Trinity Lutheran Church

The missionary who organized Trinity had most of a state for a parish. Writing in the Texas Lutheran Messenger in 1928, Pastor G. Birkmann recalled that the church decided at New Orleans in 1882 to call one missionary for Texas, and chose Candidate J. Trinklein. Working first from Hockley, he did mission work at Hempstead, White Hall, Cat Spring and Sealy, gathered congregations at Riesel and in Hamilton County, and reached Abilene and Cisco before any other pastor of his synod. He reported ten mission places in 1885, then accepted a call to Houston and moved north in 1889.

What the plaque says

Trinity Lutheran Church After preaching his first sermon in Sealy on February 11, 1883, Lutheran Missionary Reverend John Trinklein organized the Trinity Lutheran Church Congregation on October 31 of that same year. In the beginning, most of the congregation was of German heritage and many early church records were written in German. The congregation dedicated its first church structure, a 24 by 34-foot frame building, on July 25, 1886. In March 1891, the congregation bought the church site from the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Company. Repaired after sustaining serious damage in the great storm of 1900, the original church building remained in use until it was replaced in 1940 by a larger 60 by 30-foot building. The current brick-clad sanctuary dates from 1963, when it and five new Sunday school rooms were dedicated. From 1883 to 2012, twenty-five pastors, including Rev. Trinklein, served the congregation. During its first dozen years, the church shared Pastors Paul G. Heckel (1890-93) and P.A. Wenzel (1893-1895) with the Lutheran congregations in Cat Spring and Pattison. In 1895, Pastor A.R. Roglitz became the church's first pastor to live in Sealy. Over the years, the church campus grew to meet the congregation's needs. In September 1913, a 20 by 30-foot Sunday school building, located next to the parsonage, was dedicated. The campus further expanded with additions to the Sunday school building in 1949 and construction of a new parish hall in 1955. For decades, the church supported activities such as the Ladies Aid Society, organized in April 1895, and the annual Bar-B-Que that started in 1963 to raise funds for local charities. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 4.1 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 11 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.
• Stafford Opera House — 23 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.

More markers nearby

• Citizens State Bank — steps away
• Sealy — steps away
• Saint John's Episcopal Church — steps away
• Haynes Mattress Factory — 0.3 mi