The Tenth Street United Methodist Church
Taylor, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Services conducted in 1896-98 by the Rev. C. Charnquist in homes of Taylor's early settlers let to the founding (1900) of the Swedish Methodist Church, North. Buying the chapel of a disbanded group, the congregation increased, moving their church to this site in 1911. Membership stabilized at about 240 in the 1920s. In 1935 English became the language in regular use. National religious trends led to name changes. The interior of the sanctuary was remodeled in 1950; annex added in 1963. Twenty-eight pastors have served this church.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
House meetings led by a traveling minister in the 1890s gave rise in 1900 to a Swedish Methodist congregation in Taylor, one of many immigrant churches that let newcomers worship in their native tongue. The congregation bought a disbanded group's chapel, moved it to this site in 1911, and only shifted to English in regular services in 1935 as the community assimilated. Twenty-eight pastors have carried the church through name changes and remodelings across the twentieth century.
Why it matters
The slow turn from Swedish to English worship captures in miniature how immigrant communities became American while holding onto the faith they carried across the ocean.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Rev. C. Charnquist
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Taylor Brethren Church
Taylor, TX
In the 1880s Czech Protestant immigrants around Taylor found themselves worshiping in a strange land where area churches held services in German or English. To keep their faith and language alive, they revived the Unity of the Brethren — a tradition tracing to the fifteenth-century Czech reformer Jan Hus — and formally organized the Taylor Brethren Church in 1895 under the Rev. Antonin Motycka. Services continued in Czech until 1967, and today a diverse congregation still worships on this site.
Immanuel Lutheran Church
Taylor, TX
As German immigrants poured into the new railroad town of Taylor in the 1880s, they brought their Lutheran faith with them, holding services by 1885 and formally organizing this congregation in 1888. A resident pastor arrived with a parsonage in 1892, and though fire destroyed the first church in 1916, the members quickly rebuilt. German remained the language of worship into the 1940s.
Christ Lutheran Church
Taylor, TX
In the mid-1880s, Wendish and German Lutheran families in the settlement of Hochkirk gathered in one another's homes for worship led by Pastor Gotthilf Birkmann. Peter Zieschang donated three acres, and in 1891 the community dedicated a church for just $200. The congregation ran a parochial school teaching in both German and English and held services in German until the 1920s, when English gradually took over—a small window into how immigrant faith communities slowly Americanized.
Site of New Bern Church, School, and Cemetery
Taylor, TX
Swiss and German immigrants who settled here in the early 1890s named their community for Bern, Switzerland. In 1892 the newly organized St. John Lutheran Church built a sanctuary that also housed the New Bern School, on land donated by Daniel Murphy, and a cemetery followed in 1895. Though the church and school buildings were eventually moved to nearby Wuthrich Hill in 1949, the New Bern Cemetery still serves the community.