This text was copied from the 1975 narrative written for the church pictoral directory using Optical Character Recognition scanning. Nothing has been added /removed/ changed from the original text. Formatting was added to improve readibilty.

A LOST HISTORY DISCOVERED

1975 was to have been St. Mark's Lutheran Church's 50th Anniversary year. It should have been because the congregation celebrated a 25th Anniversary in 1950. The founding of the congregation had been dated at 1925, and several living charter members attested to the congregation's beginnings as of that year.

All that changed when Pastor Zersen found old records and minutes written in German dating back much earlier. Then there was the Constitution dating from 1907 found when the cornerstone of the old St. Mark's church was opened in 1973. With the help of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Weber of St. Mark's, further research was done on old records at Batavia, West Chicago, and in the District and Synodical offices - all of which were written in German, the "official" language in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod until the mid '20s.

The history which was uncovered showed that a ministry was performed to German speaking Lutherans in St. Charles dating back to 1878, first by Trinity, West Chicago, and then by Immanuel, Batavia. In the early 1900s, the German speaking Lutherans in St. Charles acquired the status of a "preaching station" in which all the official acts of a congregation were carried on. By 1907, at the instigation of the Heinz brothers of St. Charles, The German Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Mark was formally established in the home of Emil Heinz, 306 S. 10th Ave., St. Charles. The new congregation resolved to pay Pastor Miessler of Batavia $10 a month plus $5 annual car allowance for bi-weekly services.

The congregation, which included relatives of present members Mrs. Dora Johnson and Mrs. Erma Eichman, quickly outgrew its meeting place, and began to hold services in the rented facilities of Bethlehem Lutheran Church (which conducted its own services in Swedish). Every other Sunday the members gathered at 3:30 P.M. to listen to sermons in German and in English, to sing God's praises (if the visiting preacher could play the organ), and to bring their children for baptism (The baptismal bowl which the members brought along with them is still in the posession of St. Charles' resident, Mrs. Charles Dau).

Pastor Herman Harms (in his late 80s and living in Waukegan) explains that from 1911 to 1919 he walked every other Sunday afternoon from his parsonage in Batavia to conduct the services. Confirmation classes were conducted in the homes of members. On a regular basis, he also performed a ministry to The St. Charles School for Boys. Toward the end of his pastorate, St. Charles confirmation students attended classes conducted in German in Batavia, but because of the tension created by the First World war, the school had to close (German was substituted with French in the St. Charles High School at this same time).

During all these years, records of membership, baptisms, weddings, communions and funerals were submitted to the Synod (even though the congregation was not formally a member until 1936). After 1919 , however, the reports become lost in sketchy records.

It is known that as late as 1923, Pastor Molthan from Batavia was offering some service to the congregation. It seems that the congregation, lacking a building of its own, grew dormant. Many of the members joined Bethlehem Lutheran Church since they now had services and confirmation classes in English. In 1924, the Mission Board of the Northern Illinois District asked a retired pastor from Elgin, the Rev. H.W. Rabe, to canvass St. Charles. In November of that same year, he began holding services in a Legion Hall. The assembled group reorganized itself as a congregation using the old name St. Mark's, and the original Constitution from 1907. Some of the names of the officers of the newly constituted congregation, names like Peters, Ronzheimer, Storm, Nagel and Dau, reflected the carryover in membership from the old congregation to the new.

By March of 1925, the Mission Board loaned the congregation $2400 to build a prefabricated building on Fourth and Walnut. From that point until the present, the congregation has continued to grow, now numbering over 800 baptized members. The more recent history of the congregation has already been written, but it seemed appropriate to record this surprisingly resurrected past, not only for the purpose of honoring it, but also for the purpose of more accurately dating the congregation's origin from January 27, 1907, in order to prepare it for a 70th Anniversary celebration in 1977.