Otto Hermann Walther (1809 - 1841)

Born 1809 in Saxony, Germany

Ancestors

Died 1841 at about age 32 in United States

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Biography

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther

C.F.W. Walther was born 25 October 1811 in Langenchursdorf, Kingdom of Saxony, as the eighth child (of twelve) to Pastor Gottlob Heinrich Walther and his wife Johanna Wilhelmina Zschenderlein. Only six of their twelve children lived to adulthood. Of these six Walther children, Otto Hermann (1809 - 1841) and C.F.W. followed their father's footsteps into the ministry; the oldest sister, Theresa Wilhelmina (1802 - 1832), married a teacher named Schubert. After her death in 1832 Schubert married her younger sister Marianne Louise (1810 - 1834). Another sister, Augusta Constantine (1803 - 1881), married a sexton named Engel. Henrietta Juliane (1804- 1868) married Pastor Adolf Wilhelmi, and the youngest Walther daughter, Amalia Ernestine (1815 - 1842), married Pastor E.G.W. Keyl.

Ferdinand, as he was called by his family, was first educated by his father. At the age of eight he attended school in Hohenstein for two years. He then entered Latein Schule (Latin school, a formal education on a college track from which a student graduates at a level comparable with today's junior college) in Schneeberg, from which he graduated in September 1829. One month later he enrolled in the University of Leipzig to begin his study of theology and joined his older brother Otto Hermann, who was enrolled in the same university.

On 15 January 1837 he was ordained in Bräunsdorf in the church "Zum Guten Hirten," where he was the sole pastor and taught religion classes in the local school as part of his pastoral duties. During his university time as well as during his time in the ministry, Walther expdrienced difficulties with the rationalistic government of the Kingdom of Saxony. He felt he could not carry out his duties as a Lutheran pastor in accordance with the confessional writings of the Lutheran Church as he had vowed at his ordination. Ferdinand and his brother Otto Hermann became acquainted with Pastor Martin Stephan of Dresden and eventually followed Stephan's call to the liberation of orthodox Lutheranism in the United States of America.

In November 1838 Walther left his homeland on the ship Johann Georg (one of five ships in the Stephan group to sail for America). He arrived on 5 January 1839 in New Orleans. Approximately 800 Saxon immigrants in the group settled either in St. Louis or to the south along the Mississippi River in Perry County, Mo.

Sources

• http://www.lutheranhistory.org/collections/fa/m-0004.htm