COUPLAND of Williamson County, Texas

St. Peter’s United Church of Christ, built in 1906. The town of Coupland, surrounded by fertile farming land, was a meeting place for Swedish, German, and Swiss farmers from the area.

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Coupland's St. Peters United Church of Christ plaque

St. Peters United Church of Christ - Historical Marker
This congregation was organized in 1894 by German and Swiss immigrants, Originally known as St. Petri Deutsche Evangelische Gemeinde (St. Peters German Evangelical Church), the congregation built this vernacular Gothic Revival sanctuary in 1905-1906. The meeting hall was added in 1925, and the two structures were connected in 1953. By 1955 English Language services, introduced in 1929, had replaced the worship originally conducted in German. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1989

Coupland's own Morgan C. Hamilton a Patriot of the Republic of Texas

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United States Senator Morgan C. Hamilton - Historical Marker
(1809-93) An outstanding patriot who acted as Secretary of War and Marine in Republic of Texas and later served the state in many roles, Morgan Hamilton in 1837 obtained a 1009-acre land grant in this area. While his brother A. J. Hamilton was governor (1865-66), he retrieved for Texas some bonds sent to Europe during the Civil War. In 1870-77 he served as a United States Senator from Texas. His nephew Theodore Van Buren Coupland (1836-90) settled here and in 1887 founded town of Coupland on land that formerly belonged to Senator Hamilton.

Type Cemetery - Historical Marker
The earliest Anglo settlers of this area came to the vicinity in the 1840s. They called their community Post Oak Island for an isolated oak grove between Bastrop and Circleville. Many of these pioneers had moved on by the time Swedish and Danish immigrants arrived in the 1890s. Swedish-born August Smith owned a store which straddled the line between Bastrop and Williamson counties. Smith opened the Type Post Office in that store in 1902, probably naming the community for the printing machine owned by his friend Jonas Sunvision. The Type Cemetery was established on land conveyed by Peder and Christine Nygaard when the Swedish Free Mission Church was founded in May 1908. The tombstones of Anna Amalia Hansen (Hanson) (d. 1910) and Christina Fredrickson (d. 1915) are inscribed in Swedish, merely one indication of the strong cultural identification of the early settlers with their homelands. Burials before 1950 are primarily those of members of the Carlson, Hanson, Nygaard, Nyman, and Swenson families. The small number of Scandinavian burials in the cemetery after 1950 reflects the group's assimilation into American culture and the dispersal of local young people to cities. In 1954 the Swedish Free Mission Church merged with Kimbro's Free Church. Of the 36 graves counted in 1998, eleven were those of Swedish immigrants and fifteen were first or second generation Scandinavian Texans. Several Mexican graves were located on the eastern edge of the cemetery. The Yegua Creek Evangelical Free Church, which relocated to this site in 1987, maintains the Type Cemetery. (1998)