The adoption of the Evangelical Lutheran Hymn-book was part of the transition of the synod from the use of German to English.
Since its founding in 1847, the synod had used the Kirchengesangbuch für Evangelisch-Lutherische Gemeinden ungeänderter Augsburgischer Confession (Church Hymnal for Evangelical Lutheran Churches of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession), compiled and edited by C. F. W. Walther (the synod's first president) and a group of other pastors.
Walther himself recommended the Hymn Book for the Use of Evangelical Lutheran Schools and Congregations, which had been edited by Professor August Crull of Concordia College in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and published in 1879 by the Norwegian Lutherans in Decorah, Iowa.
[1] Professor Crull assembled and edited a new hymnal, the Evangelical Lutheran Hymn Book, and presented it to the English Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri and Other States, who published it in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1889.
Originally containing 543 hymns, it underwent significant expansion prior to the publishing of The Lutheran Hymnal in 1941.