Evangelical Free Church
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Swedish immigrant settlers in Williamson County met together in homes for worship services as early as 1884. In 1891 this congregation was organized in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sven Peterson by 21 charter members. Known as Brushy Evangelical Free Church, the congregation built a sanctuary in 1892 on land southeast of Georgetown donated by C.J. Gustafson. This Georgetown site was acquired in 1960, and a new sanctuary was dedicated in 1963. This church has been part of Williamson County history for nearly a century. (1988)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Swedish immigrants in Williamson County first gathered for worship in one another's homes in the 1880s, and in 1891 twenty-one charter members organized this Free Church in the Peterson home. They built their first sanctuary in 1892 on donated land southeast of Georgetown, moving to this site in 1960. The congregation has been part of county life for well over a century.
Why it matters
It reflects the Swedish immigrant faith communities that took root across Central Texas in the late 19th century.
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Related people
- · Sven Peterson
- · C.J. Gustafson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
St. John's United Methodist Church
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Swedish immigrants who settled the Brushy Creek country south of Georgetown began holding Methodist services in their homes as early as 1871. They organized formally in 1882 as a Swedish Methodist Episcopal church and completed this native-stone sanctuary in 1906. Swedish-language worship continued into the 1940s, long preserving the founders' Old World heritage.
C.A.D. Clamp
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Born in Prussian Thorn—today Torun, Poland—Christian Augustus Daniel Clamp came to Texas in 1846 and settled in Georgetown in 1851. A skilled carpenter and cabinetmaker, he became one of the young town's foremost builders, raising homes, stores, churches, and public buildings, and ran a furniture business on this block for years. An active Presbyterian and civic leader, he also served as mayor from 1878 to 1880.
St. John's Cemetery
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This burial ground began with a Swedish Methodist church that immigrant families established in the Brushy Creek area in the early 1880s, its earliest known grave that of an infant in 1881. When the congregation relocated in 1906 it eventually became St. John's United Methodist Church, but the cemetery endured under a caretaking association formed in 1984. Pioneers, community leaders, and veterans reaching back to World War I rest here.
Caldwell-Palm House
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T. J. Caldwell and his wife Letitia raised this sturdy limestone house on the eve of the Civil War in 1860, quarrying its walls from the surrounding land and, as the marker plainly records, relying on the labor of enslaved people to build it. Their daughter Mary married Swedish immigrant Sven William Palm, whose family kept the property for more than a century. Around it grew the small Caldwell Heights community of school, cotton gin, and farmsteads.