From the very start, our family has had strong ties with Bethlehem Lutheran Church, located a mile north of Okolona, OH.  We have ties to it still.

     Even before its first official pastor came on the scene, Erna Baden's father, Heinrich Friederich Bostelman, was baptized there in 1857 by Rev. A.F. Knape, who organized the congregation just three years earlier.

     Young Heinrich (Henry) grew up in this growing German church.  And though his father, Heinrich Sr., died when Henry was only ten, Henry's mother Maria faithfully continued bringing her boy to church.  Henry was confirmed in 1872 by Rev. Kaspar Strauss, the church's first full-time pastor, who relocated Bethlehem Lutheran three years earlier by one half-mile to the south, where it sits today.

     Immigrant Johann Wilhelm (Bill) Baden soon began to worship here, only a mile or so from his newly-cleared farm.  He married Doris Bostelman (no apparent relation to Henry) here and brought his children here, including his son Carl William Baden.

     (Were Johann and Henry good friends?  Hard to tell, but it's interesting to note Carl's full name, Karl Heinrich Friederich Wilhelm Baden)

     The succeeding pastor, Rev. Herman Kloeckner, played an important part of the family's critical year of 1916.  Only two months after Johann's funeral, Pastor Kloeckner officiated Carl Baden's wedding to Erna Bostelman, Henry's daughter.

     Pastor Kloeckner would see many more important family events to come, from baptisms and confirmations to weddings and funerals.  And as this German congregation developed along with the times, adopting more English in its services, so too would our family flourish and change.

     As of 2007 it can be said that the great-great grandchildren of Johann & Doris and of Henry & Anna have attended worship at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, sitting in the same pews as so many relatives before.