by Theophil Stroeker RETURN to Family Page
Remembering Mother and Father
Some time in the late summer of 1857, a family moved to a farm in the western part of St. Charles County, Mo. The father Christian Friedrich Stoerker, was 45 years old; the mother, Clara Marie (nee Poesser or Poehse) was 41. There was a boy, Conrad Friedrich Stoerker 7 years of age. Up to this time we have established that there was one girl, older than the boy, ant two girls younger. A fifth child, a girl, was born in 1860, in St. Charles County. This information is probably correct, but we do not know whether it is complete.
The family had started from Buer, near Melle, Province Hannover, in Germany, in July of that year. How they crossed sea and land, the experiences along the way, is a story buried in the past. So far the county records have not revealed that Christian Friedrich Stoerker ever was the owner of any St. Charles County land. He may have been a tenant farmer.
The family lived a few miles from the Cappeln Church, where they worshiped on Sunday mornings and the children went to instruction on Sunday afternoon. If in the course of the week they had memorized 13 passages (verses) of scripture, there was some kind of recognition. After instruction, when they would return to the farm, the family circle would listen to a sermon, read by the head of the household from a large book brought from Germany and bound in pig-skin.
The six year old boy was FATHER, His boyhood memories included at times meeting a man who was an extensive landowner, gathering certain weeds along the country road. These weeds were cooked into a solution which was put into bottles. This was the overall medicine for any illness which would come to his slaves. During the civil war days horses disappeared from barns and the raw edge of things sometimes showed up in the rural areas. The head of the family was absent for a time, helping to guard a bridge. Eleven years after they had crossed land and sea, the father of the family, Christian Friederich Stoerker, died. His grave is still marked on the Cappeln cemetery, not far from an area where bodies were buried so fast that identification of the graves did not take place. That was in the cholera epidemic of 1830.
Father was now seventeen and devoted the next three years helping his widowed mother and his sisters. He had attended the parochial school and had been confirmed by Pastor Philip F. Meusch, who signed the certificate “Your teacher and spiritual adviser” (in German “Lehrer und Seelsorger”). This was March 25, 1866 in the then new church building, which is still in use.
In 1871 he entered the Seminary of the German Evangelical Synod of the West, which was called Missouri Valley College. In a way life was undisturbed in the primitive peaceful rural atmosphere, but at the same time it was a struggle for survival for faculty and students. The students freely offered their assistance in the economy of the household. Father, the farm boy, knew how to kill and process beef. With others this knowledge and skill became his contribution. He would be sent to the surrounding farms with a halter to bring home purchased or donated animals. Of course he walked. From him we also know that the first coal oil lamp was installed in the main lecture room after he became a student, and those permitted to use the lecture room in place of their often poorly lighted quarters.
The students were urged to develop their voices. A high limestone ridge overlooked the valley. The students stood on this ledge and practiced throwing their voices across the valley. They waited for the echo. (It may have been in 1930 that I stood on this ledge with an aged minister, Dr. Samuel Kruse, who could still throw his voice across the valley. And I heard the echo.) This place was known as “Pulpit Rock”. This was before the sound amplification. Bread was baked in a hill-side oven. The well that supplied water for all purposes was called “Siloah”. The first mail deliveries (far from daily) came via Femme Osage. But there were the days when a student would saddle a white horse (called the “Seminar Schimmel”) ride it to the Missouri River, tie it to a sapling, get into a little boat (skiff) row to Washington on the other side of the river, and bring home the mail. That was once a week.
On July 5, 1874, a class of 17 seminarians, including C.F. Stoerker, was ordained as a group in St. Peter’s Chirch (still the same building) Washington, Missouri. Graduations from the Seminary and ordination were seemingly one ritus in those days. You studied there to be a minister of the church. The “Friedensbote” of that your reports this service in detail, but does not give names of those that were ordained.
Pastor Philip Meusch who had confirmed father in Cappeln, was now in Carlinville, Illinois. Father always spoke very affectionately of Meusch. After ordination he was assigned to be vicar under Meusch, probably until Meusch left to become Inspector (later this changed to Director and still later to President) of the Proseminar (Now Elmhurst College.)
In March 1875 father was assigned an interim pastorate in Old Monroe, Mo., St. Paul’s Church. He was to be in Old Monroe five months and stay with the members, since he was unmarried. The board member who received him took him to a farm, where they met the owner, to whom the board member said “Ick bring di his den Pastur”. (I bring you the Pastor). The man replied “Den wu’lln wie gar nik hobben”. (Him-we do not want at all). They thought a minister could only understand High German. Never-the-less, father was received into the home. Later that day he found the children of the family playing around the pump. He immediately got acquainted with them by talking to them in their father’s “Platt-deutsch”, to the dismay of the farmer who came upon the scene and discovered that the minister could speak in his provincial tongue.