Doctor Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther was born on October 25, 1811, in Langenchursdorf, Saxony, Germany, and died on May 7, 1887, in St. Louis, Missouri. After arriving with the Saxon immigrants in Perry County in 1839, he served as pastor of the newly founded congregations of Dresden and Johannisberg. Following the dismissal of Bishop Martin Stephan, he assumed leadership in the Saxon Settlements. Walther was co-founder of the first Lutheran Seminary west of the Mississippi, Log College, in 1839. In the famous Altenburg Debate in April 1841, when things were near spiritual disaster in Perry County, he took the affirmative and winning stand. He served as president of Concordia Seminary from 1847 to 1887 and also started Der Lutheraner in 1844. The Walther League, organized in Buffalo, New York, on May 23, 1893, was named in his honor and served as Synod's youth organization until 1968. Walther has been called the "Luther" of America and its greatest Christian theologian of the nineteenth century.