The Rev. Henry P. Young

Young reached Galveston on January 26, 1846, and preached his first sermon two days later, outdoors on Fifteenth Street, to about a thousand people. For six years from 1849 he rode circuits out of New Braunfels as far as San Saba, 180 miles away, sleeping on the prairie with his saddle for a pillow. Back in Galveston he organized the city's first German Presbyterian congregation on April 19, 1857. Its church of 1871 cost $9,000 and burned in the fire of 1885, and a smaller one went up the next year.

What the plaque says

The Rev. Henry P. Young (October 2, 1817 - September 12, 1901) Born Heinrich P. Jung in Germany in 1817, the Rev. Henry P. Young began a Methodist ministry in Galveston in 1846. That year he founded the first society of German Methodists in Texas. From 1849 to 1855 he rode a mission circuit of German colonies in Central Texas. He returned to Galveston by 1856. In 1857 he joined the Presbyterian faith and organized the German Presbyterian Church and School where he served as minister and teacher until his death in 1901. Recorded - 1992

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 0.6 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.
• Moody Mansion — 2.6 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 2.7 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 3.1 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.

More markers nearby

• William Tennant Austin — steps away
• Burial Site of David G. Burnet — steps away
• Peter Leroy Colombo — 0.3 mi
• The Original Galveston Seawall — 0.6 mi