Hope Lutheran Church

Buckholts began because of a railroad. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe built through in 1881, John A. Buckholts donated land for the townsite, and a post office followed in 1882. By 1884 the place had sixty-one residents, two general stores, two hotels, a dry-goods store and a lumber dealer. Farmers on the blackland soils included immigrants from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, as the Handbook of Texas lists them, and cotton was the main shipment. The town had 182 people in 1900 and an estimated 800 from the 1920s through the 1940s.

What the plaque says

Hope Lutheran Church Founded in 1890, this congregation began with twelve charter members led by German missionary Julius Schroeder. Early worship services were held in homes and in a local school building. The Rev. H. F. Daude was called to serve the church in 1891, and in 1901 the first sanctuary was erected. It was replaced by a second structure in 1925. Some worship services were conducted in the German language until 1949. A new sanctuary was erected in 1975. The oldest church in Buckholts, Hope Lutheran serves a predominantly German and Czech membership. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 8.9 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.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 20 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.
• Calvert — 28 mi
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.

More markers nearby

• Buckholts Brethren Church — 0.3 mi
• S. S. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church — 3.7 mi
• Bryant Station — 4.4 mi
• Site of New Colony School — 6.5 mi