Trinity Lutheran Church

The congregation the plaque follows to 1999 left Port Arthur in 2021. The Port Arthur News reported that Trinity Lutheran, on Fifth Street, would hold its final service on September 19, 2021, and join St. Paul Lutheran of Groves as Peace Lutheran Church. Its interim pastor, the Rev. Tim Dinger, had led Trinity for 36 years. The paper described an outreach to immigrants that began with the Vietnamese community and an English as a Second Language program, then adapted as the Spanish-speaking population grew. The THC atlas records the marker moved to the Groves church in 2022.

What the plaque says

Trinity Lutheran Church Twelve people heard the Rev. C. G. Kuppler of Louisiana deliver the first German Lutheran sermon in this area in early 1899. The small group applied for a regular pastor; the Lutheran Mission Commission sent Dan Poellot, a theological student, who served about six months. In August 1899 Pastor Kuppler installed Concordia Seminary graduate H. C. Gaertner of New Orleans as pastor of the church in Port Arthur, and assigned him to minister to Lutherans in Beaumont and Orange as well. The Port Arthur congregation established a church constitution in 1899 and incorporated as "The Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Congregation of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession" in 1901. The church and its school burned in 1902, but the congregation rebuilt by 1903. The church membership doubled in size and was self-supporting by 1904. The industrialization following the Spindletop oil boom and during World War l caused Port Arthur to grow rapidly. A new building two miles from the old church wa dedicated in 1924. The old structure became a mission, first attended by Trinity members who lived near the old site. It soon grew to become St. Paul Lutheran Church. Trinity helped organize more missions which became full churches: Good Shepard, Port Arthur, in 1947; St. Mark, Port Arthur, in 1950; and Holy Cross, Nederland, in 1957. Trinity's school enrollment declined in the 1980s with the wane of Port Arthur's oil industry. The school closed in 1987 after 85 years of operation, but the church initiated new programs and remains active. Hoi Thanh Tin Lanh, a mission for the growing Vietnamese population, was established in 1991. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 5.0 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 11 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.
• McFaddin-Ward House — 15 mi
  A Beaux-Arts Colonial Revival mansion finished in 1906 and lived in by one family for 75 years, with free guided tours of three furnished floors, the carriage house and gardens.
• Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center — 15 mi
  More than 250 acres on Adams Bayou, begun by H. J. Lutcher Stark in 1937, with garden rooms, a cypress-tupelo swamp, a heronry blind and free pontoon tours in season.

More markers nearby

• Central Baptist Church — 0.6 mi
• Janis Lyn Joplin — 1.4 mi
• The Hughen School — 2.1 mi
• Harry Henry Choates — 2.2 mi