Our Savior's Lutheran Church
Clifton, Bosque County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Mother church, former Evangelical Lutheran Church in Texas. Organized June 14, 1869, by Norwegian settlers of Bosque County. Building erected 1875-1885. Cleng Peerson, pioneer of Norwegian emigration to U.S. (landed 1821) is buried here. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965 Supplemental plate: Centennial 1869-1969 Church built by Norwegian pioneers, 1875; contractor Gunerius Shefstad. Dedicated in 1885; enlarged, veneered with brick in 1907; veneer work redone, 1956; memorial windows given in 1958. This church has been served by eight pastors. (1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Norwegian settlers organized this congregation in Bosque County in 1869, and over the next decade and a half built the stone church that would become the mother church of Texas's Norwegian Lutherans. Buried in its grounds is Cleng Peerson, the restless "father of Norwegian emigration" who first landed in America in 1821 and spent his life guiding his countrymen to new homes on the prairie. Enlarged, brick-veneered, and adorned with memorial windows over the years, the church still anchors a distinctly Norwegian corner of central Texas.
Why it matters
Our Savior's is a cornerstone of Norwegian immigrant settlement in America, and the resting place of the man who set that entire migration in motion.
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Related people
- · Cleng Peerson
- · Gunerius Shefstad
Related events
- · Norwegian emigration to the United States
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Norse Seventh Day Adventist Church
Norse, TX
Norwegian immigrants settled this corner of Bosque County after 1854, and most worshipped in the community's Lutheran churches. That changed after young Ole T. Nystel—captured by Comanches in 1867 at age fourteen and held three months before being ransomed—was later baptized a Seventh-day Adventist and helped organize this congregation in 1880. Its 1913 building is the oldest standing Seventh-day Adventist church in Texas, and the adjoining ground holds Nystel, his family, and a grandson killed as a Marine in World War II.
Norwegian Settlements in Bosque County
Clifton, TX
When Norwegian emigrants began crossing the Atlantic in the 1830s, a share of them found their way to the wooded, hilly Bosque County country that reminded them of home. In 1854 Ole Canuteson founded what became the largest Norse settlement in Texas, and along the Gary Creek valley families kept their language and old-country customs alive well past 1900. Their farms and folkways left a distinctly Norwegian imprint on rural central Texas.
Homestead of Knud S. Knudson
Cranfills Gap, TX
Norwegian immigrant Knud S. Knudson brought his family to Bosque County in 1868, received a state land grant, and built a farm at this site. A small 1860s log home was later enlarged with a limestone addition, and the farmstead, with its home, barns, and outbuildings, stayed in the family until 1945. It survives as a fine example of a rural Norwegian vernacular farm complex.
Jens Jenson Homestead
Clifton, TX
Jens Jenson came to Bosque County in 1854 with his Norwegian immigrant family, went to sea out of Galveston, and served in the Confederate Army before settling to farm. Beginning with a single stone room in 1867, he expanded the house as his family grew to eleven children, and his descendants have farmed the ancestral acres ever since.