St. Paul Lutheran Church and School

The Wends who organized this church belonged to a people with no country of their own. Also called Sorbs, they come from Lusatia, where about 164,000 lived in 1840 and where their Slavic language was written in Gothic letters until 1937. Nearly 600 conservative Lutheran Wends left Germany in the fall of 1854 under John Kilian, and seventy-three died of cholera aboard the Ben Nevis. The ship reached Galveston on December 15, 1854. Most Texas Wends had shifted to German by World War I, and by the 1980s only a few could still speak Wendish.

What the plaque says

St. Paul Lutheran Church and School ST. PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH AND SCHOOL IN DECEMBER 1911, ST. PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH WAS ORGANIZED BY A SMALL GROUP OF WENDISH LUTHERAN MEN UNDER THE DIRECTION OF REV. E.J. MOEBUS IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY OF CONCORDIA, ABOUT SEVEN MILES NORTHEAST OF BISHOP. JOHANN MICHALK OF THORNDALE (MILAM CO.) DONATED A FIVE ACRE SITE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A CHURCH BUILDING, AND THE STRUCTURE WAS ERECTED BY EARLY 1912. AMONG THE FIRST CONCERNS OF THE NEW CONGREGATION WAS THE RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN. THEREFORE, THE NEW BUILDING WAS USED AS A SCHOOLHOUSE DURING THE WEEK. JOHN G. DUBE DONATED A TWO ACRE SITE NEAR THE CHURCH FOR THE CREATION OF A CEMETERY THAT CONTINUES TO BE USED BY THOSE AFFILIATED WITH THE ST. PAUL CONGREGATION. ALTHOUGH A FULL-TIME PASTOR (REV. ARTHUR E. MOEBUS, SON OF THE ORGANIZING PASTOR) WAS HIRED IN 1913, THE CHURCH'S PAROCHIAL SCHOOL DID NOT ACQUIRE A FULL-TIME TEACHER UNTIL 1931. ALFRED GEIHSLER SERVED THE SCHOOL FOR OVER FORTY YEARS AS A TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL. A NEW, LARGER CHURCH BUILDING WAS CONSTRUCTED IN 1928, FOLLOWED BY A DEDICATED SCHOOL BUILDING IN 1934. IN 1960, THE CONGREGATION VOTED TO RELOCATE TO BISHOP; THE NEW CHURCH AND FOUR-ROOM SCHOOL WERE DEDICATED ON SEPTEMBER 20, 1964. THE PARISH HALL, PASTORAGE AND TEACHERAGE WERE MOVED IN FROM THE FORMER CHURCH SITE. SEVERAL ORGANIZATIONS HAVE BEEN FOUNDED WITHIN THE CONGREGATION, INCLUDING THE LUTHERAN WOMEN'S MISSIONARY LEAGUE, THE LUTHERAN LAYMEN'S LEAGUE AND THE WALTHER LEAGUE. TODAY, ST. PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH AND SCHOOL CONTINUES TO SERVE THE PEOPLE OF THE BISHOP AREA. 175 YEARS OF TEXAS INDEPENDENCE * 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• King Ranch Visitor Center — 7.8 mi
  The bus-tour gate to a working ranch of about 825,000 acres, founded on Santa Gertrudis Creek in 1853 and worked from the start by the Kineños, families from Cruillas in Tamaulipas.
• Mirador de la Flor — 29 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 29 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 29 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Bishop — steps away
• St. John Lutheran Church — 0.4 mi
• Bishop — 0.6 mi
• Kingsville Cotton Mill — 6.1 mi