Introduction

We were unable to locate the original church record book. It was thought the Zion Lutheran Church in Atalissa, Iowa, held it for a time. James Batchelor, Louis Cooling, Margaret Marolf and Jeff Kaufmann presented a photocopy of the original records to Wilton Public Library, 106 East 4th St., Wilton, Iowa. These church records were written in German. To facilitate their study, we have attempted to translate the entries for sections describing Baptism, Confirmation, Marriages and Funeral records. The section on Communicants we did not do for the copy quality of the pages was poor and extremely hard to read. An Index of names was created.

Deciphering the German script and then contending with the old style handwriting was challenging. When looking up a name in the index be very flexible in the spelling. Modified vowels (umlaut) of the letters a, o, and u translate into the English language as ae, oe and ue. On occasion a name was spelled as the Secretary perceived it. Some families even changed the spelling of their name to be more American.

To learn more about the History of the German Evangelic Lutheran Salems Church in Wilton: Click Here.