Julius Feicke

The Feickes were a German couple that had five children before they left their hometown of Berlin for America in 1893. A passenger list shows Marie brought four of her children to New York where her husband and oldest child had apparently gone ahead to find work. 

Julius secured a position as pastor of the German Evangelical Reformed Church in Jersey City, New Jersey. He had graduated from the University of Berlin and taught high school in Hamburg before being ordained, serving churches in northwestern Germany for 20 years.

The four pillars of human nature are the desires for fame, fortune, power, and pleasure. When a person feels a calling from God or has been led by deep personal conviction to be in full-time service to a church or a religious vocation, those desires are replaced by a humble spirit, a more powerful desire to love and serve God by loving and serving one’s fellow man, not to serve one’s self.

That’s what makes this story interesting. Julius certainly understood his calling and its implications, but he was also a practical man. His first priority was providing for his family, so he stepped down from the pulpit on September 1, 1895 after he was denied a request for an increase in salary. 

His initial pay was $900 a year but when the elders reduced it to $700 he said he simply could not meet his expenses. He was told that the church was in debt, there was a mortgage of $5000 on its property, and they were giving him all they could afford to pay. 

His only option was to seek other employment, but would it be sacred or secular? He chose the latter, and bought a saloon at Fifth and Garden Streets in Hoboken. Curious reporters came to investigate the unusual situation in November, so headlines flashed across the country, like these. Was it sensation or scandal?

One of the journalists observed, “The clergyman himself tends bar [wearing] a suit of black, gold-rimmed glasses, and a white necktie which, together with his close-cropped side-whiskers, give him a decidedly clerical appearance.”

When asked by reporters, the bartender said he does not sell to minors or those intoxicated, and his pool table was not available on Sunday although the bar was open. The family began attending a church whose pastor said he did the right thing, simply in order to get by.

Not everyone agreed, particularly those in the governing body of the Reformed Church in that area, known as the Classis. The story below reports on their initial response to the matter. In mid-January they expressed sympathy for his financial state but said he could have chosen a more honorable occupation. He was suspended from holding a pastorate in one of their churches until he demonstrated a change of behavior.

Julius was pleased they held out an olive branch and didn’t depose him permanently. After declaring his projection that he would make $2000 a year from the bar, he acknowledged he would gladly return to a pastor’s position if a congregation would agree to pay a salary of $1200 a year. 

As it so often happens, sales began to dwindle as the novelty wore off. An attempt was made to offer some vaudeville-style entertainment on the second floor of the building but it was short-lived. Eventually there wasn’t enough revenue to make ends meet, so in the summer of 1896 Julius made peace with church officials and they found an opening for him at a church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He paid off the mortgage to the brewing company that owned the bar, leaving him with $125 to his name, but it appeared the Feicke family finally found a firmer foundation for financial freedom.

Alas, it was not to be. Julius became seriously ill and could not travel, unable to accept the job offer. A newspaper account from October, 1896 said the man was destitute and the Classis took up a collection for him.

The next six years lack any documentation of his whereabouts or how the family survived. An article in a Baltimore newspaper in January, 1903 said the Maryland Classis of the Reformed Church admitted him to membership and he accepted a call to the Reformed Congregation of Jacksonville, Maryland. Perhaps he eventually did make it to Bethlehem or possibly a church in Germantown, since the story added that he was formerly of the Dutch Reformed Synod of Philadelphia. 

The last pieces in the puzzle of this man’s life were found on his death certificate and obituary. In 1906 his family was living in Glassboro, New Jersey when he suffered a stroke. Ministers and congregations of the German Reformed Churches of Philadelphia and Glassboro were invited to the funeral at Reformed Emmanuel Church, 38th and Baring Streets in West Philly. This implies he had been the pastor of the Glassboro congregation, and may have served at Emmanuel before he moved to Maryland in 1903.

Marie remained his widow until her death in 1919 and is the only other family member in their plot.