Living on the fundraisers’ edge

Since before the College welcomed its first students in Hillsboro, Illinois, Carthaginians have been working to win over hearts, minds, and wallets for a common cause.

As he set out to secure public support for the proposed Literary and Theological Institute of the Lutheran Church in the Far West in the 1840s, the Rev. John Jacob Lehmanowsky must have assumed an easy task lay ahead. The well-traveled pastor had always followed his own fervent beliefs without question.

Born into a Jewish family in 1773, he converted to Lutheranism as a young man and then followed the scent of freedom from his occupied Polish homeland to France. Enlisting in the military there, he gained the trust of a young Napoleon Bonaparte and fought alongside him for more than two decades.

When the Battle of Waterloo completed Napoleon’s fall from revolutionary hero to “unloved and unwept” exile in 1815, authorities arrested Lehmanowsky and sentenced him to death. As the Rev. William Sadtler dramatically recounted in the biography “Between Two Captains,” an ally delivered a cake with a hidden file that the condemned officer used to escape the night before he was to face a firing squad.

Years after making his way to the United States and entering the ministry, Pastor Lehmanowsky turned his singular focus toward the future college and seminary in southern Illinois. Surely the faithful citizens of Iowa, Wisconsin, and northern Illinois would share his vision.

His reports from the field remind us cash isn’t the only way to build a school from the ground up. According to “The Miracle of Carthage,” a definitive history by President Harold H. Lentz, Pastor Lehmanowsky wrote in April 1847 that he had obtained hundreds of books and 300 or so “specimens of minerals and natural curiosities, some very rare in the U.S.”

But his talents proved more effective in battle and preaching than fundraising. Blaming apathy and bias “against a liberal education,” Pastor Lehmanowsky deemed the Midwestern tour a failure, wrote off the school as mortally wounded, and went back to lecturing about Napoleon.

The death knell was premature, of course. Just as the pastor himself had, the young college survived with grit, personal sacrifice, and assistance from like-minded backers — in this case, the Lutheran synods.

Other financial agents followed, with more success. They certainly had incentive to succeed. Initially hired as chair of Christian theology, the Rev. Simeon W. Harkey agreed to delay those teaching duties while he raised the money to endow his own salary.

A pamphlet he created for the task offered a grandiose prediction for the region: “It is situated in the very centre of the great Mississippi Valley, a country that must in a few years be crowded with its teeming millions of immortal souls.”

After moving from Hillsboro to Springfield, the College found some stability — and a permanent name — at its third site in Carthage, Illinois. Yet the need for donations remained, a task that increasingly fell to the president.

The Carthage Collegian newspaper describes a harrowing venture that President J.M. Ruthrauff made through Missouri in 1897, navigating landslides and nearly impassable terrain with an improvised mix of trains, horses, mules, carriages, wagons, and miles-long walks. After several hard-earned days of bed rest, he reported in understated fashion that he had “secured some money on this trip for the College.”

Over that first century, fundraising messages typically reflected the institution’s fight for survival. A special edition of the Hancock County Journal on Jan. 29, 1923, laments that “the sum of $23,000 stands between the life and death of Carthage College.”

The brilliant decision to move to Kenosha opened the door to a new cast of supporters. Limited means was no deterrent. President Lentz noted a Native American congregation in Montana where “26 contributors from families whose average annual income was less than $1,000 pledged over $2,200.”

Thriving rather than merely surviving in 2023, Carthage is appealing once again to the vast network of supporters who are ready to serve as a Light That Travels.