# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S85
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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could be found, at Pastor Berg's request a woman from the Negro congregation, Mrs. Reed, a mulatto, who was trained for school service, was appointed as assistant teacher, a small house near the church was rented and fitted up as a school. The benches for it were bought in St. Louis. A wooden coal shed was also built behind the church. After only a few months Mrs. Reed declared that she would keep school no longer than until the spring of 1880; the faculty at Addison was therefore asked to look about among its graduates for a suitable man; Missionary Berg was also permitted to visit the seminary at Addison himself for this purpose. On his proposal Mr. Karl Berg from the seminary at Addison was then called as second teacher for the Negro school at Little Rock, and the call was accepted by him.

As early as May 1880 Missionary Berg reported that the school was not making such good progress as he had hoped; that on the contrary a decrease in the number of pupils had taken place, and that it would therefore probably be advisable to wait still longer with the call and the school building. Since Teacher Berg had already been called, however, the Commission thought it best not to reverse the call, but to employ Teacher Berg in New Orleans if he should not be needed in Little Rock. In September Teacher Berg was then installed in Little Rock as second teacher at our mission school. But since by the end of the year the sum required for the school building still had not come in, and the number of school children had also not increased but had decreased considerably, the Commission resolved to abandon the school building altogether for the present, and asked Teacher Berg to go to New Orleans, where a large field of work was open to him. Right after the beginning of the year 1881 Teacher Berg went to New Orleans, and Missionary Berg was now alone again with his teacher Jeske in Little Rock.

The number of children in the school, and also the number of attendants at the services, grew ever smaller, whereby our mission workers were naturally made sad and disheartened. When, therefore, Missionary Berg received in the autumn of 1881 a call to a German Ev. Lutheran congregation in Indiana, and the Commission held that a change was desirable, he accepted the call with the approval of the Mission Commission. Teacher Jeske was now alone, and kept weekday and Sunday school. Pastor Obermeyer of the German Ev. Lutheran congregation in Little Rock took an interest in the little Negro congregation as far as possible at our request, preached to it also on Sunday evenings, and whenever he could not preach, Teacher Jeske read a printed sermon.

In December of last year a letter arrived at the Commission from the little Negro congregation and some of its friends, in which