New Fountain United Methodist Church

The creek at Vandenburg sank into the porous limestone of its bed and rose again four miles downstream, and most of the colonists moved after it. The congregation Schaper gathered stood out as a pocket of German Methodists in mostly Catholic country. A post office opened in 1857, and by 1860 the settlement had a mill and a Masonic lodge and was a stage stop on the road from San Antonio to Uvalde. The Muennink Gin here is believed to have been the county's first cotton gin and its first building with electricity and a telephone.

What the plaque says

New Fountain United Methodist Church This region, known as Soldaten Kemp (soldiers' camp) for its history as a rendezvous point for frontier military patrols, freighters and others on the San Antonio Road, was home to many German immigrants by the mid-19th century. The Rev. John Schaper organized a Methodist congregation here in 1858 and a church building was erected by 1860. Church members John and Aalke Wiemers and Friedrich and Antje Muennink deeded land for a new church building in 1871. Using native stone, pastor and stonemason Jacob Bader built the new church with help from his parishioners. For many years it was the community's only meeting hall. It was enlarged in 1900-01 during the pastorate of the Rev. C. A. Lehmberg. (1975, 2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Landmark Inn State Historic Site — 11 mi
  A store and stage stop at the Medina River ford in Henri Castro's Alsatian town, with a mill race under the ground and rooms you can still rent for the night.
• Frontier Times Museum — 24 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• Town of Quihi — 1.9 mi
• Vandenburg — 4.0 mi
• Medina County — 5.5 mi
• Hondo — 5.7 mi