First of all, no joke for today!!! Now, I made two collages of Frankenmuth, or you may call them "postcards", but I'm not decided which one looks better... maybe y'all help me make up my mind! Try it at full size! A short history of Frankenmuth, MI The idea of founding Frankenmuth was first fostered due to a German missionary named Frederick Wyneken working in the states of Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. In 1840 he wrote an appeal to all the Lutherans in Germany for help, telling them of the hardships of the German pioneers in his region and of their lack of pastors, churches, and schools. This appeal struck the heart of Wilhelm Loehe, pastor of the country church in Neuendettelsau, Mittelfranken, Kingdom of Bavaria. Loehe was a popular and influential preacher in his time because of his strict adherence to church doctrines at a time when rationalism was more commonly preached. He organized a mission society, still operating today, and began training teachers and pastors for work in the United States. His idea formulated in 1844, was an experiment to send a mission congregation with a dual purpose: to give spiritual comfort to the German pioneers in the Midwest, specifically the Saginaw Valley, and to show the native Indians in the area "Wie gut und schoen es ist Jesus zu sehen" (how good and wonderful it is to see Jesus). Loehe wrote the pastor of a Swabian settlement in Michigan to recommend a site for his mission colony. He approved the location along the Cass River in Michigan, naming it "Frankenmuth". The German word "Franken" represents the Province of Franconia in the Kingdom of Bavaria, and the German word "Muth" means courage, thus the city name Frankenmuth means "courage of the Franconians". Thirteen people, mostly farmers from the area around Neuendettelsau (eight were from Rosstal) volunteered to form the colony. Loehe selected Pastor August Craemer, a graduate of Erlangen University who was, in 1844, teaching German at Oxford, England, to train to be the mission colony's pastor and leader. The colonists had meetings during the 1844-45 winter to discuss the founding of their colony and to set down their congregation's constitution. It defined the colonists' responsibilities to each other and the church, and it outlined the colony's government. Frankenmuth was to be an exclusively German-Lutheran community, and the colonists pledged to remain loyal to Germany and faithful to the German language. The emigrants departed from Nuernberg on April 5, 1845 and traveled by foot, wagons, and trains to Bremerhafen, where they bought the provisions for their voyage. On April 20 they boarded the CAROLINE, where four engaged couples in the party were married, since they hadn't been able to satisfy the strict German marriage law requirements. The trip began with a bad start, as the drunken captain steered the ship into a sand bank of the Weser River. Because of winds and storms, they had to sail around Scotland instead of through the English Channel. Their journey across the Atlantic encountered violent storms, seasickness, a nightmare collision with an English trawler, and undesirable winds which drove the ship north into icebergs and dense fog for three days. The ship was damp and overcrowded, and their food became stale. Toward the end of the journey almost everyone in the group contracted smallpox, and a child in the party died from it. They reached New York Harbor on June 8, after 50 days of sailing. To reach Michigan, they took a steamboat, a train (which collided with a coal train, giving them only slight injuries), and another steamboat. They took another steamer to Detroit and then a sailing ship on Lake Huron for a week-long trip to Bay City. From there they had to pull the ship 15 miles up the Saginaw River to Saginaw, where they stayed until their exact settlement site was chosen. They were objects of curiosity to the French and English of the city because of their Franconian dress and habits. To be continued!