St. James Lutheran Church

German Lutheran churches like this one grew from a synod founded in Texas in 1851. C. Braun, sent in 1850 by the Lutheran Synod of Pittsburgh, organized the First Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Texas in Houston that November. Needing ties to a larger body, it joined the Lutheran General Synod in 1853. When the General Council could not supply the pastors Texas needed, the synod withdrew in 1895 and voted to join the Iowa Synod, and in 1896 it split into two branches over the change. From 1892 to 1903 it published a periodical, Der Gemeindebote.

What the plaque says

St. James Lutheran Church Founded in 1897, St. Jakobi Evangelish Lutherisch Kirche was organized to serve German Lutherans in the growing community of Llano. Pastor Hugo Krienke, also serving churches in Mason and Leiningen, held German-language services first in Llano's northside school, then in a small frame house on the south side of the river, and later in the First Presbyterian Church until land was purchased in 1908. By 1910, the Lutherans had a small building, and after 1920 services were conducted entirely in English. The members of St. James Church dedicated a new building in 1958. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Llano County Courthouse Square — 0.4 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 17 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.
• Inks Lake State Park — 18 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 19 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.

More markers nearby

• O'Henry School Building — steps away
• First Christian Church of Llano — steps away
• Dillard Cooper — 0.3 mi
• Richmond Alexander McInnis — 0.3 mi