charlotte and Lexington had 65 souls and 35 communicants, not 85. [1894 — 1894, printed page 34]
The May number of 1902 is No. 5, not a second No. 6. [1902, the May masthead — 1902, unnumbered page]
And the standing notice “‘June 31’ on the label means that your subscription has expired” is not an impossible date: the label gave month and year, as an earlier notice's “Dec 23” shows. [1931 — 1931, printed page 96]
Transcriptions here follow the printing exactly,
including its mistakes. Where a reading was settled on the page image rather
than taken from optical character recognition, the entry says so.
