Click photo to enlarge.

By Bonny Gould

Surprise came to some local church folks just recently when the Colorado University Press of Boulder published a picture of their houses of worship in a small book entitled "White Churches of the Plains."

With a foreword by Thomas Hornsby Ferril and photographs with brief text by Robert Hickman Adams, the fly leaf features the state's oldest Lutheran church, Bethune and Burlington's own Immanuel Lutheran. In the largest picture of this edifice may also be seen in a distance of a mile north, the present brick structure now the Hope United Church of Christ. The location of these is ten and eleven miles north and one east of Bethune. Twenty Burlington families drive to Immanuel each Sunday; six families from here belong to the Hope Congregation. This 40 mile and more round trip has been made for decades by the truly spiritual sons and daughters of early day pioneers, whose homes comprise the area known as The Settlement.

THEY CAME FROM RUSSIA
History is recalled by these Settlement descendants, whose story of migration from Georgia, in Southern Russia to Scotland, S. D. where they stayed for five years before starting the Twentieth Century as homesteaders in the 10-to-18 mile area northeast of Burlington, is one of the most absorbing and heroic tales of any people. Surviving drouth, hail and dust bowl they can well feel that God championed their struggle.

This year 64 families, with 250 persons baptized and 172 confirmed, make up the thriving and intensely involved membership of Immanuel, reports William Bud Stolz, Burlington postal employee, who found a newspaper advertisement about the book. Upon ordering and receiving his copy he was amazed that It featured the place where he as well as his family and relatives were baptized and confirmed; where he and his wife were married and where all maintain almost perfect lifetime attendance. A poll of local residents fails to turn up anyone who had a knowledge of any such church photographic work being done here. The present pastor is Rev. Earl Martell, the most recent of a long series of dedicated men who had been in the pulpit since the spring of 1890 when adobe homes of the settlers became too small for church services.

ROCK CHURCH 80 YEARS AGO
It was decided then that a rock church, 24 by 40 by 10 feet would be constructed. Each married man was required to get eight loads of rock, and each single man had to get four loads. Labor was donated and this stone church dedicated the following year. It stood until 1920 when, during the pastorate of the Rev. 0. Kloeckner, the present largest of plains churches, white frame with a lovely and graceful bell tower was erected.

Maintenance has always been scrupulously performed, and at the time the book picture was taken it shows a woodpecker had knocked a hole in the extreme near the cross. This, together with a round window in the belfry out in the picture, was repaired, as have been all weathering defects on the gospel homes for the past 81 years. These and other matters are looked after by the church board, which this year is composed of Albert Amman, president, Milbert Berringer, vice-president, Philip Stolz and Jim Hasart, trustees, Carl Adolf, Jr., treasurer and Edgar Stahlecker, secretary.

FAMILY HISTORY PARALLELS CHURCH
ImmanuelLutheran's story just about parallels that of one of Burlington's leading citizens, A. W. Adolf of 463 Cherry St. This well-known resident was the first child born into the congregation. His brother, Daniel Adolf, age 7, who died of diphtheria, was the first buried in the little cemetery back of the church yard. In 1912, A. W. and his wife, the former Mary Weisshaar, were married in the church.

MINISTRY INTEREST GENERATED
Among the pastors that have come out of Immanuel will be Gregory, the Adolf's grandson who has four years completed of the long, intensive six year training necessary for Lutheran prelates. Gregory is the son of, Art Adolf of Phoenix, Ariz. An uncle of Bud Stolz, Rev. Ernest Stolz is pastor of a Denver Church. Bud's brother, Rev. Henry Stolz, preaches in Aberdeen, S. D. Rev. Ivan Amman, who has completed a term as missionary in New Guinea, is now serving two Nebraska flocks. Ivan is the son of Albert Amman of Bethune, Henry of Mrs. Bernice Stolz of Burlington. Among the pastors serving the Immanuel call, the longest term was by the Rev. H. L. Wcelber, now of Loveland - 1930 to 1947, followed by the Rev. Lester Johnson who was here the next seven years. The late A. F. Boese and earlier Rev. G. Adolf and R. Ackerman are among notable ones.

ANOTHER CHURCH FOUNDED
Back in the year 1911 a number of Congregationalists moved into the territory, and so, without animosity nor dissentation [sic] these and some of the former Immanuel Lutherans decided to make a church of their own. Therefore they erected a 36 by 58 foot building and began to hold services as the Hope Congregational. Pioneers in this were John Dobler, Jake Schaal and Gottlieb Gramm. In 1928 the present handsome brick building was built by the late J. A. Haughey.

Just this past summer, historian Albert Strobel points out, a fine addition of a new Sunday school room and an inside entrance to the basement were constructed. With the closing last fall of the Bethune town Methodist church, formerly Evangelical United Brethren, four families have begun to drive out to Hope, which has been known by the United Church of Christ name since the national merger in 1965 with Congregationalists.

Hope's membership of 55 will be augmented by 15 more Palm Sunday, by which time it is anticipated that a minister will have been engaged. Their former preacher, Rev. Harvey Griffith, left in December and since then supply pastors intersperced [sic] with services by the deacons has kept up the interest. The deacons are Emil Strobel, Lloyd Gramm and Ted Schaal. Hope trustees are William Schlichnemayer, Mervin Corliss and Ernie Langendoerfer.  The newly elected education committee is composed of Roland and Art Strobel and Mrs. Esther Corliss.

Out of the "Brick church" inspiration have also come men who have chosen to make the ministry their way of life. Rev. Theordore Strobel, a brother of Albert and Emil, has just retired and lives in Portland, Ore. Rev. Herbert Schaal, a son of the Jake Schaals, is a missionary now in Argentina. John Dobler's son, Rev. Walter Dobler is serving a church in Kansas City and a Settlement daughter, Minnie Statz [Stutz], is married to a Lincoln, Neb., preacher.

Musicians of note have also derived from these two high plains church groups. The Lutherans bought their first organ in 1913.

OTHER CHURCHES PICTURED
In addition to these two churches, pictures were taken of the Evangelical United Brethern and Seventh Day Adventist of Stratton built in 1908 and 1916, respectively according to captions and the Seibert Evangelical church built in 1913.

THURMAN'S TWO DISASTER CHURCHES
Thurman's church of circa 1915 built to replace one burned in a prairie fire, stands in spite of a devastating tornado which killed 11 people nearby in the early 1920's.

Adam's book does not state this north of Flagler denomination, but old  timers here remember it is now Mennonite. They bring to mind the tragic story of how the tornado came along one summer Sunday as all the congregation had gathered at the home of the minister, Rev. Kuhn for a basket dinner. The menfolk had gone about 100 feet from the house to the garage to admire the preacher's new flivver. The women and some children were in the house cleaning up after the dinner when out of the blue the cyclone swept down from the southwest, missing the garage, but lifting up the house with all its occupants and slamming it down some distance away. Many were injured, the eleven losing their lives. The minister's wife and also his two daughters were among the victims. One of the daughters was holding a baby which was uninjured. The windmill and all outbuildings were strewn along the flat countryside, which was populated by the pastor's chickens running naked since the wind blast had taken off their feathers. At the mass funeral the caskets stood outside the church and the bodies are in the little cemetery where the church used to stand before it was moved to the present site near Thurman post office.

According to Mrs. M. E. Ferguson of Burlington, formerly Faye Zook-Pangborn, mother of Burlington pharmacist William Pangborn, Thurman first had a church before the turn of the century. Its Amish congregation sat for services with no singing nor music of any kind with a division down the center - men on one side, women on the other. Born in the area, she was baptized in this white frame meetinghouse which was later consumed in a devastating prairie fire. The wind fanned blaze swept over the hill from the northeast in about the year 1914, narrowly missing the Pangborn and Zook farms. Tongues of flame flared skyward for miles, fed by the "Go-Back" bushy grass, with scarcely a homesteader left in the area to get barrels of water and gunny sacks on a wagon to fight the fire. Go-back grass resulted when land was given up after sod had been broken and hard-pressed settlers fled elsewhere to make a living.

MANY CHURCHES IN RUIN
"These little white churches stand for something powerful and luminous in the westering of American life which excites spiritual energies," Thomas Ferril states, continuing: "Sad and wicked to me is this ruthless bulldozing into oblivion of so much of America's architectural past - the cities are hardest hit, but the rural. communities are not spared. What remains of the little white churches may soon be gone."

The Methodists, according to the photographer-writer Adams, called these little temples "Buffalo Grass Charges." From the day of their dedication he points out they became the center of not only the religious but social life of 'the members.

"Most of the small prairie communities - their churches included, are dying. In part it is the problem of recurring drought and more lethal, the decline of small farms in favor of highly mechanized large scale efforts - there is no longer enough income to support a minister -- then the church doors no longer are opened, and if the building is old, mutilation is then all but certain."

IMMANUEL; HOPE EXCEPTIONS
The contrast of the above gloomy words to the lusty and healthy condition of this region's two churches may not have been realized by the book's author. These vital chapels of worship stand in a rich, irrigated area. Fine quality fat livestock graze contentedly near them. They remain a source of pride and devout religious exultation to the second and third generation children of those remarkable immigrants who came to Colorado - with a prayer - to make their fortune in Kit Carson County!