A Plea from Fort Wayne

On 4 June 1838 Adam Wesel, elder at Saint Paul Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana, wrote to the mission society of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, appealing for a missionary to serve them. A Pastor Kohler had previously been sent by the society to travel through Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, but he had begun to serve congregations in eastern Pennsylvania and was no longer interested in traveling.

F. C. D. Wyneken, who had just arrived in Baltimore from Germany on 28 June, was recommended to the executive committee of the society, which invited him to meet with them in Lancaster for an interview. The committee “found him to be a man, whom they believed to be especially qualified for the important work of a missionary,” so “they took him into their service” (Proceedings of the Missionary Society, Synod of Pennsylvania, 1839, p. 5).

Although he was directed to survey the same territory as Kohler—Indiana, Illinois and Missouri—he spent a week in several settlements in northwest Ohio and then traveled to Fort Wayne, where the congregation prevailed on him to become their pastor. The mission society granted their request “to keep brother Wynecken [sic],” who also continued to visit German settlements in northern Indiana and Michigan and organized several congregations. A detailed report, dated 25 February 1839, recounts Wyneken’s missionary activity for the society.