# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1899_S60
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

60 Proceedings of the 24th General, or

sium [Progymnasium] in the circle of our Eastern District. It came into
being because in the oldest Lutheran congregation in America too, the
Ev. Luth. St. Matthew's congregation in New York, Luther's spirit had
remained alive. It had for years maintained a kind of classical school
(academy) in a flourishing condition, and had thereby served, for the
most part, circles outside our own.*) When it, in keeping with its
history and its confession, became part of our Reverend Synod, it
converted the academy into a Progymnasium, so that in this respect too
it might conform to our Synod and serve it more effectively. That took
place in the year 1881.

"It is just and fair to state here, in this first report to the
Reverend General Synod, that the worthy congregation and individual
members of it have made great sacrifices to maintain and build up this
institution. Their money and their teaching staff stood at its disposal.
Later the Eastern District of our Synod took over the institution as its
own. Yet it was not the Synod that bore the heaviest burden, but the
St. Matthew's congregation; it was not the Synod but a single Christian
who made the establishment of the Tertia possible, by sending in the
professor's salary every month by himself. Thereby our institution had
grown into a Mittelgymnasium [intermediate classical school].

"Through the generosity of a Christian, the wish of so many in the
Eastern District, that the institution might get a home of its own, was
brought closer to realization, in that he bought a 17-acre piece of land
on which stood a spacious house and a large orchard, and gave it to the
Synod. On this property the sizable building was erected that is now
known as 'Concordia College in Sherman Park.'

"Three years ago our Eastern District resolved to offer this
Mittelgymnasium to the Reverend General Synod as its property, with
the wish that it be 'enlarged into a full gymnasium.' The grounds for
this wish lay in pedagogical considerations and in the much larger
matter of the high mission of our precious Synod here in the East (see
the 1896 report, p. 73). For our institution is indeed the only classical
school of our Synod east, south, and north of Fort Wayne. A classical
school for the many thousands of Missouri Lutherans in this large
territory! The Reverend General Synod resolved (we cite only the
resolutions falling within our scope):

"1. That the Progymnasium be taken over by the General Synod
free of debt and continued as its institution;

"2. that the three lower classes, the Sexta, Quinta, and Quarta, be
continued.


*) Though not entirely. President Wegener in New Orleans and P. W. A.
Fischer in Danbury were students of it.