The German Church was the first church built in Whitmore. This chapter is dedicated to Mollie Cochran St. John and her daughter, Carlene. Mollie Cochran St. John was the granddaughter of one of the founding families of the church and grew up in Whitmore. St. John said:

Henry and Katherine Buszdieker [St. John's grandparents] came to Whitmore in 1885 as members of a group of twenty-one German families called the Eudora Colony, sponsored by the Evangelical Zions Congregation. They had been told that the property they had purchased was a farm, but when they arrived they found raw, uncleared land. Henry and his family cleared about forty acres, and built a home and barn. Irrigation was brought in from Cow Creek by ditch.

It was a religious group. Somebody went back and told them about this land in California, where they could start their own community and have their own church. They were scattered all over, Nebraska, and other places, and somehow the church got them together. They were just sure they were coming in and finding established ranches.

The men of the twenty-one families of the Eudora Colony built a small church, twenty-two by thirty-two feet, in 1885. It had a belfry with one pull rope to ring the bell. The wood for the church was cut with broad axes. They used square nails on the rough twelve-inch boards and battens that came from the Mott and Atkins mills. The cemetery was placed next to the church.

On January 1, 1886, they held the first General Conference of the church. The church collapsed in the 1936-37 snow storm. In the 1961 Covered Wagon Lena Buszdieker Meineken tells of giving the bell from the collapsed Whitmore church to the United Lutheran Church in Redding. She gave a cross, made out of the walnut wood of the organ, to the Pilgrim Congregational Church in Redding. A few bits of foundation can be seen where the old church stood, and the outhouse is still there. The church cemetery is managed by the Millville Masonic cemetery organization. The cemetery is now known as the Evangelical, Masonic and Odd Fellow Cemetery.

St. John talked about the church:

There was an isle down it and just a row of seats on each side, pews. We'd sit there and they'd preach, and preach, and preach, it was an all-day affair. Then we'd get to go outside and eat lunch, and the men would play horseshoes and then we'd go back in and they'd preach some more. We'd go to a funeral there, and there was the body in the casket, and everybody had to walk around and look at the body. Then they'd close it up, and then they would lower the casket. Everybody stayed there, it was terrible. Everybody took all of their little kids to the funeral. I thought it was awful.

St. John said,

"Do you know why front doors are always four feet wide?" Ask any carpenter -- you've got to have it four feet wide so you can get the casket through. In all of these old houses you'll see at least a four-foot front door. The body would be kept at the house, usually just for overnight. They'd sit with the body until the funeral.

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