Ansgar Evangelical Lutheran Church and Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the words on the official marker for Ansgar Evangelical Lutheran Church and Cemetery, out here in Wharton County. So let's get into it. Sometime in the early 1890s, the Danish Folk Society worked out a land option with the Texas Land and Cattle Company, and what happened next was no small thing.

Ninety-three Danish families, most of them coming from the midwest, put down roots right here and formed what became the Danevang Cooperative Settlement. Ninety-three families. You think about the wagons, the trunks, the languages, the recipes, the hymns packed into all of that, and it starts to feel like something more than a land deal.

These settlers were strong adherents of the Lutheran religion, and they were not about to let the Texas prairie talk them out of their faith. By 1895, with the help of a pastor named Reverend F. L.

Grundtvig, they organized an evangelical Lutheran congregation. In those earliest days, before there was a building, before there was a steeple, worship services were held in the home of Mads and Maren Andersen. That front room must have been something to hear.

Also in 1895, the congregation erected a meeting hall at this very site. The early pastors came over from Denmark and held services in the Danish language, so if you wandered in off the Texas plain that Sunday morning, you were hearing the old country echoing in the new one. Then came 1909, and they built something meant to last.

A sanctuary, raised from native pine and cypress, went up right here. Inside the new building they placed a painting of Saint Ansgar baptizing a child. And up in the steeple, they hung a bell.

A seventeen-hundred-pound bell. They say on a still day that bell could be heard four to five miles away. Out on the flat Texas coastal prairie, that's a long reach for a congregation that started in someone's living room.

But 1945 brought a storm, and the storm won. The sanctuary was destroyed. Now here's where the story takes a turn that only makes sense if you know something about stubborn people with a purpose.

The congregation found an army chapel and reassembled it at this site. Piece by piece, they put it back together and kept going. The cemetery beside the church holds its own kind of weight.

The first recorded interment here was Maren Andersen, in 1895. The same year the congregation organized. The same year the meeting hall went up.

The ground and the congregation grew together from the very start. Today that cemetery holds more than five hundred burials. Among them are three former pastors of the church, and veterans of wars ranging from the Civil War all the way to World War II.

A board established in 1965 maintains it, keeping faith with the names in the ground. Ninety-three families followed a land option into the Texas prairie, built a congregation, hung a bell that rang for miles, lost a church to a storm, and rebuilt it from an army chapel. The bell is quiet now, but out here in Wharton County, the ground still holds every note.

What the marker says

The Danish Folk Society obtained a land option from the Texas Land and Cattle Company and helped 93 Danish families from the midwest establish the Danevang Cooperative Settlement here in the early 1890s. The settlers, strong adherents of the Lutheran religion, organized an evangelical Lutheran congregation in 1895 with the help of the Rev. F. L. Grundtvig. Worship services were first held in the home of Mads and Maren Andersen. Early pastors came from Denmark and held services in the Danish language. The congregation erected a meeting hall at this site in 1895. A sanctuary made of native pine and cypress was erected here in 1909. A painting of St. Ansgar baptizing a child was placed inside the new church building and a 1700-pound bell, which could be heard four to five miles away, was placed in the church steeple. The sanctuary was destroyed in a 1945 storm and replaced with an army chapel which the congregation reassembled at this site. The first recorded interment was that of Maren Andersen in 1895. The cemetery, maintained by a board established in 1965, contains three former pastors and veterans of wars ranging from the Civil War to World War II among its more than 500 burials. (1994)