Book Review: Lutheran Makers of America

Title: Lutheran Makers of America

Author: Ira Oliver Nothstein

Date: 1930

Publisher: United Lutheran Publication House

ISBN: none

Length: 223 pages plus index and illustrations

Illustrations: many sepia-tone plates on glossy paper

Quote: “It has been an inspiration and a delight to the writer to gather...[Brief Sketches of 68 Notable Early Americans]...and these sketches are sent forth in the hope that they may bring equal inspiration and delight to many others.”

Although the copy I received owes its good condition to having been one of those “dry old reference books” that spend long tranquil lives in church libraries, as a fifty-year-old history buff I did find it a source of inspiration and delight. (It's not about Lutheran beliefs; it's about early immigrants to the United States who happened to belong to Lutheran churches, some of whom are remembered mainly as churchmen, some of whom are not.)

It's meant to be accurate rather than exciting, inclusive rather than detailed. In many cases, what's known about even the most “notable” immigrants into a prehistoric country is raw data. In some cases, even the raw data is confusing. All a biographer can do is gather the data into one place and write, in plain prose, what can be learned from lots of crumbling lists of names and dates and an occasional letter from a mission church back to its parent denomination overseas.

Nevertheless, Nothstein's material is about as inspiring as data can be. Sixty-eight church members went to certain places, did jobs with reasonable success, and became leaders of their communities because others failed not only to do similar jobs but to survive. They got along with their neighbors (in the absence of common languages, or even languages closely related enough to allow accurate translation). They farmed (using hand tools, many of which were hand-made) or practiced medicine (ditto). They taught elementary school or Sunday School classes (with or without even one actual book for the class to share). They were pioneers.

In the mid-twentieth century when I was born, a vigorous marketing campaign was underway to help the U.K. recover from the war and, at the same time, help every child in the U.S. identify with (and buy things imported from) “Mother England.” We spoke English. Many of us had English-sounding names. We read books by British authors, listened to records of British musicians, had boots and overcoats and bicycles and sewing kits made in England if able to afford them; I know Americans for whom the fashion for all things British never passed, who still drive British cars. Because all this was meant to help rebuild bombed-out London, it was, in fairness, much less deplorable than it came to seem to those who had no English ancestors and felt left out.

But even if we had English ancestors...I did. I had more Irish ones, and even if Scotland and England can fairly be lumped together as one United Kingdom, I had other kinds of American and Western European ancestors too. My real-world family name is one of those that have been used by several unrelated families in different European countries; one of the English families that used it was rather affluent, and some of the cousins were disappointed when the actual line of descent was traced back to Germany not England. Later on a relative went to Germany and located our distant cousins there; some of them, also, have black hair and tan easily. (Those basic-human-color genes that Hitler so resented are found all over the world because they tend to be healthy genes; our ancestors had apparently been practicing intertribal marriage, while continuing to breed to type, for several hundred years.) Although one of them was Dad's direct male-line ancestor, there were only three Germans in his pedigree, along with three Cherokees, two Frenchmen, a Scot, and several Irish people; since both of my grandmothers had Irish names the majority of my known ancestors were Irish. So, I grew up amidst celebrations of everything British, lived through periods when it was fashionable to be Irish or Cherokee, and by way of relatives I've been able to participate in celebrations of several other types of ancestry...but Americans tend to associate the word “German” with either the word “Nazi” or the word “beer.” Many people, including many of those who try, cannot celebrate beer.

And yet...thousands of North Americans had German ancestors. Recent waves of interest in the Amish may be an effort to reconnect with this submerged German-ness. In Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania, Germans were a majority. There was serious debate whether, if the American Colonies became a nation, that nation's official language would be English or German.

So what Nothstein offers in this little book is a group portrait of the “mainstream,” non-Amish, non-Mennonite Germans. Nothstein also explains why many of them, as the Amish say, went englisch even to the extent of “translating” their family names. If the Lutheran pioneer families' names were still spelled the German, Swedish, Dutch, or Danish way in 1776, changing to English spelling in 1776 kept the men who used those names from being mistaken for Hessian mercenary deserters and shot. Names like Nichols and Martin needed no change, and names like Schmidt and Braun were likely to have been changed already; names like Smith, Brown, Miller, and Johnson are common in the U.K. but much more common in the U.S. because, in the U.S., they may also be of German origin.

Most of the “noteworthy” individuals are men, although the data suggest that some of the women in their families must have been equally noteworthy. In the one chapter devoted to the courage of two children who preserved their German language and songs after years of “being Indians” (they, too, must have had dark complexions), Nothstein admits some question whether the parents belonged to a Lutheran church. Only one adult woman (Sarah Austin) gets a chapter to herself. (Austin or her sewing club may have been the first to complete a newly designed U.S. flag; Nothstein discusses the difficulty of determining whether Austin beat Betsy Ross's time.) Other women's achievements were documented, and are discussed, as notes on the records of their husbands and fathers.

But they were tough as nails, anyway, and their achievements can be celebrated without beer. Johan Campanius Holm (usually called Campanius) not only learned a Native American language but translated a book into it; a Lutheran Catechism is a book of respectable size. Peter Zenger upheld the ideal of freedom of the press. Jonas Bronck lent his family name to “The Bronx,” and the Muhlenburg family left their names to several places in Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. The pleasure of reading about Christopher Ludwig or Ludwick, whom George Washington claimed as a friend, was new to me and I won't spoil it for other readers.

After one reading Lutheran Makers of America will be shelved or donated to a church as a reference work; it's a fine candidate for Project Gutenberg, but do give it that one reading. If you have any German ancestors, you'll feel their DNA inside you going “Ja, ja! Danke schoen!”. Modest though cultural influences made the Lutheran pioneers, they did give North America a traditional celebration (of flowers) for which beer is optional.

Lutheran Makers of America is still relatively affordable, as vintage books go. To buy it here, send $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment, to the appropriate address (directly to P.O. Box 322, or to the Paypal address you get by e-mailing salolianigodagewi @ yahoo. At least four books of this size will fit comfortably into one package and you can probably squeeze in a few thin paperbacks for the same $5 shipping charge.