Information Sheet

 

 

R         Saint John’s Lutheran Church (Benton County, Mo.).

546                  Records, 1881-1945.

                                    Four volumes.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are records of St. John’s Lutheran Church at Boeschenville in Benton County, Mis­souri.  Included are the constitution, by-laws, registers of members, lists of births, baptisms, com­municants, and deaths, and minutes of meetings, 1912-1941.  Most of the records are in German.

 

This congregation was organized in 1880 when members from the local Iowa Synod and Missouri Synod congregations left their churches to form an independent Lutheran body.  That fall the new congregation began the construction of a parsonage, and they called the Rev. A. Dietrich, a non-synod pastor, to the pulpit.  He assumed the pastorate on 1 July 1881.  The church’s ceme­tery was dedicated on 11 August 1881 with the burial of Gottlieb Edward Warnke.  On 21 August 1881 the congregation adopted a constitution and laid the cornerstone for a new church edifice.  On 4 February 1882 the congregation purchased six acres in the name of the Ev. Lutheran Inde­pendent Bethlehem Church.  The congregation was supplied for a time by the Rev. Otto Kloeckner from Christ Lutheran Church in Stover, as well as by non-synod pastors.

 

After struggling for years to secure non-synod pastors on 11 July 1911 the congregation voted to disband, distributing the church property to the majority of members who wished to af­filiate with the Iowa Synod.  The new trustees took title to the property in the name of the Iowa Ev. Lutheran St. John’s Church on 7 August 1912, although the legal description of the property would later prove to be inaccurate.  Pastor Alfred C. Fleischman wrote a new constitution that the congregation adopted on 25 August 1912.  In September 1912 the congregation was officially ac­cepted into the Iowa Synod.  Pastors from Christ Lutheran Church in Stover supplied the church until the congregation legally disbanded and some of its members joined Christ Lutheran on 7 April 1946.  The property, except for the cemetery, had been sold on 24 October 1944.  On 26 May 1960 the cemetery, which is known as St. John’s of Boeschenville, became the property of Christ Lutheran Church of Stover.  The congregation’s records were transferred to Christ Lutheran in Stover when it disbanded.

 

[Revised 2004]

 

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