Moody-Leon United Methodist Church

The Winklers belonged to a people with their own language. Wikipedia's article on the historian Ernest Winkler says his grandparents, August and Maria, left Prussia in the 1850s and were Wends from Lusatia, who settled at first among other Wends in Lee County. His father Charles and uncle William settled The Grove, on the Bell and Coryell county line, in the 1870s and established a German Methodist church even though the family was Lutheran. Ernest, born there in 1875, later cataloged the University of Texas's Bexar Archives.

What the plaque says

Moody-Leon United Methodist Church Established in 1877 by the Rev. F. Von Schulenbach, this German Methodist congregation was formed through the efforts of two brothers, Charles A. (1844-1931) and William Winkler (1839-1920). Members worshiped in homes and in Winkler schoolhouse until 1908, when a frame church was erected at this site. A parsonage was built in 1920 for the first resident pastor. Morning services were conducted in German until 1939. The original frame church burned in 1969 and was replaced by the present structure. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 3.2 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.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 15 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.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 27 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 27 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.

More markers nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 2.1 mi
• Eagle Springs Baptist Church — 4.5 mi
• Moody — 5.7 mi
• First Baptist Church of Moody — 5.8 mi