A membership list of the Zion Lutheran Church – Alva was compiled when Zion was
A membership list of the Zion Lutheran Church – Alva was compiled when Zion was about five years old probably by Pastor Herman Meyer who was the pastor from 1901 until 1914.
Biographies of the members were included here to give the stories of the members. The two books, “Pioneer Footprints Across Woods County”[1] and the “The First 100 Years of Alva, Oklahoma. 1886-1986″[2] were the biography sources for most member families. For those member families not in these two books, biographies and obituaries from Ancestry.com were used where available. And, the US Census records for the years 1900 and 1910 that bracketed the 1904 date were used to identify families for which no biographies could be found.
Member Biographies
Friedrich Wilhelm and Marie Louise (Lubbert) Breford
From the Zion Lutheran Church – Alva 1904 membership records
Wilhelm Breford, Son of Friedrich Breford, was born in Indiana on 12 June 1856 and his wife Louise, daughter of Jobst Luebbert, was born in Indiana on 15 Jan 1862. They had eight children: Anna born in indiana on 17 December 1882; Eleonora, born in Indiana on 6 June 1885; Elisabeth, born in Indiana on 22 may 1887; Friedrich, born in Indiana on 22 July 1889; Ida, born in Indiana 31 May 1892; Lorina, born in Indiana on 7 September 1897; Ernst, born in Oklahoma on 4 july 1900; and Emma, born in Oklahoma on 24 May 1902 and died 17 April 1903.
From the Pioneer Footprints Across Woods County biography of Friedrich Wilhelm Breford
Friedrich Wilhelm Breford, called William, William Schaefer, and C.H. Mauntel came in 1898 to purchase homesteads, and to decide where to live permanently. They returned to Indiana to get things ready to move. C.H. Mauntel and wife came in September, 1898, to Alva because of his health, but Mr. Breford and Mr. Schaefer and their families waited until March 1, 1899, to bring their families together on the same train.
The three men helped organize the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church of Alva on May 21, 1899. They first met in the upper room of a store over Schuhmacher Drug Store. A great flood kept some of the Lutherans living north of the Salt Fork from attending the meeting, so only thirteen were present to sign the constitution, including William Breford, Wm. Schaefer and C.H. Mauntel. In 1900 William Breford was on a committee to help buy the two lots where the present church stands for $50. He also helped on the building committee. This was a frame building used for church and later moved to Second and Maple where it was used as a school.
William Breford and his wife, Marie Louise Lubbert, moved to their farm, 2 1/2 miles southwest of Alva now the Harold Wiersig farm. There they built a home. Louise Breford and children knitted stockings for every member of the family before they made the trip to Oklahoma. One time soon after moving to Alva while they were away from home the Indians stole all their stockings. One other time the family were eating their meal and the Indians came in and took all the f