In the summer of 2018 I undertook a plan to visit all the Lutheran churches in Texas of my forefathers. I was able to attend a worship service at each of them.
When the Wends landed in Galveston December 10, 1854, and settled on the Delaplain League in what is now the Serbin area, they soon built St. Paul Lutheran Church there. My great-great-great-grandfather Johann Karl Teinert was one of the leaders of the immigration company for the group of Wends that emigrated from Upper Lusatia. And he was the organist at St. Paul-Serbin for a while.
Later, on March 17, 1873, Karl Teinert was one of the founding members of Holy Cross Lutheran Church- Warda. The Teinert farm is north of the church toward Giddings and is still in the Teinert family. Karl is buried in the Holy Cross cemetery along with other ancestors on both my father’s and my mother’s families.
Karl’s granddaughter (my great-grandmother) Magdalena (Lena) Teinert was born in 1875. Her parents were Johann and Anna Teinert. Lena married Karl August Hempel, also a Wend, in 1894 and she had my grandfather Reinhold Hempel in 1899. Reinhold’s father died in 1901 at Greens Creek, so Reinhold moved to Copperas Cove where other family members could help her. The family were long-time members of Immanuel- Copperas Cove, which had been organized in 1894 and still exists there today. Four generations of our family are buried in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery, and numerous others are buried in the Copperas Cove City Cemetery.
After WWII, Mom moved from Copperas Cove to Austin to find work. She and my Father met at a church function and later married. They attended St Paul Lutheran Church- Austin where my Grandmother Pittsford was also a long-time member, having moved to Austin from Warda in the early 1900’s as a young teenager to find work.
In 1954 my parents became charter members of Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Austin. They were married for over 62 years and were the last living charter member couple of Redeemer, we were told. My sister Alice, brother Gordon and I were greatly blessed to be brought up in that church.
So those are the Lutheran Churches in Texas of our forefathers, since the family arrived on the Ben Nevis in the winter of 1854, now 169 years ago. It is the strong faith of our fathers that sent me on this trek to visit the Lutheran churches of their times. It gave me great comfort and joy to know and see the depth of the influence of our great Church on our family. It actually goes back much further than that, back to southeast Germany and several centuries of Lutheranism for our families there in Upper Lusatia.
Which brings me to my unfinished business. Lord willing, I will travel with our fellow tour group members to Upper Lusatia in Germany later this spring. We will visit and worship at the St. Trinitatiskirsche in Weigersdorf, the home church of Karl Teinert and family and the congregation Pastor Johann Kilian was serving when he was called to be the spiritual leader of the 1854 Wendish migration to Texas. And we will visit the Johanneskirche church at Klitten, home church of many Texas Wendish families, a congregation Rev. Jan Kilian also served as Pastor. We will also see the church at Kotitz, the hometown of the Hempel’s, where Pastor Kilian was pastor before he was called to Weigersdorf.
Thank God for our Wendish ancestors and their strong faith.