St. Paul Lutheran Church

The plaque's mother church, St. John of Ross Prairie, left records before it moved. Its German-language books, with confirmations from 1852 and baptisms from 1855, survive as photocopies, Ms. 57, at the Nesbitt Memorial Library in Columbus. When the Ross Prairie congregation moved to Ellinger, dedicating a church there in May 1895, the Fayetteville members kept a St. John of their own, the name that later became St. Paul. Roehm also wrote a historical account for the synod's twenty-fifth anniversary convention; the original and a translation sit in the Ziehe papers at the Lutheran archives in Seguin.

What the plaque says

St. Paul Lutheran Church Lutheran worship in this area dates to 1851 when Pastor J. C. Roehm of Basel, Switzerland, organized the first Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Texas and then began preaching, establishing St. John Lutheran Church of Ross Prairie in 1859. In 1894 the growing number of St. John members in Fayetteville erected a church building on this site, calling the Rev. Vaclav Pazdral who served until 1911. During the pastorate of Hans Krause the congregation joined the Texas Synod in 1913 and the American Lutheran Church in 1930. By 1938 the name had changed from St. John to St. Paul Lutheran Church. Services were held in English and German until 1947. The St. Paul Lutheran Church continues in the traditions of its founders. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Round Top and Festival Hill — 11 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 12 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 14 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 15 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.

More markers nearby

• Sarrazin Store — steps away
• Site of Svrcek Garage — steps away
• Fayetteville — steps away
• Phillip James Shaver — steps away