CONGREGATIONAL
HISTORY
From 1900 to 1912 Immanuel Lutheran Church was again an independent Lutheran congregation, although it had a definite lean toward membership in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The building itself sat four miles east of the frontier town of Shobonier, the first town in Fayette County. The land it sat upon had been railroad land purchased by Mr. Friedrich Emel and later resold to the congregation for $36.00 per acre. Two acres had originally been purchased. In December 1879 Mr. Emel generously donated an additional four acres upon which to build a parsonage.
The church sat at a crossroads, on the northwest corner, facing south. Across the rough dirt road to the east sat a store owned and operated by Gottfried Metzger. South a mile sat another store owned and operated by Mr. Schaefer, beside which sat a little one-room school, originally supported by the St. Paul community School District.
In times past, before road delivery of mail, people traveled by foot, wagon, or horseback to collect their mail at the post office in Shobonier. It was not an easy journey. The trip itself took the better part of a day. It therefore was not unusual to take the entire family at times and spend some time in one of the town’s four general stores, two blacksmith shops, town barber, stockyards, or train depot. On Saturday afternoons one could even listen to the town band, have some homemade ice-cream, and do a little socializing.
Still
it was a hard trip to make. So the
community spoke to Gottfried Metzger who, on January 13, 1898, allowed a little
post office to be placed in the back corner of his store. Now each day a man from Shobonier would
deliver the mail to the post office in the quaint little German community four
miles east of town.
The post office had been there about two years when the new Pastor of the little German Lutheran church arrived. The man's name was Pastor Suhren. He was a man who had grown up in Augsburg, Germany, and was not long in America.
As was the custom in those days, a lot of discussions took place around the pickle barrel and the potbelly stove. One morning as Gottfried Metzger and Pastor Suhren were visiting, the man came to deliver the mail. The discussion turned to the little post office. Yes, this little post office was a fine thing to have, but shouldn't the community choose a name for itself so that people might better address their mail? No one knew what to call this little settlement.
Linda Wasmuth, one of our members and the daughter of Gottfried Metzger, remembered being present for this discussion. As she recalls it, among those present, it was Pastor Suhren who suggested, "Why not call it Augsburg?"
The name stuck and so it is today that the name Augsburg, given to this little German settlement 101 years ago, remains to this day. No more fitting name could have been chosen. For not only is it the name of our one time Pastor's hometown in Germany, but it is also a name which identifies the faith of those who worship here. It was in Augsburg, Germany, that the great Biblical truths of justification by faith were so boldly confessed and reaffirmed by Dr. Martin Luther and his supporters at the peril of their lives in 1530. It is upon the same faith and beliefs in that Biblical standard, the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, and the symbols of the Evangelical Lutheran Church that we stand today. The