Background
John Harpster was born on April 27, 1844, at Centerhall, Pennsylvania, United States, the youngest of the twelve children of George and Frances Harpster.
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John Henry Harpster
Edit ProfileEducation
John entered the academic department of the Missionary Institute at Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, where he soon displayed an aptitude for languages. He then studied at Gettysburg Theological Seminary, 1869-1871.
Career
On April 22, 1861, a week after President Lincoln’s first call for troops, John Harpster was mustered into the 7th Pennsylvania Volunteers for three months’ service. In August 1862 he enlisted in the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteers. He was wounded in the head at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, and on rejoining his regiment in September at Culpeper, Virginia, was assigned to ambulance duty. He was promoted successively to the grades of second lieutenant, first lieutenant, and captain, and was mustered out in June 1865.
Immediately after his ordination in Baltimore, December 20, 1871, Harpster set out for his post, visiting Europe, Palestine, and Egypt on the way. He began work in the General Synod’s mission at Guntur, April 1, 1872. His eminent success in India was due to several factors. Army life had given him a knowledge of men and of practical affairs; he regarded Christianity more as a way of life than as a body of complicated and, to the Hindu mind, incomprehensible doctrine; he mastered the Telugu language with unusual thoroughness; and from the beginning he showed his confidence in the ability and integrity of the natives. His health, however, compelled him in 1876 to relinquish the work.
For a short time Harpster was a reader in an Episcopal congregation in San Francisco. He served as pastor of Lutheran churches in Ellsworth, Kansas, 1879; Hays, Kansas, 1879-1882; Trenton, New Jersey, 1882-1884; and Canton, Ohio, 1884-1893.
In 1893, accompanied by his wife, Harpster returned to the work at Guntur, celebrating the day of his arrival, after an absence of seventeen years, by delivering a short address in Telugu. He labored with his customary success among the Guntur and Sattenappalli Taluks and in 1901 returned on furlough to the United States. The next year, at the urgent entreaty of his brother-in-law, Henry Eyster Jacobs, who was president of the General Council’s Board of Foreign Missions, he entered the service of the General Council as "temporary director" of the mission at Rajahmundry.
In 1909 Harpster returned to the United States, and although much in need of rest he devoted himself whole-heartedly to lecturing and writing in behalf of the Rajahmundry mission. Contracting a cold which developed into pneumonia, he died at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, in his brother-in-law’s home, February, 1911. He was buried at Gettysburg.
Achievements
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John Harpster was famous as a leader of the mission at Rajahmundry. The work that he there undertook was of extreme difficulty, for dissensions among the resident missionaries and the impolitic conduct of the Board had rendered the situation all but hopeless. His achievement in restoring the prosperity of the Rajahmundry mission ranks him with J. C. F. Heyer as one of the great missionaries of the Lutheran Church in India.
Connections
August 1, 1882, Harpster married Julia, daughter of Prof. Michael Jacobs of Gettysburg.
