St John's Lutheran Church - Eagle Lake, IL

Background Information

St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church - Eagle Lake, Beecher, Washington Township, Will County, Illinois

© copyright 1997 FEEFHS, all rights reserved

Edwin C. Friedrich
3105 Beacon Bay Place
Davis, California 95616
eMail address: mailto:friedrich@chem.ucdavis.edu

Karen S. Rowe
122 West Saunders Avenue
Lincoln, Nebraska 68521-3925
eMail address: rerowe@inetnebr.com

The St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Congregation was organized late in 1854 as a daughter congregation of Zion (now Trinity) Lutheran Church of Crete, Illinois. Their first church was located on Bemis Road in Crete Township not far from the Ilinois-Indiana State line. In 1866 the church was moved about 2 miles south to its present location on Eagle Lake Road in the Northeast corner of Washington Township, just across the border from Crete Township.

The charter members of the congregation are said to be: Hans H. Tatge, John Hartmann, Henry Wassmann, John Scheiwe, Konrad Ohlendorf, John Windheim, F. Rotermund, Chr. Wassmann, Chr. Scheiwe and Konrad Tatge.

The list which follows was extracted from photocopies of Book One (1854-1876) and Book Two (starting 1877 and containing printed forms for the entries) of the original church records. The photocopies were made by Christian Orlov of New York, N.Y. (born James Ballard, and Gr. Gr. Grandson of Christoph and WIlhelmine (Seegers) Ohlendorf and Christian and Sophia (Grages) Klemme). He, as well as the present writers who have translated and tabulated the records , are all descended from or have some close connection with early members of the Congregation. (Edwin Friedrich is the Gr. Gr. Grandson of Friedrich and Maria (Knief) Wille and Friedrich and Dorothea (Ostermeier) Battermann).

All of the entries in the St. John's Church Record Books One and Two are written in German. Most of the names, dates and place names were written using the present English style script. However, the remainder of the entries were often written using the old style German script.