Background
John Heyer was born on July 10, 1793, in Helmstedt, Germany, the son of Johann Gottlieb and Frederike Sophie Johanne (Wagener) Heyer.
John Heyer was born on July 10, 1793, in Helmstedt, Germany, the son of Johann Gottlieb and Frederike Sophie Johanne (Wagener) Heyer.
From his third until his fourteenth year John attended the local school in Helmstedt. In 1807 he was confirmed in the village church of St. Stephen’s, and shortly thereafter sailed from Friedrichstadt, Denmark, to join the family of an uncle in Philadelphia. Here he attended Pastor Passey's private school, and learned from his uncle the furrier’s trade. He attended Zion’s German Lutheran Church and took part in many of its activities. Having decided to devote his life to the Christian ministry, he studied theology from 1809 until 1814 with Dr. Justus H. C. Helmuth and Dr. Frederick D. Schaeffer in Philadelphia. In the spring of 1815 he returned to Germany to visit his parents and to engage in university study. Finding Halle University closed on account of war, he entered the University of Goettingen, where he stadied foe a year. Later he learned a little Sanskrit and a little medicine.
From September 15, 1813, John Heyer taught the parochial school conducted by Zion’s Church in Southwark, Philadelphia, and preached occasionally. In 1817 was licensed to preach by the Pennsylvania Ministerium. He was assigned to itineration among the Lutheran churches of Crawford and Erie counties, making Meadville his headquarters. After a year, he was assigned to the Cumberland parish, Maryland, where he labored for the next six years.
Heyer was ordained at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1820 by the Ministerium and appointed to make a short tour through parts of Indiana and Kentucky. In 1824 he was called to be pastor at Somerset, Pennsylvania, and in 1827 accepted the pastorate at Carlisle. In 1828 he was elected secretary, and in 1831, president of the West Pennsylvania Synod. Becoming the agent of the Sunday School Union of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States in 1830, he served in that capacity until January 1832, when he resumed the pastorate at Somerset. Five years later he removed to Pittsburgh and took a leading part in the organization of Lutheran work in that area.
In May 1840, the German Foreign Missionary Society asked Heyer to consider foreign missionary service. He accepted the call and spent the fall and winter of 1840-1841 at Baltimore in the study of medicine and Sanskrit, his purpose being to work in India. He went to India as agent of the Pennsylvania Ministerium. On July 31, 1842, at Guntur, he began the founding of the first foreign mission of his Church. His service in India falls into three periods, with furloughs in 1846-1847, and 1857-1869. His second furlough, except for a year which was spent in Germany, was given to home-missionary work in Minnesota, where he was president of the Synod for ten years. Guntur and Gurjal were the centers of his work in India until 1855, when he entered the Rajahmundry field.
For a time the greater part of the expense of his work was borne by friends in Guntur.
In 1846 the Guntur mission, and in 1851, the Rajahmundry mission passed into the control of the Foreign Missionary Society of the General Synod of the Lutheran Church.
The latter mission, however, reverted in 1869 to the control of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, and Heyer hastened to India to make the transfer effective. In 1872 he returned to America and became chaplain of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he died in his eighty-first year.
In 1819 Heyer married Mary (Webb) Gash, a widow, who bore him six children.