He was tried for heresy by the board of directors at Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, on April 4 and 5, 1893, which put on trial many key issues that Lutherans still debate today.

For a year and a half, Daniel walked five miles (8.0 km) every week through the very thick Penn's Woods to York to recite to the elder Schmucker.

He was a model of cleanliness, of industry, of activity, of precision and care in minute things, of honor and noble pride, of economy, and of all the manly graces and qualities which constitute a true Christian hero and gentleman.

Luther Gotwald reported, in his own autobiography, as to his father's German language preaching that "As an orator and preacher he possessed great power.

One of the deacons, on one occasion, when Timmy paid over his annual subscription, asked him why it was that, although not able to understand a word of what Father said, he still so faithfully came to hear him, and also helped to support him.

Daniel Gotwald's death left his wife of twenty-five years, Susannah, with their eight surviving children to bring up and with meager financial means to do it.

Scherer died near Shelbyville, Illinois, on October 15, 1851, while Luther was living as a guest in his home shortly before he left for Springfield, Ohio, to begin his studies at Wittenberg College.

But then, Luther continues with great relief that "when forty one years of age, he professed to give his heart to God, and has ever since lived a consistent Christian life."

Luther attributes this great miracle to his "pious mother", who prayed every day for forty years for that conversion and her son's resultant salvation.

Luther admits that he does not even know whether Daniel Isaac was a Christian but continued that "Fervently do I hope that he was, for it is a dreadful thought that any of those we love, and especially one so dear as a Brother, should be called unprepared, from time into eternity, there to suffer forever for the misdeeds of this life.

Luther's younger brother, Jacob Henry Gotwald, was a respected surgeon, who died at sea close to Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of 24 during the Civil War (discussed below).

Her plan generally was to take us into "the back room," and first calmly and tenderly talk to us, and show us our wrong, and how it wounded her, and how such conduct was especially displeasing to God.

They married,[22] on October 13, 1859, in her home the "King Homestead" at 2 Ferncliff Place, Springfield, Ohio (today the Chi Omega sorority house of Wittenberg University).

Upon attaining adulthood, David King obtained an apprenticeship as a store clerk in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he met teenage Almena Caldwell.

His early education was received at the York County Academy and he was examined and ready to enter the Freshman Class at Pennsylvania College the following September.

[37] Luther Gotwald had been out West on church business and stopped in Springfield on his return train trip to find Almena on her death bed.

He was a frequent contributor to the Quarterly Review of the Lutheran Church, published at Gettysburg, and wrote various other papers and periodicals, including a number of pamphlets on historic and ecclesiastical subjects.

If my memory serves me rightly, it occurred on a Sunday afternoon, and the only thing I distinctly recollect was my sitting on our front porch sobbing and crying with breaking heart over the hellish outrage and wrong of the act, and, child as I was, I remember that I felt that it was inexpressibly mean and cowardly in us all to see that poor black man helpless in the hands of his brutal captors and run back again into the terrible life of slavery without putting forth a single effort to assist and deliver him.

[41]Lutheran minister Abraham Essick writes in his diary that he bumped into Gotwald on May 8, 1861, at the train depot in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (right after the April 13, 1861, fall of Fort Sumter), who was taking his family to Springfield, Ohio, to leave them there (without doubt at the King Homestead, with his mother in law, Almena Caldwell King), while he joined the Union Army to serve as a chaplain or even a private.

[43] Luther's brother, Jacob H. Gotwald, was the chief surgeon on board the ship Keystone State under the command of Rear-Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont in the fight at Charleston, South Carolina.

Therefore, it was with much trepidation that Martin Luther Culler and Washington Van Buren Gotwald accepted a request by the pastor of the Emmitsburg charge for two Gettysburg Seminary students to fill the pulpit at Fairfield, Pennsylvania, for the morning and evening services scheduled for Sunday, June 28th.

After respectfully saluting the officer, Culler earnestly narrated the true sequence of events and the mistaken identity which had occurred in the midst of the confusion.

[55] Perhaps most damaging in the leadup to the trial were articles in the Lutheran Evangelist that named "Luther Gotwald as a teacher not fit to teach in a General Synod Seminary".

[56] A minority of the Wittenberg board of directors, consisting of Ernest E. Baker, Alexander Gebhart, and Joseph R. Gebhart, sent a minority report to the Miami Synod Convention, which was held in Springfield, Ohio, on October 5 through October 7, 1892, requesting that it investigate whether Prof. Gotwald "gloried in the idea that the logical interpretation of the [Augsburg Confession, i.e., orthodox Lutheranism] would lead to the doctrinal basis of the general council (i.e., unorthodox and, at the time, actively competing Lutheranism).

[57] Even so, these accusations motivated Gotwald to assure the Wittenberg board of directors in writing on October 31, 1892, that he had "never contemplated a change in the doctrinal basis of the General Synod".

[64] Firey had little luck in prosecuting the case, since the original accusers all steadfastly refused to participate in any way and, unlike in a regular court of law, he had no way to force their testimony.

As the Gotwald heresy trial book puts it, in "the Twenty-first Century, in the wake of the ecumenical movement, Lutherans are again being challenged to identify their reasons for being and knowing their true identity.

[76] Their son George Daniel Gotwald followed in his father's footsteps by graduating from Gettysburg Seminary and serving as a Lutheran clergyman in Kansas.

The Missouri Pacific Railroad hired him right out of school, where for several years he worked laying extensions to its system in southeastern Nebraska.

For "family reasons" he moved to Springfield, Ohio, in 1893, where he not only practiced engineering but also acquired a knowledge of architecture and soon built up a large business in that profession.