History: Tracing our Roots

Before you decide that there's not much you can do about the world's problems, that your vote does not count, listen to the story of Gottleib Germann and his wife.

Gottlieb was a harness maker in the cavalry department at the Rock Island Arsenal, making two dollars a day. In February of 1898 he discovered a baby boy abandoned in a barn. He and his wife began a personal campaign to open a home for similarly abandoned children. He submitted a proposal to the Associated Charities of Rock Island. No response. In May, he made an appeal to the Tri-City Ministerial Association to establish a rescue mission, but without results.

In desperation, Gottlieb and his wife rented a house at 14th Street and Fourth Avenue and opened a kindergarten, trusting that the Lord would supplement their own meager resources. A young school teacher from Davenport showed up to teach the kindergarten. She agreed to furnish the equipment for the school and work without any definite pay.

The Germanns barely made a dent in the poverty and homelessness all around them, but they persisted. Finally, in 1899, with help from a local lawyer and his wife, the Germanns incorporated the Union Mission in a larger home several blocks away.

The Union Mission had officers and a board of directors, but no money for a superintendent. The Germanns agreed to leave their own home, move into the mission, and serve as superintendents without pay for three years. And, in addition, to donate the mission's general fund of $30 a month from his earnings at the Arsenal.

The Union Mission opened on December 12, 1899. Within a month, it had taken in ten children. Another 48 arrived within the next year.

Eventually, the mission idea caught the fancy of others. Community and church support increased. Many private clubs and community groups contributed money and volunteers. Leading citizens agreed to serve on the board. The county came across with funds.

Without a harness maker's willingness to see a problem through to its solution, there would today be no Union Mission in Rock Island - or rather, no Bethany Home, the new name it adopted in 1902.

"Rock Island Lines"
Roald Tweet, Ph.D.
Retired Professor of English, Augustana College and writer

Bethany Superintendents, Executive Directors, and Presidents

Gottlieb Germann
1899-1902

Adah Ferguson
1901-1902 

Dina Ramser
1902-1908

L.O. Jahns
1908-1912

Miss Parsons
1912-1914

Meda Smith
1906-1916; 1918-1924

Clara Bowers
1925-1933

Nellie Seiler
1933-1937

Lora Barber
1938-1939

Maude Butler
1939-1944

Frances Gingerich
1944-1953

Margaret Brooks
1953-1965

Gerald Hicks
1965-1966

William Wilson
1966-1972

Gene Svebakken
1972-1978

Lee Hout
1978-1981

Gary Ulrich
1981-1995

Shirley Stewart
1996-2004

Bill Steinhauser
2004-Present