In the latest Lutheran Brotherhood Bond magazine there's an article about a group known as Wends. A Slav or Slavonic people who migrated gypsylike between Poland and Czechoslovakia on the east and various boundaries within Germany on the west. They were given the name Wends in early Latin histories. It says here, in the 6th century a group settled in Brandenburg and Saxony (south of Berlin and northeast of Dresden), but were denied independence by the dominant Germanic tribes. During the reformation most Wends became Protestants. As a result of Luther's stress on teaching Biblical truths in the mother tongue they developed a literary language using the Cyrillic alphabet. As the result of further prosecution, several groups came to the USA, one group of 575 in 1854, settled in Texas at Serbin. Their leader was Johann Kilian. (actually he was a classmate of the Missouri Synod's C.F.W. Walther who led the German Lutherans to St. Genvieve in 1838. The language is not in use, but Concordia University in Austin is based on Wendish tradition and some 10 percent of the faculty and student population has Wendish ancestry.

There's a book about the Wends, "In Search of a Home: Nineteenth-Century Wendish Immigration" by George Nielsen, published by Texas A&M. There is a museum, Texas Wendish Heritage Museum, Rte 2, Box 155, Giddings, Tx 78942 and a web page at www.concordia.edu.ethn.htm. [Not found. Surely Gerald meant: http://www.concordia.edu/ethn.htm.]

Where there was one Kilian leading there likely were many more.

Gerald