Trinity Lutheran Church Cemetery

The church that took over this burying ground in 1875 kept the rhythm of Klein's days. Its bell tolled each death: three strokes for an older person, two for a younger one, one for a baby. It rang at six on Saturday evenings before worship. In the old church, young people sat upstairs, boys on one side and girls on the other. The church school began in 1874 with seven grades. David Theiss's funeral in February 1950 was the last in the old church; his daughter Laura Mueller's, that May, was the first in the new one.

What the plaque says

Trinity Lutheran Church Cemetery A number of German immigrants settled in this area in the 1840s. The community first called Big Cypress was later renamed in honor of pioneer settler Adam Klein. Trinity Lutheran Cemetery serves as a reflection of the German heritage of this part of Harris County. A diphtheria epidemic in 1872 took the lives of three children of the Klein community. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Kaiser buried their two-year-old son beneath an oak tree on their farm. Soon after, children of the Adam Klein and Conrad Krimmel families also succumbed to the disease and were buried next to the Kaiser child. The small cemetery became a community burial ground in 1875 when the Kaiser family deeded the one-acre plot to Trinity Lutheran Church. Subsequent land acquisitions have increased the size of the cemetery to 4.5 acres. The oldest gravestone standing in the cemetery dates to 1879. Among the pioneers buried here are five charter members of Trinity Lutheran Church: Adam Klein, sr. (1826-1891); Henry Kaiser (1825-1892); Heinrich Bernshausen (1822-1892); Johannes Brill (1833-1905); and Jacob Theiss (1826-1912). Many of the tombstones bear German inscriptions. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 22 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• The Menil Collection — 23 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 23 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 23 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• The Klein Community — 1.8 mi
• Kohrville Community — 2.0 mi
• Wunderlich Farm — 2.0 mi
• Catherine Wunderlich — 2.0 mi