By 1860 another Lutheran Church had been established with 40 members in Northwest Marion County near Wachahoota. The church flourished, and around 1863 Pastor Bernheim was joined in Ocala by Pastors William A. Julian and John H. Mengert. The Civil War severely hampered the growth of the Lutheran Church in Florida. It was reported in 1864 that Pastors Bernheim and Julian were “fleeing from Florida to North Carolina, as refugees, to escape the horrors of Yankee rule.” They evidently changed their minds and remained until sometime in 1866 or 1867. Both went on to serve elsewhere, Pastor Julian eventually returning to churches in Lake City and Melrose. Pastors Bernheim and Julian were instrumental in preparing Pastor David Koontz as the first African-American Lutheran minister in the Missouri Synod.

The Lutheran Churches in Florida were without pastors following the war. The church at Long Swamp disappeared. Lake City struggled on. (It still exists). The church at Wachahoota, by then referred to as the Lutheran Church at Central, also continued. According to stories passed on by descendants of the members, sometime between 1876 and 1880 the church was burned to the ground because it had both Black and White members worshiping together.

By 1900 the headstones had been removed from the church cemetery and are lost with one exception. Some of the members of that church went on to form Shiloh Methodist Church in 1880. One of the headstones from Central was brought to the Methodist church where it remains, the only physical reminder of the early Lutheran churches in Marion County.

Read Philippians 3:2-11 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne