I get to travel back home to Altenburg today, so I will share this story that was written on today’s date back in 2017. The original Log Cabin College is still located in Altenburg, across the road from Trinity Lutheran Church and our museum. The Replica was built on the campus of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in around 1938. Both cabins have a similarity. Each one was constructed in a particular location, only to be moved later. In the case of the Log Cabin College in Altenburg, it was moved twice.
Clara Grebing is today’s birthday girl, and she married a man named Edward Baese, who became a gardener at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He likely was instrumental in getting logs from his father-in-law’s land in Perry County for the building of the Replica.
There are some around East Perry County, including me, who occasionally refer to the building on the campus of Concordia Seminary as a “Lousy Replica”. That is because it has a window on the front, and there in no front window on the original cabin. The drawing that we use in our logo at the top of our website’s pages was made from an old photograph that displays the fact that there is indeed no front window on the cabin.
We are creeping up on the date when the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod will be celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of the voyage of the Gesellschaft to America. The bicentennial of the time when the ships left Germany will take place in November of 2038. The bicentennial for that group’s arrival in Perry County will take place in May of 2039. The bicentennial for the opening of the Log Cabin College for its first day of classes will take place in December of 2039. I do not know if I will be alive at that point in time. If so, I would be about 89 years old. It is my hope that there will be energetic people around when that date arrives who will plan a big celebration. As for me, I love researching the significant early Lutheran history that took place in East Perry County.
If you want to see the real Log Cabin College, you will have to come to Altenburg.