St. Paul Lutheran Church
Shelby, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Die Deutsche Evangelische Lutherische Saint Paulus Gemeinde) On April 26, 1903, fifteen members of local church Die Friedens Gemeinde organized a new church called Die Deutsche Evangelische Lutherische Saint Paulus Gemeinde, or St. Paul German Evangelical Lutheran Congregation. The Rev. Albert Julius Fuenning was the congregation's first pastor, also serving a church in Haw Creek, southwest of Shelby. Fuenning pastored until fall of 1904, when the St. Paul congregation called the Rev. A. Wenzel of the Missouri Synod. That year, church trustees built a sanctuary at this site on land purchased from C.P. and Anna Vogelsang. Mrs. Charles Siebel sold the church land for a parsonage. The congregation later joined the old Texas Synod and then the Iowa Synod, from which it called the Rev. Julius Bosshard in 1908. Bosshard remained until 1920, then returned in 1930 to serve until his death in 1947. Other St. Paul pastors during the first half of the 20th century included the Revs. M.C. Hoermann and E.J. Scheffel. During that time, the congregation formed the Luther League and a church choir. In the 1950s, church members organized a Brotherhood and Women's Missionary Society. A German-speaking congregation for much of its first fifty years, St. Paul also followed endorsed Lutheran practices, which included seating the men on the left side of the sanctuary and women on the right. Women were also not permitted to vote in congregational decisions. These practices were revised in the 1940s. As the congregation grew, it joined the Texas District and later the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, also adding facilities to its property. Over a century after its founding, St. Paul Lutheran church continues to serve its community. (2003)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1903, fifteen members broke away from a local congregation to found a German Evangelical Lutheran church in the farming community of Shelby, in Austin County's German-settled countryside. For much of its first half-century the congregation worshiped in German and kept old-country customs—men seated on the left, women on the right, and women barred from voting in church affairs until reforms in the 1940s. As it moved through a succession of Lutheran synods, the church anchored the immigrant community that built it.
Why it matters
The congregation preserves the story of German immigrant settlement in central Texas, where language and church tradition held a community together for generations.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Town of Shelby
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Named for 1822 settler David Shelby, this Austin County town grew up around the mill of German pioneer Otto Von Roeder. Families like the Ohlendorfs and Vogelsangs arrived in 1845, followed by more German immigrants in later years, and the community gained a post office in 1846, a school in 1854, and agricultural, singing, and band societies. Mission work begun in 1876 led to the founding of Peace and St. Paul Lutheran churches, and by 1900 at least a dozen businesses operated here before farming's decline scattered residents to city jobs.
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Dr. Ernst Witte, trained as a lawyer in Hanover, Germany, immigrated to Texas and in 1856 bought 1,422 acres in Austin County, raising cotton and building this farmhouse around 1860. Constructed of stuccoed sandstone with fachwerk interior walls and locally sourced adobe, the house carries distinctly Germanic details — clipped gables and eyebrow windows inspired by Witte's home near Hanover. It stayed in the Schmid family until 1986 and stands as a rare survivor of mid-nineteenth-century German rural architecture in Texas.
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