Jacob & Christiane Buenger

Select a yellow box to move around Lisa's paternal family tree.

Jacob was a Lutheran pastor in Etzdorf, Saxony, Germany who was descended from a long line of pastors going back to the Reformation. He was born in Schoenbach. He was his parents' only son but had a sister named Marie. She married Ernst Hasse, who was a pastor in Bockwitz. Jacob attended the University of Halle in 1798, switched to Jena in 1799, and completed his courses there in 1801. He became a member of the theological seminary at Greiz on Easter in 1802, was hired to teach at the Greiz Latin School in 1804, and was called to be vicar for the Greiz pastorate in 1806. He received a call to be pastor at Etzdorf, where he preached his first sermon on 20 October 1808. He was selected for the call by Count von Einsiedel even though he hadn't applied for the charge.

Christiane was born in Etzdorf, where her father Rev. Wilhelm Reiz was Jacob's predecessor, and married Jacob there. Although not a Rationalist, who based faith on reason rather than revelation, Jacob wasn't considered to be as devout as his father and father-in-law. He served as pastor at Etzdorf until his death from pnemonia.

His son, Johann Friedrich, joined a group of students at the University of Leipzig which resisted the Rationalist trends in the church. After completing his examinations for the pastorate, he worked as a tutor for a private family in Dresden. There he met Martin Stephan, a pastor who took a determined stand for confessional Lutheranism. Stephan concluded that his congregation would have to emigrate from Germany to gain freedom of worship. They considered going to Australia before deciding to travel to America. J.F. Buenger and many of his Leipzig associates, including C.F.W. Walther and Ottomer Fuerbringer, joined the group. His widowed mother, Christiane, three brothers; Ernst, Theodore, and Herman; and four sisters; Christine, Agnes, Clementine, and Lydia also went along. His youngest sister, Emma, was left behind with Uncle Ernst and Aunt Marie because of delicate health.

While waiting in Bremerton for the ships to sail, C.F.W. Walther and his brother O.H. Walther put their orphaned niece and nephew, Maria and Theodor Schubert, under Christiane's care. Since the Walther brothers were taking the children to America without the consent of their legal guardian, the authorities arrested Christiane on 4 November 1838 and detained her on a trumped up charge of kidnapping in an effort to catch the Walthers and recover the children. J.F. and Agnes Buenger remained with their mother while the rest of the group of about 650 people departed.

Christine Buenger left on board the Copernicus on 3 November 1838 and arrived at New Orleans on 31 December. The five other Buengers, O.H. Walther, the orphans, and the group leader Stephan left on board the Olbers on 18 November 1838.

The authorities released Christiane on 11 December when they realized that the Walthers and orphans had escaped. She left Bremerton on board the Constitution on 19 December with J.F. and Agnes, arriving at New York on 18 February 1839. There they joined a group of Germans, mostly from Berlin, who had immigrated under the leadership of F. Sprode in 1836. They traveled with about 100 members of this group by way of the Erie Canal and the Ohio River, leaving New York on 22 April and arriving in Perry County, MO on 17 May to reunite with the rest of their family.

J.F. Buenger eventually founded Lutheran Hospital and the Lutheran Orphans' Home. Christine married C.F.W. Walther in 1841. Agnes married O.H. Walther, but he died in 1841. Then she married Fuerbringer, who pastored Trinity Lutheran in Freistadt, WI from 1851 to 1858 and St. Lorenz Lutheran in Frankenmuth, MI from 1858 until his death in 1892. Fuerbringer was also president of the Northern District of the Missouri Synod from 1854 to 1872, and from 1874 to 1882. Herman Buenger was a druggist in St. Louis.

The Buenger matriarch, Christiane, settled in St. Louis. On 13 May 1845 she purchased a lot for $562.30 on the southwest corner of Lombard and 3rd Streets, across the street from the original Trinity Lutheran Church. Here she lived in a two-story red brick house with C.F.W. Walther's family downstairs and the family of another son-in-law, Gottlob Neumueller. The second of three preliminary meetings to organize the Missouri Synod was held in this house in May 1846. The house was used for temporary seminary instruction in early 1850 during the transition from the log cabin seminary in Perry County to the new Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Today a business stands on the site beneath the I-55 freeway.

Christiane died of cholera and was buried directly behind Holy Cross Lutheran Church at Miami and Ohio Streets. Later the body was reinterred at a different location.

Christiane Buenger's house in St. Louis, MO (on right), across the street from the original Trinity Lutheran Church where Dr. C.F.W. Walther was pastor