# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1861_S216
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

216 The German Lutherans in America, etc.

here as well, to New Hanover, and from there attended with much difficulty to
the vacant congregations of Pastor Schaum, who died on January 26 of this
year, instructing and confirming in them a number of young people. Now both
pastors are together again, gathering the congregation and holding divine
service in both churches with fidelity and untiring diligence, according to
the grace and strength which the LORD supplies. In Zion Church every hearer
must bring along his own chair or seat if he wishes to sit. For in this
costly time it would require many thousands of pounds *) to fit it out again,
since at the beginning, in the cheap time, the interior construction cost, in
carpenters' and joiners' wages alone, without the materials, about two
thousand three hundred pounds. The school and parsonage have remained
undamaged, the schools have been continued, but the seminary has been
suspended for want of the cost of its maintenance. How the pastors and
schoolmasters, poor in bodily goods, will get through in the present dearness,
divine providence will show and time will teach. A cord of firewood costs
nearly 20 pounds before one can lay a piece of it in the stove or on the
hearth. A hundred pounds by weight of flour, 5 to 7 pounds. A bushel of salt,
9 to 12 pounds. A pair of shoes, 3 pounds. A pound of butter, 6 to 10
shillings. A quire of writing paper, 15 shillings. Linen and woolen articles
of clothing incredibly high, and so everything else that belongs to necessity
and sustenance.

3) St. Peter's Church at Barren Hill has been used alternately by both
contending parties as a battery and a horse stable and has been wrecked; it
lies full of filth and looks like a night hut in a cucumber field and like a
devastated city. The inhabitants roundabout are partly driven off, partly
plundered and reduced to bitter poverty.

4) Our congregation in and around Germantown has suffered severely beyond
others, because the main engagement took place there and the town was
plundered by the victorious army. Our fellow brother, Pastor Schmidt, was
compelled to flee with his family into the country and to shift for himself
in want. What he could not at once carry off of his household goods was
afterward smashed. He preached now and then to a vacant congregation in New
Goshenhoppen, now lives again in Germantown, and is gathering the poor
scattered ones together. With bodily support things will go hard under such
circumstances. The church has been fairly spared, except that the organ has
been broken.

5) St. Augustus Church and congregation in Providence has hitherto been
served partly by Pastor Voigt, partly by my son Friedrich August and myself,
and has remained spared, except that several times in wet and cold weather it
had heavy quartering of troops.

6) The old congregation in New Hanover was in grievous strife,

*) Three Pennsylvania pounds make two pounds sterling. One may reckon one
Pennsylvania pound at 4 Reichsthaler in louis d'or.