The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 167

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER 167

to be confirmed. Wooden soles were cut to con-
form to the shape of the foot and then the tops of
worn-out boots were nailed to these soles for uppers.
During those early years the pioneers suffered much
from drought and from the visits of voracious grass-
hoppers. Yes, those were years of great privation.

But more than the physical comforts these pious
Lutheran pioneers missed their church. They had
come from Christian homes and had been reared in
Lutheran schools and churches. In the old father-
land they had every Sunday listened to meaty Gos-
pel sermons and had joined in the singing of the
sweet hymns of their Church, and now they had
to do without all this.

When they heard of a Lutheran pastor
who was located at Marysville, several of
them hired an English neighbor’s horse and
wagon to see this man. ‘They attended
a service conducted by this pastor, but they
immediately noticed that he was not a Lu-
theran minister; and though he offered his
services, our good Lutheran pioneers kindly,
but firmly declined them, telling him that
they wanted a Lutheran pastor. After
casting about for some time, they were told
of a Lutheran pastor quite a distance to the
north. They journeyed there and found
what they had sought, a man who spoke “the
language of Israel.” This Lutheran pastor
promised to come to them as soon as he
cowd, but it was no less than five months
before he was finally able to visit them and
preach a sermon to them. The successor of
this first visiting pastor came as often as he
could and was paid thirty-five cents a trip.
The people were so poor that often this
pitifully small sum had to be borrowed.

About six years after the coming of the
first Lutheran settlers in Washington County one
of them, living in the Lutheran colony south of
Palmer, had the happy thought of inserting an
advertisement in a German family paper, still pub-
lished in St. Louis, the Abendschule, in which he
called attention to the German settlements already
existing in the county and expressed the desire of
the good people to have a real Lutheran minister
among them. The truthful advertiser did not hide
the poverty of the people, stating that, while they
Were so anxious to have a pastor, they would not
be able to pay him a fixed salary, though they
would give him in kind whatever they could.
A retired Lutheran pastor, the Rev. F. J. T. Jungk,
read this advertisement. At the time he was living

at Cape Girardeau, Missouri. There was something
in the advertisement that arrested his attention.
He entered into correspondence with the advertiser
and finally decided to go to Washington County and
buy a farm there with the few hundred dollars
he had. Soon after, in-1878, Pastor Jungk removed
to Palmer and there bought himself a farm. A few
months after his arrival the fever that had troubled
him left him, and soon thereafter he began to preach
to the settlers.

Every enterprise meets with difficulties. The
difficulty that confronted Pastor Jungk was that
his people lived in two settlements, ten miles apart.
However, the people in the colony north of Palmer

Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Washington County, Kansas.

expressed their willingness to attend services in the
colony south of Palmer for the time being, though
the impassable roads compelled the worshipers to
make the ten-mile trip afoot. After the service
those from the northern settlement would be the
guests of the members of the southern settlement
and partake of a good meal of corn bread before
making the weary ten-mile trip back to their homes.

During the next few years the northern colony
was enlarged by the coming of ten or more other
families, and Pastor Jungk then began to preach
there every three weeks in the public schoolhowses
of the neighborhood until a church was built in the
summer of 1882.

We must tell our readers how it came about