First United Methodist Church

German Methodism in Texas began in Galveston, with a German church founded in 1846, and grew into a German district of eleven appointments by 1855. That year German Methodists began publishing their own paper, Der Deutsche Christliche Apologet. The Civil War divided them from their Southern church: many German and Black Methodists, who had never favored slavery or secession, joined the northern Methodist Episcopal Church after the war. Its Texas district of 1865 became a conference within two years and, by 1874, three conferences, among them the Southern German Conference.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church In the 1850s, Methodism spread across south Texas and into New Braunfels. Many German-speaking immigrants in communities like New Braunfels would be converted to Methodism. In 1853 a circuit rider, Rev. Henry P. Young, established the New Braunfels congregation as part of a circuit which included other German-speaking congregations in the area. This action was followed by the appointment of rev. J.W. Devilbiss as the presiding elder of the German district which covered all of Texas. Living in New Braunfels, Devilbiss trained ministers and gathered German-speaking converts to Methodism. In 1858, a church building was constructed in the Comaltown area of New Braunfels on Union Street. Among the converts was the Karbach family who strongly supported the growing church community by hosting Sunday school, preaching and hosting camp meetings on their ranch. By 1913, the Methodist community had grown and a new church building named Karbach Memorial Methodist church was constructed on west San Antonio Street. In 1916 the church was no longer on a circuit. Over the next decades, the church moved from German-speaking to bilingual to English-speaking. by 1952 membership passed 500. That year a new sanctuary was built on the San Antonio street site and renamed First Methodist Church. By 1980 membership surpassed 1000. In 2005, to continue its mission of outreach, the congregation sponsored a daughter church, Gruene United Methodist Church. Today both congregations are thriving and continuing to serve god and the people of the area. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 0.3 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Gruene Historic District — 3.1 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 13 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 18 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.

More markers nearby

• New Braunfels Academy — steps away
• International & Great Northern Railroad in New Braunfels — steps away
• Hermann Seele — 0.3 mi
• Sophienburg Hill — 0.3 mi