bigpigeon.us webpage St. Paul's > St. Paul's Resources, updated by RAC 11 Feb 2020.
Print and web resources for those interested in researching the history of St. Paul's Lutheran Church.
Commemorative Booklets:
  • 1931 – St. Paul’s Church Jubilee Book, 1881 - 1931 (72 pages, Jubilee book committee P. W. I. Hansen, Peter Bondo, Elias Ericksen, Martin Christoffersen, James N. Lund).
  • 1956 – St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Neola, Iowa, 75th Anniversary, 1881 - 1956 (24 pages)
  • 1981 – St. Paul’s Lutheran, Neola, Iowa, Centennial, 1881 – 1981 (64 pages, contains birth, confirmation, marriage and death information. I was told that Rev. Neal Zeilinger played a major role in its production.

Web Resources:
  • My St. Paul's reports available in the St. Paul’s area of my website, bigpigeon.us, are:
  • This brief history.
  • My reports on the early families of St. Paul's broken up into 43 extended families.  I prepared these reports with the help of my second cousin, Elaine (Bondo) Hoyer, along with many other individuals.
  • My brief biographical summaries of the lives of the young people of St. Paul's and the surrounding area who served in the Armed Forces during World War II.
  • St. Paul's church records through 1940 or beyond are available via ancestry.com.  

If you have access to ancestry.com, you can search portions of the St. Paul’s data or browse through all the St. Paul’s data thusly:
  • First access search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=60722
  • To search: In the Any Event row, enter neola, Pottawattamie, iowa. Then enter a name of interest. (Only part of the data is searchable.)
  • To browse: In the upper right-hand corner, select Iowa, then select Neola, and then click on St. Paul’s. (Early records are in Danish.) You should get 
If you don’t have access to ancestry.com, you can view a paper copy of these records at the Danish American Archive and Library in Blair, Nebraska.

This is the ancestry.com index of the St. Paul's records:

IOWA: NEOLA: ST. PAUL’S

Membership Record Book #1, 1881-1900
  • Membership, 1881-1894    1-50
  • Constitution    51-67
  • Membership, 1895-1900    70-118
  • Baptisms, 1889-1899    3-9
  • Confirmations, 1889-1899    26-29
  • Marriages, 1893-1899    40
  • Funerals, 1889-1900    46 
  • Communions, 1886-1900    72-110 

Membership Record Book #2, 1900-1925
  • Baptisms, 1900-1925    1-18
  • Confirmations, 1900-1923    34-40
  • Marriages, 1901-1924    49-51
  • Funerals, 1900-1924    57-61
  • Communions, 1900-1924    not filmed
  • Membership    91-100, 112-114
  • Losses, 1902-1923    115-116
  • Pastoral Journal, 1900-1924    123-145

Membership Record Book #3, 1925-1969
  • Officers    4-6
  • Membership    9-51
  • Baptisms, 1925-1969    53-97
  • Confirmations, 1925-1969    169-193
  • Marriages, 1925-1968    221-233
  • Funerals, 1925-1969    245-255
  • Communions    not filmed
  • Pastoral Journal, 1925-1940    389-393

Membership Record Book #4, 1970-1974
  • Constitution    
  • Pastors
  • Membership
  • Baptisms, 1970-1974
  • Marriages, 1970-1974
  • Funerals, 1970-1974
  • History, 1970

Minutes Books:
  • Minutes Book #1, included in pages of Membership Record Book #1
  • Minutes Record Book #2, 1901-1915
  • Minutes Record Book #3, 1916-1950
  • Minutes Record Book #4, 1936-1966 (Church Council)

Original Records property of the Congregation. Microfilmed by the Archives of the American Lutheran Church at Dubuque, Iowa November 12, 1975.​