Emmanuel Lutheran Church

George Knippa had seen the Frio country in the 1870s and early 1880s, a run of wet years when spring-fed rivers crossed rich grazing land, and he moved his family from Fayette County to the railroad siding of Chatfield soon after the line reached Uvalde. The drought of the early 1890s ended those hopes for many of the farm families who had followed him. When the rains came back around 1900, a new wave of settlers arrived, mostly Germans and mostly Lutheran. The county commissioners had set up a school district at Knippa on February 16, 1898.

What the plaque says

Emmanuel Lutheran Church This church traces its origins to 1904 when nine charter members led by the Rev. Gottlieb Langner organized a congregation in Knippa. Services were held in the homes of its members, who were served by area pastors and traveling missionaries. George Knippa, for whom the town was named and a charter member of the church, died in 1905. The land he donated in his will to be used for a Lutheran Church was exchanged for this church site. A wooden church with a 67-foot bell tower was built in 1910. Pastor Langner became the first full-time pastor in 1912, organizing a Sunday School and choir. The German-speaking congregation conducted its services in German. During World War I, a Uvalde County resolution prohibited the use of the German language. Challenged and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1918, the court ruled it was a matter for the church to decide. German was spoken in church until 1942. A new sanctuary was constructed for the growing congregation, and was dedicated on the 50th anniversary of the church's founding in 1954. A new parsonage, annex and fellowship hall were later added. This church continues to serve its membership and the community as it has for more than 90 years. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 11 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 11 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Fort Inge Historical Site — 11 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.
• Garner State Park — 22 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.

More markers nearby

• Town of Knippa — 0.2 mi
• Knippa Trap Rock Plant — 0.9 mi
• Garner Army Air Field — 8.1 mi
• Site of Camp Sabinal — 9.4 mi