Baltzer Family Ancestry

BaltzerAncestry.com is a collaborative effort by descendants of Pastor Adolph F. H. Baltzer (1817-1880). Along with assistance from photo volunteers across the US, they have contributed the more than 500 photographs, articles, and documents featured on this site.

In 1845, Pastor Baltzer (pictured with black bowtie above) emigrated from Berlin, then the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia, to St. Louis, Missouri. In 1866, he was elected the first president of the newly renamed Evangelical Synod of the West, a body that grew over subsequent decades into The German Evangelical Synod of North America, now part of the United Church of Christ (UCC).

Today, scattered throughout the USA and beyond, Pastor Adolph Baltzer's descendants bear surnames including: Baltzer, Jennrich, Kramer, Heiner, Erdmann, Langerhans, Jens, and many more.

The Minna was a 337-ton, three-masted bark built in Vegesack near Bremen and launched in September 1844. Under the command of Captain Johann Dannemann, the Minna departed Bremen in early August 1845 and arrived in New York City on October 4 after a voyage of roughly eight weeks, a typical passage for the era. Among the passengers were Adolph Baltzer (age 28) and fellow pastors Joseph Rieger and William Binner, traveling together as missionary clergymen to serve the growing German immigrant communities of the American Midwest. Their journey formed part of the great wave of 19th-century German emigration that brought hundreds of thousands of Germans to states such as Missouri and Illinois. After arriving in America, Baltzer and his companions continued to St. Louis, where they helped establish what would become the German Evangelical Church in the United States.

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