St. John Lutheran Church Records, Saginaw, Saginaw County, Michigan



Copyright © 1997 by Beverly Petersen. This copy contributed for use in 
the USGenWeb Archives.  

 

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How to use this book. Surnames are sometimes followed by a name in ( ). This indicates that the name was not familiar to Mrs. Boldt in its form. She added a possible modern change and may not necessarily be correct but would be that of families now in that area.
	Example: Lanklass (Langlass) - Langlass is the more common name of the 	Saginaw County area and possibly what the modern German-rooted family 	now uses.
Page numbers in the index refer to the hand written page numbers at the bottom of the page in the actual book. The original book is at St. John Lutheran Church and a photocopy of the original (German version) is at the Allen Co. Public Library, Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The index corresponds with the page numbers found on the actual book church book, not on the bottom of the pages of this book. The book was photo copied one page at a time. As a result, often a complete record would be on two consecutive pages.
	Example: Page 4 & 5 would show part of the record on page 4 (on the 	left)and page 5 would show the other part of the record (on the 	right). 
Other numbers refer to the number of the record as listed on the page. Often, numbers were missing and not in order.
+  indicates the person had died. The date is generally not shown. 
E. S. = East Saginaw.
Middle Franken was a community near Saginaw. This town does not exist today.
Translation was done was Anita (Zehnder) Boldt of Birch Run, Michigan, who is a member of St. Lorenz Church of Frankenmuth, Michigan. Without her, this project would have been impossible!
Typing and indexing was done by Beverly (Trew) Petersen of Mishawaka, Indiana whose ancestors attended St. John Lutheran Church early in its history.

Mrs. Boldt includes the following note:
Very poor Book Keeping! But...when did that Pastor find time to enter these records? No office girl. No telephone. No automobiles!
He must have been busy day and night with Church Services. Special holidays were celebrated on Easter Sunday, Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, with services every day. Christmas was the same.

He had to preach, teach, visit the sick, funerals, make many house calls, etc. He had a horse and buggy. In winter, a sled. Many of the Pastors calls came in the night and many were long trips.
Pastor Volz served 40 years. In his early days, the Pastor had to take care of his own horse, clean the barn, feed the animals and carry straw into the barn for bedding for the animals. They usually had a couple of cows, a flock of chickens and a big garden and orchard for fruit.
The Pastors wife had to help him, but usually they had a big family themselves. She usually was the President of the “Ladies Aid” (considered an honor). They would also meet at the parsonage. There was no electricity, clothes had to be washed on a scrub-board and hung outside on a clothes line in winter and summer. Just like everyone else in “The Good Old Days”.
According to his book-keeping, I found that at times he was too busy to enter the records in his books. When he finally got them, it looks as if he just put down what he remembered, that is the names, at what time and how they were spelled. He did not grow up with the members of his congregation.
No one in this day and age can imagine what it was like. Sometimes not even trails or paths through the underbrush.
Some of our old records have faded so bad and are impossible to read. But we have to thank God that they even had pencil and paper: Ink froze!




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