First Lutheran Church

First Lutheran traces to circuit riders. The church's history says Pastor H. Mertz visited Temple in 1884 and told the synod it was an interesting place. In 1885 Karl Kreuzenstein took over as traveling missionary, serving Buckholts, Cameron, Killeen, Belton and Clifton with Temple as his base. He told the Texas Synod that the railroad station at Temple opened the way to the state's northwest, and he organized thirteen charter members as Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church. They first met in homes and sometimes in Grace Presbyterian Church.

What the plaque says

First Lutheran Church When this church was organized by the Rev. Carl Kreutzenstein in 1886 for Temple's German-speaking Lutherans, it was named Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church. Charter members included the Schmidt, Paulus, Scholz, Koch, Bosl, Jahnke, Rhein, and Haedge families. A small frame sanctuary was built at the corner of Avenue F and Fourth Street. By 1913 the congregation needed larger facilities, and a new building was erected at Avenue G and South First. In 1946 the church was renamed First Lutheran Church. A new sanctuary was built at this site in 1958. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 0.8 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Mother Neff State Park — 17 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 29 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.

More markers nearby

• Santa Fe Memorial Hospital, Inc. — 0.6 mi
• W. Goodrich Jones (1860-1950) — 0.7 mi
• Cora Anderson Negro Hospital — 0.8 mi
• Temple Daily Telegram — 0.9 mi