Site of New Bern Church, School, and Cemetery

The Handbook describes a village that gathered around its church and then built itself a hall. A public school opened in 1900, and in 1908 the New Bern Helvetia Lodge Hall was finished as the center of social life, a name that keeps the settlers' Swiss roots. The congregation raised a large wooden church in 1912. In 1948 it joined St. James Lutheran Church, from Wuthrich Hill, to form the Prince of Peace Church, and the building moved there. The school merged with Thrall's in 1949, and by 1986 only the cemetery marked the center.

What the plaque says

Site of New Bern Church, School, and Cemetery Swiss and German immigrants who settled here in the early 1890s named their settlement for Bern, Switzerland. In 1892 the newly organized St. John Lutheran Church built a sanctuary which also housed the New Bern School here on 2.5 acres donated by Daniel Murphy. The New Bern Cemetery (0.1 mi.E of this site) was established in 1895 on 3 acres acquired from Friedrich and Anna Stauffer. Though a new church building (1912) and schoolhouse (1920) were moved to the nearby community of Wuthrich Hill in 1949 the cemetery continues to serve the community. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 21 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 21 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 23 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Town of Thrall — 3.3 mi
• St. John Lutheran Church — 3.4 mi
• Christ Lutheran Church — 5.2 mi
• Howard Bland, Sr. — 5.3 mi