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First classes October 1846
The school: The pastor shortage Wyneken advertised to Germany was answered in part by training men on the ground. Wilhelm Löhe in Bavaria gathered eleven theological students and sent them to Fort Wayne; with three young men already being tutored by Sihler and others — F. Husmann, G. H. Jäbker and C. H. F. Frincke — they formed the first class of "The German Evangelical Lutheran Preacher's Seminary of Fort Wayne." The school held its first formal classes in October 1846, on the second floor of Pastor Sihler's parsonage next door to St. Paul's, with Sihler as its first president. At its 1848 meeting the new Missouri Synod formally received Löhe's gift of the seminary, and in 1849 a first campus was purchased — a fifteen-acre estate with a four-room brick house, the congregation of St. Paul's and its neighbours contributing most of the cost of expansion. Susanna Sihler's sewing circle, formed to mend the seminarians' clothing, is remembered by the seminary as the Synod's oldest continually operating Ladies Aid. The seminary's later wanderings and its 1976 return to Fort Wayne are told in the entry below; Wilhelm Sihler's biography is in the People record.
Sources:
- Robert E. Smith, ed., Shepherds for Christ's Sheep (CTSFW, 2017) — the eleven from Germany, the October 1846 classes in the parsonage, the 1848 synodical reception, the 1849 campus, the sewing circle.
- Rudolph F. Rehmer, "Origins of Lutheranism in the Fort Wayne Area" (1967) — the "Practical Seminary" founded 1846 under Sihler, deeded to the Synod in 1848.
- "Wilhelm Sihler," Wikipedia — Sihler's September 1846 start of the school at St. Paul's parsonage.