Editing Hodgkins, Illinois (section)

==Immanuel Lutheran Church==
Thoughts of organizing a [[Lutheran]] congregation at Hodgkins were entertained as far back as the 1880s. At that time there were several Lutheran families living in what would later be the village of Hodgkins who were members of the Lutheran churches of [[La Grange, Illinois|La Grange]] (St. John) and [[Willow Springs, Illinois|Willow Springs]] (Trinity). A local merchant named John Witsan organized a [[Sunday school]] in Hodgkins about this same time. The development of the Sunday school amplified, for the Lutheran families, the inconvenience of sending their children to the Lutheran day schools and Sunday schools in La Grange and Willow Springs, and thoughts of a stand-alone congregation in Hodgkins began to materialize. Two representatives from the Lutheran churches in La Grange and Willow Springs, Reinhardt Leu and Henry Bloedorn, approached Reverend Alex Ullrich of LaGrange with the proposition of establishing a Lutheran congregation in Hodgkins.<ref name=service>Order of Services of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Dedication and A Brief History of Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church, Hodgkins, Illinois (September 26, 1937)</ref>