The Rev. Jacob Scherer

🏛️The era

Columbus sits on the Colorado River in one of the oldest areas of Anglo-American settlement in Texas, the country of Stephen F. Austin's original colony. By the time Jacob Scherer arrived in 1851, Texas had been a state for only six years. Its towns were still young, and its institutions, including churches, schools and courts, were mostly still being built.

Education was a real challenge. Early Texas had no statewide school system, and children were taught in private academies, church schools or at home, if they were taught at all. In the 1850s the state started setting money aside for public schools, but communities had to do most of the actual work, which meant raising buildings and finding teachers.

Religion was also changing. Lutheranism in Texas was closely tied to German immigrants, who worshipped in German. A Lutheran congregation worshipping in English was unusual, and that unusual detail is at the center of Scherer's story.

👥People & events

Jacob Scherer was born in North Carolina in 1785, while the United States was still under the Articles of Confederation. North Carolina had old Lutheran communities descended from German settlers, many of whom eventually came to worship in English. That background helps explain the kind of church he would later build.

Remarkably, Scherer came to Texas in 1851, when he was in his mid-sixties. Most people that age would be slowing down, but he began a new chapter on the frontier. As pastor at Columbus, he is said to have founded the first English-speaking Lutheran church in Texas. The marker carefully says "is said to," and that is a fair caution, because claims about who was first are often hard to prove.

He did not stop at the church. In 1857 he was among the founders of Colorado College, the first public school in Columbus and one of the first in Texas. Scherer and three of his sons made brick by hand and built the college themselves. Making brick meant digging clay, shaping it, and firing it, which was hot, heavy, slow work for a man in his seventies.

Scherer died in 1860, only a few years after the school opened, and just before the Civil War changed Texas. He spent the last decade of his long life building a church and a school for a community that was only beginning to take shape.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Scherer's story shows how the American frontier was built not only by soldiers and settlers but also by ministers and teachers. In town after town, clergy were among the first to organize congregations and schools, laying foundations for community life long before states could provide them.

His English-speaking Lutheran church also says something about the American immigrant experience. Churches brought by immigrants usually began in the old language and gradually moved to English over generations. Scherer brought an already English-speaking tradition from the older East to a part of Texas where Lutheranism mostly meant German, showing that different strands of the same faith met on the frontier.

Finally, Colorado College is part of the long, gradual story of public education in America. The idea that every community should offer schooling to its children grew one town at a time, and early efforts like this one in Columbus helped make public schools an expected part of Texas life.

🧭If you visit

Columbus is one of the most historically rich small towns in Texas, set along the Colorado River with a long history going back to Austin's colony. This marker honors a man more than a building, so take a moment with it to think about what it meant to start over at sixty-six.

As you look around, think about the bricks. Scherer and his sons made them by hand to build a school, and that detail is a good way to help children understand how much effort it took to start something as ordinary as a school.

Columbus is a pleasant place to walk, with historic buildings around its center, and it sits conveniently between larger Texas cities. That makes it an easy and rewarding stop on a road trip across the state.

It also pairs well with other places in this part of Texas that trace the early history of Anglo settlement and the arrival of German immigrants. Together they show how many different backgrounds helped build Texas communities.