# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S32
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 32 —

ful plague of yellow fever raged worse and longer than usual in the Southern states, especially in New Orleans, so that it did not seem advisable to go there before the onset of winter.

"After Missionary Döscher had therefore recovered fairly well from his illness through God's help, your Commission commissioned him, at the request of our brethren in Baltimore, Md., to make the attempt there to bring a mission among the Negroes into being. The missionary preached several times to the Negroes, many showed interest, and a Negro Sunday school was begun. An advisory mission committee also formed in Baltimore, which took the matter in hand and continued it after the missionary's departure. Your Commission had to refrain from sending a missionary of its own to Baltimore. Teacher Spieker continued the Sunday school with great faithfulness for about half a year, but will probably have had to give it up in the end for lack of pupils. A proof that where mission work is to be carried on, there must also be a missionary, and the mission cannot be carried on on the side. In general your Commission is of the opinion that the Southern states of the Union are the most promising field for our mission, where we can also find work enough.

"In the month of December of last year Missionary Döscher moved with his family, consisting of ten persons, to New Orleans. Having arrived there happily, he found that our dear brethren had faithfully continued and maintained the Sunday school he had founded at the beginning of the year. So he could at once resume the mission work in the old 'Seamen's Home' through preaching and Sunday school. In January a weekday school was also opened with 26 children, a number which however soon rose above 100. The missionary considered it necessary to begin the mission in another part of the city as well, namely in the 3rd District of New Orleans, because many neglected Negroes live here, among whom little mission work had been done. Since a suitable location could not be found in this part of the city, it appeared to him a necessity to erect here a building of our own for the mission. But where were the means to come from, since the church-building fund was empty and we were not allowed to build otherwise? In the hands of the Committee for Fever Victims, after the plague had ceased, considerable sums had come in for which it had no use. The missionary therefore turned to it with the request that it help him toward the building of a mission chapel. The committee granted $300.00, a suitable lot on Claiborne Street [printed "Clayborne Straße"] was rented, and a cheap frame building was erected on it. In March this new mission chapel was dedicated and since then preaching and Sunday school have been held in it regularly.

"Meanwhile the missionary needed help, since the work, especially in the school, became too much for him. His daughter indeed helped him as much as pos-