St. Paul Lutheran Church

Eickhoff's Kingsville charge was part of a young Missouri Synod district's push south. Texas congregations had belonged first to the Western District, which the Wendish church at Serbin joined in 1855 under Pastor John Kilian, and then to a Southern District that first met in New Orleans in 1882. The Texas District organized at Houston in February 1906 with forty-two pastors and twenty-three member congregations. Its 1912 convention listed Kingsville among eight new southern mission places, and by 1930 the district counted seventy voting congregations and had built a school at Austin.

What the plaque says

St. Paul Lutheran Church Kingsville's St. Paul Lutheran Church grew from early missionary efforts of the Rev. Frederick H. Eickhoff, an Indiana pastor working for the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod of Texas. It began in January 1912 as one of his several charges in the region. Early members met at Flato Hall, on Kleberg Avenue, and later at First Presbyterian Church. In November 1913, Henrietta King donated this site to the church, which officially organized in 1918. Over the years, church programs have included the Lutheran Women's Missionary League, the Lutheran Laymen's League and a parochial school, as well as youth and service groups. (2004)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• King Ranch Visitor Center — 2.2 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.
• Kenedy Ranch Museum of South Texas — 20 mi
  A museum in the Kenedy Pasture Company's 1927 office in Sarita, telling how Mifflin Kenedy and three generations of his family shaped the Wild Horse Desert, with murals and an audio guide.
• Don Pedrito Jaramillo Shrine — 24 mi
  The grave and shrine of the folk healer of Los Olmos, a place of prayer where South Texans still leave candles and letters for the curandero who took no fee.
• Heritage Museum at Falfurrias — 26 mi
  A free town museum of ranch gear, a Texas Ranger room and 99,000 photo negatives, in the town Edward Lasater built around his railroad and his Jersey cows.

More markers nearby

• Englishmen in South Texas, 1568 — 0.5 mi
• Uriah Lott — 0.6 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Kingsville — 0.7 mi
• King Star Baptist Church — 0.7 mi