In 1836, in Germany Pastor Theodor Fliedner and his wife Friedericke Műnster, using the story of New Testament Phoebe (Romans 16:1), the example of Mennonite deaconesses in Holland, the work of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul and the work of Wichern...

Before the summer of 1884, John Lankenau’s friend and fellow hospital board member, the German Consul in Philadelphia, Charles H. Meyer, traveled to Germany to inquire about the availability of deaconesses from Kaiserwerth motherhouse and other motherhouses to staff...

In 1889, just five years after the arrival of the Philadelphia sisters, the General Synod of the Lutheran Church (USA) created a Board of Deaconess Work, designating deaconesses as persons holding an “office of the church”. They opened a Motherhouse in Baltimore in...

Pastor E.A. Fogelstrom created Immanuel Hospital and Deaconess Motherhouse in Omaha in 1890, a brief six years after the early beginnings in Philadelphia. He had sent women to Philadelphia and Sweden for training as deaconesses. Immanuel Hospital was opened in 1890,...

    Merging Together As early as 1947, the Philadelphia and Baltimore Houses were in close consultation with one another. Church merger and the birth of the Lutheran Church in America in 1962 provided good timing for the unification of these two deaconess communities...