Saint Lorenz and the Log Church

The town and its church were born on the same day. When the fifteen colonists arrived in eighteen forty five, their leader was Pastor August Craemer, a graduate of Erlangen University who had been teaching in England before Wilhelm Loehe recruited him for the wilderness. Their first act was to raise a log cabin that served at once as church, school, and parsonage.

The following June, nearly one hundred more immigrants arrived from the Rosstal, Gunzenhausen, and Nuremberg area, swelling the congregation. Together they built a sturdier church, school, and parsonage, dedicated on Christmas Day of eighteen forty six. They named it Saint Lorenz after their mother church back in Rosstal, in Bavaria.

For generations the congregation worshipped and taught in German. Today Saint Lorenz Lutheran Church stands as one of the largest Lutheran congregations in the country, its tall spire visible across the flat farm country as you approach town. The building you see is far grander than that first log cabin, but it sits on the same ground, the spiritual center that everything else in Frankenmuth grew around.