# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S58
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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immediately take steps to set the mission among the heathen, or at least religiously neglected and abandoned, Negroes of this country in motion. As soon as it had organized itself, and the Rev. P. Bünger had been elected chairman, Mr. Umbach treasurer, and the undersigned secretary, the Rev. P. J. F. Döscher, as a tried and experienced missionary, was, after inquiries made, called as the first missionary among the Negroes of this country at a salary of $300.00 and free housing or, as long as the Synodical Conference cannot provide a dwelling, at a salary of $1000.00 a year, together with reimbursement of the costs of his journeys undertaken in the service of the mission and of hotel expenses.

"Your Board of Missions instructed the missionary to make first a round trip through the Southern states, to preach to the Negroes everywhere where opportunity offered and so to reconnoiter the whole mission field, and then to organize a congregation first at the place that seemed to him the most suitable, to give it a pastor, and then to try the same at another place.

"On 16 October of last year, on the occasion of the convention of the Western District of the Synod of Missouri at Altenburg, Perry Co., Mo., the Rev. P. J. F. Döscher was installed in his office as missionary to the Negroes, on behalf of the Reverend President of the Synodical Conference, Prof. W. F. Lehmann, and of the Reverend President of the Western District of the Synod of Missouri, the Rev. P. F. J. Biltz, by the Rev. P. J. F. Bünger with the assistance of the undersigned. During the same synod a free mission meeting also recommended the publication of a mission paper and proposed the Rev. P. Müller of Chester, Ills., as editor. The Board of Missions, however, did not consider itself entitled to publish a mission paper without being commissioned to do so by the Reverend Synodical Conference, but is of the opinion that the Reverend Synodical Conference should deliberate on the publication of a mission paper. Perhaps the Rev. P. Frey might be ready to hand over to us the mission paper founded by him.

"Missionary Döscher opened his mission work with an English sermon at a mission festival taking place some days after his installation at New Wells, Mo., to which Negroes had also been invited and had come. First Missionary Döscher went to Memphis, Tenn., then to Little Rock, Ark., where he found a very promising field of work. He was advised not to travel further south now in the fall, but to remain in Little Rock until about January, to which your Board gladly gave its consent. The missionary's work in Little Rock was a quite blessed one; a little flock gathered to hear his sermons, and he also had a Sunday school of about 50 children.

"Although Missionary Döscher and the advisory mission committee elected from the Ev. Luth. congregation in Little Rock wished that the missionary remain longer in Little Rock, your Board of Missions nevertheless thought