Texas campuses and the stories they hold.
Texas Lutheran traces its roots to a small German-language academy founded in Brenham in 1891. In 1912 Seguin businessmen lured the school west with land and cash, and it opened here with a single building on a former cotton field. This walk covers the historical marker that tells that story, the hall named for its first leader, the limestone chapel at the heart of campus, the library and auditorium, and an old family cemetery on the campus edge.
Texas Lutheran University is a private college or university in Seguin, Guadalupe County.
The site sits at 29.5727, -97.9880 near Seguin. The nearest cataloged historic site is Texas Lutheran College (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Benton, Col. Nathaniel, Vaughn Cemetery, and Guadalupe County.
Texas Lutheran dates to 1891, when the First Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Texas, a German-speaking body, opened Evangelical Lutheran College in Brenham under the Rev. Gottlieb Langner. Money troubles shrank it to a proseminary by 1909, and in 1912 Seguin's business community put up $20,000 and 15 acres to lure it west; the relocated Lutheran College of Seguin started out with 46 students and one building on what had been a cotton field. It qualified as a junior college in 1928, took in the faculty and backing of Trinity College, a Swedish Lutheran school in Round Rock, in 1929, and adopted the name Texas Lutheran College in the early 1930s (sources differ on 1930 or 1932). Four-year status came in 1948; when full Southern Association accreditation followed in 1953, students and faculty celebrated by ringing the Victory Bell for hours, and in 1954 the college absorbed Clifton College, a Norwegian Lutheran school. San Antonio architect Henry Steinbomer designed the campus centerpiece, the limestone Gothic Revival Chapel of the Abiding Presence, in 1954; after a 1969 fire, architect Edward Sovik reworked it. Renamed Texas Lutheran University in 1996, the school now occupies 184 acres in Seguin, plus a biology field station on Lake McQueeney.
Sources: en.wikipedia.orgtshaonline.org
See this site and every marker, cemetery, courthouse, museum and landmark across Texas on one live map — find what's near you, get directions, and check in as you roam.
