Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size Text Size Print This Page Send by Email
Manchester was once home to a Lutheran Seminary. Maybe you read the one sentence about it on Manchester’s wikipedia page and wondered if it could possibly be true. Or maybe you read the blurb on the back of the Manchester Areas Historical Society calendar in 2008. Or maybe this is the first you’ve heard of it. In any case, it is true that 140 years ago, Manchester was home to Michigan’s only Lutheran seminary. For two years, 1885 and 1886, the Michigan Lutheran Seminary was located at 8720 Sharon Hollow Road in Manchester in a two-story brick house. And the building and property that housed that seminary all those years ago is currently up for sale!
So much of the story of the seminary in Manchester came together for this article by piecing together the little bits of information we do know, though there still is quite a bit we don’t. Two indisputable facts that have emerged in researching the seminary are that although not at all associated with it, how a seminary came to be located in Manchester is a story that is closely tied to Emanuel Church, and seems to be largely the work of Manchester Township’s Johann George Heimerdinger (1830 – 1917) …