Saturday evening Margie and I stopped by New Sweden Evangelical Lutheran Church on our way home. The timing was fantastic, as the way the sun shone through the clouds was spectacular!
Construction on this lovely building started in 1921 and was completed in 1923. It’s the third building to serve the congregation and is located a few miles east of their cemetery, where the first two buildings stood.
I learned just this morning that the building is modeled after another church in Wakefield, Nebraska (apparently Salem Lutheran Church– that church’s spire is similar to New Sweden’s).
If you’d like to learn more about Swedish Lutherans in Texas, check out Pr. Elroy Haverlah’s book (https://amzn.to/2GKpDB6). Haverlah served as pastor of one of the three early Swedish Lutheran churches near Austin for twenty years (Palm Valley in Round Rock; New Sweden and Gethsemane in Austin are the other two). It has a detailed history of New Sweden (it’s where I learned about New Sweden being modeled after the church in Wakefield)!