Texas Lutheran College

From one building on fifteen acres in Seguin, the college grew to more than thirty major buildings on 184, with a biology field station at nearby Lake McQueeney, the Blumberg Memorial Library and the geological displays of the Fiedler Memorial Museum. In 1932 ownership passed from the First Evangelical Lutheran Synod to the American Lutheran Church, and in 1940 the college joined the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Under Charles Oestreich, president from 1969 to 1994, scholarship endowments rose from $1 million to $21 million. The school became Texas Lutheran University in 1996.

What the plaque says

Texas Lutheran College The first German Evangelical Lutheran Synod in Texas authorized the establishment of a college in Brenham in 1890. Directed by the Rev. G. Langner, the Evangelical Lutheran College of Brenham opened in September 1891. Modeled after the European Gymnasium Schools, the Brenham Academy offered elementary and secondary courses taught in both German and English. It continued as an academy until 1906. That year the Synod limited the focus of the school to prepare students for the ministry. In 1909 the name was changed to Evangelical Lutheran Proseminary. The school remained in Brenham until 1912, when it moved to Seguin after citizens here offered land and improvements as a relocation incentive. Re-established as a coeducational academy, it became known as The Lutheran College of Seguin and gained accreditation in 1928 from the Texas Association of Junior Colleges. The Swedish Lutheran Trinity College at Round Rock merged with the Seguin school in 1929, and in 1932 the name was changed to Texas Lutheran College. It became a senior college in 1948 and attained accreditation in 1953. In 1954 the Norwegian Lutheran Clifton College merged with Texas Lutheran College. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 12 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Gruene Historic District — 13 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 22 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 23 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.

More markers nearby

• Colonel Nathaniel Benton — 0.4 mi
• Guadalupe County — 0.7 mi
• Juan Seguin School — 0.9 mi
• Black Education in Seguin — 1.0 mi