Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/499

 HISTORY OF GOODHUE ( orvi 5 ->:, and junior. A parochial school is held a few weeks every sum- mer for the purpose of teaching the children the Swedish lan- guage. The church belongs to the Swedish Mission Covenant of America. Rev. Henry Soderholm was horn in Sweden in 1866 and came to this country in 1885. He entered the Chicago Theological Seminary, graduating in the spring of 1890. He has served as pastor in three churches previous to coming to Red "Wing, two in Connecticut and one in Chicago. He is married and has a family of five children. GERMAN CHURCHES. The history of the German churches of the county will be found under the head of "The Germans," an article by Prof. F. W. Kalfahs. which appears in this work. Rev. Christian Bender. There are probably but few names that are recalled in Red Wing with so much love and so deep a veneration as that of the Rev. Christian Bender. For nearly thirty-five years he was the leading German pastor of the county, and the older Germans remember him as the one who married them, who gave advice and help to the well, sympathy and con- solation to the afflicted, and whose voice spoke the last sad words when their loved ones were laid to their eternal rest. His influ- ence on the parishes in his charge will never be forgotten, although the real extent of the vast good he accomplished in his quiet, unostentatious way can never be fully measured. He was born in Germany September 11, 1838, and as a boy attended the public schools of his neighborhood. At the age of twenty-two years he entered the Mission College at Basel, Switzerland, and graduated in 1866. He was ordained at Wittenburg, and preached in his native country about one year. During that time he became interested in the stories of the American Northwest, and learned that there was among the pioneers from his own country a vast field for religious work. Accordingly, in 1867, he came to this country, and after a week at Minneapolis, located in Red "Wing, where he at once received the appointment as pastor of St. John's German Lutheran church, also taking charge of St. John's church at Frontenae and Grace church at Goodhue. He died in February, 1901, and his death caused deep mourning among all denominations, all classes and all nationalities. Rev- erend Bender was married in October, 1868, to Christina Dick- hudt, born at Quincy, 111., March 7, 1850. To this union six children were born: Lydia, Christian, Anna. Christina. Freda and Adolph.