Industry Brethren Church Cemetery
Industry, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
INDUSTRY BRETHREN CHURCH CEMETERY THE INDUSTRY BRETHREN CHURCH IS THE THIRD OLDEST CONGREGATION OF THE UNITY OF THE BRETHREN LOCATED IN THE GERMAN SETTLEMENT OF INDUSTRY. PERIODIC WORSHIP SERVICES WERE CONDUCTED IN INDUSTRY BEGINNING IN 1860. THE REV. JOSEF OPOCENSKY WAS THE FIRST MINISTER TO SERVE THE CONGREGATION, MOVING TO INDUSTRY FROM FAYETTEVILLE IN 1860. IN 1875 THE REV. LUDVIK CHLUMSKY ORGANIZED THE CHURCH WITH NINE CHARTER FAMILIES. THE BRETHREN CHURCH IS A CONGREGATION BASED ON THE PRINCIPLES ORIGINATED FROM AN AREA EAST OF BOHEMIA IN THE STATE OF MORAVIA IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA. CONSTRUCTION OF A CHURCH BUILDING BEGAN IN 1878 AND WAS DEDICATED ON NOVEMBER 1, 1879. THE CEMETERY WAS ESTABLISHED BY 1880, AND THE CHURCH INCORPORATED IN 1888. THE CHURCH WAS RENOVATED IN 1929. A NEW SANCTUARY WAS BUILT AND DEDICATED SEPTEMBER 29, 1968. AFTER THAT THE ORIGINAL CHURCH BUILDING WAS DISASSEMBLED AND REBUILT BY THE CHRISTIAN FAITH CHURCH MEMBERS OF BELLVILLE WHERE IT REMAINS. IN 1966, IT WAS AGREED BY CHURCH MEMBERS TO EXCHANGE 0.367 ACRES OF LAND WITH ROBERT SPIESS FOR ENLARGING OF THE CEMETERY. THE INDUSTRY BRETHREN CHURCH CEMETERY HAS MORE THAN 200 GRAVES, WITH THE OLDEST BEING IN 1880 OF L. AND ROSALIE MAREK. SOME OF THE HEADSTONES HAVE VERSES WRITTEN IN CZECH THAT WHEN TRANSLATED ARE BEAUTIFUL, AS IS THE CASE OF JAN COUFAL (1842-1902). THE PICKET FENCE WAS CONSTRUCTED IN THE 1930s. THERE ARE AT LEAST TWENTY-ONE VETERANS BURIED IN THIS CEMETERY WITH ERNST MAECKEL, BENNIE DOCKAL AND JOHN RIPPLE, JR. BEING THE EARLIEST BURIALS. THIS CEMETERY WAS ORIGINALLY REFERRED TO AS THE BOHEMIAN MORAVIAN EVANGELICAL REFORMED CHURCH CEMETERY AND THE CZECH-MORAVIAN CEMETERY, SHORT FOR EVANGELICAL UNITY OF THE CZECH-MORAVIAN BRETHREN OF NORTH AMERICA.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This is the cemetery of the third-oldest congregation of the Unity of the Brethren, a faith rooted in the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia and carried to the German settlement of Industry by immigrant families. Worship began here in 1860, the church was formally organized in 1875 with nine charter families, and the burial ground was in use by 1880. Among its more than two hundred graves are headstones bearing verses in Czech and the resting places of more than twenty veterans.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the transplanted religious and linguistic heritage of Czech-Moravian immigrants, one of the distinctive communities that settled central Texas.
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Related people
- · Josef Opocensky
- · Ludvik Chlumsky
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lindemann-Ott House
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Jacob Ott, a baker who emigrated from Worms, Germany, began building this two-story home with a carpenter neighbor in 1870, using the ground floor for his bakery. Ott later became a Methodist minister, and the property passed through owners including storekeepers Fritz Holze and Edward Lindemann, whose family lived here for decades. With its Queen Anne detailing and center-passage plan, the house links generations of the German community of Industry, Texas.
Fisches Park
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This roadside park sits on land once granted to Friedrich Ernst, remembered as the father of German immigration to Texas, in Industry — the state's oldest permanent German settlement. When Highway 159 was routed past the Fisches family farm, Annie Fisches, an automobile enthusiast, deeded ground to the state in 1939 to create a rest stop under Texas's new roadside-park program. Closed in 2008 for lack of funds, it was reopened by a community unwilling to lose it.
Industry Post Office
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By 1831 the family of Johann Friedrich Ernst had settled along the Gotier Trace and founded the community of Industry, and Ernst's letters home to Oldenburg—one printed in German newspapers—drew a wave of countrymen to Texas, earning him the title "Father of German immigration to Texas." Mail for area residents came addressed in his care, and his partner and son-in-law Johann Gottlieb Sieper became the town's first official postmaster in 1840. The Ernst store, long held to be the site of the first post office, survives today in a memorial park.
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German settlers Friedrich Ernst and Charles Fordtran founded Industry in 1831, the first permanent German settlement in Texas and part of Stephen F. Austin's colony. As cotton overtook cigar-making as the local staple, planter Ernst Knolle had a wood-frame gin built here in 1857, one of the first of a dozen gins to rise in the area. Powered in turn by mules, steam, and finally diesel, and run for generations by the Schramm family, it processed the last bale of cotton in Austin County in 1973.