St. John Lutheran Church

Rode, the lay minister who first served these Lutherans, was born in Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1828 and reached Galveston in January 1846 under the Adelsverein, becoming one of the first settlers of Fredericksburg. He married Katherina Klaerner in 1851 and was for several years a director of Zion Lutheran Church there. In 1852 he moved to Cherry Spring, where he and a relative bought land at twenty-five cents an acre. He taught school at night in neighbors' homes, and in 1879 he built a three-story limestone ranch house whose second floor served as school and church.

What the plaque says

St. John Lutheran Church German Lutherans in this area were served by circuit-riding lay minister Dietrich Rode as early as 1870. A congregation was organized in 1893 on the north side of the Llano River in the Leiningen settlement (about 3 mi. E). A second church, known as Leiningen Two or Zion, was built on the south side of the river (5 mi. E) in 1907. The two congregations merged as St. Johannes Evangelische Gemeinde in 1926, and a new sanctuary was built. Worship services were conducted in German until the 1950s, and the name was changed to St. John Lutheran Church. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 15 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.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 16 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.
• Fort Mason — 17 mi
  A reconstructed officers' quarters on Post Oak Hill above Mason, standing where the army's stone fort was taken apart by the town that grew up below it.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 25 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.

More markers nearby

• St. John Lutheran Church Cemetery — steps away
• Trinity United Methodist Church Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Castell School — 0.8 mi
• German Settlements — 1.0 mi