Lutheran Deaconess History

Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Motherhouse of Deaconesses was established by John D. Lankenau in 1884 to provide nurses for the German Hospital of Philadelphia.

Baltimore

Started in 1891 by the General Synod, with the first class of deaconesses consecrated in 1895.

Immanuel, Omaha

On October 8, 1887, Pastor E.A. Foglestrom and others organized the Evangelical Lutheran Immanuel Association for Works for Charity.

Bethesda, St. Paul

In 1902 a second deaconess training site for the Augustana Lutheran Synod opened in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Bethphage

Bethphage Mission, Axtell, Nebraska, was established in 1913 by the Rev. K. G. William Dahl, to provide a Christian home for “the feeble-minded, the epileptic, and the destitute.”

Brooklyn

Sister Elizabeth Fedde found so much need in homes, hospitals, ships in the harbor, and even the streets of Brooklyn, that by 1886 she started a deaconess home and hospital.

Through the insistence of the Rev. Falk Gjertsen, Sister Elizabeth Fedde and two women who wanted to be deaconesses moved into the new deaconess home in Minneapolis on November 2, 1888 and the hospital opened in four rooms of the home a few days later.

Chicago

The Norwegian Lutheran Deaconess Society of Chicago was incorporated on September 17, 1896. The organization rented two houses to serve as a hospital, which opened on May 22, 1897.

Institute of Protestant Deaconesses, Milwaukee

As a pioneer in Lutheran ministry of mercy, the Rev. William Alfred Passavant, Sr., established hospitals and orphanages from Pennsylvania to Illinois and Wisconsin, brought deaconesses from Germany to manage these enterprises, and chartered the Institution of Protestant Deaconesses (IPD) to manage them.

Eben-Ezer, Brush, Colorado

In the summer of 1903 Pastor Jens Madsen visited Danish congregations in several states, soliciting funds to build a tuberculosis sanatorium and a deaconess motherhouse in Colorado.