Immanuel Lutheran Church

The congregation's first home, New Berlin, lay eleven miles southwest of Seguin and was settled largely by German immigrants who arrived in the 1870s. Ed Tewes built its first store, and the community had a post office from 1878 to 1906. By the mid-1880s New Berlin had two steam gristmills and cotton gins, a general store and seventy residents, and it shipped cotton, cottonseed, corn and oats. Fifty-six pupils attended its one-teacher school in 1904. The population fell to forty in 1949, and the town incorporated in 1980.

What the plaque says

Immanuel Lutheran Church German immigrants settled in the nearby New Berlin community on Elm Creek in the 1870s and founded a congregation known as Christ Lutheran Church. After the arrival of the San Antonio and Gulf Railroad in 1893, many church members moved to La Vernia, and for a time they made the weekly journey back to New Berlin for worship services. In 1901, however, 20 families gathered to form a local congregation to serve German Lutherans in La Vernia, and they called the Rev. H. W. Schmidt as their first pastor. Immanuel Lutheran Church members worshiped at the Presbyterian church until their own building was completed on this site on Cibolo Creek in October 1901. An associated cemetery (2.1 mi. NW) began on donated land the following year. After Pastor Schmidt left in 1903, the church issued a joint call for a new pastor with Christ Lutheran Church, and this shared pastorate continued for many years. The congregation grew steadily under the leadership of the Rev. Nic Frueh, who served as pastor from 1911 until 1943. In 1932, due to deterioration and a violent storm, a new church building was erected to replace the original. During pastor Frueh's tenure, English language services were added and one member was ordained into the Lutheran ministry. Although damaging floods in 1913, 1973 and 1998 have proved challenging for the congregation, the members have sustained their various ministries and programs, including education and outreach. Immanuel Lutheran Church remains an important part of the ethnic and religious heritage of Wilson County. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 21 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Mission San Juan — 21 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.
• San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 22 mi
  Four working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
• Mission Concepción — 23 mi
  A stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.

More markers nearby

• La Vernia — 0.3 mi
• Concrete Cemetery — 1.8 mi
• Claiborne Rector — 1.8 mi
• Pat Higgins Grass Farms — 6.1 mi