You are here

Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains and West » North Central Texas » Gatesville to Hillsboro » Cranfills Gap Vicinity (Bosque County) » Our Savior’s Lutheran Church

Our Savior’s Lutheran Church

-A A +A
1875–1885. 152 County Rd. 4145, 10 miles east of Cranfills Gap

The stone church, all that remains of the early Norwegian settlement of Norse, was erected by contractor Gunerius Shefstad. The rectangular stone nave has external buttresses, all of which were veneered in brick in 1907, and pointed-arched windows. The frame tower over the entrance has an eight-sided spire.

Cleng Peerson, known as the “Father of Norwegian Immigration” in America, arrived in America in 1821, selecting land for Norwegian immigrants in the Midwest. He came to Texas in 1849 and in 1853 led a group that established the Norse settlement in Bosque County. Peerson died in 1865 and is buried in the church’s cemetery. The dry-stack stone wall between the church and cemetery extends a quarter-mile north to the Kari and Sedsel Quested Farm, built between 1855 and 1870, an inaccessible National Register compound of Norwegian stone structures.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
×

Data

What's Nearby

Saint Olaf Lutheran Church, “The Rock Church”
Cliftex Theater

Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Our Savior’s Lutheran Church", [Clifton, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-GH13.

Print Source

Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains, and West, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, 262-263.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,