Father Heyer, First American Lutheran Missionary to India

John Christian Frederick Heyer was born in Germany in seventeen ninety-three and spent his life building institutions. He helped found Gettysburg College and the nation's first Lutheran theological seminary. Then, in eighteen forty-one, in his late forties, he became the first American Lutheran missionary to travel to India, where he established schools and churches and ministered to women and to people outside the caste system.

He returned to the United States, organized more congregations across Pennsylvania and the Midwest, and then sailed back to India for a second mission in eighteen forty-seven. He died in eighteen seventy-three and is buried here in Friedens, in the Somerset County community where he served as pastor.