Matthew P. Wyneken's notes from
C. C. Schmidt Autobiography

(The autobiography is resource #0939.)

Pg 1:

Born 8 Nov 1843 in Bonfeldt, Württemberg

Father was John Adams Schmidt, born 16 Aug 1816 in Bonfeldt
Shoe maker's journeyman in Stuttgart. He wanted to become a "Meister", which was only possible in the place of his birth.

Mother was Rosine Katharine Bertsch, from Metzingen

In 1849 the revolution reached Bonfeldt: State troops and peasant troops came through. 

The family emigrated to US in 1852 via Heidelberg, Mannheim, Rotterdam and Hull in England. They sailed from Liverpool to New York, where they landed on 1 May 1852. They spent the first few months in a suburb of New York. From there they moved to Buffalo and then Cleveland. From there they went to Bolivar, Tuscarawas Co., Ohio to his father's cousin's place who lived close by. From there they moved to live with a relative, Sattler, who also lived in the area. A little later they moved to Shelby Co., Ohio, where Sattler's brother lived.

Pg 2:

CC's father bought 40 acres in Shelby Co., including a block house and cattle stalls. Most people in the area were Lutherans from Alsace. 

After a while, the Schmidts joined a Lutheran congregation served by pastor Werfelmann and belonging to the Missouri Synod. Pastor Werfelmann asked CC Schmidt if he wanted to go to school and study for the ministry. Both of these things met with CC's approval. CC attended Werfelmann's school, boarding in the area. 

Werfelmann left and was replaced by a different pastor who was not quite as popular with CC. But with this pastor and four other pastors he went to a conference in Fort Wayne in 1857. On the way they spent the night at "Father Bunck's" house (presumably "Buuck"). CC enjoyed the student life in Fort Wayne so much that he decided to continue to be a student despite his unhappiness with the new pastor.

In the spring of 1858 he was confirmed and moved to Fort Wayne after Easter. 

Pg. 3:

In Fort Wayne one of his teachers was Prof. August Craemer, under whom he had bible history among other things. In bible history under Craemer the students has to learn the whole bible by heart. CC writes that Craemer was a very good teacher, a "teacher par excellence". Craemer's wife was the house mother and was very loved by the students and she treated them very nicely. 

In 1860 CC moved to college in St. Louis to prepare for the seminary. In St. Louis the students from Fort Wayne were looked down on as they were allegedly inadequately prepared scholastically. 

Pg. 4:

When Lincoln won the presidential election the situation started getting interesting in St. Louis. When the state of Missouri decided to join the Confederacy the seminary students got together and decided to ask the faculty to allow them to leave because they did not want to join the rebellion. The institution was closed at the end of April (1861?). 

CC returned to Fort Wayne in the fall of 1861. By that time his parents had moved to Fort Wayne so he was able to live at home. Typhus broke out and many of the students became ill. The teachers were the same ones they had had in St. Louis. Siehler was among them. He was both beloved and highly esteemed by the students. 

In the summer of 1862 it was suggested to the students to go back to the seminary in St. Louis since seminarians wouldn't be drafted into the army. Most of the students didn't do that. 

Pg. 5:

In the fall of 1864 the entire class in Fort Wayne, including Martin and Henry Wyneken and Adolph Biewend, transferred to the seminary in St. Louis. Among their teachers in St. Louis were Craemer, CFW Walther and Prof. Brohm. CC says of the teachers both in Fort Wayne and St. Louis that they were good men, that they knew what they were teaching, but that they were not good teachers. He writes that the teachers in later periods were a lot better. CC was very impressed with CFW Walther, though. 

Pg. 6:

They graduated in June of 1868. At Easter Pastor Brohm arranged for a call for CC Schmidt to New York, where Brohm was interim pastor. He arrived in New York on 9 July and was supposed to meet a Joachim Birkner.  <- MAKE CROSS REF TO HENRY BIRKNER  The parish was in Yorkville between the East River and Central Park, centered around 3rd Avenue. 

CC Schmidt lived and worked in New York from July 1868 to September 1872.

Pg. 8:

CC was rather overworked at the beginning because he also had to do the teaching. After a while a teacher joined the parish and CC was able to pass the teaching duties to him. Later on this teacher attempted a coup in the congregation but failed

CC Schmidt's wife is mentioned on page 8 with no name. However, this must be Maria Wyneken. Nothing is said on this page about how they met or when they married. 

The president of the congregation was names Keyl. I [MP'W] wonder if this is the Keyl known in LCMS history in other contexts.

Pg. 9:

He disliked the practice of celebrating parties with drink and dancing, but he had difficulties getting the people in New York to stop doing that. After a number of years he finally convinced them to celebrate events without drink and dance. Everything worked fine that way, everybody was happy and they made more money.  

He was in Elyria, Ohio from 1872 to 1877. He was installed there in September 1872. He also took care of a congregation in Liverpool, Ohio at that time. When he started at Elyria most of the townspeople were English speakers. There was just a small number of Germans and there were three or four families that made up the congregation. In the course of time the congregation was increased by people who immigrated from Mecklenburg. They spoke the Mecklenburg Plattdeutsch dialect. Since he was from Württemberg he spoke Swabian so they had difficulties communicating.

CC's brother, Philip, later became pastor in Liverpool. 

Pg. 11:

He made his first public address in English in Eliyria at a funeral when the person who was supposed to take the funeral didn't show up. The night before the business section of town burned down. He had to write his address during the fire. He wasn't convince that what he wrote was good, although the content was satisfactory. 

A group of people opposed to alcohol, mostly Calvinistic, tried to close down the saloons but failed. The tried to get CC's wife to join their cause. CC told them that what was very un-Lutheran and that his wife was too busy with housework to have time for their project. 

CC belonged to the Cleveland conferences of LCMS. He thought this was fortunate because Wyneken and Schwan were in this conference, as well. 

Pg. 12:

The name "Keyl" is mentioned again and was apparently a pastor. 

Pg. 13:

CC married Mary Wyneken in Cleveland in May of 1870. He says she grew up in an ideal parsonage. She learned to be satisfied with what was available and for the sake of the office of pastor to be content with much that others might find unacceptable. She had learned to live without extravagance or luxuries. She spoke Plattdeutsch, which was very helpful with the Mecklenburgers in the congregation in Elyria. 

In March 1872 in New York they had a daughter, Bertha. Mary became ill after childbirth but fortunately recovered completely after several months. During the five years in Elyria, Carl and Louise were born. They had to scrimp because the pastor's pay wasn't very good. Fortunately the farmers very often supplied them with food and provisions.

During his last year in Elyria he received several calls. First the congregation didn't want to let him go but they finally released him.

Pg. 14:

He was in Indianapolis from June 1877 to November 1887. In Indianapolis he developed a throat ailment. The Synod held it's general meeting at his congregation. He had to do a lot of talking because of all the organization he had to see to. 

Pg. 15:

This Synod meeting was very bad on his health and he took his very first vacation to recover from his throat ailment. He traveled east to Pittsburgh, where a doctor told him to keep his mouth closed as much as possible and to eat as many grapes as he could. He was told by another pastor to go to Saxonberg in the mountains, where it was affordable and there were lots of grapes. This occured in September. The doctor had also recommended to go somewhere where the people were wicked so that he wouldn't have anything in common with them, thus lessening the amount of talking he did. He stayed there six weeks, enjoyed himself and ate a lot of grapes. Since then his throat has been completely healthy.

At one point he traveled to Columbus, Indiana to attend a pastoral conference. While there, he read in the newspaper that his church had burned down. This truly was a catastrophe but they were able to gain from it because they needed to build a new building anyway. They took advantage of this opportunity and built at a different site.

The year during the construction was very difficult for him because it was hard to find room for the whole congregation in a different church and keep them all together. The end result was a beautiful new church building that didn't cost as much as they were afraid it would. A new parsonage was built. School attendance increased tremendously after the new building was built. 

Page 18:

In Elyria they had become accustomed to saving money and this served them well in Indianapolis, too. His salary was $700, unfortunately paid at irregular intervals. Whenever the treasurer collected $10 he took it to the pastor and his family. They had to wait to make important purchases. During the 10 years there they had five new children, thus increasing their expenses: Ernst, Pauline, Emma, Martin and Alfred. The children contracted the normal childhood diseases but not of the illnesses were severe. 

He never complained or told the congregation about their financial problems. After three years he was given a $100 raise without him saying a word.

The congregation had to pledge what they were going to donate during the year. One year the pledges were very insufficient so they were going to retry in a new meeting the following Sunday. He preached a good sermon on the subject that Sunday morning and the pledges were raised. It was after this that he got his $100 raise and he believes the raise was because of the sermon.

He relates how his family, as did many members of the church, would buy a pig or two and have other members of the congregation join in the slaughter. the butchering and the preparation of sausages. There was another member who was not rich but who was very generous, not only to the pastor but to other poor people in the congregation. For example, he donated a stove range and a heater to the pastor's family. 

Pg. 19

In 1877 CC received a call to go to St. Louis. This was a very difficult decision for him to make because he had gone through some difficult times getting used to the congregation and them getting used to him, and he didn't feel it was the right thing to do to leave now that everything was all right. On the other hand, the call was a very important thing. He wasn't sure whether he would be able to meet the requirements in St. Louis. He left it up to the congregation to decide whether he should stay or not. 

The St. Louis congregation sent a delegation. They were successful in convincing the congregation that it was God's will for CC to accept the call. He preached his last sermon on the first Sunday of Advent 1877 and the next day he took the train to St. Louis. He was able to go back to visit in Indianapolis six different times in the next years for special occasions. 

In November 1877 he moved to St. Louis. His new congregation was Holy Cross, which was very close to Concordia Seminary and most of the professors' homes. This meant that he would be preaching to a lot of the professors and students from the seminary. This made him nervous. 

Pg. 24

A new church, called Redeemer Church, had been started in the vicinity. English services were held there. Many of the seminary students and young people in general started going to the English services at Redeemer. When people in CC's congregation married outside of the Missouri Synod, the new spouses often only spoke English. CC tried to get them to join the church but the religious instruction had to be held in English because they didn't have a German background. Thus, English language services were also helpful. 

He started making plans to have church in English. Some of the young people in the congregation approached him on the matter and he suggested they bring it up in a church meeting. It was brought up and received with lots of opposition, especially from the older members. They were afraid that if they started talking English they would lose their Lutheranism. Finally they asked CC for his opinion. He named his reasons and suggested that they at least try for a while having English services in the evening. He was willing to try to do that himself. He did that for a while. He provided English evening services twice a month for five years. By that time everyone saw that it was necessary to continue the English services, so they called a different pastor, Paul Koenig, in 1914. After Koenig started, English speaking people started to attend services. They started having English services in the morning, alternating between German and  English, sometimes one early and the other late and then switching the order.

A similar development took place in the school. The catechism started out only being taught in German but then they had to switch to English because people were learning that English was the life that their children were going to grow up in. 

Pg. 25

This matter was apparently in discussion shortly before World War I because CC says that they finally agreed on it and then they entered into war against Germany. That also made it a good idea to discontinue the use of German in services and at school. After the war ended they had to decide whether to return to German or not, but they couldn't find any good reasons to do that so they never did. They did, however, decide to provide the children the opportunity to learn to read and write German if they wanted to.

For various reasons CC wanted to instituted Sunday school, as well, in order to reach some of the young people who otherwise would not be taught Christian doctrine etc. There was a lot of opposition to that from professors and students, who were apparently prejudiced against Sunday school. It was voted down several times but in the end the congregation agreed to do it and it turned out to be a good thing. All of the fears the people had had proved to be unfounded. 

Pg. 26

There is a list of pastors and teachers that emerged from this congregation. Some of the names are:

Theo. Brohm, Adolph Biewend, Ferdinand Walther, L Craemer, Johann Schaller, William Schaller,  George Mieger, Theo Graebner, Martin Graebner. Johannes Graebner, Rudy Graebner, Otto Graebner, a Stoeckhardt (related to his second wife?). George Schmidt. The preceding were all pastors. Martin Schmidt was a teacher. Gustav König was also a teacher (possibly relative of San Francisco Königs?) 

[MPW: Many of these names either appear in the Wyneken genealogy database or are known to have had some sort of connection to the people in the database]

Now starts a section concerning personal family affairs. The page numbering starts over:

Pg. 1

When he moved to St. Louis he had no idea that he was going to lose his wife there. He moved to the parsonage in St. Louis in December 1887. His wife, on the other hand, did have a premonition that she was going to have problems. He confident, trustful mood left her. She didn't feel equal to being a pastor's wife in St. Louis so near the seminary. Things went better than she had expected. There were still friends of hers and the Wyneken family in the congregation. FCD had lived in the neighborhood for a few years when he was district president. Thus, the beginning of their stay there was friendly. However, already in the following spring he had to go to the doctor with her. 

"The symptoms were of a disease against which the art of medicine could prevail nothing. All efforts to save her life were in vain including a visit to a specialist in New York and a two month stay with her brother, Prof. Wyneken, in Springfield, Illinois, where a homeopath promised to try to help. With much sorrow and prayer we became convinced that after 19 years of happiness we must now part from each other. Long days and nights of suffering in pain followed after she returned from Springfield. The first week of August 1889 she had a sweet blissfull dream with open eyes like a vision - I didn't disturb her. Through the open door she saw her long dead loved ones - father, mother, brothers - beckoning to her to come to Jesus. How happy she would be with her loved ones. Her redemption and the fulfilment of her glorious wish came eight days later. Her solemn funeral was held on August 11. One hour before the scheduled starting time, my children and I stepped to the coffin. I said a few words and

Pg. 2

spoke a prayer. So we said farewell to our dear mother. Later we would stand quietly at the grave - sad indeed, oh how sad. But yet a joyful and certain faith that her soul is with the Lord."

His wife's sister, Paula, was staying with them for months to nurse the patient and take care of the children. She stayed for a time afterwards until Bertha, 17, and Luli, 13, could take care of the house. Paula then returned to California and took the youngest, Alfred, with her. Ernst and Paula found temporary homes, Ernst with C.C.'s sister, Rosie Schmidt and family in Liverpool, Ohio, and Paula with Mrs. Senal in Indianapolis. (Translator's comment: No mention is made of what happened to Carl, also known as "Bubi". Emma and Martin.)

Two years later he found a wife and father for his children, a sister of Dr. Stoeckhardt. Her name was Marianne, the daughter of Dr. Stoeckhardt from Tharant. Sachsen. She was still living in Germany during their courtship but she had spent several years before with her brother so she knew about the circumstances of the Schmidt family. She had also known Schmid't deceased wife and was friendly with her. He met her in New York [MPW: presumably when she arrived from Germany] and they married on 11 September, 1891.

She was not a typical stepmother to the children. She was a true mother. 

Pg. 3

They had three children of their own.

He received three calls to be a professor, twice to the seminary in Springfield and once for St. Louis. However, he never accepted any of these calls. He served the synod in other offices: president and vice president of the Western District, vice president of the gneral synod for nine years and 33 years he was on the board of control of the St. Louis seminary. 

Pg. 4

He's approaching his 81st birthday when he wrote his autobiography and he had served 56 years and was planning on continuing as long as he was able.