“When [Rev. Franz Julius] Biltz accepted the call to
Concordia, he perhaps little realized what great dangers he would encounter as
pastor of the congregation,” wrote Lutheran historian August R. Suelflow. Rev. Biltz was installed April 29, 1860,
nearly a year before the Confederate troops attacked Fort Sumter. In October 1860, the new pastor attended the
convention of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Illinois and other
States in 1860. He reported to the
convention that the members of the congregation at that time totaled 325 souls
with 86 students in the parish school.
The relative peace of life in the new parish would be short lived as the
Civil War would tear the nation in two and the conflict reach as far as the
prairie of Western Missouri.
The conflict spread to Lafayette County already by the
summer of 1861. William Arndt, who
served as professor at St. Paul’s College in Concordia from 1912-1921, wrote of
Biltz, “The Civil War had been casting its shadows before it in Western
Missouri and Eastern Kansas; but that his own little flock of honest,
hard-working, peace-loving German immigrants would become implicated in such
bloody affairs undoubtedly must have seemed to him a very remote possibility,
if it entered his mind at all.” According to historian Robert Frizell, Biltz
would be interrogated by Colonel Edwin Price, son of Missouri State Guard commander
and former governor, General Sterling Price.
While assurances were made to Biltz that the German community would be
left out of the conflict, the rebel troops claimed guns, horses, and other
goods from the residents of the Cook’s Store area (one of the early names for
the community).
The most personal brush with the conflict for Biltz would
come the following year. On October 5,
1862, Pastor Biltz went to the home of Julius Vogt to baptize newborn twin sons. As Biltz joined the family and guests for a
celebration meal after the baptisms, armed men took descended upon the
gathering. They would take Biltz and
others prisoners, killing Heinrich Brockhoff and Heinrich Hartmann. The band of “Bushwhackers” would wound a
number of men, but eventually released Biltz and several others. Biltz, would in turn, conduct the funerals of
the men killed the very next day.
In the summer of 1863, four young men (Conrad Bruns, Louis
Fiene, Dietrich Karsten, and William Scharnhorst) from the congregation had
been killed by guerilla troops. As the
congregation gathered in the old brick church on the site of the St. Paul’s
cemetery for the funeral, reports reached the assembled of approaching troops. Arndt recounts the chaos that ensued, noting
that Biltz remained in the pulpit until the elders pleaded with him to come
down. Once the congregation learned that
the troops were approaching were Union soldiers, the funeral continued. The history of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church notes
that Pastor Biltz prayed, “God have mercy on our congregation and on our
land.”
The most deadly conflict with the Bushwhackers would come
late in the war, in October 1864. News
reached the citizens of the community that the guerillas were once again in the
area. Approximately 100 men gathered at
St. Paul’s to set out to meet the rebel troops.
Biltz was originally with the group that was setting out on horseback,
but the tall man was encouraged to go with the other group on foot. The group on horseback headed East while the
group on foot went northeast. The group
on horseback encountered a larger group of the guerillas near Emma and
twenty-four local men were killed, thirteen from St. Paul’s. The second group, that included Biltz, met no
enemy troops and returned safely home to the sad news of the deaths of so
many. Once again, Biltz would be called
on to bring the comfort of God’s Word for a congregation and community saddened
by grief and tragedy.
In 2009, Biltz’s diaries were discovered in a collection of
items from his grandson, Rev. Theodore Walther at Concordia Historical
Institute (CHI) in St. Louis. His
diaries note significant milestones during the Civil War era such as comments
about specific battles and the assassination of President Lincoln, in addition
to his notes about community and parish life.
The diaries were featured in an exhibit at the CHI Museum housed at the
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod International Center.
The days of the Civil War would eventually come to a close
and the congregation and community would grow and thrive during the rest of the
19th Century. Such growth
continued even during the war as the congregation grew to 576 members and with
125 students in the school. William
Arndt summarizes the ministry of Biltz during these treacherous times, writing,
“It was in times like these that the faith of the founders and first members of
our Synod was tested. Pastor Biltz, in
spite of an alluring call into safe territory, remained with his little flock
in the war-torn area, conceiving it to be his duty no to forsake it in these days of temptation and
sorrow. His heroic devotion to duty
constitutes one of the fine pages in the early history of our church-body. It was but natural that soon the Western
District looked upon him as one of its leaders and after the lapse of several
years elected him as its President, a position which he occupied with honor for
seventeen years.”
Rev. Dr. Lee
Hagan
A thorough treatment of the history of the German immigrants
who founded the community of Concordia, including the local skirmishes with the
Bushwhackers is Robert Frizzell’s book Independent
Immigrants: A Settlement of Hannoverian Germans in Western Missouri,
published by University of Missouri Press.
Frizell will speak at St. Paul’s on June 15 in the afternoon as part of
the congregation’s 175th Anniversary.
An article about the discovery of the Biltz diaries was
featured in Lutheran Witness in June
2009. http://blogs.lcms.org/2009/uncovering-history-6-2009.
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