Isaac K. Funk
American Lutheran minister, editor, lexicographer, publisher and spelling reformer
Isaac Kaufmann Funk (September 10, 1839 – April 4, 1912) was an American Lutheran minister, editor, lexicographer, publisher, and spelling reformer. He was the co-founder of Funk & Wagnalls Company, the father of author Wilfred J. Funk (who founded his own publishing company, Wilfred Funk, Inc., and wrote the Word Power feature in Reader's Digest from 1945 to 1962), and the grandfather of author Peter Funk, who continued his father's authorship of Word Power until 2003. Funk & Wagnalls Company published The Literary Digest, The Standard Dictionary of the English Language, and Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia.
Early life
Funk was born in 1839 in the village of Clifton, Ohio. In 1842, he moved to Springfield, Ohio, where his father John managed the Pennsylvania House.
Years later, he attended Wittenberg College (now Wittenberg University) and Wittenberg Theological Seminary, both in Springfield.
Career
Upon his graduation in 1860, he was ordained as a Lutheran pastor, and served pastorates in New York, Indiana, and his home state of Ohio; his last pastorate was at Saint Matthews English Lutheran Church in Brooklyn, New York, where he stayed seven years. In 1872, Funk resigned from the ministry and made an extensive tour through Europe, northern Africa, and Asia Minor.
Funk was a prohibitionist. He founded the Voice in 1880, an organ of the Prohibition Party, and he was the Prohibition candidate for mayor of New York.
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This entry incorporates text from “Isaac K. Funk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.