DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way back in 1854, a group of German immigrant families planted roots in a patch of Texas that would become the community of Dessau. The Wielands, the Nauerts, the Nehrings, the Grosskopfs, the Kruegers, the Goerlitzes, the Hennigs.
Names that carried the weight of a long ocean crossing and a longer hope. These were pioneer people, and pioneer people don't wait on fine buildings before they start prayin'. For years, worship happened in private homes.
Somebody's parlor, somebody's kitchen table cleared back, voices rising in German right there among the everyday. Now that's a kind of faith that doesn't need stained glass to know it means business. Then, around 1876, something changed.
The community decided it was time. Time for a proper sanctuary. And here's the thing about that building: every bit of labor that went into raising it, every plank and nail and stone, came from the members of the community themselves.
They didn't hire it out. They built it with their own hands, out of their own materials. When you worship somewhere long enough, you tend to want a say in how it stands.
And stand it did. Services inside those walls were conducted in the German language, carrying on in the tongue those founding families had brought with them, all the way until the mid-1900s. Decades of German hymns and German scripture echoing through a Texas morning.
The church building is still there today. So is the adjoining cemetery, quiet and keeping watch beside it. Together they stand as reminders, the marker says, of the area's pioneer German heritage.
The Wielands, the Nehrings, all of them. They built something that outlasted the language they prayed in. That's not nothing.
That's Dessau.
What the marker says
The community of Dessau was founded in 1854 by German immigrants, including the Wieland, Nauert, Nehring, Grosskopf, Krueger, Goerlitz, and Hennig families. The pioneers worshiped in private homes until this sanctuary was built about 1876. Labor and materials used in its construction were supplied by members of the community. Worship services were conducted in the German language until the mid-1900s. The church building and adjoining cemetery stand as reminders of the area's pioneer German heritage. (1984)