DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Way out in Gillespie County, there's a little place called Cherry Spring, and its story starts the way a lot of good Hill Country stories do: with German immigrants arriving around 1850 and planting roots in rocky soil. When families started settling in, the children needed schooling.
No schoolhouse yet, so classes were held in private homes. Kitchens, parlors, whatever space a family could spare. That's how it began.
But a community with ambitions doesn't stay in somebody's parlor forever. In 1859, a German nobleman by the name of Wilhelm Marschall Von Bieberstein deeded ten acres of land to six men: L. Schneider, H.
Bradhering, W. Kothe, C. Ahrens, C.
Kothe, and F. Doering. Ten acres, six names, one purpose: the construction of a schoolhouse.
Come 1860, classes were being held in that original building. And they kept right on being held there, year after year, all the way through 1878. Nearly two decades of children filing in and out of those doors, learning their lessons.
Then the building took on a second life. It began serving as a place of worship, and in 1905, that same schoolhouse became the site of the formal organization of Christ Lutheran Church. A building that began as a classroom, ended up as a congregation.
Out here in the Hill Country, things have a way of becoming more than they started out as.
What the marker says
The Cherry Spring community was founded by German immigrants about 1850. Classes for schoolchildren originally were held in private homes. In 1859 German nobleman Wilhelm Marschall Von Bieberstein deeded ten acres of land to L. Schneider, H. Bradhering, W. Kothe, C. Ahrens, C. Kothe, and F. Doering for construction of a schoolhouse. Classes were held in the original part of this building from 1860 through 1878. the schoolhouse later was used for church services and was the site of the formal organization of Christ Lutheran Church in 1905.