St. Mark's Lutheran Church

St. Mark's grew up in a German-speaking town. The Handbook of Texas places German Lutherans in Cuero by 1880, the year William T. Eichholz started the German-language Deutsche Rundschau, and lists a turnverein and an Order of Sons of Hermann lodge among the town's German societies. H. Runge and Company, a branch of Henry Runge's Indianola firm, was among Cuero's first businesses. The Handbook says German Lutheran numbers grew after the 1886 migration from Indianola. The Cuero Daily Record, founded in November 1894, later absorbed the Rundschau.

What the plaque says

St. Mark's Lutheran Church The great gulf storm of 1875 in Indianola brought many Lutherans to Cuero. By 1880 German Lutherans were meeting for services conducted by pastors from nearby communities. The 1886 destruction of Indianola brought more Lutherans, and St. Mark's was organized by German Home Mission Board of the Lutheran General Council on July 18, 1886, with 30 charter members. Sunday School was organized Jan. 2, 1887. Ladies' Aid was formed in 1889 to raise funds for building. The first church building, erected in 1889, installed a copper ship's bell previously used on the Lutheran church in Indianola. First parsonage was built 1905; present church, 1939, with old copper bell as prayer bell; second parsonage, 1953; fellowship hall, 1959. The Luther League was organized 1902; Brotherhood, 1918; Women's Missionary Society, 1921, merging with Ladies' Aid, 1955. Dr. L. C. Kleinecke was Sunday School superintendent 1889-1949. Ten pastors served from 1886 to 1972: J. Butterman, Cornelius Ziesman, John Hurtzig, Reinhold Schubert, William Utesch, A.A. Hahn (two terms), Frank F. Eberhardt, John W. Kern, John A. Jacobs, H. A. Hanson. St. Mark's has been affiliated with Iowa Synod, United Lutheran Church in America; and with Lutheran Church in America. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — steps away
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 25 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 27 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 27 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• Honoring Texas Confederate General August C. Buchel — steps away
• Buchel Bank — steps away
• James Norman Smith — 0.2 mi
• St. Michael's Catholic Church — 0.3 mi