An autobiography by C. Philipp Koehler translated by Marcus Koch

Christian Philipp Koehler's Childhood

I was born on the 8th of October in the year 1828. The beautiful town of Neuwied, which is located in a fruitful plain bordering on the Rhine and is a part of the Prussian Rhine province, is my native city. There my parents lived in the so-called death cottage which stood behind an old barn in a secluded corner of the city's outskirts. It was a very humble dwelling consisting of only two rooms. Yet it had an advantage in that the yard belonging to it adjoined a park owned by a family of the nobility. In this park every year during the spring and summertime the nightingales and other songbirds charmed our ears with their lovely song. Then too, in this somewhat isolated dwelling we were not so exposed to the quarrels and chicaneries of evil men as were many other families. Though our home was despised by many, it was nevertheless a quiet little place where it was difficult for another to bother us.

My father, Johann Heinrich Koehler (b. November 26, 1792, in Neuwied), was an honorable and skilled linen weaver, who always did a brisk business, so that he could generally keep two and often three looms in operation. Because the income of linen weavers was a very meager one, however, he could not for all his efforts get beyond the point of just barely providing his family with nourishment and necessity of body and life. My father's income was in fact often inadequate to provide the basic necessities of sustenance for his family, and certainly he was at pains to succeed in this. I must say to my father's credit that he was not only an industrious and skilled linen weaver, but also a faithful and conscientious housefather who squandered nothing, but rather denied himself much in order to provide the bare essentials for his children and household. He was moreover an honorable and serious-minded man, thorough and strict in the management of his home and bringing up of his children, a regular church attendant and therefore an esteemed member of the congregation.

My mother, Maria Margaretha Koehler, nee Becker (b. October 13, 1788), from Braubach on the Rhine in the former principality of Nassau, was a careful housemother who swallowed many a bitter pill for the sake of her children and stood shoulder to shoulder with my father in the care of his own. She not only used judiciously what my father earned through the labor of his hands and budgeted it with thrift, she herself earned many a penny (Groschen) by doing washing and working in the houses of the rich and prominent so that her children should not lack the necessities and to relieve her husband as much as possible from the day's sweat and labor. A large and strong woman, she never, even in her old age, spared her physical strength so that she might maintain an honorable sustenance for her family. She was besides very thrifty, and used very little for herself and was quite satisfied with a single plain Sunday dress to wear to church. Nor was she less strict than my father was in bringing up her children and insisted on disciplined obedience.

Thus I spent the years of my childhood in frugal circumstances and had early to learn to be satisfied with the meagerest necessities. In eating and drinking, in clothing and in all other things I and all my brothers and sisters were kept on short rations. The bread which we now eat as a matter of course was not then my daily fare, but black shredded rye bread without butter or lard, and with it black coffee, potatoes and only twice a week a small portion of meat, such was my usual fare. On weekdays I had to wear patched clothing and hand-me-downs and my Sunday suit was not nearly as good as my everyday clothes are now. How often I had to go to school in torn shoes, and to church too! How often I had to freeze in my thin and outlandish Sunday clothes in the big church which was unheated in the wintertime, so that my teeth chattered. The only fun I was permitted as a child was when my father would sometimes take me along on a Sunday afternoon when he went to visit one of his customers in a neighboring village, where we then were treated to apple wine, bread, cheese, coffee, cake and fresh fruits. These excursions took us through field and woods, over high hills and through deep valleys. That was always an unqualified pleasure for me, for already as a child I admired and marveled at the beauties and curiosities in nature, and the countryside around Neuwied offered amble opportunity for that. On these excursions my father also sought to round out my knowledge. Every written or printed piece of paper he saw lying along the way, I had to pick up and read. He also enjoyed giving me problems in arithmetic to solve and was always ready to answer my questions as well as he could and to satisfy my thirst for knowledge.

Primary Education in Germany

I was barely five years old when I had to go to school. As far as my schooldays are concerned, the lines were fallen to me in lovely places, because I attended a really good school. In my father's town of Neuwied there were at that time two Evangelical congregations, which originally had been Reformed, and a newer Evangelical one, which had originally been Lutheran. My parents belonged to the latter congregation. The school of this congregation was integrated with the teachers' seminary of that city in such a way that the seminary students of the upper class did their practice teaching under the supervision of their teachers. I advanced rapidly in all courses in this school, and because I had a deep desire to learn, especially in geography and history, and also because my parents were strict in seeing to it that I attended school regularly, I was always a favorite of my teachers. In this school, too, I made my first attempt at teaching, for it often happened that I had to hear a class of my fellow students in reading or memory work. To this day I have never found a school which advanced its scholars so far along in the elementary courses and instructed them so thoroughly as in this school.

At this time I also became intimately acquainted with Mr. Stiehl, then the director of the seminary who later was called as lecturing counselor to the Ministry of Culture in Berlin. This man demonstrated an extraordinary friendship toward me, and I was often invited to visit him, and he would converse with me and give me good books to read. So it came about that already as a child I experienced through this man the first stirrings to become an active worker in the kingdom of God.

When I was not in school I had to "spool" (wind spools for the weaver's loom) at home and do other chores, and there was seldom any time left to play with other boys of my own age. The older I became the more strictly and unexceptionally was I kept at home. By and by, then, I lost all desire to play with other boys. I was so thirsty for knowledge in those days that I preferred to occupy my few hours of freedom with reading from any kind of book I could get hold of. My father looked askance at this and frequently chased me from my book with a harsh scolding, for undoubtedly he knew already then that I would be of no use to him in his trade. At that time I was so bent on reading that I pursued it even while working. The work, of course, had to suffer then because of it. The spools would get tangled and I would catch it with the stick or with my father's bare hand, and this often embittered my heart against him.

Early Spiritual Life

As excellent as the instruction was that I received in the school, so deficient was the confirmation instruction I received. Old Pastor Reck whom we had at the time, though a faithful man in his calling, was nevertheless a bone-dry rationalist who did not consider the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of the living God and the Savior of all men, and he preached not the gospel of Christ but a dry moral code. Equally as confused and unpalatable as his sermons was his confirmation instruction. Nothing better of his instruction remained in my memory and heart than the epitaph of a lazy man, which he once gave us to read. This epitaph read: Hier liegt der Schuft, der in der Grub erst Nutzen bringt, er duengt! ("Here lies the deadbeat, all unsung, of use at last, dug under, making dung!") This epitaph made a deep impression on my memory and whenever it occurred to me I firmly resolved to beware of ever becoming such a worthless fellow.

For all that, the day of my confirmation was a day of awakening. What passed through my young soul on that day I cannot now cast in words, but from that day onward my purpose and pursuit inclined toward the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. Whenever, after that day, I sat in church and earnestly tried to understand the sermon, my heart throbbed with the wish: If only I too might someday be able to preach the Word of God. But at that time there was absolutely no prospect, by human reckoning, of this wish being fulfilled. I mentally explored every channel toward realizing this dream, but I found none.

Had my father given me the choice of a calling after my confirmation, I would have said to him: "Let me become a schoolteacher," because the way toward the attainment of this calling had already been paved for both my father and me. The seminary director Stiehl had asked my father to release me to become a schoolteacher and he himself would provide my training. But my father refused to give his consent. He was so deeply in love with his craft that he felt his four sons must also become linen weavers. My two older brothers had already learned my father's trade; so then, I had to learn it, too. Besides, around that time my oldest brother had married and become self-supporting. The second oldest brother had gone out on his journeyman's apprenticeship. I was consequently next in line to help my father at his trade. I lent myself to the task with an inner antagonism. The time that I then spent in my parent home was a hard one. My dislike for the weaver's trade grew increasingly pronounced and unbearable for me. The work at the weaver's bench was so hateful to me that I returned to it each morning with a sigh and was forever casting about how I could, with good graces, free myself from this work that was so objectionable to me. This attitude did not remain entirely hidden from my father, and he daily came to see more clearly that I would never become a competent weaver. If often made him angry then, and I had to take a lot of abuse in those days.

There was, however, something else that displeased my father and was very repugnant to him. I didn't go along with most of the things my schoolmates went in for, who, after their confirmation, looked for their fun in the immoral ways and pleasures of the world and although I had not as yet learned the shiftless and ruinous ways and doings of the world but was only then beginning to know that life and to abhor it, I nevertheless turned away from the world and began to keep company with the small flock of those that sought to work out their salvation. Among my schoolmates there were two who were likeminded with me and who lived under similar circumstances in their parental home as I did in mine. I joined myself to these two and we formed a bond of friendship to last our entire life. We vowed to be true to one another until death, and we united in the resolve to live for and serve him alone who had died and had risen again for us. So we were generally together evenings, retired to some lonely spot, told one another our experiences, confided our sorrows to one another and prayed together.

One evening a week we attended an hour of edification which was conducted in the poorhouse by a good-hearted man of Christian experience. Sundays we no longer looked for our edification in the church of our baptism and confirmation but in the church of the Brethren congregation at Neuwied, where one could always hear a worthwhile evangelical sermon. When at that time a new pastor was called to the older Evangelical congregation and it seemed to us that he was a man of faith, we approached him with the request that he would conduct a Bible class for us one evening a week, which he willingly did. At that time I was going through a stage somewhat like the little children who pray:

Ich bin ein kleines Kindelein

Und meine Kraft ist schwach.

Ich moechte gerne selig sein

Und weiss nicht wie ich's mach.

A little infant child am I,

And my poor strength is frail.

I'd like salvation by and by--
but how to get it, tell!

For I lacked the proper understanding and did not know the way to salvation. My parents, teachers, and pastor themselves did not know the way. They were imprisoned in the bands of self-righteousness and the crassest rationalism. My poor soul, however, hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and I looked for this righteousness where I thought I might find it.

All this went against my father's grain. It would of course have made him happy had I been a regular church attendant, for he himself was that, and had always made his children go to church. But that I sought my edification in other churches, that I sought something better than what our old pastor was able to offer, and that I associated with people who, to his thinking, considered themselves better and more pious than others, this he considered a dangerous aberrancy and as a sure way to insanity; this he also believed to be the cause of my lack of appetite for the weaver's trade. I therefore often had to let the eruptions of his antagonism and his anger sweep over me and regularly gnaw at my vitals because I dared not risk opposing him. My mother and my brothers and sisters, although they weren't quite so hard on me, yet they too felt sorry that I separated myself from the world and I seemed a riddle to them. My old pastor most contemptuously regretted that neither his sermons nor his instructions any longer satisfied me, nor did he neglect to search me out as a lost sheep and try to convince me that Christ was not the Son of the living God, and that he was not the only one who could save, but that man saves himself, if he walks blamelessly according to the law. But, to my father's deep chagrin, I opposed him as best I then knew how.

Discovering a Vocation

Although my first steps on the way of life had been badly soured for me since I was very ignorant and bemused concerning spiritual and heavenly things, I nevertheless stuck it out under these trying circumstances until my second oldest brother Henry returned home from his apprenticeship travels and again offered his services to my father. I begged my father then to allow also me to strike out into the world in order to perfect myself in the weaving craft. He granted his consent because he could spare me now and because he thought that life away from home would soon clear such notions out of my head. My close friend William Hoffmann, who had taken up the book printing trade, wanted to get away, and we agreed to undertake our apprenticeship together and to look for employment first of all in the Wupper Valley. So I packed up my duffelbag and one day said goodbye to my family, not only in order to look for work but to search for challenge and nourishment in my weak spiritual life.

I couldn't find even a small job in Elberfeld and Barmen so soon, not enough to support myself by the efforts of my hands. I was in a real fix and for a number of weeks I was compelled to wander anxiously from place to place. I knew nothing, of course, of brocade weaving as it was practiced in Elberfeld and Barmen, and no one seemed interested in hiring me to learn it. I would have been so glad had someone tried me out at some other kind of work, but even for that there seemed to be no opening.

I found a master at last in Sonnborn near Elberfeld who was not only willing to make a competent brocade weaver of me but a true Christian as well. Under the tutelage of this serious-minded man I learned much at the loom, much also for the welfare of my soul, thirsty as it was for light and healing. But even he could not get me to enjoy weaving. Still, I was in a Christian home at last and under the influence of a believing man. I could pursue my longing for spiritual food without hindrance, and every Sunday could hear several fine sermons. I could enjoy the stimulating association of truly Christian-minded people. I could also see more deeply into the spiritual ways and life of the world and grew in the knowledge of myself as well.

During that time I also had access to the Mission House in Barmen and became acquainted with and interested in heathen mission work. I would, already then, gladly have entered the Mission House to be trained for heathen mission work, but it all came about otherwise than I had wished and hoped, and I was destined first to pass through an altogether different school.

Those were the days when the heavy hand of danger lay on my country, when everywhere the torches of rebellion and incendiarism flared up against the government. In the Wupper Valley, too, things got pretty wild and one feared from day to day that the rioters would gang up and destroy the homes of the rich. Political conditions were such that business houses went into receivership and many weavers were out of work.

So that was why I had to take up the wanderer's staff again. My employer released me with a good deal of reluctance, and it was hard for me to leave him, too. In those restless, evil days it was inadvisable for a young man to pursue his journeymanship to find work in another city. And in fact I didn't care to do so. I headed homeward, to my parents' house, especially because I felt that now I might make myself more useful in my father's weaving shop and find him reconciled to such skill as I had acquired for my career. It was in spring of the memorable year 1848 when I again crossed the threshold of my parents' home only to leave it hardly a half year later and then to leave it forever.

During that half year I renewed my old acquaintances and found new ones as well who have since become a great and lasting blessing to my inner self. Once again I sought and found contacts and spiritual food in the congregation of the Brethren. Particularly stimulating for me was an association with a certain old Christian whom I visited almost every Sunday afternoon. This man took seriously the obligation of encouraging my growth in the right knowledge of our Lord and Savior. About that time too I became acquainted with an elderly retired missionary by the name of de Fries, who for a number of years had served first in South Africa, then lastly in Greenland, and enjoyed frequent visits with him. Now I also found someone likeminded with my own relationship, a cousin, who had come to the knowledge of the truth, and on whom I could lean. With all this I continued my single-minded search for a way to realize my goal to become active in the kingdom of God.

In the fall of 1848 I read a circular calling upon Christian-minded youths to enter the rescue institute (Rettungsanstalt) in Duesselthal near Duesseldorf as supervisors and teachers of orphaned boys. I happily made up my mind to answer this call at once.

The Orphanage at Duesselthal

My father had at length come to the conclusion that it was simply inadvisable to tie me any longer to the weaver's loom and gave me his consent to leave. I announced myself in Duesselthal and was immediately invited to make my appearance there. How glad I was that at last a door had been opened to me and that I now could say goodbye to the onerous weaver's bench. Leaving my family was not nearly as difficult this time as it had been the first.

I received a friendly and hearty welcome at Duesselthal. After I had passed a short but pretty incisive examination under the director of the institute, a group of boys were entrusted to me made up more or less of wayward children, with whom I had now, as their supervisor and teacher, to live, eat, drink, sleep, and work. It wasn't easy for me to adjust to this calling. It stood me in good stead then that I myself had been sternly reared and that the rod had not been spared on me. While I struggled to keep my good-for-nothing rascals in line, I had to learn to discipline myself and that cost me many a hot battle with my own flesh and blood and really drove me to prayer.

But now I too had to be content to submit to a rigid regimen because the inspector of the institute was a strict housefather and observed the indisputably correct principle that those who wish to exercise discipline on others must themselves be well brought up. Accordingly there was much in my own upbringing to catch up on, considerations my parents had neglected, and in fact make up in such a way that it hurt my old Adam much more than the hardest switchings I had ever received in my boyhood at the hand of my father. The young men who acted as supervisors and teachers at the institute received one hour of instruction a day, and it was always a pleasure for me to participate in this. So I put this instruction to the best possible use and already then got so far as to write a thesis, deliver a lecture, and was able to teach some of the subjects myself.

Meanwhile I had become 21 years old and was required to report to the Prussian Military Reserve Commission and to undergo a medical examination to determine my eligibility for service. It would at that time have made me happy to be declared fit and to be mustered into a Prussian regiment. I would then perhaps have remained a soldier and probably either excelled on some battlefield in Holstein, Bohemia, or France, or might even have died an honorable death of my country. From early childhood onward I had always enjoyed watching military maneuvers and often had wished that I might wear the king's uniform and go to war with God for king and country. But neither was this beautiful dream of my youth to be fulfilled. I was found unfit for military service and could there remain in Duesselthal.

After a year and a half [at Duesselthal], during which time I had become well acquainted with the work and life in that situation and so learned to love it, I was hospitalized for a long spell. I had contracted a recurrent fever then endemic in Duesselthal which refused to yield despite the quantity and strength of the medications prescribed for me. Someone got the idea after a while that a change of air might help me get better. I was then transferred, together with a number of ailing children, from Duesselthal to a branch institute at Overdyck near Bochum in Westphalia.

Here I arrived in utterly wretched physical condition. This frightful fever had sapped practically all of my strength and robbed me of every bit of energy and will to live. Even here at Overdyck the fever hung on for five weeks, day after day, although I was able to spend the better part of the day out of bed, and in the late afternoon hours could even walk about a bit. No medication, it seemed, could rid me of this misery. My doctor at this time was a genteel lady, the Countess Ida von der Recke Vollmarstein, and although on her orders I was well attended, my convalescence dragged on. Then a gracious God provided me a simple remedy with the result that the fever left me. A spoonful of silversand taken only twice in some brandy, and already I was better. My strength returned then to me quickly, enabling me to get busy at my job.

The housefather and teacher at Overdyck was a insouciant fellow in whom Director Georgi in Duesselthal reposed small confidence. I was appointed to be this man's colleague, not only as his assistant in school and home, but also in fact as his guardian. Thus my position at Overdyck was a rather difficult one, but with God's help and blessing I succeeded in getting settled in my position and in earning my supervisor's respect and trust. The idea of dismissing the teacher and of naming me as teacher and housefather was already circulating. This plan, however, was forestalled by my departure from the institute.

Everything in Overdyck had suited me just fine. I was satisfied with my situation, and I had come to appreciate my job so much that I hoped to make a career of it. Yet it all turned out quite otherwise. I had gotten to know a miner of Christian persuasion by the name of Eickhoff in Linden near Bochum. This man often visited me in Overdyck and came ever more deeply to share my weal and woe. He frequently urged me to make application at the Langenberger Association for the Protestant Germans in North America. This association would subsidize my training for the holy ministry at the Barmen Mission House and send me to America as their representative. He was well acquainted, he said, with some of the trustees of the association and would endorse my application.

For a long time I couldn't make up my mind to take this step. In order to find clarity and certainty in this matter, I turned at length to Director Georgi at Duesselthal. He rejected the proposition with hand and foot, as they say, promised to see me trained as a schoolteacher, and then bombarded me with the notion that I could never become a first rate preacher in the Mission House at Barmen anyway because anyone electing to become a preacher must first of all graduate from a Gymnasium and then attend a university for several years and study theology.

With this line of argument he tried to scare me off. His disconcerting reply was, nevertheless, the means that made up my mind to risk the step of applying to the Langenberger Association. I received an immediate answer and was graciously invited by the president of the Association, a wealthy and very kind merchant in Langenberg, to visit him as soon as possible so that he might get to know me personally. When I responded to the invitation, I was asked to write up and submit a resume of my life. I shortly received notice that the Association had decided to subsidize my training as a preacher to Protestant Germans in North America. I was informed, too, of the time when I might matriculate at the Mission House at Barmen. It would be far sooner than I had expected. I was happy, though, that the gracious God had again opened a door for me, and that before me now lay the prospect of seeing another beautiful dream of my youth about to be fulfilled.

I accordingly discharged my commitments in Overdyck, once again visited Duesselthal, which I had gotten to like so well, in order to take leave of my former superiors, and then traveled to visit my parents in Neuwied, where I remained until I entered the Mission House. And I was happy to see my aged parents at last begin to rejoice over their son Philipp after such displeasure at his failure to stick to the weaver's bench.

The Barmen Mission House

In September of the year 1851 I was accepted along with four other young men into the Mission House in Barmen. I brought with me a voracious appetite for study, and, it soon became apparent, I was better equipped in basic information than were my four classmates. Now the three years that I had spent in Duesselthal and Overdyck and the skills I had acquired there stood me in good stead. Yet I was, as it were, a blank sheet of paper when I entered the Mission House, for I possessed only a general Christian understanding. As to a confessional consciousness or a knowledge of comparative doctrines, I didn't even know the ABC's. And yet the foundation of my Lutheranism was, as early as this, about to be laid in that union-oriented Mission House of Barmen, and it occurred in fact through the instruction of the incumbent Inspector Wallmann.

To this original and forceful man I owe a great deal, and I can't think of him without praising God's gracious goodness in granting me the privilege to sit at the feet of such a teacher. Through this faithful man I first really got to know the Scriptures; through him I first became acquainted with Luther's life; through him I received the key to the correct understanding of the Word of God. I have therefore often said, and I say so still today, that the time I was permitted to attend the Mission House was the golden age of that institution because neither before nor after my student days did it claim an inspector who was as faithful and as capable as the sainted Wallmann.

My first year at the Mission House was barely past when I was already asked to share the divine treasures I had gathered. The signal rang ill in my ears. It rather frightened me when in one of our classes our Inspector announced in the hearing of all my classmates: "Koehler, you must now prepare yourself for your first sermon." At the time my companions could lay aside their books for a while and begin their vacation trips. But I had to remain at the Mission House and study a sermon. I shook like an aspenleaf when I entered the pulpit for the first time, because I was scared stiff that I would get stuck. But it was granted to me to deliver my first sermon in the chapel on the Doenberg in Langenberg without stumbling. From then on I was permitted to practice-preach regularly every four or five weeks. I had, besides, to conduct a Sunday school class on Sunday afternoons, and every Saturday evening a Bible class in a wild and ill-reputed section. Then I would usually have to go home in the black of night, and once it happened on the way that I was attacked by some drunkards. They shattered my lantern so that I had to fumble the rest of my way home in the dark, where I arrived for all that with my skin still intact.

In my free time I was required to visit the members of the Langenberger Association who lived in Langenberg, Elberfeld, and Barmen. On Sundays I could always hear a good sermon, since at the time the Wupperthal was amply supplied with faithful and very competent witnesses to the truth. It was a beautiful time of ingathering for me, and it came to an end all too soon.

My physical well-being, too, was thoroughly superintended in those days. The Langenberger Association paid (in addition to paying my fees) for my personal necessities, and our sweet housemother treated me and the other trainees like one of her own foster children. She provided good food, decent clothing, and clean laundry. I was even given an allowance, with which I purchased some good books. Two years had been allowed for my training. But a word from the Inspector permitted me to remain at the Mission House a third year.

Family Matters

During this idyllic interval my father died (May 5, 1853). When I came home for the funeral I was especially glad to hear that in the last years of his life he had looked around for better sustenance for his soul. At the graveside my heart was very heavy indeed. Could someone have assured me then that my father had died in the Lord I should have given thanks with tears of joy. But even the graveside address that was delivered there didn't offer me this comfort for which, after all, my soul so deeply longed. My mother for her part posed no obstacle to my untroubled return to the Mission House, because my sister, who was already married at this time, wished to receive her into her own home, and I had no doubt that our mother would be in good hands there.

Not long after the death of my father I made the acquaintance of the girl whom a year later I asked to be my helpmeet and for whom I had prayed to God, Ms. Appolonia Schick. I met her at her brother-in-law's (Ludwig Zimmer in Engelstadt near Bingen), where she was living at that time and where I spent several days on a vacation trip. I didn't guess then, of course, that she would one day be my life's companion. As long as we were at the Mission House we were not allowed even to think of such things, but if sometimes such thoughts nevertheless crossed our hearts, we wouldn't dare to express them with so much as a syllable.

Graduation and Assignment to Wisconsin

In the summer of 1854 I had to prepare myself for my final examination. In the presence of a number of pastors and merchants who belonged to the Langenberger Association, I was examined by my teachers. Right after the examination the president of the Association explained to me that they intended to send me to the state of Wisconsin in North America, and that they hoped that I would prove myself a faithful worker in the vineyard of the Lord and that I would joyfully preach the righteousness by faith as I had learned it from the Scriptures.

I can't say that this announcement moved me at all pleasurably. Had I then rather been informed: "You will have to spend one more year at the Mission House," it would have been just what I had wished. I had, of course, often observed trainees at the Mission House preparing themselves for their journey into the heathen world and had noted that they were always glad that the term of their instruction had terminated. Of this joy I felt hardly a trace. I was not at all pleased at having to conclude my studies.

But there was another dark thought that gave me considerable pause. I had, to be sure, entered the Mission House for the express purpose of being trained to do mission work among the Protestant Germans in North America. But when the time came for me to venture forth, I should have preferred going anywhere else at all in the heathen world. North America was never the land of my choice. From childhood the emigrations to America had always been a stone of offense to me. I had tried to dissuade many from emigrating there. I considered it wrong and regularly cited the Bible passage (Psalm 37:3): "Bliebe in Lande und naehre dich redlich." "Stay in the land and eat honestly." My mind seemed unwilling to accept the idea of doing mission work among people who had faithlessly left their fatherland and had run away from their mother church in order to become rich and unattached.

Such were my thoughts when I was told: You must go to America. Still, I did not want to do anything to alter my assignment. Better to be obedient and allow myself to be sent. In the free time that remained I busied myself with preparations for the long journey across the ocean to the land of the setting sun. The faithful housemother at the Mission House provided me with a wardrobe, two trunks full of clothes, laundry and other necessities.

At this time I journeyed back to Neuwied to visit my relatives and to attend to another bit of business very important to me. I had asked for permission to become engaged before my commissioning. Permission was readily granted with the proviso that I choose a life's companion worthy of both me and my calling. I had neither time nor inclination to look about among the daughters of the land. I was too bashful for that and also too awkward.

Nor was it necessary. Appolonia Schick, the young lady with whom I had become acquainted the year before in Engelstadt, was my heart's choice. She had been highly recommended to me by George Zimmer, her brother-in-law's brother, who was my confidant in the Mission House. I therefore wrote a letter to her brother-in-law asking her through him for her hand in marriage. Her affirmative answer was not long in coming. It was as on eagles' wings that I then hurried from Neuwied to Engelstadt, where our engagement was announced publicly.

From there I took my fiancée back to Neuwied to present her to my aged mother, my brothers, sisters, and relatives. Then I took her back to her home. It was on the steamship in Koblenz that I took leave of her for what would be an undetermined length of time. Through God's gracious guidance and providence I now had this important step behind me.

While I had gone awooing, my oldest brother had arranged that on my last Sunday in Neuwied I would preach in the same church in which I had been baptized and confirmed. This was something I had long wished to do. I was now to stand in the pulpit of this church and proclaim the Word of Life to a large number of people. This also was the first Sunday that I wore my clerical garments. I felt like David in Saul's armor. The text was Revelation 3:17,18. ["You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see."]

During the following days I took one last look around my hometown, said my farewells to relatives, and once more returned to the Mission House in Barmen. On the last Sunday in September 1854 I was ceremoniously commissioned in Elberfeld by Pastor Feldner. I spoke a word of leavetaking based on Romans 1:16. [For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.]

Final Farewells

The next day we had a farewell banquet at the Mission House. I left immediately afterward. Inspector Wallmann and a number of students accompanied me to the railroad station. The train took me from Barmen to Bremen. It was from there I was to sail to North America.

In Bremen I received a gracious welcome in the home of the Viehor brothers who owned the ship which was to bear me to America. It was there also that I made the acquaintance of the seasoned master of the ship, Captain Volkmann, and was appointed the ship's pastor for this voyage.

I also had occasion to preach in the prayer chapel of the Church of the Brethren and several days later in the emigration chapel at Bremerhaven where our ship lay at anchor. Finally, the ship was ready for the voyage. I boarded it on October 8, 1854. It was my [twenty-sixth] birthday.