The Rev. Timotheus Stiemke was in a difficult situation. He’d been assigned to a new Lutheran congregation in the little town of New Start (a few miles south of Serbin), where he was installed on the fourth Sunday in Advent in 1874. Stiemke was the second pastor to serve the congregation, which had only been …
“And unto the Wends I became as a Wend, that I might gain the Wends…” Read More »
Usually it’s a good thing when we open up our mailbox and find a letter inside (I mean of the personal variety, not the prequalified credit card offers and other junk that make up the bulk of correspondence we receive these days). In the last few years I’ve gotten into the habit of regularly sending …
When it comes to the study of history, generalization is (in general) a problem. (See what I did there?) That being said, it’s difficult to begin the study of any historical event without starting with generalities. One such generality is “the Wends came to Texas to preserve their language and culture.” In general, that is …
To Generalize or Not To Generalize, That is the Question Read More »
The largest group of Wends came to Texas in 1854 on the Ben Nevis, but they weren’t the first (or last) Wends to emigrate. Two smaller groups arrived in 1849 and 1853, and others came after the War Between the States and into the twentieth Century. Frank Wissel’s great-grandfather, Andreas Mattijetz, was six years old …
It’s early 1855. You are one of the fortunate ones who survived the two-month trip across the Atlantic in the Ben Nevis. The brutal winter will, in a few months, give way to Spring. Unfortunately, though, your husband was one of the seventy-some souls who perished en route to Galveston. Now that you’re in Texas, …
“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone…” Read More »
The high pulpit at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Serbin is perfectly positioned for the delivery of a sermon. However, the height does come with some disadvantages. Moonyean Recks recently shared in a comment on a previous post featuring St. Paul Serbin that in 1970 her husband, the Rev. Ewald Recks, was delivering a sermon …
[Note: I wrote this after reading in a source that Kilian’s call was on May 25, 1854. However since then I’ve found the actual call document (you can see it online here https://forum.wendishresearch.org/viewthread.php?tid=2644) which is dated May 23. It could be that the original source was just incorrect, or it may be that Kilian officially …
Why Wendish Lutherans Moved to Sam Houston’s Texas Read More »
When I gave my Wendish Heritage presentation at St. Paul Thorndale’s LWML banquet a few weeks back we won a bag of Wendish noodles in the raffle. I’d been waiting for a good reason to make some (do you really need a good reason to make Wendish noodles?), but last night I got a hankering …
It must be Ray Spitzenberger’s It Must Be the Noodles book… Read More »
Pastor Killian often had his hands full with conflicts within his congregation over theology, language (German vs. Wendish), and of course, personal matters. Besides those, it seems that the English-speaking Texans in the area didn’t know what to make of the worship of the newcomers, or how to behave in church. The following rules, which …
“It is not permitted to comb or arrange the hair during the worship.” Read More »
On Saturday, while Margie and I were out at the Texas Wendish Heritage Museum in Serbin I picked up a copy of Ray Spitzenberger’s book, It Must Be the Noodles. Next weekend I’m flying out to South Carolina and I figured it would make for nice reading on the plane. Well, yesterday afternoon I got …
