First United Methodist Church
New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the 1850s, Methodism spread across south Texas and into New Braunfels. Many German-speaking immigrants in communities like New Braunfels would be converted to Methodism. In 1853 a circuit rider, Rev. Henry P. Young, established the New Braunfels congregation as part of a circuit which included other German-speaking congregations in the area. This action was followed by the appointment of rev. J.W. Devilbiss as the presiding elder of the German district which covered all of Texas. Living in New Braunfels, Devilbiss trained ministers and gathered German-speaking converts to Methodism. In 1858, a church building was constructed in the Comaltown area of New Braunfels on Union Street. Among the converts was the Karbach family who strongly supported the growing church community by hosting Sunday school, preaching and hosting camp meetings on their ranch. By 1913, the Methodist community had grown and a new church building named Karbach Memorial Methodist church was constructed on west San Antonio Street. In 1916 the church was no longer on a circuit. Over the next decades, the church moved from German-speaking to bilingual to English-speaking. by 1952 membership passed 500. That year a new sanctuary was built on the San Antonio street site and renamed First Methodist Church. By 1980 membership surpassed 1000. In 2005, to continue its mission of outreach, the congregation sponsored a daughter church, Gruene United Methodist Church. Today both congregations are thriving and continuing to serve god and the people of the area.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As Methodism spread across south Texas in the 1850s, circuit rider Rev. Henry P. Young organized a New Braunfels congregation in 1853 within a circuit of German-speaking churches. Rev. J.W. Devilbiss, based in the town, trained ministers and gathered German-speaking converts, and a church building went up in the Comaltown area in 1858. Over the following century the congregation shifted from German to bilingual to English, grew past a thousand members, and in 2005 sponsored a daughter church in nearby Gruene.
Why it matters
Its story shows how American Protestantism took root among German-speaking immigrants, gradually blending them into the wider religious life of Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The New Braunfels of the 1850s was a young German colony still finding its spiritual footing. Its settlers had arrived only a decade or so earlier, part of the organized German emigration to the Texas hill country, and they brought with them the faiths of the old country — largely Lutheran and Catholic. Into this German-speaking world, American Methodism came reaching.
Methodism in that era spread by a distinctive method that gave the movement its name: the circuit rider. These were traveling preachers who covered enormous territory on horseback, stitching together far-flung settlements into 'circuits' and bringing regular worship to places too small or too new to support a settled minister. In frontier Texas, the circuit rider was often the first representative of a Protestant denomination a community ever met.
What made the work here unusual was language. To reach the German settlers of central Texas, Methodism had to preach in German, train German-speaking ministers, and build German-speaking congregations. This marker records the birth of one such congregation — and, over the following century, its slow passage from a German mission into a fully American church.
People & events
In 1853, the circuit rider Rev. Henry P. Young organized a Methodist congregation in New Braunfels, one stop on a circuit that linked several German-speaking communities in the area. Close behind came Rev. J.W. Devilbiss, appointed presiding elder of a German district that stretched across all of Texas. Living in New Braunfels, Devilbiss trained ministers and gathered converts, doing the patient, local work that turns a preaching stop into a lasting church.
In 1858 the young congregation built a church in the Comaltown area, on Union Street. Among its pillars was the Karbach family, who hosted Sunday school and preaching and opened their ranch for camp meetings — the outdoor revival gatherings that were a hallmark of frontier Methodist life. Their devotion was later honored when a new church, built on West San Antonio Street in 1913, was named Karbach Memorial Methodist Church.
From there the congregation's story is one of steady growth and gradual change. By 1916 it no longer needed to be part of a circuit. Over the following decades its worship moved from German to bilingual to English. Membership passed 500 by 1952 — the year a new sanctuary rose on the San Antonio Street site and the church took the name First Methodist — and topped 1,000 by 1980. In 2005 the congregation planted a daughter church in nearby Gruene.
Its place in the American story
This congregation's arc mirrors a much larger American story: how the great Protestant movements of the nineteenth century reached across language and culture to gather in the country's immigrant communities. Methodism's circuit riders and camp meetings were among the most effective engines of religious growth the young nation ever produced, and their willingness to preach in German — to meet newcomers in their own tongue — is a vivid example of how American religion adapted to the peoples it hoped to reach.
The slow shift from German to bilingual to English worship is, in miniature, the immigrant experience itself. The same passage played out in thousands of ethnic congregations across America — German, Scandinavian, Czech, and more — as the children and grandchildren of immigrants grew up as Americans. A church's language is a quiet record of assimilation, and this one traces the change across three or four generations.
That the congregation eventually grew large enough to sponsor a daughter church closes the circle. A mission that began as one stop on a horseback circuit became, in time, strong enough to plant new congregations of its own — the frontier pattern of church-planting carried into the modern era.
If you visit
This is a story better felt than photographed. As you stand at the marker, let the timeline unspool: a horseback preacher in 1853, a small church in Comaltown in 1858, a family opening their ranch for camp meetings, and — a century on — a congregation of more than a thousand.
If your travels take you around New Braunfels, notice how the church's history is written across the map of the town itself, from the early Comaltown site to West San Antonio Street to the daughter congregation in Gruene. A faith community that moves and multiplies across a town is a kind of living document of that town's growth.
New Braunfels wears its German heritage openly, and this marker adds a spiritual dimension to that heritage — a reminder that the settlers who came for land and opportunity also brought, and reshaped, their faith. It fits well into any visit that takes the town's German story seriously.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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