St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Parish Register, Book I
The earliest settlers of the Ridgeville area of
Monroe County, formerly called “Dividing Ridge,” were Lutheran immigrants from
Preussen (Prussia) who had first settled in Jefferson County, WI. In 1855 Gottlieb Gnewikow,
Wilhelm Albrecht, Ferdinand Vincenz, Karl Fuerbringer and Heinrich Vieth
arrived. Daniel Zellmer, Gottfried
Jaskiewicz (later, Kewit), Michael Zielke, and Daniel
Raedel followed during the next year.
But it was not until the arrival of Mr. Wilhelm Waegner in September
1860 that efforts were made to gather the scattered Lutherans into a
congregation.
They initially met in a one-room country
schoolhouse on April 1, 1862.
Representatives from 18 families gathered together
to officially organize the German Evangelical Lutheran St. Johannes Church of
Ridgeville. Before that organizational
meeting, a group of Lutherans had been meeting for reading services that were
led by Wilhelm Waegner. He had moved to
Ridgeville with his wife, Sarah (Huth), and was instrumental in bringing German
Lutherans together. As a lay leader, he
conducted reading services, substituted when no pastor was available, and
instructed young people in Catechism. He
served on the church’s first board of trustees and was elected its first
president.
Waegner lived long enough to see the
building of three churches, including the current one. The first was a log cabin, built in 1863 on
the present lot. Early services were conducted
by the Rev. Michael Evert of Burr Oak Valley in Jackson County, who made the
60-mile round trip by horseback every eight weeks and was paid $8 for each
service. The first resident pastor was
John A. Hoyer. He, his wife and six
children lived in the new parsonage—a modest log cabin—for the two years he was
at St. John’s.
By 1872, 70 families were members. To accommodate the growing church, the
congregation built a bigger church, a frame building on the same lot, with the
congregation furnishing and delivering necessary stone for the foundation.
After the congregation outgrew this place of
worship, plans were made to build a new church of brick. According to an article in the Tomah Herald,
150,000 bricks were hauled from the Tomah railroad depot to Ridgeville for the
project. Ground was broken for the
foundation walls on May 14, 1900, by Friedrich Zellmer of Ridgeville, using
horse-drawn equipment. Helping him and
carpenter William Matthews were several volunteers. The church was officially dedicated on Jan.
20, 1901, and three services — two in German and an evening one in English —
took place.
Services continued in German until 1920,
when, after some controversy, services in English were conducted once a
month. The last class to be confirmed in
German was in 1926. By the early-1940s,
with only four families attending a monthly German service, German was
discontinued.
A Christian Day School for seventh- and eighth-graders opened in 1920 and closed in 1933 amid the
Great Depression. A Sunday school was
organized in 1939 and continues to this day.
The Ladies Aid Society organized in 1898 is still going, as is an Altar
Guild that was formed in 1975.
A focal point of the church’s interior is a
crystal and brass chandelier with eight lamps.
The church organ, located on the balcony in the rear of the church, is a
pipe organ that was built by Mann-Wangerin-Weickhardt
Co. of Milwaukee and installed in 1911.
This is one of the first ones of this type that was made and only one of
two or three still in use today.
This
church became a landmark in the area partly because of the towering 105-foot
steeple. The new church bells could be
heard throughout the countryside, especially on Saturday evenings. Irreparably damaged by the weather, the
steeple was replaced with a cap tower in 1948.
St. John’s has been served by 22 pastors
during its more than 160 years. The Rev.
Carl E. Berg held the longest tenure, serving St. John’s for 25 years from 1924
until he retired in 1949 at the age of 72.
The pastor at St. John’s also serves St. Jacob Lutheran Church in
Norwalk.
St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church was
the first Lutheran church in Monroe County and is the mother church to several
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) churches, including St. Peter’s in
Indian Creek; St. Matthew’s in South Ridge; St. Matthew’s in Kirby; St. Jacob
in Norwalk and St. Paul in Tomah.
Sources:
·
Ms. Lyda Lanier, member, St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran
Church.
·
The History of Monroe County, dated 1912,
Page 543ff
When St. John’s was founded in
1862, entries began to be recorded in Book I of the Parish Register of the
church’s first 851 baptisms, 362 confirmations, 139 marriages and 193 burials. The records in Book I were written in German,
but an English translation was made many years ago. That is the source of the information in this
database. Book II was started in 1889
and those records have not been included in the database used for this website.
The contents of the Book I entries
are contained in the following reports:
Baptisms
(including Birth information), Sorted by Baptism Number
Baptisms
(including Birth information), Sorted by Infant’s Surname
Confirmations, Sorted
by Confirmation Number
Confirmations,
Sorted by Youth’s Surname
Marriages,
Sorted by Date of Marriage
Marriages,
Sorted by Groom’s Surname
Marriages,
Sorted by Bride’s Surname
Deaths
and Burials, Sorted by Date of Death
Deaths
and Burials, Sorted by Decedent’s Surname
For consistency and ease of searching, it
has been necessary to standardize some of the names in the register. For example, a person may be listed with his
or her full name in the Baptism section, but with their commonly-used
middle name or nickname in the Confirmation, Marriage or Burial section. An attempt has been made to standardize the
entries for a particular person to his or her formal name.
I hope that you find this information to be
interesting and helpful to you in your research of your family’s history.
To access any of the other genealogical
research on this website, click any of these links:
·
Griggs
and Pergande Families
Gary Griggs
Murrells Inlet, SC