St. John Church

Richland took its name from the quality of its soil. The first known settlers, the Henry Pfluger family, came in 1849, and many who followed had left Germany to escape political persecution. They grew corn, wheat, rye, cotton, fruit and sugarcane and drove cattle to market on the Chisholm Trail, though cotton came to rule. The Sons of Hermann chartered a Richland hall in 1894, and a saloon, store, gin and blacksmith shop came and went. In 1987 Austin proposed the area for a new airport, but nothing came of it.

What the plaque says

St. John Church German settlers who came to Richland community in the 1860s worshiped originally in private homes. Nineteen charter members, under leadership of the Rev. G. Haehnelt, organized the St. John German Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1878. Church land was given for a schoolhouse where services were held until the first sanctuary was built in 1884. The second was erected in 1891 and replaced by the present building in 1925. Services were conducted in German until the 1930s. In 1960 the congregation became affiliated with the United Church of Christ. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• LBJ Presidential Library — 15 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 16 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Harry Ransom Center — 16 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 16 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.

More markers nearby

• New Sweden Evangelical Lutheran Church — 3.1 mi
• Manda — 4.2 mi
• Kimbro — 4.4 mi
• Carlson — 4.9 mi