FAYETTE COUNTY, TEXAS
Text of historical marker erected on FM 159 at Rutersville in 1972:
From Fayette County, Her History and Her People by F. Lotto, 1902:Rutersville
Founded in 1838 upon the recommendation of Dr. Martin Ruter (1785-1838), as a site for an institution of higher learning. Named in honor of Dr. Ruter, a pioneer Methodist missionary who entered Texas on Nov. 21, 1837 and weakened by his travels, died on May 16, 1838. Later in the year of his death, a company of ten Methodists bought a tract of Land, platted the townsite, and began to build Rutersville. In 1840, Rutersville College was chartered by the fourth Congress of the Republic of Texas as the Republic's first Protestant college. The legislation specified the school should not be exclusively for the benefit of Methodists, and it was patronized by families of various faiths. Rutersville students were noted for their loyalty to neighbors, sometimes spending days away from class, pursuing Indians. The Rev. Chauncey Richardson, A. M. (1802-1852), whose grave is nearby, was first president of the college. The campus was half a mile southeast of this marker. After the Civil War ended in 1865, the original inhabitants of Rutersville sold their property. It was later purchased by German immigrants, whose descendants now live here in large numbers.
Rutersville
Rutersville lies about six miles northeast of La Grange in the fertile Rutersville prairie, hog wallow land, near the banks of Rocky Creek. it is located on the Franklin Lewis league. Rutersville is an old historic place. In the early days it was a competitor for the capital of the Republic of Texas. At that time there was a military school owned by the state under the management of Prof. Forshea and a female college under the management of Supt. Thrall at Rutersville. On account of these schools, the town was a local option precinct. These schools were closed during the Civil War and not reopened thereafter. A stock company bought the college and sold it to the Lutheran congregation; they sold it to the Methodists, who for a long time used it for a school.
Rutersville consists of a store, a saloon, a gin and a blacksmith and wheelwright shop. It is a voting place of the county and a postoffice. Mr. G. D. Wessels is the owner of a fine hall for dancing, the best in the county. he also is the owner of a first-class saloon.
The Rutersville country was settled by Americans and Germans, but now the country is almost entirely German with a sprinkling of Bohemians. Old settlers: C. Amberg, sr. (deceased), Geo. Mauer, B. W. Hobson (deceased), F. Luecke, W. Hancord, the Mohrhusens, H. Harms, Carl Schulz, R. Pohl, L. Struve, Joe Brendel.
From the Footprints of Fayette article transcribed by Connie F. Sneed from the General Commission on archives and History of the United Methodist Church:
Martin Ruter
Martin Ruter (1785-1838) was a native of Massachusetts and served the church as a pastor, book agent, and college president in the Northeast, Canada, and Kentucky.
At the 1836 General Conference, news came that Texas had won its battle for independence from Mexico, and that the Republic of Texas had been established. Martin Ruter immediately offered himself as a missionary, and the next year was appointed Superintendent of the Texas Mission. Littleton Fowler and Robert Alexander were his assistants.
He was the son of Job Ruter, who was born in Charlton, Worcester County, Massachusetts, on April 3, 1785. Although his blacksmith father could not send him to school, he read widely in English literature and the classics and gained a working knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French. After being called into the ministry, he joined the New York Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1801 and received his deacon's and elder's orders from Bishop Francis Asbury in 1803 and 1805. After the deaths of his wife, Sybil (Robertson), and two children, he married Ruth Young of Concord, New Hampshire, in 1810. Nine children were born to this second union. Ruter served churches in the New York, New England, and Philadelphia conferences and was a delegate to seven general conferences.
Taking a large supply of Bibles, hymnals, and Sunday school books, he headed for Texas in early November with David Ayres as his companion and guide. On November 23, 1837, they crossed the Sabine River at Gaines Ferry, where they met Robert Alexander. In the following three weeks, Ruter preached in San Augustine, Nacogdoches, and Washington-on-the-Brazos and formed a new society at Egypt. By mid-December he was in Houston, where he preached in Congress Hall and met with Sam Houstonqv and other leaders of the government. Ruter stated his plans to establish a college and received pledges for an endowment of six or seven leagues from large landholders. He even drew up several articles of a charter to be presented to the next session of the Texas Congress.
Ruter spent just one year in Texas before his untimely death on May 16, 1838, but he firmly established Methodism in Texas. One of his plans had been to establish a Methodist college. Two years after his death, the Congress of the Republic of Texas chartered Rutersville College, a coeducational institution, the first Protestant college in Texas. Chauncey Richardson (1802-1852), a Methodist preacher and educator in Alabama, was elected president. He visited Rutersville for the first time in 1839 and pronounced it "literally the heart of Texas."
The townsite of Rutersville was laid out some six miles northwest of La Grange just five weeks after Ruter's death. The school was built there in 1840, opening with about sixty students and three faculty members, including Richardson. Later that year, on December 25-28, 1840, the Texas Conference was organized in Rutersville, the first annual conference ever held in Texas.
The college faced several difficulties during its early years, including competition from a school in nearby Bastrop, financial problems, conflicts with the Texas government, and a scandalous love affair between a local preacher and the college president's daughter.
By the mid 1850s, Rutersville College had faded into memory, but in 1872, when Southwestern University was founded, the Rutersville charter was included in Southwestern's charter as a legitimate ancestor of the new college.
The Rutersville property was briefly used for a private military institute. After the Civil War, large numbers of German immigrants came into the area, and in 1883 the college property was purchased by the Southern German Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The lumber from the frame college building was used to build a church that served German-speaking Methodists until the 1930s.
