Part I, Chapter XI — Dr. Heyer a Home Missionary in Minnesota
In Father Heyer we have an incarnation of the inner unity of Home and Foreign Missions. When he was not a foreign missionary he was a home missionary. He returned from India and the work of converting heathen to an out- lying, newly settled district in the United States to gather scattered and neglected members of the Church and organize them into congregations; and he was as successful in the one as in the other sphere of activity.
After his second return from India, Heyer visited his children and grandchildren in Somerset, Pa., and waited for the hand of God to direct him to some field of labor in the United States. He had not long to wait. Minnesota was then a newly settled territory to which many Germans and Scandinavians were migrating. The far- seeing eye of the Rev. Wilham A. Passavant, D.D. observed this migration, and his sensitive ear caught the sound of the call of his brethren according to the faith to help them pre- serve and build up the Church of their fathers on the frontiers. At the Monday afternoon session of the East Pennsylvania Synod in St. John's Church, Lancaster, Pa., October 5, 1857, Dr. Passavant, after having presented the Orphans' Home cause, added a plea for the scattered Lutherans of Minnesota. He was a mighty advocate of any cause he espoused. The synod enthusiastically passed the following resolution: "Re- solved, That five hundred dollars be appropriated to the support of an EngUsh Lutheran mission in St. Paul, Minn., and that the Executive Committee of the Central Home Missionary Society of the General Synod endeavor to secure a suitable man for this important post." Dr. Passavant proposed the name of Dr. Heyer, whom the synod at once elected. The Central Home Missionary' Society approved
DR. HEYER A HOME MISSIONARY IN MINNESOTA II5 the action of the synod and commissioned Heyer in November of that year to go to St. Paul, reorganize the church of the Holy Trinity in that town and do such other mission work as opportunity offered.^
Heyer reached St. Paul on November i6, 1857, and threw himself with all his vigor into the work. Before the close of the year he had gathered seventy communicants, Germans and Swedes, baptized eight children and organized a class of catechumens, six of whom he instructed in German and three in English. In January, 1858, a site for the church was purchased opposite the capitol building for $1500, Heyer making himself personally responsible for the payment of two-thirds of the purchase price. Another lot, which ex-Governor Ramsay had donated in 1855, was sold, and the proceeds were devoted to the building of the basement of the church, where the first service was held on October 17, 1858.
While thus engaged in St. Paul, Heyer also began mission work elsewhere, preaching at Red Wing, Shakopee, Jordan City and a number of towns in Carver County; but Holy Trinity, St. Paul, demanded the bulk of his effort. As many as three hundred attended the service in that church on Sunday, April 24, 1859; and the report of the first year's work showed 44 baptisms, 16 coaflrmations and 109 commu- nicants. The original intention of establishing an Enghsh congregation, however, had to be abandoned, because most of those who were gathered were Germans and preferred to be ministered to in their mother-tongue. The Swedes were cared for by the Rev. Mr. Carlsson and established a small congregation in 1858. Nevertheless, Heyer occasionally preached an English sermon, "to prepare the way for some younger brother to come West and estabhsh an English Lutheran church in St. Paul."
A number of other Lutheran ministers had started mis- sions in other towns in Minnesota, and it was decided that the formation of a synod would be advisable. How small ' In 1855 Rev. F. W. Wier had begun the establishment of a congregation in St. Paul with the aid of Senator Alexander Ramsay, ex-govemor of Minnesota.
Il6 AMERICAN EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN MISSIONS IN INDIA was that beginning! Three Lutheran missionaries met on July I, 1859, in Holy Trinity Church, St. Paul, and organized by electing Heyer president, and Rev. W. Thomson of Owatonna, secretary. The third man was Rev. M. Mallinson of Minneiska.
Despite the success of Heyer in St. Paul, the Central Home Missionary Society of the General Synod, because of financial difficulty, threatened to withdraw its support. Then Dr. Passavant personally pledged $300 toward Heyer's salary and so insured the continuation of the work, which prospered and grew, insomuch that at the close of the second year Heyer reported 49 baptisms, 11 confirmed, 35 received otherwise, 130 communed and 50 Sunday school pupils.
The second meeting of the Minnesota Synod in Holy Trinity Church, St. Paul, July 6, i860, enrolled six clerical delegates, the three additional ones being Rev. F. W. Wier, St. Paul, Rev. A. Brandt, Frank Hill, and Rev. Charles Yough, New Oregon. Heyer, though absent, was re-elected president. He had gone East on a tour to collect funds for the completion of his church. Returning in December, i860, with about $1200, he was able to finish the building, which was consecrated in October, 1861.
After Heyer had installed Rev. G. Fachtmann, his suc- cessor, as pastor of Holy Trinity, St. Paul, on Sunday, July 13, 1862, he became the travelling missionary of the Pennsylvania Ministerium in Minnesota, with headquarters at Red Wing. Starting westward from there on September nth, riding in a prairie wagon drawn by a blind horse, with supplies for a long journey and a spirit lamp on which to cook his food, going alone through a region which had but recently been the scene of an outbreak of Sioux Indians, he travelled to the extreme southeastern corner of the state and back again to Red Wing.^ ^ He stopped at Northfield, where in the home of Mr. Ludwig Albrecht he conducted a service attended by thirty Germans; at East Prairie, where Rev. S. Wier was located; Warsaw, then a new settlement of less than twenty houses, preaching in English; Owatonna, Rev. W. Thomson, pastor loci; Marion, where the first Lutheran Church in Olmstead County was established by Rev. Mr. Mallinson; Hamilton, where a Sunday service was held by Heyer in a country schoolhouse about four miles from the town; Brownsville, which he reached on October 2d, and where on the following Sunday he held a service in
DR. HEYER A HOME MISSIONARY IN MINNESOTA II7
In December, 1862, Heyer went to Stillwater, Minn., and organized St. John's Church, confirming ten catechumens and administering the Lord's Supper to fifty-six communicants. He left again in the month of February following, and started from Red Wing on another long tour. The winter was an unusually severe one. The lakes and streams were frozen over. The snow was deep. On the way to Centreville he lost the trail and found it again with great difficulty; and, again, near Crow River he lost his way in the forests and had to remain out all night. He went as far as Pelican Lake. On his return, ten miles from Hastings, he fell into the water and barely escaped death by drowning.
St. John's, Stillwater, made rapid progress. In May, 1863, it entertained the Minnesota Synod, and in August that year it called a pastor, the Rev. F. W. Hoffmann. Minnesota had become an important and very promising home mission field of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, which had four home missionaries at work there under the general supervision of Heyer.
In 1864 Heyer spent several months in Somerset, Pa., where in May of that year he organized a German congrega- tion, purchased an old church property and ministered for a while to the twenty or more German families who joined in the movement. He served them without charge. Returning to Minnesota he concentrated his efforts on the establishment of a congregation at New Ulm, where a brick church was built and consecrated on June 17, 1866. After the Rev. Mr. Papp became the regular pastor of this flourishing congregation, Heyer planned to go to St. Anthony; but an attack of rheumatism forced him to relinquish his purpose, and he spent the winter of 1866-67 in Somerset, Pa. Then an opportunity presented itself for a return a schoolhouse; Crooked Creek, where he left his prairie wagon, walking back to Brownsville to take a boat to La Crescent; La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he preached to the congregation already established there on the same Sunday that the Rev. Mr. Stark, afterward pastor, preached a trial sermon; back to Browns- ville by boat, where he administered the Lord's Supper to thirty-eight communicants and baptized five infants, one of whom was brought fourteen miles; and then through Caledonia, Preston, Chatfield, Rochester, Greenwood, Minneiska and Wabashaw to Red Wing.
Il8 AMERICAN EVANGELICAL LUTHEEAN MISSIONS IN INDIA to the less strenuous life of a settled pastorate, when, in March, 1869, the congregation in Cumberland, Md., grate- fully remembering the service he had rendered it forty-five years before, extended a call to him. But Heyer preferred to remain the Pennsylvania Ministerium's travelling missionary for Minnesota and resumed his labors in that field. The Minnesota Synod had re-elected him president, in 1867, for another term of two years, and thus he held this ofiice with- out interruption for ten years. During this period he saw the synod grow from three to twenty-six clerical delegates.