Site of New Bern Church, School, and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out here in Williamson County, Swiss and German immigrants put down roots in the early 1890s, and when it came time to name their little settlement, they looked back across the water. They called it New Bern, after Bern, Switzerland.

That name carried everything they'd left behind, folded right into the Texas soil. Now, 1892 is when things really got organized. The newly formed St.

John Lutheran Church put up a sanctuary, and that building pulled double duty, housing the New Bern School right inside its walls. All of it sat on two and a half acres donated by a man named Daniel Murphy. Two and a half acres, and on that ground, a whole community began to take shape.

Then in 1895, they set aside three acres for a cemetery, land acquired from Friedrich and Anna Stauffer, just a tenth of a mile east of the church site. A cemetery means you're planning to stay. It means you're putting your people in the ground and calling that ground home.

The years kept rolling. A new church building went up in 1912. A new schoolhouse followed in 1920.

And then, 1949, both of them were moved to the nearby community of Wuthrich Hill. Picked up and carried on down the road. But here's the thing about that cemetery.

It never moved. Friedrich and Anna Stauffer's three acres stayed right where they were, and the New Bern Cemetery continues to serve the community to this day. The buildings followed the living.

The ground kept the rest.

What the marker says

Swiss and German immigrants who settled here in the early 1890s named their settlement for Bern, Switzerland. In 1892 the newly organized St. John Lutheran Church built a sanctuary which also housed the New Bern School here on 2.5 acres donated by Daniel Murphy. The New Bern Cemetery (0.1 mi.E of this site) was established in 1895 on 3 acres acquired from Friedrich and Anna Stauffer. Though a new church building (1912) and schoolhouse (1920) were moved to the nearby community of Wuthrich Hill in 1949 the cemetery continues to serve the community.