Rev. L. J. Rausch

Rev. Leonhard J. Rausch and family came to Henry County in June, 1954. Mr. Rausch was installed as pastor of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Florida, Ohio, on June 20. He served this congregation until his retirement on September 16, 1973. He also served as pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Flatrock Township from 1958 to 1973.

Pastor Rausch is a member of that family of Rausches which began coming to America before the Revolutionary War, settling in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, in Pennsylvania, and Ohio. They came to America from the Palatinate on the Rhine River, in Germany. Reasons for coming were political and religious oppression, and also the repeated pillage and murders of warring armies which used their country as a common ground when marching to and from their battlefields.

As part of the Bicentennial observance Pastor and Mrs. Rausch will attend on August 13-14, 1976, the 265 Anniversary Reunion of the Rausch Family Association, which has members in every State in the Union, to be held in New Market, Virginia, where the ancestors first settled. It was in the Lutheran Church in nearby Woodstock that the preacher-general Muhlenberg on January 28, 1776, dropped his long silk clerical gown in the pulpit after the sermon, exposing a colonel's uniform. On that Sunday he called for volunteers for the Eighth Virginia Regiment, famous as the German Regiment, and served conspicuously throughout the Revolutionary War. Several Rausches enlisted on that Sunday. The British had changed the name Rausch to Roush, but that did not make the men more British, but rather more American.

Pastor L. J. Rausch's ancestors followed other relatives to America and settled in Union County in 1828. Here pastor Rausch was born on Feb. 5, 1904, one of ten children, on a farm occupied by his family from 1830 to 1940.

Mrs. Rausch is the former Bertha Blumenschein, and they were married in Union County on August 12, 1928, shortly after her husband graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis.

The first 11 years of their marriage were spent in South Dakota, where the following children were born: Phyllis Irene (Lunz) on December 23, 1929; Melba Marie (Lunz) on December 16, 1932; Mary Elizabeth (Koch) on March 22, 1936; Lois Evelyn (Bischoff) on June 8, 1937; Paul LeRoy on Oct. 21, 1938.

The following were born at Wapakoneta, Ohio: Leon Luther on Oct. 31, 1940; Carl Alvin on June 6, 1943; Lillian May (Andrew) on May 5, 1945.

All eight children are married and at present there are 26 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The oldest daughter, Phyllis, started school near Yale, South Dakota, in a rural school with four other pupils. Her husband Reuben is a farmer and carpenter in Wapakoneta. Melba's husband Herbert is a farmer and assistant postmaster at Wapakoneta.

Mary's husband Lester is in research at Proctor and Gamble, Lima. Vernon Bischoff is maintenance engineer at Campbell's. Paul works at Eckert's and is assistant fire chief at Florida.

Leon graduated from the Air Force Academy and served as a fighter pilot in Florida during the Cuban crisis. He also spent a year at the air base Tan Canut, Viet Nam, and four years in Germany. He is now located at Shaw Air Base in S. Carolina.

Carl works for the telephone company, keeping the micro wave in order in Henry and surrounding counties.

Lillian is married to a steel worker, Thomas Andrew. She has a teacher's license and has a hobby painting pictures and making banners for use in churches.

Pastor Rausch, although retired, has been kept busy preaching. He and Mrs. live in their home 11/2 miles northwest of Malinta.

Submitted by L. J. Rausch