Philadelphia Evangelical Lutheran Church

The congregation on this plaque gave a small farm town its center. Swiss Alp, eleven miles south of La Grange, was settled about 1865 by German Lutherans, and Wendish families from Serbin in Lee County came later. A post office opened in 1877 and closed in 1906. The town peaked in 1896 at about 100 people, with twelve businesses and a school tied to the church, then shrank after 1900. In 1967 three Lutheran congregations from nearby towns merged here. By 1987 the church served dairy farms and cattle operations, and the 2009 Texas Almanac counted seventeen residents.

What the plaque says

Philadelphia Evangelical Lutheran Church Second oldest congregation in the Texas-Louisiana Synod, United Lutheran Church in America. The founding occurred on March 24, 1867, under leadership of the Rev. C. C. Rudi, who had just moved to the Swiss Alp area. A ten-acre church site was donated by John and Christina Knippa by deed of March 29, 1869. Cedar was donated by J. F. Melcher and the Knippas, and original log church was built in 1869. In Feb. 1877 the cemetery was established and in Nov. 1877 an adjoining tract of 44.5 acres was added. The present church building was erected in 1889-90. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 4.9 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.
• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 5.4 mi
  A red brick Gothic Revival church of 1906 in a German farm settlement, where two San Antonio painters spent 1912 faking marble columns and stone vaults on wood.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 7.6 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 7.8 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.

More markers nearby

• The Oldest Czech Settlement — 3.6 mi
• Brookfield-Evans-Cremer House — 3.6 mi
• Czech Catholic Union of Texas — 3.7 mi
• Cedar Cemetery — 4.4 mi