St. Paul Lutheran Church

The congregation's first home was a farm settlement the residents called Vesperville. About 1890 C. H. Waterhouse brought German families from his home state of Pennsylvania to tenant-farm his land west of the Colorado, and he set aside five acres for a church and cemetery. They built St. John's in 1895, with German-only services. The Handbook of Texas says it was destroyed three times at that site: by a hurricane in 1909, a tornado in 1910 and a fire in 1918. The congregation moved to Glen Flora, and in 1941 to Wharton, where another St. John's already stood.

What the plaque says

St. Paul Lutheran Church This church traces its history to 1893, when German settlers in Waterhouse (about 10 miles W) began worshiping together. Officially named St. John Lutheran Church in 1895, the congregation moved to Glen Flora in 1920, after storms destroyed its first three houses of worship. The Glen Flora sanctuary, built in 1920, was destroyed by a 1929 tornado. The congregation moved to Wharton in 1941, taking with them the small frame sanctuary they had built in 1929. Renamed St. Paul Lutheran Church, the congregation eventually erected larger facilities at this site. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 29 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 35 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Wharton — 0.4 mi
• Wharton County — 0.4 mi
• Judge George E. Quinan — 0.5 mi
• City of Wharton — 0.5 mi