Ohio County, West Virginia    Biography: Rev. William Gottlob ULFERT

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Submitted by Valerie Crook, <vfcrook@trellis.net>, March 1999
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., 
Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 27-28

REV. WILLIAM GOTTLOB ULFERT. As head of one of the
large congregations in Wheeling and the examplar of exalted
ideas of Christianity, perhaps no one has done more in a con-
structive way in organizing and promoting the essential in-
fluences of the Christian Church in that city than Rev. Mr.
Ulfert, pastor of St. John's Evangelical Protestant Church.

Rev. Mr. Ulfert was born at Landsberg, Brandenburg,
Germany, May 18, 1854, son of William G. and Ida (Wilski)
Ulfert. His father died in Germany in 1888, and his mother
at the age of eighty-two. William Gottlob Ulfert had a
broad and liberal training, attending college at Landsberg,
and at the age of twenty-four graduated from the University
of Berlin, where he studied theology, philology and oriental
languages. For one year he was a private preceptor on the
island of Rugen, and he also taught a year in his home
college at Landsberg.

In 1880 Rev. Mr. Ulfert came to the United States and on
May 22, 1880, was ordained as an Evangelical minister. In
August of that year he took his first pastorate at Aetna,
Pennsylvania, and on November 1, 1884, was installed as
pastor of St. John's Evangelical Protestant Church at
Wheeling. His ministry here is now approaching its fortieth
anniversary, and these four decades have represented a re-
markable progress and material prosperity in the church and
constant and unremitting duties on the part of the pastor,
whose life has been to a singular degree a great consecration
to the ministry of service.

St. John's Church is an historic institution of Wheeling.
Some of the old German settlers of that city organized it in
1835, the first services being held in North Wheeling. In 1836
the building on Eighteenth, near Jacob Street was erected
and was in use until 1869. This old building is still standing,
now being used as a mission house for the First Presbyterian
Church. In 1871 their church on the site of the present
Baltimore & Ohio passenger station was finished, and was the
home of the congregation just forty years. When they gave
up this place of worship at the request of the railroad com-
pany, ground was secured at the northwest corner of Chapline
and Twenty-second streets, where the beautiful new church
and parsonage were erected at a cost of $120,000.00. The
church auditorium has a seating capacity of six hundred, and
there are also suitable office, choir, Sunday School and lecture
rooms, and ample kitchen and dining room facilities in the
basement. The auditorium is handsomely and richly
furnished, containing beautiful memorial windows. The
services of the church alternate in the English and German
languages. Many of the elders of the congregation still
prefer to listen to God's word associated with the recollec-
tions of their youth. The greater part of the active members
today are descendants of the original congregation. In
1884, when Rev. Mr. Ulfert became pastor, the congregation
was comparatively weak in numbers, but for a number of
years past it has been one of the strongest congregations in
the city. Its communicants now represent 550 families,
besides about 200 single persons not included in the family
enumeration. The loyalty of the membership is a source
of constant inspiration to the pastor. One of the prominent
ministers of Pittsburgh, Rev. William K. Geese, received
his early religious training as a boy in St. John's Church.
Rev. Mr. Ulfert is an honored member of the Evangelical
Protestant Church of North America, affiliating with the
branch having headquarters at Pittsburgh. He is a thirty-
second degree Scottish Rite Mason and is chaplain of Wheeling
Lodge No. 5, P. & A. M.

January 18, 1883, he married Miss Marie Heinrici, who
came to Wheeling as a child with her parents, Rev Charles
and Emma Heinrici. Her father for some years was pastor
of St. Paul's Church in Wheeling. Mr. and Mrs. Ulfert
have two children: William Karl Ulfert, a Wheeling physician
and surgeon, and Martha, wife of Dr. William Elmer Hodgson,
of McKeesport, Pennsylvania.